EDITED FILM STORES IN UTAH COUNTY CLOSING

BY SARA ISRAELSEN-HARTLEY / Dec 5, 2007
The Deseret Morning News

OREM — Clinton Uytenbogaardt and his fiancee, Celeste Wright, scanned the shelves, pulling off an edited copy of the epic depiction "300" to add to the "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End," already in hand. "Is it edited?" Wright's 10-year-old son, David, asked about the pirate movie, and his mom nodded. "Ye
s!" he cheered, and pumped his fist in the air. "He didn't get to see the second one, because it wasn't edited," Wright said. "So for him, this is great."

Tuesday's holiday party, with a gift of the newly released third "Pirates of the Caribbean" movie, at Flix Club on 908 S. State in Orem, turned into a teary goodbye as customers learned the family-friendly store was closing. "I'm sorry I can't fight this battle," owner Daniel Thompson said, becoming emotional as he addressed the crowd that gathered in his store. "I can't. I've tried."

Thompson explained that about two weeks ago, he got a letter from an attorney in New York who represents Warner Brothers, Sony, Disney, Twentieth Century Fox and Paramount movie studios, telling him his edited movie rental and sales business was breaking copyright law and he had to close. "This is my life," Thompson said of Flix Club. "I've worked 6 1/2 years for this." Thompson then asked the attorney about legitimate ways to keep operating. What about selling the real movie but giving customers an edited copy as a free gift? What about having an unedited back-up copy for every edited movie rented? And what would happen if Flix Club just stayed open? "'If you stay open, we will break you,'" Thompson said, quoting the attorney. "'We will go after you for everything you have.'"

"I don't want to be broken," he said. "I've never been scared until recently." The edited-movie battle began in 1998 when an American Fork movie theater cut out steamy topless scenes of Kate Winslet from the film "Titanic." Paramount Pictures reprimanded the theater, then yanked the film. Businesses sprang up and a series of lawsuits followed, ending with a federal judge's decision in July 2006 that editing businesses were breaching copyright laws and had to stop.

But the lawsuit didn't name Cougar Video or Flix Club, who tried to sneak by without detection or slide through on an educational loophole, in which 80 percent of edited sales must be education based.

"We felt like no news was good news," said Kirt Merrill, who has owned Cougar Video for 15 years. "(We decided) to fly under the radar until some dude in a dark suit walks into my store and hands me paperwork. It was all great until September when some guy (walked) into the store ..."

... And handed him a threatening letter.

"We don't want to get wrapped up in a lawsuit," said Merrill, who also attended the closing announcement at Flix Club, then made the same announcement at his store later Tuesday evening. "(A lawsuit) would cost us far more money than closing the store. They would just toast us. We just cannot really afford to fight the thing anymore."

"I've never rented from anywhere else," said Devin Sims of Lindon, who came with three of his five children to get the Pirates present. "There are plenty of movie stores from our house to here. But it's worth driving down here. You know you can take (a movie) home and have a good, wholesome family film."

Both Flix Club and Cougar Video, along with Family Video Book and Clothing on the Alpine/Highland border and several other Utah County companies, will be gone by Dec. 31. "So what's been around for 15 years is going away because of this ruling and lawsuit," Merrill said. "They've destroyed the store, and there's nothing I can do to solve it. They've crushed us."

MOVIE MAKERS VERSUS THE CLEAN FLICKS REVOLT

BY JOHN HUGHES / Aug 28, 2002
The Christian Science Monitor

SALT LAKE CITY - When a little Utah mom-and-pop video store snipped the Kate Winslet nude scene out of the "Titanic" movie a few years ago, it didn't know what it was starting. That act caught the interest of many video-renters in Utah, a conservative state with a large Mormon population, whose church discourages viewing of movies with heavy doses of violence, steamy sex scenes, and profanity.

It turned out there was a considerable market for the edited version of "Titanic" among all kinds of families who didn't want their children watching the sex scenes. And as it further turned out, a national market has flourished for "E-rated" or edited films, which are cleaned up for families who don't want it the violence and crudity that Hollywood injects into far too many of its movies. We are not talking about what scoffers call the "Mary Poppins" line of family movies here. We are talking about major and often significant movies that are simply overladen with filth that some families would just as soon avoid.

A lot of the edited films were originally R-rated, but some films rated P-13 such as "Big Daddy" and "Anna and the King" are getting an editing as violence and profanity creep in. Stores renting the E-rated videos have mushroomed in many states, but the edited versions can also be ordered from websites that put the cleaned-up movies within reach of anybody with a mail box.

This grass-roots revolt against the moviemakers' pollution of our culture has not been well received in Hollywood. The argument producers and directors have used hitherto to justify the increasing use in their productions of four-letter filth and violence is that movie-goers demand it. The emergence of a substantial audience that clearly does not approve of this content surely belies this theory.

