How the MPAA Works

Welcome to you stuff you should know from HowStuffWorks dot com.

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W Chuck Bryant, and Jerry. But where's wal though right over there apparently.

Man, I wish people could hear in between stuff.

I think Jerry was recording that last one.

Oh yeah, I think so. She used to give us a neat little outtakes, but she doesn't do that anymore. Those days are long gone. They exist in the vault, though. How you doing?

I cood no, No, I don't know what's wrong with me. I am off.

Today, out of your game?

Yeah, it's weird.

Well, I think this is the perfect podcast to set you straight. Why because it's something that we both have some passion about against.

Yeah. I think anybody who's seen the documentary this film is not yet rated. Yeah, that would be very difficult to not be persuaded to feel strongly about the MPAA and its practices.

Yeah, and at least how they do things.

But we're going to try to be objective.

Yeah, I'm gonna go ahead and say up front, I have no problem with rating a film's content so parents can decide whether or not it's appropriate. I think it's valuable, but I think there are ways to do it that I don't think the MPa does. Yes, So I just wanted to float that early on.

Okay, I think that was probably smart. Okay, Okay, I don't have kids, so I don't really whatever. But I mean, I can understand the value of that kind of thing.

Yeah, but it gives you an idea, Like I like having an idea what I'm about to see too.

I feel like I can tell just from watching a trailer of previewsing a movie poster. I'm pretty I'm pretty intuitive when it comes to the marketing techniques of movies.

Yeah, but I think like being a film nerd, it's like, is the New Is the New Avengers movie going to be rated? R? That really tells you something, Right, it won't be. No, it never would be, because PG thirteen is the the that's the strikes one.

These days, it really is. Apparently PG thirteen movies pull in more money than all other ratings combined. Yeah, and it's a relatively new phenomenon. You want to talk about its origin, Yeah, let's do it. So Back in nineteen eighty four, a man named Steven Spielberg had two movies out who Steven Spielberg, Right. He directed one, Indiana Jones and the Templar Doom, and he produced another, Gremlins. Yeah, and both of them caught He caught a lot of heat from both of them.

Sure, Indiana Jones for the heart removal scene specifically.

Yeah, but also the snake, the live snake at the feast thing yeah. Yeah, all the snake babies, the eyeballs, all that stuff. And then with Gremlins, it was just downright terrifying in a lot of different places, especially if you're a kid. And the reason he caught heat was because both of those movies were rated PG. Yeah. So Spielberg went to the NPAA, the Motion Picture Association of America, and said, let's do something about this, because these clearly

Yeah, And this was before he had all this sway in the world. He was influential, but it wasn't like Spielberg today, who could have just waved his wand and made it happen.

Yeah, But I think even at the time he was important. He Yeah, there were very few directors at that time who could have gotten something like that done.

Yea too.

So that's where PG thirteen came from, and that, like you said, that's the strike zone now. And the reason why is because that is the kind of movie that caters to young teenage boys, who apparently are the most successful at getting girls to go to movies with them. So if you can get a movie rated PG thirteen, yeah, you're going to make a bunch of money.

Yeah. Plus it makes sense, it's right there in the middle. Yeah, you know.

But the problem is is it's become a means of almost advertising that rating rather than cautioning parents. It's a way of attracting the audience.

Yeah.

True, it's like this is some kids PG movie.

This is as close to an R movie as you can get.

In Yeah, and I think filmmakers try to achieve that rating by either scaling back their R rated movie or juicing up their PG movie.

Or adding more violence. Apparently PG thirteen movies are have tripled in violence over the last few decades. Yeah, and they now have, according to one study, more violence than there are rated counterparts.

Yeah, and different kinds of violence that you didn't used to see. Yeah, you know, all right, I guess we should go back in time a little bit. Let's is it way back machine?

Sure, let's let's go way back in time in Hollywood.

All right, it's nineteen twenty two. Hollywood and Vine is a viable intersection in Hollywood at the time, unlike now, although people are going to say no, they built that area back up. Yeah, and that is when the NPA was born in the early nineteen twenties.

Yeah.

And at the time, it was up to local authorities or your state or your municipality to either stamp something as moral or immoral. There were no ratings on movies. And thanks to a guy named Will Hayes who was the first president of the NBA, he installed the Hayes Code and said, you're either going to pass or fail. It's either going to be stamped in moral or moral.

