Is there any organization with more power over Hollywood, and less respect from the people whose destinies it controls, than the Motion Picture Association Of America? The MPAA’s content ratings have huge implications on movies’ box office receipts, but often seem almost willfully out of step with the actual content they’re meant to label and protect younger audiences from.
Directors have been arguing with the MPAA for years, from Kevin Smith arguing for his right to show cartoon scrotums, to The Invisible War director Kirby Dick’s feature-length takedown, This Film Is Not Yet Rated. The latest gladiator to wade into the surprisingly bloody (but sex-free) arena of arguing with the MPAA? Comedian and director Mike Birbiglia, who hopped onto Twitter today to compare and contrast the association’s treatment of his recent film, the improv dramedy Don’t Think Twice, and David Ayers’ just-released violence orgasm Suicide Squad.
The MPAA apparently decided that Don’t Think Twice’s “Language and some drug use” called for a harsher judgment than the big-budget comic book movie’s “Sequences of violence and action throughout, disturbing behavior, suggestive content and language.” Birbiglia’s fellow director (and superstar comedy producer) Judd Apatow—no stranger to getting slapped with an R-rating over some fairly innocuous pot smoking and swears—also weighed in, saying it’s all about the money:
Birbiglia followed his initial tweet up with some foul language of his own—tweeting “Fuck the MPAA”—but has since deleted the tweet. Presumably, he decided to follow his own advice, and remember that what he should have said was nothing—a sentiment we’d also happily apply to everything Suicide Squad star Jared Leto has ever said, did, or sung.