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Kirby Dick's new documentary Outrage, which premiered at Tribeca last month and opened theatrically last week, is an exposé of U.S. politicians, like Larry Craig, who spew anti-gay rhetoric and vote against gay rights while secretly living gay lives themselves. As you'd imagine, the film has sparked some controversy -- but who would have guessed it would cause problems at liberal NPR?

As first reported by IndieWIRE on Monday, NPR ran a positive review of the film by Nathan Lee, who, in the course of discussing the film, named some of the specific politicians whose hypocritical double lives the film investigates, including former New York City mayor Ed Koch and current Florida governor Charlie Crist. When the review was published, though, Lee was surprised to find that the NPR editors had removed those names from it. Incensed, Lee had his byline removed from the review, too.

Hypocrites beware: Kirby Dick will have none of your shenanigans. His Oscar-nominated Twist of Faith dealt with sex-abuse cover-ups within the Catholic Church, and This Film Is Not Yet Rated let the irrational and inconsistent MPAA ratings board have it with both barrels. Now, in the engrossing, revelatory new Outrage, the message is clear. If you're a politician who publicly oppresses the gay community while secretly belonging to it, Kirby Dick will kick your closet door down and tell the world what a hypocrite you are.

The incendiary but thoughtful filmmaker presumably has no beef with politicians who put up a straight facade while secretly gayin' it up when their voting record doesn't suggest anti-gay sentiments. It's only when they spend their days voting against gay marriage and domestic-partnership benefits and filling their speeches with anti-gay rhetoric that Dick believes their private deeds ought to be made public. Outrage is based on the premise -- which Dick assumes we agree with before he begins -- that such votes are tantamount to homophobia, and that voters therefore deserve to know what their elected homophobes are up to after hours.

And that is Outrage: a series of U.S. politicians with anti-gay voting records are dragged out of the closet. Dick avoids sensationalism, even though the material is inherently steamy, and even though his last name is Dick, for crying out loud. If my last name were Dick and I were making this movie, there's no way I'd be able to keep it classy.

Documentary filmmaker Kirby Dick is no stranger to controversy, and it sounds like his latest project, set to premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival later this month, might be the most eyebrow-raising yet. After addressing pedophile priests in Twist of Faith (which earned an Oscar nomination) and the corrupt MPAA ratings system in This Film Is Not Yet Rated, Dick is now going after a different breed of hypocrite: politicians who promote anti-gay legislation while secretly living gay lives themselves.

The film is called Outrage, and our colleagues at IndieWIRE have seen an early cut of it. (Dick says they'll be editing right up to the last minute, to ensure timeliness.) The film has interviews with openly gay politicians like Barney Frank, but the real meat seems to be reporting on the closeted politicians -- mostly Republican men -- who rail against homosexuality publicly while engaging in it privately. IndieWIRE, while refraining from spoiling any surprises, says there are stories here that have not been publicized before. So it's not just Larry Craig and Mark Foley, but others, too.

If that's the case, then the weather forecast calls for major s***storms once the film debuts at Tribeca on April 24. Magnolia is releasing it theatrically shortly thereafter, on May 8, to capitalize on whatever brouhaha erupts; I hope that this doesn't cause the film to come across as vindictive or sensationalistic. I've admired all of Dick's previous documentaries, not least because they've stayed on the side of truth and justice and didn't engage too much in pettiness. Dick tells IndieWIRE that the purpose of the film is not just to out closeted politicians -- and that's good. If a politician (or anyone else) wants to stay closeted, that's fine. It's only when they're simultaneously endorsing public policies that hurt the gay community that it becomes an issue.

The Tribeca Film Festival has been in the news lately for significant personnel changes, but what about the movies? This year's edition gets underway on April 22, and Cinematical has received a list of the first 38 of the 86 feature films that will be screened. A few titles that jumped out at me:

The Eclipse. The great Ciaran Hinds stars in an "atmospheric drama about a widower who sees and hears strange things in his house." Hinds was fairly magnificent in the TV series Rome and stood out in Steven Spielberg's Munich. Add to that Iben Hjejle and Aidan Quinn as writers the widower encounters at a literary festival, and this is a drama that I want to see.

The Fish Child. Lucia Puenzo made the well-regarded XXY and now comes a "a passionate love story in the arms of a pulsating thriller." I love the idea that for her sophomore feature, the director has made what is evidently a very different type of movie than her quieter debut drama.