Right. And the reason Will Hayes, who was the NPAA president, came up with the Hayes Code, which was really extensive. It was like, if you talk about the government, it always has to be good, sexuality has to be repressed, and just basically in hetero how you think about all movies from like the thirties and forties. Yeah, squeaky clean basically sure, like the division between good and evil is

So is it not even get your film exhibited?

Right? So remember in the A c l U episode where we're talking about that one, that one movie that New York just the Catholics said no, you can't show that here, and the a cl you went to work getting getting the Catholics beaten in court.

Right, even though it was just a bad movie that had something to do with well, I mean it did, but it shouldn't have been shown because it was so terrible.

Was it bad?

I don't remember. Yeah, I mean it was supposed to be not very good.

Okay, but it happened like that kind of thing happened a lot like local local town said no, we're not going to show that movie. So Hayes figured out if if Hollywood policed itself. Then they could control what, you know, what movies came out, and therefore everybody could make a bunch of money. That's right, And that's the point of the NPAA. They're the lobbying arm of six major Hollywood studios.

Yeah, they're there. They worked for them.

Yeah.

Well, yeah, that's one way to say it.

But they and it's just too isn't it.

Well yeah, I mean, there's definitely an arguments these days that independent filmmakers have a much rougher time with the NBA. Yeah, but most of the indies too, are eventually distributed by the majors. Anyway, I got you. You know what I'm saying. Okay, So flash forward a bit in our way back machine to the nineteen fifties. Things changed a little bit after World War Two and people, I guess the easiest way to say is people loosen up a little bit and

No, millions of people hadn't died in World War Two yet, that's right. I imagine that kind of loosens you up as far as the seeing Chris Wards and stuff in movies goes.

Yeah, like that's not a big deal, Like World War two is a big deal, right, get your haunches down exactly. Yeah.

That was the big one, the big first crack to the Hayes code. Yeah, and then there were I think that you said He.

Won an Oscar, right, Yeah, it was a really good movie that kind.

Of opened the floodgate, so that by the end of the fifties you got some like it hot and Tony Curtis and Jack lemon are dressed like women hitting on Marilyn Monroe. Yeah, And at that point it was pretty obvious that Hayes code was dead. Yeah.

I mean, they weren't passing the code, but they were still getting released. So once something is subverted like that, it's dead in the water.

Right, So there was a that was fine for a little while. I think the Hayes code just kind of fell to the wayside and people were releasing movies without any kind of moral or immoral stamp. But the rating

Yeah, and he, I mean Jack Valenti was the head of the NBA for close to forty years, and he initially the intention was to stop censorship because he feared that the movies were going to start being censored locally and so I think the origins of the NPA rating system. We're art centered.

Art center, but also money centered, because again, if you have if you have town A showing the movie, but Town's B through L deciding that the movie is obscene and not showing it, then you're losing that money and B through L. So what Valenti came up with was this idea that let us tell you what is appropriate for minors or not what movie is, and we'll just make a simple rating system. Yeah, gpg R.

Or X the old X yeah, and triple X, which wasn't even formally a rating, it was just.

A marketing tool.

Yeah.

Yeah, because three exes, that's like whoa.

I wonder if anybody ever came out with one with.

Four X yeah or double X even yeah, like yeah, we cut out that one part so X.

Yeah.

Christian, our colleague here, wrote a great blog post about the former X rated movie.

Is that right? Yeah, we'll have to check that out. That's good for brain Stuff for stuff a genius.

On the brain stuff blog earlier this year. And you actually recommended it on your blog, the X rating, Yeah the best I remember it this week.

Yeah, I remember recommending one of his things I just don't remember that one.

Just good. I thought about asking him in here, but then I thought, yeah, we got it nice. So yeah, back then it was G through X and well we'll talk about you know how that changed maybe after this message break. All right, so no longer do we have X rayed movies. Now we have something. I guess we should just go through what these ratings mean today in twenty fourteen. Okay, so you've got your G.

G's always been G general audience.

Anyone can see it, Yes, and that's your your family cartoon that kids love and parents are forced to go to.

Right.

Then you've got PG that means no drug use, maybe violence, because as we'll learn, the MPa has less problems with violence and more problems with language and sex. Huge criticism, huge criticism PG thirteen, which we've you know, kind of been through. Then you've got your R and that is no one under said. This is a suggestion that no one ever seventeen be admitted without a parent. And these aren't laws, though, that's one thing that's important to point out.

