THREE LOCAL MOVIE STORES FORCED TO CLOSE THIS MONTH

BY MALLORY BATEMAN / Dec 5, 2007
Brigham Young University's Daily Universe

As Flix Club owner Daniel Thompson treated eager customers to a free copy of "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End," the gift was accompanied by news that the store would not survive to see the new year.

The owner greeted customers by name as they filed in to the small store on State Street in Orem Tuesday night. The media had already gathered to hear what few people knew - Hollywood had finally won the battle against edited movie stores and was closing them down.

Flix Club, along with Cougar Video and Family Video, once competitors, were all serviced papers in September from law firm Loeb and Loeb in New York stating the stores needed to shut down. "I wrote them back saying I was operating under educational use," an exception in copyright law, Thompson said. "They responded by giving me three options."

The firm told Thompson that his loophole to copyright law would not hold up and he could negotiate with each individual studio, close down, or continue to operate and face a lawsuit, he said. "I called the firm and said I don't want to fight," Thompson said. "They said that if I don't shut down they would break me and take everything I have." So he decided to quit.

Flix Club has been in business for seven years, but Thompson said he couldn't fight the battle anymore, especially against companies like Disney, MGM and Dreamworks. "How many people know me?" Thompson said.

The crowd responded with cheers as nearly everyone raised their hands. "I've looked into every possibility," Thompson said. "They're wiping us out."

In an emotional speech, Thompson thanked customers for their business and asked for their support until he turns his sign off for good on Dec. 31. "You know me; you know that I'm here." Thompson said. "You mean everything to me."Customers thanked Thompson for his business and pledged their support as they gave their regards.

Orem resident Dana Johnson said Thompson knows every customer by name and said he thinks Hollywood is making a mistake "I think it's awful," Johnson said. "They're giving up money for something stupid."

BYU student David Ybarra said he and his wife Emily have rented from Thompson since high school and prefer Flix Club to any other video store. "I won't watch a movie if it's not edited," Emily Ybarra said. "It makes it so you don't have to brace yourself during the movie."

Cougar Video owner Kirt Merrill said he would be closing, too, even though 90 percent of his movies are not edited. However, he said, 85 percent of his income comes from renting the edited movies.

Family Video owner Ryan Van Dorn said he survived the first wave, which closed down Clean Flicks, but his edited movies won't survive this time. He said he will continue to rent movies rated PG-13 or lower. "This will be the final nail in the coffin," Van Dorn said.

VARSITY MAKING COMEBACK WITH CLEAN FLICKS

BY TAD WALCH / Feb 23, 2005
The Deseret Morning News

Venue to show only Hollywood hits that meet Y. standards

PROVO — Long lines for tickets were routine during the Varsity Theatre's heyday.

The Brigham Young University playhouse competed with Utah Valley theaters for moviegoers because of its fare — edited versions of R-rated movies such as "The Last of the Mohicans," "A Few Good Men" and "The Firm."

But the lines that snaked through the Wilkinson Student Center hours before tickets went on sale vanished in 1998 after movie studios and distribution companies pressured the theater to stop editing from the films what university officials and Varsity patrons considered objectionable content.

Hollywood hits are making a slow comeback at the Varsity this semester, but local theaters needn't feel threatened, and no one should expect watered-down versions of of R-rated epics like "Alexander," "Constantine" or even PG-13 smashes like "Million Dollar Baby."

"We received permission last fall from the administration to show movies again at the Varsity Theatre, but we will not accept any edited movies, we will not edit them ourselves and we must preview all the movies to make sure they meet BYU standards," said the man behind the renaissance, campus-involvement coordinator Ron Jones.

The theater has been mostly empty for the past seven years, first home to poorly attended movie classics and then to the university's International Cinema program.

Jones is rolling out "Dollar Night at the Varsity" slowly, with a single movie just one weekend a month. "Spider-Man 2" produced a sellout of the Varsity's 794 seats when it ran for three days in January. "The Village" drew solid crowds last weekend.

