It's tough to battle the Establishment, whether your cause is good, bad or somewhere in the middle, and Hollywood sure showed those Mormons in "Cleanflix," a documentary about movie content in Utah which headlines the Webster University Film Series today through Sunday. There are gray philosophical, political, moral and legal areas everywhere in the film, written and directed by Andrew James and Joshua Ligari, and while it seems that the filmmakers have law on their side, one can argue a lot.
Everything began when Ray Lines, a Mormon from Utah, learned to edit DVDs and began sanitizing the movies he was renting and selling from his shop. Since R-rated films are anathema to Mormons, Lines saw himself with a chance to do good and do well at the same time. He began re-editing completed films, deleting all the sex and extreme violence and bad language that had brought the rating. Some of the films may have been only 20 minutes long when he finished, but they were properly cleansed for Mormon eyes and ears. Business boomed at his little shop.
Of course he was violating copyright laws but that didn't matter–not to him, anyway. But it did matter to writers and directors and producers and HOLLYWOOD, as the giant sign in L.A. says, and the Establishment went after Lines and the Cleanfix president, Allan Erb. Daniel Thompson, a shop owner who loved being in the center of the controversy, spoke early, often and loudly to television cameras, and Robert Perry, a burly biker who owned a store (or a franchise, the movie never is clear on that point), also became a media favorite.
Neil LaBute, better known as a writer, and director Steven Soderbergh spoke for the writers and filmmakers, who secured an injunction that the censors ignored. A majority of Utahns agreed with them.
As a writer, I was immediately on the side of the writers, but the Cleanflix supporters suggested a compromise. They would accept the slightly bowdlerized versions of movies that are shown on airlines. Hollywood refused. Why, I wondered. Of course, the number of films shown on flights is minuscule compared to the overall production, which would have opened the argument about censorship once again. But I like arguments.
I liked "Cleanflix," too.
Cleanflix opens today at the Winifred Moore Auditorium on the Webster University campus and will be repeated tomorrow and Sunday, starting at 7:30 p.m.
–Joe