Stay Cool. The Polish Brothers (Northfork) return with a "charming comedy" about a high school reunion of sorts, with Winona Ryder and Hilary Duff. Manure was sharply criticized at Sundance just a couple of months ago; could Stay Cool possibly be any good? Winona Ryder doesn't get seen enough, and Hilary Duff has made interesting choices, so this could be surprisingly good -- or another train wreck.

Outrage. Documentarian Kirby Dick, who made the terrific This Film is Not Yet Rated, turns to the subject of "the hypocrisy of closeted politicians who actively campaign against the LGBT community they covertly belong to." I'm hoping it's as sensational as it sounds.

After the jump: The complete announcement. Browse away, and tell us what looks good to you!

According to an article in today's Variety, MPAA chairman Dan Glickman is trying to find a new rating that will group together the movies that currently tip the dirtier scale of the R-rating -- the 'hard R' films that contain copious amounts of nudity, the f-word every three seconds, or gruesome torture-horror imagery, for instance. The move is apparently being motivated by outraged parents who can't believe what is allowed under today's R-rating and demand there be something new between PG-13 and R to let parents know whether they are allowing their teenage children to see a 'soft R' or a 'hard R.' The article reminds us that this debate has been had over and over throughout the years, and that X-rated films like Midnight Cowboy even won Academy Awards before the rating was 'overtaken' by the adult film industry.

The MPAA is also under pressure from the studios to get rid of the NC-17 rating, because its association with heavy sexual content has made it almost worthless -- Blockbuster refuses to carry any DVDs rated NC-17, for example. Many daily newspapers also refuse ads for NC-17 films, even though unrated films with similar content can sometimes skirt by, the article notes. Cinematical recently interviewed Kirby Dick, director of This Film Is Not Yet Rated, about the pros and cons of the current ratings system, if you want to know more.

Some of us were pretty excited yesterday after hearing that the MPAA and NATO (and CARA) is reforming the film ratings policies, procedures and practices. But two people aren't buying the whole "change" part of the announcement. This Film is Not Yet Rated director Kirby Dick and producer Eddie Schmidt have released a statement saying that they are grateful their documentary has put uncredited pressure on the MPAA, but that they see through the B.S. of the ratings revisions, calling all but one "cosmetic."

For each supposed "change" to the system, Dick and Schmidt gave a response that exposes the real meaning, and explain the continuing problems with the ratings system despite the MPAA's claim that things will be more fair and honest from now on. It is great that we are getting such quick commentary from these guys, since they are the experts on the issue (as much as any documentary filmmaker is an expert of their subject). Such a public reaction also can't hurt the guys with regards to their upcoming DVD release.

Check out the responses (lifted from the official press release) after the jump ...

According to the MPAA website, "One of the highest accolades to be conferred on the rating system is that from its birth in 1968 to this day, there has never been even the slightest jot of evidence that the rating system has deliberately fudged a decision or bowed to pressure." If that statement's patent absurdity wasn't already obvious to any follower of non-mainstream film, This Film Is Not Yet Rated proves it, with a celluloid middle-finger salute to the MPAA and the Leave it to Beaver-style fantasy image it sells to the public.

Despite proudly proclaiming that its board of directors includes "the Chairmen and Presidents of the six major producers and distributors of motion picture and television programs in the United States", the MPAA nevertheless insist with a sort of dreamy sanguinity on the film ratings board's -- made up of parents, we are repeatedly told, whose only interests are in protecting children and families -- absolute neutrality and invulnerability to outside influence. With that sort of material to work with, mocking the MPAA is like shooting fish in a barrel for a filmmaker as witty and skilled as director Kirby Dick. And mock he does: Via a multi-pronged attack featuring interviews with directors, detective work and side-by-side comparison of levels of obscenity, Dick creates an often-hilarious documentary that is both cutting and compelling; it's so engaging that even filmgoers who wouldn't dream of setting foot in an arthouse cinema will eat it up.

Documentarian Kirby Dick has been compared to photographer Diane Arbus in the way he prefers to open the camera lens to the pained, the freakish and the inexplicable that exists on the margins of everyday life. Over the course of his career, Dick's subjects have included people dying of cancer in a Los Angeles hospice, sexual surrogates in the employ of psychotherapists, actual freak show performers and Vegas showgirls. He also once followed around French philosopher Jacques Derrida for a documentary that attained cult status the moment the 70-year old deconstructionist was forced to entertain questions about Seinfeld. For his latest film, the Academy-award nominated director sets out to answer a simple question: Who actually sits on the film ratings board of the Motion Picture Association of America? What qualifies them to rate films? What are their names?

