If the folks behind "Natural Born Killers" -- Oliver Stone's hallucinogenic 1994 film about honeymooners on a massive, messy killing spree -- tried to get their project green-lighted in Hollywood today, there's a good chance "Natural Born Killers" would never exist.
A year after Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris gunned down a teacher and 12 classmates at Columbine High School, gratuitous violence just isn't cutting it in Hollywood -- at least not on the scale it used to. But whether the studios' new restraint is a sign of altruism or business savvy is open to debate."I think that in today's climate, we would think differently about what we did," says Thom Mount, "Natural Born Killers' " executive producer. "We saw that picture, rightly or wrongly, as a piece of social satire. We'd have a much harder time making that case now."
The Littleton, Colo., tragedy on April 20, 1999, prompted President Clinton to decry Hollywood's role in the "coarsening of the culture" and led to a Federal Trade Commission investigation into how violent entertainment is marketed to youth. Suddenly, filmmakers started taking pains to show their softer side.
Threatened by private litigation and the specter of government censorship, the industry is rethinking the way it depicts violence and how it pitches its product in print, on TV and on the Internet -- downplaying the carnage, and even the presence of guns, in ad campaigns. To be sure, blood, guts and gore can still be found on multiplex screens: Witness the current "American Psycho" and "Romeo Must Die" and the forthcoming slasher spoof "Scary Movie" and Roman sandals swordfest "Gladiator."
But "even if a movie contains violent images," says Martin Grove, film analyst for the Hollywood Reporter, "the studios are choosing not to exploit them in their movie trailer. They're toning down the references."
This month, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by three families who contended that the Leonardo DiCaprio film "The Basketball Diaries" inspired the 1997 shooting of their daughters in a West Paducah, Ky., high school. But another suit -- which holds "Natural Born Killers' " creators and distributors responsible for encouraging "imminent lawless activity" that led a Louisiana woman to be shot and paralyzed -- is still on the table.
Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Association of America, cites First Amendment protections when legislators suggest that laws be passed to restrict violence in films. But over the last year, he has urged theater owners to step up enforcement of MPAA admission policies.
"The safety lock, as far as Hollywood is concerned, is the R rating, which is supposed to lock out anyone under the age of 17" without a parent or guardian, Grove says. "But that's a big 'supposed to' because (rules concerning minors) may affect their ability to buy a ticket, but it doesn't necessarily affect their ability to see the film."
There will always be theater employees -- many of whom are underage themselves -- who look the other way. And as exhibitors build more and bigger megaplexes, it becomes easier for minors to buy tickets for a PG or PG-13 picture, then sneak into the R-rated film they want to see instead.
"Does this happen? Yes, obviously it happens," acknowledges John Fithian, president of the National Association of Theater Owners. But not often, he and exhibitors say.
"The vast majority of patrons and the vast majority of the employees at movie theaters are working with this system in a responsible way, so that if you can't buy a ticket to a film, you don't go to it."
The theater-owners' group was among those that met with President Clinton last year to discuss ways exhibitors could improve adherence to the MPAA ratings and admission policies.
The studios also took action: Following the Colorado killings, Miramax Films changed the title of "Killing Mrs. Tingle," about high school students' revenge on a cruel teacher, to the demure "Teaching Mrs. Tingle." And though it did not tone down its content, Twentieth Century Fox postponed release of the ultra-bloody Brad Pitt movie "The Fight Club" from summer to fall.
Now, the independently produced "Pups," about an armed 13-year-old bank robber, is being snubbed by distributors. Likewise, "The Boondock Saints," in which a pair of killers are outfitted in trench coats, eerily echoing the Columbine students' "Trench Coat Mafia" attire, has gotten the cold shoulder from Hollywood. At this point, the independently financed picture may never find a mainstream distributor.
"This issue is very much at the forefront of people's thinking," says Mount, who for the last two years has been president of the Producers Guild of America. "I think you'll look around the community of pictures being made and you'll see, in general, a more responsible and thoughtful take on violence."
Documentarian Bruce Sinofsky, whose "Paradise Lost: The Child Murders" at Robin Hood Hills and its sequel follow three Arkansas teenagers arrested on homicide charges, sees some self-policing going on in Hollywood. But he's skeptical.
"It's like a person who has had a heart attack, and the doctor says if you want to live another 10 years, you've got to cut out the mayonnaise," the award-winning filmmaker observes. "They do for awhile, and then when they feel better, they go back to the mayonnaise again. I think that's what the industry will probably do. They're more interested in the bottom line, more interested in how much money they can make. And if violence sells, they'll sell it."
But what if violence isn't selling?
Producer Edward R. Pressman, whose "American Psycho" opened April 14 on more than 1,200 screens, says that the industry's recent call for "responsible" filmmaking is partly motivated by the fact that traditional action pictures have not performed well at the box office lately, at home or abroad.
"There's some genuine soul-searching going on," says Pressman, whose R-rated "American Psycho" follows a maniacal yuppie as he slices and dices his way through '80s New York. "But it's also market-dictated. The Van Damme films, the action films that Schwarzenegger and Stallone made to great success a few years ago aren't as popular now. People are looking for something more unusual."
Pressman, whose film had a mediocre under-$5 million opening weekend, recalls a meeting he had with Sony Pictures executives last year. The crazed Nicolas Cage thriller "8mm," about the hunt for the maker of a snuff film, had recently opened to lousy business, and the producer was told that the studio wasn't interested in making that type of film anymore.
"I think it was more a function of the lack of success of the film than anything about excessive violence that put them off," Pressman says.