Yes, it's let's kind of dig into that. So none of this is legally binding. Now, none of them are anything more than recommendations. They're basically saying that this movie has X amount of profanity or x amount of nudity, or lacks any drug use or something like that. Sure, and so for what the MPAA thinks the average moral compass of the average American thinks about these different things like sex, drugs, nudity, all that stuff, this movie falls

Yeah, it's a completely voluntary system to submit your film to the MPa ratings board.

But it's de facto, but you have to do it. Yeah, that's the.

Rub is that they say it's voluntary, but you actually have to pay a fee to submit your movie if you ever want to have it shown in theaters.

Right and the fee is anywhere from like twenty five thousand dollars for a big budget movie to seven hundred and fifty dollars for a short Yeah, and so you submit your movie. Well, we'll get into it in a second. Let's talk some more about the rest of the ratings.

Yeah, well, there's only one more, and that's NC seventeen, which replaced X. And that means this is a nineteen ninety and that basically means that it's for adults only and you should not come in if you're under eighteen.

Right, and also means these days it's foreign or about lesbian or gays. Basically, yeah, not fully, but sure, it's pretty close. Yeah, and NC seventeen. The first movie to come out with that was Henry in June. Yeah, I have to be confused with Benny and June, and it basically sunk that movie because everybody was like, oh, this

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, all right, So let's get into this the actual ratings board. There's the NPAA, and then working for the NPA is the Classification and Ratings Administration. Kara and Kara doesn't say whether your movie stinks or not. Kara is eight to thirteen people and they are called raiders, and they are overseen by a senior raider, and they sit down and watch these movies and take copious notes

Right supposedly, which is a kind of a thing because the whole rating system, as you just kind of pointed out, is a subjective.

Totally subjective. They supposedly. Here's the other rub is it's all secret.

Right.

You can find out a federal judge's name and address, but you can't find out who a raider is for your films. It's all conducted in private. None of this stuff is released. And that's one of the big rubs in that documentary and with filmmakers in general, is it's all done behind closed doors. There's never any explanations provided.

Yep.

It basically frees them up from any accountability. Yeah, to do this all in private and in secrecy.

And until that movie by Kirby what is Kirby's last name?

Henry and June No no, the documentary Oh oh yeah, this film is not yet rated.

Yeah, until Kirby Dick's this film is Not Yet Rated came out, Like all of this stuff was just conjection, conjecture in Hollywood legend. Yeah, he was the first one to really basically he tailed these people, tail them to lunch, yeah, to find out who they were, and eavesdrop on them, and like did some digging and found like these anonymous people did not fall into the requirements that the NPA said they did. And so not only was it in secret,

Take out these bad words, cut the sex scene a little early, leave all the violence.

Yeah. Or you can reject the rating and just release your movie is unrated.

Yeah, which, well, you can try to release it, but since no one will show it, it's really sort of a misnomer.

Right, but it's becoming increasingly a thing again. You need the rating to get your movie shown in movie theaters. But what happens if you don't care if your movie comes out in theaters, video and demand, yeah, or just releasing it to the internet.

Now, I'm curious about that. How that's going to change the landscape?

Well, right now, it's a huge threat to the NPAA because all of the power they wield is found in this rating system.

And if for theaters, yes, if no one's going to theaters.

Then the MPAA loses all that power, which is a big deal, especially now because the NPAA is needed more than ever as a lobbying group because of online piracy, which we'll talk about some more. So it's a very precarious time for the MPAA right now, and it's a terrible time for them to be under as much scrutiny and public attack and critique as they are. So it's I mean, they got spears sticking out every which way, and their trunk is flailing and they're honking.

That is true. One thing I should point out is I said, is that there's no accountability. That's what the NPA says. It's the good thing about the secrecy is that it frees them up. That anonymity does. It frees them up from accountability. I just don't agree, right, Okay.

So if you want to appeal, there was apparently a change made in response to Kirby Dick's movie the documentary before if you were appealing your rating, which is very difficult, almost never was done and.

Well you never want that's for sure, right.

And when you were appealing, you couldn't reference any other film. It was totally done in a vacuum, which is pretty preposterous.

Yeah, Like that's the only way to be able to tell us like, wait a minute, if you said this about this, then why not this for my movie?

Which meant that there was no real standard yeah that you could point to, or there were standards you could point to, they just would be considered.

