Bully (2011 film)
Bully (originally titled The Bully Project) is a 2011 American documentary film directed by Lee Hirsch and produced by Hirsch and Cynthia Lowen. It documents the lives of five students who face bullying on a daily basis in U.S. schools. The film premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival on April 23, 2011.
Bully
- Cynthia Lowen
- Lee Hirsch
- Lee Hirsch
- Cynthia Lowen
Lee Hirsch
- Lindsay Utz
- Jenny Golden
- Ion Furjanic
- Bishop Allen
- Cinereach
- Where We Live Films
- April 23, 2011 (Tribeca Film Festival)
- March 30, 2012 (United States)
99 minutes
United States
English
$1.1 million
$3.6 million[1]
On the film's official website, the filmmakers promoted Bully as a tool to help combat bullying and facilitate an anti-bullying movement,[2] but these goals were jeopardized by its initial R rating from the Motion Picture Association of America. Following a failed appeal of the rating, the Weinstein Company released the film unrated in theaters in the United States on March 30, 2012.[3] After some profanity was removed, the film was re-rated PG-13, and this version of the film was released in theaters on April 13. The PG-13 version of the film was released on Blu-ray and DVD nearly a year later, on February 12, 2013.
Content[edit]
The film documents the lives of several public-school students and their families in Georgia, Iowa, Texas, Mississippi, and Oklahoma during the 2009-10 school year. There is a particular focus on two students who are regularly bullied, one student who has been incarcerated after brandishing a gun on a school bus in response to being bullied, and the families of two boys who were victims of bullying and died by suicide.[4][5] It describes in great detail how the average American student cannot defend themselves against ridicule.[6]
Production[edit]
Lee Hirsch was a victim of bullying as a child and decided to make a documentary so the hidden lives of bullied children would be brought into the open.[8] He approached the nonprofit organization Fractured Atlas, which gave him partial funding for the film. Significant additional funding was provided by the Sundance Institute Documentary Fund, The Fledgling Fund, BeCause Foundation, and Gravity Films. The film's music was composed by Ion Michael Furjanic (former member of the band Force Theory) and indie band Bishop Allen.[9]
At a screening of the film in Minneapolis in September 2011, Hirsch told the audience that his having been bullied as a child was part of the inspiration for the film.[10] He continued his discussion of the subject in an interview with a Twin Cities news website after the screening, saying: "I felt that the hardest part of being bullied was communicating, and getting help. I couldn't enroll people's support. People would say things like 'get over it,' even my own father and mother. They weren't with me. That was a big part of my wanting to make the film. It's cathartic on a daily basis." Hirsch said he hoped the film would inspire advocacy, engagement, and empowerment, not just in people who are being bullied and in their families, but also in those who, all too often, stand by and do nothing. He stated: "I hope we build something that's really sustainable. I hope this takes on a life of its own."[10]
Release[edit]
The film premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival on April 23, 2011,[11][12] and was acquired by the Weinstein Company immediately afterward.[13] It was subsequently screened at numerous other film festivals, including the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival[14] and the LA Film Festival,[15] and had its global premiere at the Ischia Global Film & Music Festival in Italy on July 17, 2011.[16]
MPAA rating[edit]
The filmmakers lost, by one vote, an appeal to get the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) to lower the film's rating from R (due to some language) to PG-13. On February 27, 2012, an online petition was created on Change.org to encourage the CEO of the MPAA to change the rating, because the R rating would prevent the intended audience from seeing the film. As of March 15, 2012, the petition had collected more than 300,000 signatures, but the MPAA hesitated to make the change. At the time, Joan Graves of the MPAA said that, although Bully was a "wonderful film", the organization's primary responsibility in the matter was to provide information to parents about the film's content.[17][18]
On March 26, 2012, The Weinstein Company announced that, to protest the MPAA's rating of the film, it would release Bully unrated,[6] even though this would likely restrict the film to art-house and independently owned theaters, as AMC, Cinemark, and many other American cinema chains have policies against screening unrated films. However, AMC announced it would allow the film in its theaters and even let minors watch it upon receipt of a signed permission slip from a parent or guardian.[19] Regal Cinemas indicated it would carry the film, but treat it as an R-rated feature.[20] At the time of the film's initial theatrical release on March 30, 2012, it had been rated PG in six of Canada's ten provinces (Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario, Québec, and Saskatchewan), and so had warnings about the coarse language, but no age restrictions.[21][22]
In April 2012, The Weinstein Company came to an agreement with the MPAA.[23] After removing some of the profanity, the film received a new rating of PG-13 (for intense thematic material, disturbing content and some strong language—all involving kids), which meant that children of all ages could watch it without an adult.[23] The Weinstein Company subsequently announced that the PG-13 version of the film would be released nationwide on April 13.[24][25] At the widest point of its release, the film was being screened in 265 theaters.
Reception[edit]
Bully was positively received by critics.[26] On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, it has an approval rating of 85% based on 142 reviews, with an average score of 7.20/10; the site's "critics consensus" reads: "Hard-hitting and gracefully filmed, Bully powerfully delivers an essential message to an audience that may not be able to see it."[27] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 74/100 based on 33 reviews.[28]
Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four, and wrote: "Bully is a sincere documentary but not a great one. We feel sympathy for the victims, and their parents or friends, but the film helplessly seems to treat bullying as a problem without a solution."[29]
The film was referenced in the South Park episode "Butterballs", particularly a scene in which Kyle asks Stan, who created an anti-bullying documentary: "If this video needs to be seen by everyone, why don't you put it on the Internet for free?" (to which Stan has no answer).[30]