Students appear interested in an on-campus dollar theater, but the crowds will depend on the movie, said Rob Hickman, a junior from Washington, D.C. Hickman bought a ticket to "The Village" because he considers director M. Night Shyamalan a "modern Hitchcock."

Jones doesn't anticipate the return of long lines, but he does hope to recapture some of the magic of the old on-campus haunt.

He began his quest to resuscitate big events at the Varsity this winter, when it became a popular home for sneak previews of a genre that hardly existed in 1998 — the Mormon-oriented movie. The house was packed for free sneak peeks of "Saints and Soldiers," "The Work and the Glory," "Baptists at Our Barbecue" and "Sons of Provo."

Utah distributor Halestorm will screen its next release, "Suits on the Loose," at the Varsity next month.

Jones said the Varsity will continue to show one Hollywood hit a month, with "Napoleon Dynamite" in March and "Hidalgo" in April, and then move to two weekends a month next fall, when "National Treasure" and "The Incredibles" make their BYU debuts.

"We're looking for movies that don't need to be edited, and we're finding some," he said. "Our purpose is to provide clean entertainment for our students. Rather than trying to make money with our films, we want to provide students with inexpensive choices for on-campus entertainment."

Jones said a committee will rule out movies with objectionable sexual content, "continued use of the Lord's name in vain that is demeaning to religion," other inappropriate foul language or issues of homosexuality.

"That limits what we can show, but we've found some pretty good movies," he said. " 'The Village' is a very innocent story. It has no swearing. It has no sex. It's just a very interesting story with a lot of twists and turns."

BYU might be sticking to its standards, but it took two key philosophical shifts to clear the way for any mainstream movies to return to the Varsity.

First, the administration dropped a requirement that the theater be profitable, Jones said. The goal now is to use it to enhance campus life. Jones also persuaded several administrators to let him deal with Swank Motion Pictures Inc., the company that distributes movies to colleges and universities in the United States.

"The only way to do this is with the distribution company BYU had a problem with in the '90s," Jones said. "Some didn't want to work with them because they felt the company hadn't supported us" during the fight over editing.

A Swank executive did not respond to a Deseret Morning News request for comment.

CLEAN FLICKS SUES TO KEEP EDITING MOVIES

BY JOSEPH HADFIELD / Sept 4, 2002
Brigham Young University’s Daily Universe

A Clean Flicks franchise is suing 16 renowned directors over the right to remove sex, profanity and violence from movies for rent or sale. But the action could turn against them.

The suit, filed Aug. 30 by a Colorado franchise of Clean Flicks, asks the courts to rule their editing practices do not violate copyright laws. But the president of the Utah-based company, John Dixon, said fighting filmmakers in court is not the best approach for the business. "Those guys are big, the best thing to do is to sit down and go over this with them," said John Dixon. "A lawsuit isn't the way to go."

Representatives from the Directors Guild of America said they are confident they will win in court. "Obviously, we think they are violating copyright law," said Andrew Levy, special assignments executive for the Guild. "They are taking an artistic work, the efforts of a lot of creative people, and changing it on their whims."

Clean Flicks is headquartered in Pleasant Grove and has 36 Utah stores. If the court rules against Clean Flicks, all franchises could be forced to stop editing films. "Our whole plan was to work with Hollywood on this," Dixon said.

The business has found regular customers at BYU, where student housing guidelines do not permit viewing of indecent material. "If they could see the kind of market we see," Dixon said. "The public wants edited movies, or even just clean movies."

One such customer is BYU senior Dave Baer, who has been a member of Clean Flicks for eight months. "Artistic freedom can go too far," said Baer, a 23-year old neurobiology major from Littleton, Colorado. "They are too caught up in their freedom rather than in making a better society."

One movie Clean Flicks edited and rents is Saving Private Ryan, a film depicting fighting in World War II. Levy said the removed parts are critical to the film. "The whole purpose is to show the horror of the Normandy landing," Levy said. "To sanitize it, is to me abhorrent."

The most surprising part of the lawsuit is that it names directors as defendants in the case, Levy said. "Directors do their films, get paid, but at the end of the day, the actual owner of the film is the studio," Levy said.

Dixon said he hopes to negotiate with studios to settle the issue, citing other instances where similar editing is currently allowed. "We want to say, 'Hey, you already do it for airlines, television and third world countries with strong religious beliefs,'" Dixon said.

When films are edited for airlines, Levy said, they are often done with the input of the director. "There is a difference between authorized editing and unauthorized editing," Levy said. "Whether the studios want to start marketing those airline videos is up to them."

BYU GRADS DEVELOP DVD-EDITING SOFTWARE

BY CHARITY BRUNSON / Nov 28, 2001
Brigham Young University's Daily Universe

ClearPlay became available last week. The company, founded by brothers Matthew, Lee and Peter Jarman, worked for two years to perfect the innovative technology that makes ClearPlay possible.

Their unique software allows an editor to map out a movie, noting frame by frame each moment that needs to be skipped or muted. The resulting file tells the computer how to play back the DVD. "If you think of a DVD player like a record player it's like picking up a needle moving it and dropping it," Peter Jarman said.

What makes ClearPlay unique is that it doesn't physically alter the DVDs, which means viewers can see an edited version of a movie they rented at any video store, Peter Jarman said. It also means that ClearPlay is completely legal -- since it changes only the playback and not the DVD itself, it doesn't violate any copyright laws, he said.

ClearPlay is currently designed to run on a computer -- it requires the intelligence of a DVD-ROM and Windows 98 or 2000 to operate -- but a laptop can be connected to a regular TV with a cable.

ClearPlay also still relies on human judgment. "ClearPlay doesn't automatically know what to skip -- we have to create a navigation file for every movie," Peter Jarman said. The service can be downloaded at www.clearplay.com.

Currently, about 160 titles are available at a flat subscription rate of $70 a year. About 15 - 20 movies are added each week. The selection includes PG, PG-13 and R- rated movies, carefully chosen for their family-friendly themes. And though the editing guidelines are the same for all films -- all graphic violence, profanity and sexual content is removed -- the results aren't necessarily child appropriate.

"With some movies, the premise of the movie isn't suitable for kids; we're not taking away that premise," Peter Jarman said. The service does, however, strive to help families promote responsible media viewing.

"It's a tool to help parents and individuals who want to enjoy a lot of the mainstream entertainment out there but not suffer through anything inappropriate or offensive," he said. It is students, however, who Peter Jarman said he thinks are most likely to benefit from ClearPlay, because they have the technology to use the software.

And in Provo, there seems to be a demand for edited movies. Clean Flicks, a club for renting edited movies, said they have over 1,500 members at fees ranging from $30 a year to $25 a month.

Matthew Jarman, who was actually inspired to start ClearPlay while working for a local movie editing company, said he is pleased with his product. "I think there are a lot of developments that we will continually improve on, but it works well right now," he said.

VARSITY THEATER STRIKES BACK

BY KATHRYN GREEN / Oct 29, 2001
Brigham Young University's Daily Universe

The Varsity Theater will reopen--sort of. After half a semester devoid of midnight movies and the smell of popcorn in the Wilkinson Student Center, Student Leadership announced Monday it has come up with a solution to bring back movies to the 37-year-old campus icon. In an advertising campaign, the BYU Bookstore will screen one film a month on Friday and Saturday nights.

It's dubbed "Student Night at the Movies," and Student Leadership - which partnered with the Bookstore on the project - thinks it will rekindle campus life. "There's just a general feeling that something is missing at BYU without the Varsity," said Ron Jones, director of Student Leadership.

The BYU Bookstore will pay for the equipment and the Information Technology services to run the movies, Jones said. In return, the Varsity will feature Bookstore ads prior to movies and during intermission time, he said. Roger Reynolds, director of the BYU Bookstore, said the arrangement is only on a trial basis to see if it will promote the Bookstore. However, Reynolds said he personally would like to see the Varsity back in use.