Yeah, or at the very least, if they do have written standards, they don't release them, so you don't even know what they are.

Right. So the MPAA is they've got their rating system, they've got the appeals process.

Which was also in secret, unless that's changed, right I think. I think the appeals board not only was the appeals board and secret, but they weren't even just raiders. They were people from the industry.

Right, and the Theater Owners Association exactly, whereas the people who were raiders are supposedly unaffiliated with the movie industry and are just like average ordinary.

Parents representing your Middle America. We'll just call it, even though I think that's insulting.

The thing is, though, is a lot of people criticize the NPA and say, these raiders are really representing the six major studios who rake in ninety five percent of the ten point nine billion dollars made in the United States. Yeah, in theaters alone, just ticket sales, not DVD or anything like that. Yeah, And that's what the NPAA does in addition to rating. They are, like we said, the lobby arm for these six studios, that's.

Right, and they I guess we should talk about piracy now. Huh. That's one of their other big asides from rating movies, they are heavy in the lobby against well, especially now with online piracy, because the digital distribution network is it seems like the way forward as far as distribution goes, right, it's the futre. It's not the future, it's the present and the future.

And the NPAA has a they're accused of basically trying to quell new technology, yeah, by just saying like, well, let's just keep people from peer to peer file sharing in total, yeah, so that they can't steal movies. In part, and if you go back to the early eighties, Jack Valente was known to have railed and lobbied against the legality of VCRs.

People are just gonna be recording things and handing them.

Out to their friends exactly. So there was a The NPA is a long history of basically like just doing anything at can to stifle innovation in order to protect

Well, and that's why filmmakers call consistently for transparency. It's I don't think there are many filmmakers out there saying should be no rating, we should just maybe some like a large fontrier, you know, or Werner Hertzog. They're probably like nota eight things at all. But I think they just want transparency, like open it up and let everyone know how this is all done, who these people are, and give us an idea on what in the world

So you were talking about online piracy and with digital distribution being a big deal now, the MPa is needed more than ever because they have to lobby Congress to fight online piracy at a time when more and more people are distributing online and going around the MPAA. So it's losing its power, but it needs its power more than ever. So, like we said, it's a precarious time

Yeah, they've cracked down on camcorder recording, yeap. Like when you're in New York City and someone has that brand new copy of Godzilla on video cassette for you, Yeah, that's because if you've seen Seinfeld, someone went and sat in that theater with a camera recorder and just made a stupid, awful quality pirated version.

Yeah, And it says that those are the most common. I guess I kind of believe that they're also the worst quality. Like sometimes people will like get up and move in front of the camera, like they go to the bathroom or something, and.

Yeah, it's I've never seen one, but I think they're terrible.

Yeah much. I don't want to say more common, but probably more common these days are like copies of screeners. Yeah, Like they send out DVDs to everybody who's members of the Academy to vote on movies and so around OSCAR timer before Oscar time, it seems like the Internet gets flooded with way more high quality copies of these major movies that are up for awards.

Yeah, I think now they have, thanks to the NBA, have something coded to your name now on your copy.

So like they'll know who leaked it or whatever. I think so not surprised by that. Apparently, if you want to show Frozen at your church, yeah, you better have a public performance license because it is illegal to show a movie outside of your home.

Yeah, that surprised me. But there are a lot of especially in the summertime, a lot of community screenings, like every city now has, you know, Atlanta shows them, and I think at Oakland Cemetery some other places in New York. They have them all over the place, and technically, yeah, they're supposed to have a license to do so, I'm sure they do the big ones.

Yeah, the big ones, I'm sure do.

But like at your community pool and you want to show et and.

The Feds could come kick the gate down around the pool. I bet everybody.

I bet they don't love HBO these days because you know HBO go people steal that. They're just like, hey, dude, what's your log in.

Oh right, yeah, and.

HBO came out and they're like, who cares?

Yeah, people are watching it.

Yeah, like go watch a True Detective. Maybe you'll sign up for HBO, yeah because you liked it, or maybe you'll just support the show period on social media, even though you're getting it for free. Like we're making enough money basically.

Yes, And that's something that a lot of people say, you know, film industry, we don't really feel that bad for you, Yeah, Seawan Austin sit down, because you guys made ten point nine billion dollars in America in ticket sales alone in twenty thirteen. We don't feel that bad about this whole conundrum that the MPAA is facing.

