"You make violent films and you make dirty films and you make, you know, family films...but most of them just aren't very good, are they? Funny. So many smart people could work so hard on 'em and spend so much money on 'em and make so much money on 'em...what do you think it is? It must be the money, hunh? Must be the money. Turns everything to crap."
Warren Beatty as J. Billington Bulworth in Bulworth

Nineteen summers ago I waited feverishly for the release of Firestarter, which starred Drew Barrymore of recent E.T. fame. I liked the book and I was still young enough to believe that any movie based on a book would be at least as good as the book. On the day Firestarter opened, I hiked a mile-and-a-half to the Hilltop Twin cinemas in Clovis, N.M., with my brothers in tow. We were first in line to buy tickets for the Friday matinee.

There was one problem: The movie was rated R. That meant there was no way the ticket guy was going to sell seats to a 14-year-old, a 12-year-old and a 10-year-old. I protested vociferously that the movie was rated PG, that I was sure that I'd seen the PG rating in the movie's TV ads, etc. Didn't work. They didn't let us in. The manager was nice about it; he found an extra copy of the movie poster to prove to us that, indeed, the movie was rated R. But I was still pissed. I wrote a protest letter to the theater. The manager apologized and sent me two free passes--remember, the customer is always right, even if he's a 14-year-old who can't tell the difference between a big "R" and a big "PG."

I think I used the tickets to see something dorky like "Cloak and Dagger," which coincidentally starred Henry Thomas, the other little kid from E.T.

The next summer, my brothers and I had a hankering for St. Elmo's Fire. I know why I wanted to see this one: All of my favorite actors were in it. Despite middling reviews (what do those old guys know, anyway?), my brothers and I dragged my mom down to the old theater in Aggieville, the student party sector of Manhattan, Kan. She told the ticket guy that it was okay for us to see the movie. He told her "no dice."

I saw both of these movies later on cable, and to tell the truth, they both sucked. Big time. Firestarter was bad enough to inspire a number of halfway-amusing drinking games, but St. Elmo's Fire was so dreary and woefully acted that even a six-pack of McEwan's Scotch Ale couldn't get you through it in one sitting.

This last week, I must have read ten stories about how some parents are freaked out that the new Matrix movie is rated R. Never mind that the reason their teenaged kids want to see this new movie is that they've seen the original Matrix DVD (rated R, of course) ten ka-jillion times. All these parents know is that this particular insanely popular movie is rated R and that any movie rated R isn't suitable for children to see in theaters.

There is an element of truth to this, of course. Most movies, regardless of their rating, aren't suitable for children or any other sentient beings. The vast majority of movies out there are simply terrible. Unwatchable. Some are made somewhat passable by excesses of nudity or explosions, but I'm afraid I've gotten to the age where a flash of breast or the sight of body parts flying through the air just isn't enough to get me excited about a movie. I saw the first Matrix flick on video. I thought it was fun, if vapid (Don't get me started on the morons who seem to find the concept of the movie deep. As Superchunk once put it, they're playing in the shallow end).

The Matrix found its success in a new medium: DVD. Similarly, movies like Fast Times at Ridgemont High--a modest success in theaters--found vast audiences in the new medium of their time: Cable movie channels.

But why this fear about movies in theaters as opposed to movies at home? It's not like parents are watching what their kids watch at home. I've seen many a kid stashed away in the family room in rapt adoration of Rambo or Total Recall or the like while their parents and I hung out in the living room having a few beers. I'm not saying this is a bad thing--I'm just asking why it is that we're so afraid of what the kids are seeing at theaters? And why is it okay to see the same stuff sans-parents at home?

There are all these stories about how the Columbine freaks got the idea to wear trenchcoats from watching The Matrix (a patently untrue story, as the movie opened a couple weeks before the shootings and the boys had been wearing trenchcoats long before that). There are plenty of examples of kids imitating stupid stunts in movies (I recall a few incidents involving "car surfing" inspired by the movie Teen Wolf, and, if I'm not mistaken, some idiots also tried to replicate the "lie down in the middle of the road and hope cars don't hit us" segment of The Program). The kids involved in these idiotic actions are almost always drunk or otherwise impaired, and they seem to have had these tendencies toward imbecilic behavior long before watching any particular movie (or listening to any particular record album, for that matter). Perhaps the parents and (gasp) the kids themselves should be held accountable for doing something stupid.

The truth of the matter is that the world is out there. While I'm not in any hurry to acquaint my 15-month-old song Max with the nastier realities of human existence, I don't lie awake at night in fear of his discovering them. My hope is that my wife Barbara and I can raise him well enough to make good judgments for himself--and to accept the consequences of his less-than-stellar choices. A few bad movies here and there just shouldn't make that much difference. If they do, then we haven't done our job properly.

Jon Worley did successfully smuggle his underage brothers into Bull Durham, thus proving his theory that theaters will let the kids in if the movie is actually good.