idiculous business practice of the year: Clean Flicks.  This company takes feature films, chops them up removing any parts they find "offensive" and resells/rents their edited versions.  They aren't doing it deceptively; and do good business with various weird people who can't watch a movie with some bare breast and profanity.  Movie directors aren't happy though.  Updates to follow.

September 23, 2002

Here's a news item about a practice I find outrageous; the re-editing of films to remove "objectionable" material from them.  Bleeping out the language and nude scenes, that is.  Networks have long aired censored versions of films, but these are done by the director or studio, and everyone concerned knows that they are edited for TV. The new issue is private companies that are editing movies how they see fit, and then selling them for profit.

The Directors Guild of America, the union representing Hollywood directors, said it asked the U.S. District Court in Denver on Friday for a permanent injunction to block about a dozen companies from distributing unauthorized versions of films that have been re-edited to remove content such as nudity and foul language.

"It is wrong to cut scenes from a film -- just as it is to rip pages from a book -- simply because we don't like the way something was portrayed or said, then resell it with the original title and creator's name still on it," Directors Guild President Martha Coolidge said in a statement.

The directors told the court that offering the re-edited versions of the films violates a U.S. law that prohibits trademark infringement, false advertising and unfair competition. The directors noted that this law has been applied in the past to protect artists' rights not to be associated with unauthorized, edited versions of their work.

What's outrageous is that these companies are getting existing movies, chopping them up as they like, and selling them.  I don't see how that isn't illegal on numerous levels, but apparently they've been getting away with it. As the article mentions, CleanFlicks, one of the chief offending companies, has actually filed their own lawsuit against a bunch of the most famous Hollywood directors, in a sort of preemptive strike, suing for their right to exist.

A quick web search on CleanFlicks turned up this article on the topic, and this one. I guess it's not surprising that these companies are successful at it.  Article here talks about the expanding store chains in Arizona, and other areas with high concentrations of Mormons and other uptight religious types.

"I have always wanted to see Shakespeare in Love, but didn't because it was rated R," said a happy Jolene Wells, 48, a Mesa mother of six and Shakespeare fan, as she picked up a sexless version at a CleanFlicks store in Mesa.

One could argue that she still hasn't seen it.

A comment made in several articles is that no one is blocking out parts of paintings they find offensive, or selling books with naughty words crossed out.  I think the best response to that might be, "Not yet."

Censored music is what we get on the radio, censored films are what we get on TV.  I haven't heard of censored books yet, but that's probably because people who read (as opposed to idiot box viewers) aren't such idiots, there are billions of books so options abound, and when there is an offensive book religious types tend to want it outright banned or burned, rather than just trimmed here and there.  As for the painting part, artists are constantly being protested or attacked for things in their work some group finds offensive.  Ashcroft and pals blocked off the statue of Lady Justice since they don't believe in justice. I mean since they didn't want her uncovered stone boobie visible, in an extreme example of artistic censorship.

The argument against the censorship is that authors, artists, directors, etc, have their vision for a work, and release it in a form that matches that vision (editor or studio interference not withstanding) and no one else has the right to alter their work.  Consuming entertainment is optional.  You don't have to watch or read it if you don't want to.  People have the option to fast forward over nudity or gore, the same way I have the right to rewind and watch it again.  I can see why there is a market for sanitized versions of popular works, and if I were kooky enough to have such issues with nudity or language that I couldn't sit through an R-rated film, I'd probably appreciate a PG cut of it that was more my style. 

However if I were the director of it, I'd be furious about my work being chopped up by some third party.  In theory I put in the violence of language or nudity since I felt it was essential to the story and the characters.  It's not like these companies are cleaning up pornos, where the only point is the sex.  They are mutilating quality films that happen to have some scenes that some people object to. As a writer, if someone couldn't handle my writing and wanted it hacked up to remove bad words, my reaction would be that they should go read Harry Fucking Potter again, if they can't handle a story not targeted at 9 year olds.

Probably the best thing would be for the movie companies and directors to just do this themselves, put an edited version on the DVD, and charge a bit more for it.  Directors wouldn't like it, but they'd get extra money for very little additional work, and people would have the choice if they wanted to practice self-censorship.

December 17, 2002

Some time after posting my initial blog on this subject, I received a reader mail about it. Here's a quick quote.

Stupid Website and Article

Hey Einstein: I thought your article on movie editing was inane, poorly researched and written, and plain stupid... From your website I can tell you're a loser that wallows in the muck of humanity. Sit back and watch as good people spend their dollars where they want and create new markets. 

It's unusual to get such an email from a person who can actually spell and punctuate reasonably well, but he seems to be motivated by some sort of prudery.  Not to restate the whole article, but the Clean Flicks company is engaging in blatant piracy, as far as I'm concerned.  They are taking the work of other people, chopping it up as they see fit, and reselling/renting it.  I find it pretty outrageous that someone would even try that in the first place, as it's so obviously illegal and unethical, but as they've gotten away with it so far, and there's money to be made, I guess it's not surprising.

The emailer seems to be of the opinion that if someone is willing to buy it, it's okay to do it, and that objecting to the butchery of films is a sign of "a loser that wallows in the muck of humanity".  I can't really deny that, I mean this is the Internet after all, and I like violent movies and serial killer articles and even some occasional pr0n.  And given that porno is about a 50x bigger market than religious entertainment, it must be pretty crowded in the muck.

None of that has anything to do with the issue of Clean Flicks chopping up movies in blatant violation of copyright law though, which is what I suspect the courts will be more concerned with.

All site content copyright "Flux" (Eric Bruce), 2002-2007.