So now, the Hollywood opposition to edited videos centers on the thesis that it represents censorship of the original artist's creativity, and is an invasion of his or her intellectual property. It is an intriguing ethical argument, with the hint of legal action by the originating studios hovering in the background.

The argument is somewhat undercut by the fact that the studios themselves alter movies for various markets, notably television, and for showing on airlines. Less well-known to American moviegoers is the fact that more than half of a popular movie's revenue comes from overseas, and movie-makers make substantial changes in those movies to accommodate foreign tastes. Violence is often toned down for European audiences, and sex scenes are often eliminated for viewers in India, and for Islamic countries like Indonesia and Pakistan.

One key legal question is whether a viewer has the right to make changes to a video he himself owns. To illustrate this point: My family pays a small annual fee to belong to a cooperative at a local video-rental store that actually owns the edited videos. A section of the store is devoted to these edited movies and when I exercise my membership I pay a small rental fee to take out a video of which I am part-owner.

But other venues make no ownership demands. Albertson's, the second largest grocery chain in the country, recently began offering E-rated movie videos for rental, and expects to have them in all of its 1,000 stores by summer's end.

New digital technology may soon make the actual editing of videotapes by snipping irrelevant. This technology, downloaded onto a computer that plays a DVD movie, will be programmed to skip over objectionable material, eliminating bad language, nudity, and violence, without copying or altering the permanent contents of the DVD.

Moviemakers see all this as unethical and immoral and are pressing the studios to take legal action to protect the directors' artistic rights. Some academics argue we are on a slippery and dangerous slope toward censorship.The best solution would be simply a recognition by Hollywood that it has descended to the outer limits of good taste and that it needs to clean up its act. At the very least, it could provide edited and non-edited versions of its products, so that viewers could make up their minds which version to buy.

While the debate over its ethics and legality is yet to play out, the revolt by a substantial number of viewers against the tawdriness of some Hollywood offerings is a signal that the moviemakers should heed.

John Hughes, editor and chief operating officer of The Deseret News, is a former editor of The Christian Science Monitor.

UTAH STORES ARE CLEANING UP BY EDITING SMUT FOR FILMS

BY BRADY SNYDER / Aug 2, 2001
The Deseret Morning News

Stop with the Utah County jokes already.

It seems the taste for sanitized versions of Hollywood films extends well beyond Happy Valley. Stores that rent edited PG-13- and R-rated videos are blooming in Davis County, St. George, Idaho, Arizona and -- perhaps the unlikeliest of places -- Las Vegas.

Editing scenes that include sex, violence and profanity from popular films has become such a promising venture that competition is cropping up. That doesn't surprise Ray Lines, a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who began CleanFlicks Video Co-Op Club late last year.

"There's 120,000 Mormons that live in that community," Lines said of the Las Vegas success. "Not to mention the Christian community. This is not just a Mormon issue."

Since opening in Pleasant Grove, Lines has expanded to Orem and Provo. He also edits videos for franchise-type stores in Tooele, St. George, West Valley City, Las Vegas, Mesa, Ariz.; and Rexburg, Idaho.

And now a competitor has entered the field.

Earlier this month, Braxton Schenk, also a Mormon, opened Layton's Clean Cut Videos, which similarly rents edited videos to its members.

Like Lines, Schenk expects to expand mightily; he's looking into opening stores in Brigham City, North Ogden, Roy, Kaysville, Farmington and Bountiful.

"The neat thing about it is that we've rented to several families that aren't LDS at all. They have very similar beliefs in the way they don't want to watch some of that garbage that's out there," said Schenk, a Washington native. "I've been really impressed by the moral values of this area. Especially from the teenagers. We've had teenagers come in and talk their parents into buying a membership."

Amidst all the success, a backlash, or copyright lawsuit, from Hollywood studios has been absent.

Lines has been featured in a New York Times article and has appeared on NBC's Today Show. Still, despite the widespread publicity, no one has asked him to stop.

University of Utah film historian William Siska says that just because the editing is legal doesn't mean it's ethical.

"If the video stores were really guardians of morality, they would really toe the line as far as what fair business practices are," Siska said.

The stores are profiting off someone else's work, and, if not illegal, it's wrong, Siska said.

Lines and Schenk maintain they are legit since they pay retail price for every video, which, after editing, will be devoid of graphic violence, sex and profanity -- including taking the Lord's name in vain.

The pair maintain Hollywood studios benefit from their businesses since they sell R- and PG-13-rated videos that wouldn't otherwise be purchased.

Still, editing raises concerns about maintaining a filmmaker's artistic vision.

"I guess it depends on what film you're talking about," said Sharon Swenson, who teaches film history and theory at Brigham Young University.

Some films exist only to make money or entertain. Such pictures, Swenson says, would suffer little from editing.

"Now if it's art, then that's another story," she said.

But for now, without lawsuit or much complaint, the clean video stores flourish.

Schenk expects to have edited DVDs in two months, and Lines plans for 10 more Utah stores by the end of next year.