Freedom and Entertainment
Rating the Movies in an Age of New Media

The first behind-the-scenes history of the American movie rating system.

Stephen Vaughn (Author)

9780521676540, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 17 October 2005

352 pages, 13 b/w illus.
22.8 x 15.1 x 2.2 cm, 0.471 kg

"Vaughn has written a significant study."
Lary May, The Historian

This is a story that Jack Valenti has long tried to keep secret. Freedom and Entertainment is the first book to offer a behind-the-scenes account of the motion picture rating system and the Motion Picture Association of America under Valenti's leadership. The book is based on the private papers and oral history of Richard D. Heffner, who headed the Classification and Rating Administration for two decades, from 1974 to 1994, and who was once called 'the least-known most powerful person in Hollywood.' The story chronicles the often tense working relationship between Heffner and Valenti, and the sometimes bruising encounters Heffner had with such Hollywood heavyweights as Clint Eastwood, Oliver Stone, Michael Douglas, George C. Scott, Lew Wasserman, Arthur Krim, Jerry Weintraub, and many others.

1. New leaders and a new system
2. Sex, profanity, and violence
3. The X rating and the home entertainment revolution
4. The technology of special effects and the wffects of screen violence
5. Pornography
6. The anti-pornography crusade
7. Hollywood, drugs, and religion
8. NC-17
9. Television
10. The digital future.

Subject Areas: Cinema industry [KNTC], Postwar 20th century history, from c 1945 to c 2000 [HBLW3], History of the Americas [HBJK]