Turns out it's not so simple. The MPAA guards that information so jealously that in This Film is Not Yet Rated, Dick is almost immediately reduced to hiring a professional private investigator to sit outside the gates of the organization's Encino compound and wait for someone to enter or exit. A few telephoto lenses and license plates later, Dick is off on a quest to not only explore the identities of the board members, but also to pull back the shroud of secrecy surrounding the MPAA's practices and its indelible bond to the Hollywood studios. Cinematical spoke to Dick, in town to do press for the movie:

Some of the early festival reviews of this film rounded on you for not proposing a lot of solutions to what you view as the deficiencies of the MPAA. Did you feel it was your job to point a way forward, or were you satisfied with just shining a light on problems with the organization? What's your response to that criticism?

KD: I did make a significant effort to get that in. The film itself had a very complex structure, with all these multiple elements, but I think in retrospect I would have worked even harder to try to get that in. Because I definitely have a strong opinion on that. What I'd like to see first and foremost is that the ratings system get out information about what the content is in films. That is one thing that the MPAA claims it's doing, but it's doing a very poor job of. I would like to see a concise but comprehensive list of the content of a film, whether its sex, violence, nudity, or drug use, so that parents can make the decision as to whether they want their child to see the film, and not have ten anonymous parents in Los Angeles make that decision for them. I'd like to see a professional system. One of the surprising things was how unprofessional this process was. There are no written standards. The raters receive no training whatsoever. There are no media experts or psychologists, unlike in Europe where it is professionalized. Also unlike in Europe, there's no transparency to the system. We should know who the raters are and we should know how the process works. In Europe everyone knows who these people are and they do their job just fine.

Boy, we here at Cinematical are just swimming in swag for you folks lately. Write the best caption for the above still from Kirby Dick's This Film Is Not Yet Rated, and you'll win some cool promo items from the film: A t-shirt (black with white ink) that says on the front "Censorship Gets F*cked" (the back has the film's logo) and a military style hat with the film's logo. Please note the nature of these items, and if you are likely to be offended by a shirt bearing the "F" word, well, don't enter this contest.

The film delves into the murky waters of film ratings, examining whether Hollywood studio films and indies are rated equally for comparable content, whether gay-themed content is judged more harshly than similar heterosexual content, the always fun issue of extreme violence (which often gets a pass) versus sexuality (which tends more to end up on the cutting room floor), and -- most of all -- why the MPAA keeps its process such a deeply-guarded secret, and whether this allows the MPAA a free hand without being held accountable. The film has made the rounds of the fest circuit and is opening September 1in New York and Los Angeles, with wider release over the coming weeks. Rules are the same as always, folks. Enter your best caption in the comments. You have until 5PM EDT on Thursday, August 31 to leave your entry, and winner will be announced on Friday, September 1.

For more on This Film Is Not Yet Rated, read James Rocchi's review from Sundance, and keep an eye out for Martha's new one, coming on Thursday.

IFC will be releasing This Film Is Not Yet Rated on September 1. The film likely caused the MPAA more difficulty that even F*ck or The Aristocrats, not because of nudity or violence, but because the MPAA is its focus. In their film, creators Kirby Dick and Eddie Schmidt not only examine the endless hypocrisy of the rating organization (the directors believe that the MPAA exhibits "a disparity of NC 17 ratings for sex over violence, gay films over straight, and indie films over studio movies") and its possible collusion with big Hollywood, but also its bizarre need for secrecy (the identities of the raters are not known).

Needless to say, the members of the MPAA were very displeased when they screened the film for rating purposes, and saw not only scathing interviews with directors and actors, but also footage of many of them going to and from work. Not surprisingly, the board turned around and slapped with movie with an NC-17 rating; IFC -- which took a damn big risk by acquiring the film in the first place -- has decided to release it unrated. Oh, and they're also trying to change how the MPAA runs (good luck with that, guys). A part of the newly-launched This Film is Not Yet Rated website is a petition demanding an overhaul of the rating system, which is described as resulting in "arbitrary, inconsistent, and unreasonable decisions." While the odds of the petition having any effect are slightly worse than those of me winning the NL batting title, it's certainly worth checking out, particularly for the solutions it presents.