My first film at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival was Cleanflix (review), a documentary which explored the issues surrounding the sale and rental of edited versions of R-rated movies to observant Mormons in Utah. I knew that after seeing the film, I wanted to ask the creators many more questions than they could have fielded during the post-screening Q&A. So, thanks to David Magdael and Margot Hardy from TC:DM Associates, I was able to sit down for half an hour with the creators of the film during what must have been a very hectic week for them. In addition to co-directors Andrew James (on the left in the picture above) and Joshua Ligairi (on the right), we were also joined by producer Amber Bollinger.
Since the interview deals with some plot points in the film, it really makes sense to read my review first.
[click to continue…]
Tagged as:
censorship,
mormonism,
religion
Cleanflix (Directors: Andrew James and Joshua Ligairi): The Mormon religion forbids its adherents from watching R-rated movies, but Mormons desperately want to see the films that everyone else is talking about. This moral quandary created what looked like a golden business opportunity for a group of Utah entrepreneurs. Beginning in 2000, Ray Lines began using computer software to digitally remove offending scenes from DVDs. His edited versions of the movies were a hot seller and soon his business, Clean Flicks, was growing wildly. At its height, he owned 10 video stores and supplied another 70. He even moved the business online, selling off the stores to a number of different people. Daniel Thompson bought several of the stores and seemed to be the most successful. But after the Directors’ Guild of America filed suit against Clean Flicks and its operators, these businesses were living on borrowed time. When the case was finally settled in 2006, they were forced to close down.
But quite a few carried on. They simply found other companies to do the editing and bought their movies from them. Among these outlaws was Thompson. He simply felt that the market demand was overwhelming, and business was too good. He continued operating under what he saw as a legal loophole, which allowed educational use of copyrighted material. But his penchant for seeking the spotlight only brought unwanted attention to Flick’s Club, the editing company he was using, and they were soon ordered to shutter their operation. To make things worse, within a few months of his own business closing down, Thompson was charged with paying a minor for sex. The irony of someone operating a business which offered sanitized movies to a religious clientele being involved in such scandalous behaviour was not lost on the local media, whose attention Thompson no longer wanted.
The directors of Cleanflix faced the not-uncommon documentarian’s dilemma of having to deal with a changing story. Unfortunately, it’s led to the fracturing of their film into two pieces. The first half is an engrossing film about issues of censorship, intellectual property, and an examination of Mormon cultural mores. The second half is a voyeuristic look into one man’s moral failings. In my opinion, the effort to meld them into a coherent film is only partially successful. It’s unfortunate that Thompson’s downfall seemed to be greeted with such glee by the smugly liberal audience. I don’t think the filmmakers’ intention was self-righteous, and the “comeuppance” angle blunted the impact of several interesting issues, which remained unresolved.
For instance, I’m curious how the “fair use” copyright activists who advocate for the freedom to “mash up” intellectual property feel about editing Hollywood movies to remove objectionable content. I was also fascinated by the cultural phenomenon of religious people trying to get around the letter of the law so they can say they’re watching the same films as the rest of America, even when they’re not. I can appreciate how Thompson’s failures as a human being illustrate the futility of trying to protect people from bad external influences, but by letting the audience see him as the villain, Cleanflix shouts when it might have whispered.
Official site of the film
Here is the Q&A with directors Andew James and Joshua Ligairi from after the screening:
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Duration: 16:14
(7/10)
Tagged as:
#tiff09,
censorship,
mormon,
mormonism
TIFF season is upon us again. For the past few weeks, I’ve been patiently entering each batch of announced films into a spreadsheet, and noting with growing alarm the number of great films that are making their way to my city. Each year, I preview a few in the hope that it helps me narrow things down. In this first post, I’ll focus on documentaries:
Bassidji (Director: Mehran Tamadon): This looks timely in light of the recently contested presidential election in Iran. The filmmaker followed members of the Islamist citizen militia over three years in an attempt to understand their rabid support for Iran’s Islamic revolution. These are the same people who have been blamed for much of the post-election violence inflicted on protesters. There are allegations that the government controls them at arm’s length in order to deny responsibility for any “excesses.”
***
Cleanflix (Directors: Andrew James and Joshua Ligairi): I remember reading a few years ago about several Utah companies who rented “edited” versions of Hollywood movies to devout Mormon customers. All the sex, violence and bad language had been removed. I always wondered how long and how coherent the resulting movies could be. This documentary follows these entrepreneurs, some of whom experienced a few R-rated plot twists of their own.
Official site of the film
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The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers (Directors: Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith): Daniel Ellsberg was a trusted Pentagon insider until he leaked The Pentagon Papers, exposing how the government had been lying about the Vietnam War. Nixon became so enraged and obsessed with punishing Ellsberg that it contributed to bringing down his government and ending the war.
Official site of the film
Tagged as:
#tiff09,
censorship,
iran,
mormonism,
nixon,
religion,
vietnam,
watergate
