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FAMED LEGAL DUO DAVID BOIES AND TED OLSON LEND SUPPORT TO FIGHT AGAINST MPAA RATING OF “BULLY”

Posted Wednesday, March 21st, 2012 - Comments Off on FAMED LEGAL DUO DAVID BOIES AND TED OLSON LEND SUPPORT TO FIGHT AGAINST MPAA RATING OF “BULLY”
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“THEY BETTER SHAPE UP OR HERE WE COME”

March 20, 2012 (NEW YORK, NY) – Tonight at The Paley Center for Media legal powerhouses David Boies and Ted Olson spoke out against the MPAA’s R rating of the documentary film BULLY, at a special screening. In front of a high-profile audience including cohost Meryl Streep and legendary activist Billie Jean King, Boies stated, “How ridiculous and unfair and damaging it is to have a film of this power and importance that is being censored by a rating system that has got simply no rational basis. You can kill kids, you can maim them, you can torture them and still get a PG13 rating, but if they say a couple of bad words you blame them. I hope, for heaven’s sake, that they find some rational basis before we have to sue them to revise the rating system.”

Olson, who served as President George W. Bush’s Solicitor General, followed Boies in agreement and stated, “Young people can be tough on one another but young people are also extraordinarily compassionate. And when they see the damage that is done to their brothers and sisters, they will speak out. They will decide to be courageous and say, ‘Don’t do that,’ or come to the defense of someone who’s being picked on. That’s why it’s important that everyone in America see BULLY to talk about it, but in particular, the young people. So Dave was right, this is an irrational decision, and I’ve heard it defended as ‘[The MPAA] really can’t do anything about it because if we make an exception here, they’ll be all sorts of people lined up wanting to have exceptions made with respect to their movies.’ What a reason for not doing something. So they better shape up, or here we come.”

The evening included appearances by Martha Stewart, Tiki Barber, Mariel Hemingway, Tom Brokaw, Katie Couric, and others. Attendees came to show their support and congratulate the film’s award winning director, Lee Hirsch, and producer, Cynthia Lowen, as well as cast member Kelby Johnson and activist Katy Butler, who started the petition to change the rating on Change.org which now has almost half a million signatures.

About “BULLY”: Directed by Sundance and Emmy-award winning filmmaker, Lee Hirsch, BULLY is a beautifully cinematic, character-driven documentary. At its heart are those with huge stakes in this issue whose stories each represent a different facet of America’s bullying crisis. BULLY follows five kids and families over the course of a school year. Stories include two families who have lost children to suicide and a mother awaiting the fate of her 14-year-old daughter who has been incarcerated after bringing a gun on her school bus. With an intimate glimpse into homes, classrooms, cafeterias and principals’ offices, the film offers insight into the often cruel world of the lives of bullied children. As teachers, administrators, kids and parents struggle to find answers, BULLY examines the dire consequences of bullying through the testimony of strong and courageous youth. Through the power of their stories, the film aims to be a catalyst for change in the way we deal with bullying as parents, teachers, children and society as a whole.

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon