UTAH SHOP OFFERS POPULAR VIDEOS WITH SEX AND VIOLENCE EXCISED

BY MICHAEL JANOFSKY / Jan 31, 2001
The New York Times

The shelves appear much like those in any other small video rental shop. There are plenty of hits to choose from like ''Titanic,'' ''Schindler's List'' and ''Saving Private Ryan,'' and a nice mix of comedies and dramas.

But movie buffs would quickly discover that the CleanFlicks outlets that recently opened here and in

Pleasant Grove, a nearby town, are nothing like other stores that offer the same titles for rent.

Owing to the strong religious beliefs and editing skills of the owner, Ray Lines, all the videos available at CleanFlicks have been relieved of scenes that include sex, violence and profanity. In the CleanFlicks version of ''Titanic,'' Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslett never appear without their clothes; in ''Schindler's List,'' Liam Neeson as Schindler does not have sex outside his marriage; in ''Planes, Trains and Automobiles,'' Steve Martin does not say naughty words; and in ''Saving Private Ryan,'' soldiers die but they do not bleed a lot.

And business is booming.

''I have nothing but respect for people like James Cameron and Steven Spielberg,'' Mr. Lines said, referring to the directors of ''Titanic'' (Mr. Cameron) and ''Schindler's List'' and ''Saving Private Ryan'' (Mr. Spielberg). ''I think they're the greatest, and I want my kids to see great films. But I don't think teenagers, and adults, for that matter, need to see all that sex and hear curse words and see all that blood and gore.''

Mr. Lines, a father of seven children, all girls, not only rents videos that he edits on his home-editing equipment, but also alters videos for another rental shop in the area, Sunrise Video in American Fork, and for people who send him videos they have bought.

Mr. Lines said his lawyer had assured him he was on firm legal ground, violating no laws by altering others' creations. The rationale, he said, is that films shown on television and airplanes are also edited.

But experts in intellectual property rights and film company executives say those versions are edited in collaboration with the studios that make them. Renting out altered tapes without authorization violates federal laws, said Christopher C. Murray, the chairman of the entertainment and media division of the law firm O'Melveny & Myers in Los Angeles, whose clients include studios, actors and executives.

''It is not only a potential copyright infringement,'' Mr. Murray said, ''it is also an impingement on the rights of artists, particularly directors.''

Rob Friedman, the vice chairman of the motion picture group for Paramount Pictures, said studios probably had no recourse against the editing of privately owned videos. But by renting altered tapes, he said, Mr. Lines was engaging in copyright and trademark infringement.

''He cannot take our films, edit them and then rent them out,'' Mr. Friedman said, adding that if any of the films were made by Paramount, ''we would have a discussion with him, that's for sure.''

Phuong Yokitis, a spokeswoman for Jack Valenti, executive director of the Motion Picture Association of America, a trade organization for the film industry, said Mr. Valenti had asked his lawyers to look into Mr. Lines's activities.

''This is the first he's heard of it,'' Ms. Yokitis said.

Mr. Lines's rental business, which offers about 160 titles, reflects a combination of the editing expertise he developed years ago as a television sportscaster in South Dakota and a tenet of his church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which discourages members from watching films with ratings that warn of explicit material.

Knowing of his background, Mr. Lines said, a neighbor last year asked if he would edit out scenes in ''Titanic'' that showed actors nude. It was a simple task, and in time, Mr. Lines said, he had 40 to 50 more requests, which convinced him he might perform a community service by editing copies of movies and renting them out.

So he began buying videos of prominent films from which he could remove anything he regarded as objectionable without compromising the basic story. He said he singled out scenes of gratuitous sex and violence, as well as profanity and blasphemy, and scenes in which people were naked for nonsexual reasons.

Working on ''Schindler's List,'' a haunting story of one German's effort to protect a group of Jews from execution, he said he decided to alter scenes of people in concentration camps who had been stripped of their clothes by their Nazi captors because he felt their appearance overstated their dehumanization.

''Every teenager in America should see that film,'' he said. ''But I don't think my daughters should see naked old men, running around in circles. You can watch that film and know people were humiliated, traumatized and put through hell even after we cut out what we cut out.''

Mr. Murray, the lawyer, said that kind of editing was precisely why Mr. Lines might be violating the law by changing scenes the filmmaker intended to portray as his account of a historical event.

In addition, Mr. Lines's editing work on ''Schindler's List'' spares viewers a scene in which Mr. Neeson, as Schindler, occupies a bed with a woman who is not his wife.

''I guess Steven Spielberg was trying to show that Schindler was a womanizer,'' Mr. Lines said. ''But 40 years ago, you didn't have to show Tony Curtis having sex to make the same point.''

Mr. Lines's stores are perhaps not so unusual in a state that has a pornography czar, an official appointed by the governor to help communities maintain standards that residents deem appropriate. Further, with 70 percent of Utah's population being Mormon, according to church officials, the church exerts enormous influence in every phase of life.

Mr. Lines insists he is no censor or arbiter of moral values. Rather, he said, he was a businessman satisfying a demand in a market where residents share his values. After just three months in business, he said, more than 500 people had rented his films.

''I'm not cramming anything down anyone's throat or campaigning for anything or trying to get Steven Spielberg to edit or direct in a certain way,'' he said. ''I'd never do that. I'm just providing the community an option.''