PG-13 turns 20

A few Gremlins, one beating heart and a powerful director changed how movies are rated.

LOS ANGELES - This is the story of how a gooey green guy in a microwave, a pagan witch doctor with a beating heart in his hand and that unlucky numeral 13 changed the way Hollywood makes its movies.

It has been two decades since the summer of 1984, when Gremlins and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom caused an uproar among some parents who took their young children to the PG-rated films and walked out wishing the rating had suggested more guidance than just "parental guidance suggested."

The solution became the PG-13 rating.

But instead of being solely an extra warning to parents, as it was originally conceived, it has evolved into the preferred rating of studios and filmmakers.

The genesis of PG-13 is directly linked to Steven Spielberg, who in 1984 became a lightning rod for parental ire.

"I created the problem and I also supplied the solution. ... I invented the rating," Spielberg, the producer of Gremlins and director of Temple of Doom, said in a recent interview.

With no middle-ground between PG and R, the ratings board of the 1980s frequently wrestled with the right way to classify movies that should and should not be viewed by children. The flaw in the Motion Picture Association of America's rating system was that it lumped all children - from infants to 17-year-olds - into the same group.

Maybe the Gremlin who met his steaming, grisly demise inside that kitchen appliance, or the chest-popping human sacrifice that put the doom in Temple of Doom, were too graphic for grade-school kids, but what about the teenage couples looking for a scary reason to cuddle in the movie theater?

Ultimately, both movies made it to theaters with the PG designation.

After Temple of Doom opened May 23, some parents complained to theater managers and the ratings board that their kids were mortified, and news reports began questioning whether the ratings board was being too lax.

The debate might have faded there if not for Gremlins, which came out two weeks later.

Director Joe Dante blames the backlash on the early trailers.

They focused mostly on Gizmo - a friendly, teddy bearlike creature called a Mogwai, which multiplies in water. But it neglected Gizmo's clones, which go through a metamorphosis that turns them into ghoulish, murderous troublemakers.

"So the idea of taking a 4-year-old to see Gremlins, thinking it's going to be a cuddly, funny animal movie and then seeing that it turns into a horror picture, I think people were upset," Dante told the AP.

But it still became a hit, collecting $150-million. Temple of Doom earned $180-million, proving there was an audience that loved movies that mixed wholesomeness with horror.

But there remained the problem of how to keep little kids away while attracting adults and teens.

Spielberg thought it was an easy fix.

"I went to Jack Valenti, who's a friend of mine, and I said, "Jack, why don't we do a rating called PG-13, which would suit films like Gremlins and Indy 2?' " Spielberg said.

Valenti took the idea to the National Association of Theater Owners, Hollywood's writer, actor and director guilds, the studio bosses and assorted religious organizations.

"I didn't seek their approval or anything," Valenti said. "Didn't have to. But I certainly conferred with all of them."

He agreed to make the distinction at 13, saying that was an age when most kids knew the difference between fantasy and reality, and had more independence from their parents.

"The child behavioral experts will tell you that not all 13s are alike, not all 14s are alike, not all 12s are alike," Valenti said. "In the end, as I have stated numberless times, it is the parent who has to make this judgment."

Aug. 10, 1984, marked the first debut of a PG-13 movie: Red Dawn, about a communist invasion of America and the high-school rebels who fight back.

The PG-13 rated Titanic is the highest-grossing movie in history, and the top 10 includes four others - both Spider-Man movies, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King and Jurassic Park.

PG, meanwhile, runs the risk of suggesting blandness.

That's the likely reason you'll see Will Smith's naked rear in I, Robot, Kirsten Dunst's wet T-shirt in Spider-Man or the joke in The Terminal about Tom Hank's muddled English being mistaken for profanity.

"In a way it's better to get a PG-13 than a PG for certain movies," Spielberg said. "Sometimes PG, unless it's for an animated movie, it turns a lot of young people off. They think it's going to be too below their radar and they tend to want to say, "Well, PG-13 might have a little bit of hot sauce on it.' "

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