SANITIZERS NOT MOVIE VILLAINS

I've been thinking about editing, but not the kind you might think. A
couple of days after I screened "Bleep! Censoring Hollywood," I received an
e-mail from a journalist asking when I was going to weigh in on the growing
practice reported in the show.

She didn't know about "Bleep" but had read a story by the Washington Post's
Paul Farhi about a so-called sanitizer, a film editor who is also the
president of CleanFlicks, one of the companies profiled. Ray Lines snips
objectionable elements -- sex, violence, language -- out of R and PG-13
movies. The films are then resold or rented on DVD.

This is a problem for a lot of people including Academy Award-winning
director-producer Steven Soderbergh, whose drama "Traffic" has been
subjected to CleanFlicks' sanitation. Nearly all of the story thread about
the daughter of the government's drug czar, who ends up prostituting
herself to feed her drug addiction, has been removed from the edited
version, something Soderbergh says in "Bleep" is more than a subversion of
his artistic vision that lessens the film's dramatic impact. It is, or at
least ought to be, illegal, he says.

Of course, filmmakers routinely censor themselves; many studio contracts
require producers and directors to supply so-called clean versions of their
work suitable for network TV broadcast or in-flight movies. Some go so far
as to shoot alternate scenes (which is why the "Aliens" you see on TV has a
different running time than the one in theaters or on DVD), but mostly it's
about trimming nudity or altering vulgar language.

But filmmakers don't want the job done by CleanFlicks.

In "Bleep," the Directors Guild of America's president, Michael Apted,
argues that CleanFlicks and its competitors are thieves and vandals, no
different than someone who breaks into your home and saws a leg off your
dining room table or rips pages out of your favorite novels. The sanitizers
say their practice is more like buying a new car, repainting it a color not
authorized by the factory and reselling it to someone who prefers purple.

My journalist friend, like most journalists, is a First Amendment fan, and
also a movie lover. She was piqued to learn that the sanitized version of
"Schindler's List" not only removes the full-frontal nudity of
concentration camp prisoners headed for the gas chamber but eliminates the
depiction of Oskar Schindler's affair.

But she also frets she has a daughter who will soon age out of her
"SpongeBob" years, and she dreads what's ahead -- "the battle of PG-13."

Ironically, the Hollywood studios are not exactly rallying around the
Director s Guild attempts to defeat or substantially amend the Family
Entertainment and Copyright Act, which permits the use of technology,
specifically an already available DVD player, to "skip or mute content
objectionable to home viewers."

One reason is that these companies are loath to do anything that could cut
off new revenue; the other is that the bill has copyright protections the
industry would like to see become law.

"Bleep! Censoring Hollywood" may ultimately side with the filmmakers in the
general debate over sanitization, but examines the issue with a fairness
that should serve as an example to both sides in the culture wars.
Sometimes you have to be frank to make a point. And sometimes, turning down
the heat can actually shed light.