"As an alumni of BYU, I grew up with the Varsity, and I'd like to see students enjoy it as much as I did," he said. The Bookstore will pay a fee for each night the movies are shown, Reynolds said.

As before, the Varsity will maintain BYU standards and promote Clean Flicks, Jones said. For example, the Varsity plans to show "Mulan" in January and "The Princess Diaries" in February, Jones said. However, movies are not going to be as abundant as they were in previous semesters, Jones said. Movies are only going to be shown on Friday and Saturday nights, and there will only be one movie each month.

The Varsity's movie format is also changing, Jones said. Instead of showing 35 mm films as in the past, Jones said VHS tapes would now be used. "It will be the same if not better quality in the show," Jones said.

The Varsity Theatre will kick off its comeback on Saturday with a free showing of "The Longest Day," a movie about D-Day. The show is to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the ROTC, Jones said.
Beginning Nov. 30, the theater will show "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas" in step with the approaching holiday season. Movies will cost $1 and popcorn and drinks will cost 50 cents, Jones said.

A REEL ENDING: CURTAIN CLOSES ON VARSITY

BY SETH LEWIS (Editor In Cheif) / Sept, 4 2001
Brigham Young University's Daily Universe

In the end, students voted on the Varsity Theatre's fate with their wallets, and the 37-year-old campus cornerstone lost. For all its nostalgia, mystique and long lines snaking through the Wilkinson Student Center, the theater will stop showing movies - yes, even the G-rated ones - beginning this semester.

When the theater quit screening edited films in 1998 because of potential legal trouble with production companies, ticket sales plunged, prompting school officials to rethink the theater's existence. "We wanted to let students tell us through the tickets, 'Do you still want this?'" said Carri Jenkins, Assistant to the President over University Communications.

Indeed, sagging interest in such films as "A Little Princess" and "Cinderella" doomed the Varsity, but Jenkins insists the school's decision was not solely dollar-dictated. Instead, she said, with the university increasingly squeezed for space, school officials thought the theater would be better suited for lectures, ward talent shows and comedy nights.

"Money is not the driving force here," Jenkins said. "It really is: How can we use this space best for our students?" Even more, the Varsity Theatre has outgrown its purpose as easy-access entertainment for students.

"At the time the Varsity Theatre was created, there were only a few movie houses in town," Jenkins said. "There were no movie rentals. It's a completely different world now than it was in 1964."

And with the proliferation of "dollar theaters" - such as Movies 8 in Provo - the Varsity lost its appeal as a cheap date. "There are so many choices in the valley for students and others to choose from," WSC director Jerry Bishop said.

Still, the Varsity remained wildly successful well into the 1990s filling one movie niche that never vanished: students' interest in edited R-rated films. In 1997, for instance, "Jerry Maguire" played to sold-out audiences for two weeks. Later that year, when the movie returned to the theater for the third time, students still waited in line for three hours for tickets. And lines for other rated-R flicks such as "Air Force One" routinely stretched outside the WSC.

But when Sony asked the university to stop screening its edited films, BYU balked. Sensing the potential for lawsuits, the school contacted production companies seeking formal contracts for editing films, Jenkins said.

Ultimately, nothing was finalized in writing. "Based on that," Jenkins said, "we didn't feel comfortable editing their movies." That was only part of BYU's anxiety.

Criticism had swirled for years about the moral juxtaposition of a school owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints showing films that often flouted church standards. "That was certainly something that had come up," Jenkins said. School officials then put the Varsity Theatre on a "trial period," Jenkins said, that would gauge student interest in clean classics and G-, PG- and PG-13-rated films.

The theater - which the university expects to pay for itself - failed to turn a profit, even after WSC administrators used focus groups and brought back popular films such as "The Princess Bride." "There is no question that the interest and attendance declined when the university made the decision to no longer show edited movies," Bishop said.

But the Varsity's viability is far from over. The theater will be booked days, nights and weekends, hosting all types of activities - and maybe even a class or two, Jenkins said. "It's not that it's going to be boarded up and shut down by any means," she said.