What Sean asked and Steel he was voices Yeah, yeah, oh okay, yeah, I don't think I knew that.

Yeah he was. I can't remember the There was like a whole kind of push an anti piracy pushed a few years back, and part of it yeah yeah, and he looked really mad about things too. But speaking of piracy, I remember there was a story that came out recently. It was if you think about it, at first, it's like wah wah, but then if you really kind of

It'd be pretty swing in prison.

It'd be weird, but it would also be unjust.

Yeah, yeah, true.

But in relation to this, it's just more and more widespread every day. It feels like it's it's a losing battle. I think that the NPAA is fighting right now.

Well, I think I read somewhere today that they I think they might release a few of the Raiders' names per film, not all like thirteen, right, But I need to look up that, look that up again, because that I don't know. I don't see the why releasing a three out of thirteen names does anybody any good?

It does zero good. Yeah, And speaking of doing zero good, this there's kind of a new attachment to the rating system that they have now. It's called check the box. Yeah, and it's it's basically a brief description of why a movie is, like PG thirteen. Yeah, so it'll say like intense sci fi action or something like that, or some drug use. Yeah, that kind of thing. And some critics of the NPAA say it's just basically like shooting a laser beam into like a fifteen year old boy's brain,

Yeah, that'd be like a cigarette company having a cartoon animal as their mascot.

Can you imagine?

Be weird? Well, one thing about the subjectivity of it and the fact that it is a closed book and they filmmakers don't even know, you know, how to tailor their movie to achieve a certain rating, I mean to within a certain degree. But they've learned how to manipulate it because there is no set standard by if you watch that film as not yet rated. And you've heard plenty of stories over the years about filmmakers intentionally putting in things that they never intend to be in the

Yeah, and they're just the stuff they want to keep in is comparatively exactly more palatable.

And if you don't have the set standard, where you can go and I wonder what those sheets look like on the interior, you know. I mean that's the great mystery. Yeah, surely they have their own interior standards. They're not just like watch it and see what you think.

Well, they have group discussions too, man, I'd love to sit in on those.

So the I read Another criticism of MPa is that the difference between PG thirteen movies and our movies these days is the profanity and the sexuality. That they're similar in violence, if not more violent in PG thirteen movies, and that this is kind of messed up, that the NPAA has very little problem with violence. Yeah, but when it comes to bad words or sexuality of almost any nature except for women being objectified and men being gratified, Yeah, then the MPAA suddenly puckers up. Well.

Yeah, in any a woman achieving receiving sexual gratification, or a homosexual couple, yeah.

Virtually like guaranteed or depending on how they do it, are if it's coming out of like one of the major studios.

So in other words, a man can receive pleasure from a woman, and of course it's scrutinized somewhat, because any kind of sex is more heavily scrutinized than violence, right, but if a woman does like you said, or if it's a gay couple, it's all over so homophobic, misogynistic.

You decide right, and fetishistic of violence, you know.

Yeah. Like, here's one example. There's a great article called don't Expect any major changes to the NPA rating system in twenty fourteen. Yeah, and it's basically Chris Dodd, who's the new head and the gang, digging in and saying, you know what, we talked to your average parents and we pull them and this is what they want. But they release No, none of those studies are released. Yeah, none of those conversations are released. A movie like Filamina,

It was so far from an R movie, it was ridiculous.

Yeah, but it had a couple of F bombs in it, so they cut those out and they bring it to a PG thirteen. You might think, who cares cut up the F bombs make it PG thirteen, But there's something bigger going on here, you know.

Yeah, there's a great AV Club article about how just totally out of step a lot of the ratings are and they have fifteen movies listed and basically talk about their ratings, like the first one. They talk about once. Yeah, that romantic. It wasn't like a romantic comedy, wasn't.

No, I would say it was a other sweet just a modern day romance told through music. It wasn't a musical, but there are a lot of musical numbers.

Highly inoffensive love story. Yeah, very sweet movie. It had the same rating as Hostile Too, which is basically torture porn. They both got the same rating.

Yeah, we should read this first line from the av club. In early summer of two thousand and seven, two films were released with our ratings. One featured a scene where a naked woman is suspended from a ceiling while another naked woman slashes her with a scyth and bays in her blood. The other featured two Dublin musicians singing songs together, falling in love and opting not to act on it. Like there was never any sex scene. They didn't even get together. Really, Nope, they're both rated.

Are both rated are because of profanity.

