Appeal seeks PG-13 for ‘9/11’

Wed., June 16, 2004

Associated Press

Distributors of Michael Moore’s controversial new documentary “Fahrenheit 9/11” are appealing to get a PG-13 rating instead of an R.

A screening by the Motion Picture Association of America’s appeals board has been set for June 22, just three days before the film is scheduled to open, but distributors are trying to speed that up.

The MPAA ratings board gave “Fahrenheit 9/11” — a critical look at the Bush administration’s actions surrounding the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and the Iraq war — an R rating for “violent and disturbing images and for language.”

Those images include a public beheading in Saudi Arabia, Iraqis burned by napalm and a grisly scene of an Iraqi man dumping a dead baby into a truck bed loaded with bodies.

“I think the message of the movie is so important that it should be available to be seen by as wide an audience as possible,” said Tom Ortenberg, president of Lions Gate Films, one of the companies releasing the film.

“Frankly, I don’t consider any of the images in the film any more disturbing than what we have all seen on the cable news networks and the gratuitous violence that fills the screen of so many PG-13-rated action pictures,” he said.

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