How to survive years of drugs, sex and violence

To: Sir Quentin Thomas
President of the British Board of Film Classification,
Soho Square, London

Dear Sir Quentin,

You kindly telephoned last week when you took over from me as president of the BBFC. You asked what advice I had to offer. What was the job like? Lots of things I should have said, I didn't remember in time. So here goes.

I made it a rule to do all my viewing at the Board's premises in Soho Square, London. At first, it seemed tempting to watch videos at home whenever convenient, but frankly I didn't want some of the stuff around my house. It's a job like any other, I said to myself; I will do it in the office.

I also found it important to prevent anybody from briefing me before viewing. Had a friendly staff member said "the trouble with this one is the torture scene with boiling fat", then I might have concentrated too much on that particular episode and perhaps missed other crucial areas. I might have been tempted to fast-forward until I came to the problematic zone.

Sometimes, though, press coverage prevents one from keeping one's mind free from preconceptions. I see that one film critic has already warned you that the explicit nature of Gaspar Noe's rape revenge movie, Irreversible, first shown at the Cannes Film Festival in May and coming here soon, will make even Baise-Moi look tame. Watch out, though, for the synthetic row. Some film distributors leak stories that a film is having trouble with the censor as part of their marketing campaign. It may be the only thing going for the film.

Speed, too, is important. It is much more difficult to make a balanced decision if a film arrives with a notorious reputation that has already generated a long debate in the press before its British opening. It is worse still if lobby groups begin to make their views known beforehand. Two good questions to ask lobby groups are, first, whether their members or spokesperson has seen the work in question (usually no); and how many members do they have (usually few).

One aspect of the job which is a lot less worrying than it at first appears is that you are required to manage by exception. Although most people seem to think that the president must have watched each film upon whose certificate his signature appears, with 600 films and 8,000 to 9,000 videos coming in each year for classification, that is impossible. It is necessary to rely upon a system which signals to the president and the two vice-presidents which works require their attention. In the case of the BBFC, this operates well.

The sheer number of videos is a surprise. While the cinema is like live theatre with its broad appeal, the video market resembles the book trade with its niche publishing techniques. For, as well as allowing people to watch cinema productions at home, the video market also caters to audiences with products that no cinema owner would consider showing.

At the edge are lots of badly made, nasty little works. These often involve sexual violence, and make you wonder what sort of people could have conceived them, made them, acted in them or distributed them and, finally, who would watch them. However, you mustn't let your guard down. For what you pass at the fringe may well come into the centre.

And even on the outer reaches you can find gems. One remarkable work was, unlikely though it seems, a documentary which told the life story of a badly disabled man who came to terms with his disease by giving sado-masochistic performances on stage.

You need context all the time. Go to the cinema often to see some of the many works which didn't cause a problem. I took tremendous enjoyment out of stepping up my movie-going to the sort of frequency only attained by film buffs. And I hope you will keep the tradition going of doing a round of public meetings up and down the country from time to time. You will find that 300 people or so will come to an evening presentation with film clips of how the Board does its work and that they will participate in a good discussion afterwards. My views were probably more affected by these encounters than by anything else.

One last thing: face your critics, but don't feel that you have to put up with commentators who are insulting rather than critical. That, by the way, is the main reason why I refused, on my last day in office, to appear on BBC Radio 4's Today with either the Daily Mail's Christopher Tookey or the Evening Standard's Alexander Walker.

Enjoy it. On the face of it, you are being asked to consider nothing but bad language, sex and violence. In practice, the questions are more precise and more interesting.

In my last week or two I had three issues to resolve. Was a video compilation of unused news footage of horrific incidents in violent sports – with the participants being dreadfully injured – a documentary or a work which dwelt on inflicting pain and injury? Did an excellent film aimed at teenagers, with teenage actors, have to be rated at 18 because of the non-stop use of f-words and c-words? Can a film be so saturated with sadism that it cannot be passed at all? Best of luck.

Yours sincerely,
Andreas

aws@globalnet.co.uk