Rushmore rated R for the uh scene at the end, whether Max is putting on the play the Vietnam play and there is a shot of a couple of little kids looking at on the set. There's some Playboy centerfolds up in the locker, yep, like on the Vietnam set, and it shows these little kids like looking at those like a twelve year old would probably do.

And it got an R for that, got an R for that. Happiness Todd Solins one of my favorite movies of all time. Yeah, they tried to give it an NC seventeen rating, and he said, you know what, I'm not cutting anything. You can just go take a long walk off a short pier, is what I think, he famously said to them. Yeah, and he released his movie as unrated.

Oh really, yep, I don't think I knew that.

Wait to go, Todd Solins.

Or if you're looking at some serious homophobia, The Great nineteen eighty nine movie and Longtime Companion features no real sex acts at all, nothing explicit. In fact, the AV Club says it could show on network TV today with just a few alterations. But it was about a gay couple and uh so I got an NC seventeen.

Yeah. There was something called Afternoon Delight, which was a movie about a woman who hires a giglow and it apparently is heavy on the the woman receiving sexual gratification. It got an R rating despite and it got an OUR rating after apparently the director cut a lot of stuff out and the director said, what the hey after Wolfe of Wall Street came out.

Like have you seen this movie with like some very.

Graphic apparent sex scenes between a man and a woman. But Leonardo DiCaprio is the one enjoying it the most, So it's fine. It's an R, right, blue is the warmest color.

Yeah. Last year that a teenage lesbian love story, and since seventeen, yeah, got a lot of attention, and there were some theaters that allowed high school age kids to go see that anyway.

Because again, this isn't law, it's not binding, it's up to the theaters.

Yeah, it's just so strange that such a small group of people have such influence on such a large industry.

And yeah, the secret the more you dig into it, the more conflicts of interest arise, and the more arbitrary the standards become, the more blood boiling it is. I highly recommend you go read some stuff like rated R for ridiculous by Kirby Dick his Little uh yeah, his little op ed about the MPAA that one US News and World Report article you wrote or suggested it was good.

I wish I wrote it.

Had you been there, would have been used correctly.

Oh did they misuse it?

What? Yeah? I know?

Terrible. So the MPa will defend themselves and they say that there's no such bias and that we all these objectionable scenes are rated on the quality and how graphic it is. But if you just look at the you'd have to be a dummy not to see these correlations, right, And the fact that they don't seem to care that much about violence in this age where I don't know, does it influence people to go shoot up a school? Who knows?

Did you see that John Oliver quote that's going.

Around, Yes, but what was it?

It's like somebody unsuccessfully tries to carry a bomb onto a plane in their shoe. We all take our shoes off, right. There's like thirty something school shootings after Columbine and absolutely nothing's changed.

Yeah. Or the onion article that's going around too now, is this is something that can't be prevented, says the only country where this kind of thing happens all the time, something like that.

Huh, I'm paraphrasing, Oh yeah, that's the onion.

Yeah, good stuff, MPa. Keep keep doing the fighting, the good fight.

Yeah. Go check out, like, just go start reading up on it. It's funny how much we just take this stuff for granted, but when just start digging just slightly beneath the surface at the very least. See this film is not yet rated. It's really good. Yeah, really engrossing. And you know, for every one hundred documentaries that come out, what five of them are like really great? Sure, most of them are pretty good, some are terrible. So any really good one is worth seeing just in and of itself.

Agreed.

If you want to learn more about the MPAA, type those letters into the search part housetifforks dot com. And I said, search parts, it's time for listener mail. Uh.

I'm gonna call this wild Parrots. Josh mentioned in the Tattoo podcast that he had heard parrots like to hang together when free, and I wanted to burst in the podcast booth and tell you about the wild pay of San Francisco. I'm not going to get into it except to say that, over the course of my life, the parrots in San Francisco are a sort of living legend that one would occaionally get the privilege of spotting now

I've heard that. Yeah, I've heard of that before. I never knew what it was about.

Amy. I will check that out.

Thank you, thank you for writing it. Yeah, thanks a lot. Amy. If you have a documentary recommendation, we are always interested in those.

Heck.

Yeah, you can tweet them to us at s YSK podcast. You can post them on Facebook. Dot com, slash stuff you Should Know, and you can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at houstuffworks dot com and as always, joined us at our home on the web, the Beautiful Stuff you Should Know dot com.

For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks dot com.