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March 16, 2021 - Epoch Times

06:26

Clean Movies Make More Money, Not Less—Movieguide’s Robert Baehr on Hollywood | CPAC 2021

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	The whole line that sex sells is actually completely wrong.
	Sex doesn't sell.
	And what we found is that the less sex you put in a movie, the more money it makes.
	The less violence you put in, the more profitable it is.
	And so we can actually determine how much every F word is going to cost you at the box office.
	So we're here at CPAC 2021 with Bobby Baer, newly the CEO of MovieGuide or MovieGuide.org.
	You do some pretty interesting and valuable work in Hollywood.
	Yeah, thank you so much.
	I love getting to be here and I appreciate that you're having me on here, so...
	So tell me about MovieGuide.
	MovieGuide sounds pretty generic.
	You'd think there's a whole lot of MovieGuides out there, but you do something very specific.
	We've been around for quite a while actually.
	We started in 1978, our parent organization, and what we do basically is we review all films.
	But we review it for the faith and family market and we look at it based on 150 different criteria on how it affects kids at different stages of cognitive development.
	The process was developed by over 60 academics and we just love getting to do that and then also what we do is we work in Hollywood with the major studios and we encourage them to make films that are more faith and family friendly.
	So just like how Nike kind of pushes for Nike shoes in content or Microsoft might push for their computers and stuff, we push for faith content in films.
	So when you see, you know, the average film in Hollywood is $104 million to make, they scrutinize every scene that they make.
	And so what we do is we try to get a scene in there of people praying or going to church or going to, you know, the Bible or other things like that where we can Insert that in a positive way into films.
	And then also just encourage more family content.
	A big part of it also is to encourage traditional values, right, in film?
	Exactly.
	You're exactly right.
	To just encourage traditional values.
	When we started, 82% of movies were R-rated.
	Last year it was 30%.
	Because the big thing that's so interesting is the whole line that sex sells is actually completely wrong.
	Sex doesn't sell.
	And we do this big report to the entertainment industry every year where we analyze all the films that come out and we are able to determine what content does better.
	And what we found is that the less sex you put in a movie, the more money it makes.
	The less violence you put in, the more profitable it is.
	And so we can actually determine how much every effort is going to cost you at the box office.
	And so what we do is we go to them and we say, really, do you want to lose this kind of money by adding an F word into your film?
	And obviously they don't.
	And so it helps us sort of communicate from the business side of it why they're not going to do well to be able to add this content that is explicit in it.
	And so it's a fight and a great dialogue constantly through all of these things.
	But whenever I say that, people are always like, what about television?
	Well, we mostly focus on films, and we're just recently getting more into television.
	And it's a whole different kind of animal, which we're kind of delving into.
	But the principles are the same.
	On the content that does well, the good does well, which is a great thing.
	No, very interesting.
	So you would, you know, if I wanted to find film that I can watch with my kids or whatnot, I would just go to Movie Guide and see, what's the rating?
	You're saying I can trust you.
	Exactly.
	And the thing that we do, too, is we don't do thumbs up, thumbs down.
	We do is we tell you what the content of the film is.
	So the thing is that you might be able to decide that for your child that it actually is, you know, completely safe for your daughter to be able to see this film, but it might not be safe for your neighbor I'm a teacher's daughter to be able to see the film, but you as the parent have to kind of, you understand your child so much better than we understand your child,
	but what we want you to know is like, hey, these are the parameters, this is what's in the film, so that you can understand where they're susceptible to, so that you can make sure that they don't fall into things that you know that they're susceptible to that are bad, you know, so they can be built up in the values that you want them to have.
	This is really fascinating because you're not telling people how they have to think.
	You're saying, I'm going to try to break this down so you don't have to watch the film ahead of time so you can actually make the judgment for yourself.
	Exactly.
	We want families to be able to learn discernment themselves and to learn how to teach their kids discernment.
	And so they're going to be able to walk away knowing what content aligns with their values so that they can keep their values.
	You know, Cornell had an interesting study that came out that said 80% of kids are leaving the faith and values of their parents.
	And so our mission every day is to be able to help parents Turn that stat around so that parents get to keep their kids in the values and faith tradition that they have.
	The parents, the grandparents.
	And so we want to help them and teach them and give them the tools that they can use so that their kids want to choose the good and not the bad.
	Well, no, it's very interesting because it reminds me of how the Epoch Times approaches the news.
	We just try to give people the information.
	Here's the reality.
	You make up your own mind, what you want to think about it.
	I'm not talking about our opinion sections.
	I'm not talking about our comms.
	I'm talking about our news section.
	And there's too few news sections out there.
	And frankly, too few, I guess, rating structures for films that do this sort of thing.
	I like what you're telling me here.
	Yeah, I think that's true.
	I mean, obviously, there's no bias, but we believe we're the best by far in this particular.
	And it's interesting because things like the MPAA, you know, those are actually owned by the major studios.
	So the nature of that content can actually even be used as a weapon sometimes for a tool against independents that they disagree with, or it can be just kind of help them push stuff that's not necessarily...
	The right kind of content.
	I mean, when you've been in a PG-13 film or something, you're like, wow, why is that in there?
	You know?
	And so we don't want parents to be, we don't want them to have the, oh man, why is that in there?
	Comment.
	We want them to know ahead of time, like, hey, this is in there.
	Like, be prepared so you can know, is it worth you watching it in the first place?
	Well, so, okay, the MPAA is an industry product.
	Exactly.
	How are you funded?
	We are a non-profit, so we're funded by individuals across the country, people who are just passionate about the work and care about it, and so we're funded in that way, and we are so appreciative of the awesome people who support us.
	Well, wonderful.
	It's such a pleasure to have you on.

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