[Publib] Showing R rated movies

[Backwage at aol.com]

In a message dated 4/2/2009 8:04:11 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time,  
rmyoung at mcls.lib.wi.us writes:

No  registration. No permission slips.  Just free films.  We are not our  
patrons' parents. 


I'd love to see a survey taken of the libraries that do and don't offer  
R-rated films to their patrons.  I wonder if the distribution would suggest  
regional differences.  
 
An interesting issue.  Reminds me of when, long ago, my brother tried  to 
show pornographic films on the side of the apartment building adjacent to his  
own, out here in California.  The police came around, asked some questions,  
could do nothing--no law to prevent it.  Perhaps out of frustration they  stormed 
his place, beat the tar out of the occupants, smashed the projector and  
departed, only to discover their cars being wrecked by the local  miscreants.  
Quite an end to a party.  
 
That's how we did things in California thirty years ago.  
 
When I was working as a clerk in a public library, they gave me the task of  
repairing eight and sixteen-millimeter films the library would show.   Mostly 
these were kiddie classics; they would screen them on summer afternoons  in an 
unused conference room to keep children quiet while their parents slept  off 
hangovers.  I hated the job.  The films were old and brittle; some  of them 
were more splices than otherwise.  If you recall those machines,  you had to 
look through a viewer and hand-crank the film along.  At the  right place you 
could put in a mend, and then keep going until the movie was  complete.  
 
A couple feet of movie is not a lot of film, but the loss is quite  
noticeable, rather like taking a few notes out of a familiar song.  Be glad  you have 
other options now--back then, all we could do was repair.  Unless  your repair 
person was bored and hated his work, in which case he might splice a  bit of 
Three Stooges into Heidi, or whatever could be found on the floor into  Sound 
of Music.  It is just too bad that we don't have films anymore--we  could 
please bluenose patrons by replacing racy scenes with excerpts from old  Civil 
Defense films.  Right at the hot places in Fatal Attraction you could  insert a 
melting glacier from An Inconvenient Truth.  What would that be  rated?
 
M. McGrorty
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