Utah 'Bleep!'-ed

Utah plays a major role in AMC's latest production — an ABC News-produced documentary about the battle between Hollywood directors and those who would "clean up" their movies.

"Bleep! Censoring Hollywood" (Tuesday, 8 and 11:30 p.m., AMC) is a surprisingly evenhanded look at efforts to censor movies to make them "family friendly" — an industry that sprang up right here in the Beehive State with companies like CleanFlicks and CleanFilms.

Yes, there's a bit about Utah's predominant religion. The narration identifies CleanFlicks founder Ray Lines as "the pioneer of the movie-sanitizing business" and intones, "He says he got the idea from his neighbors. Like him, they're Mormons. And the church discourages them from watching movies with sex and violence."

And while Curtis Fullmer of CleanFilms is identified as "a Mormon," he's quoted as saying, "the need for edited movies goes way beyond religious or political boundaries."

But "Bleep!" makes it clear this is not a Mormon issue — that there are a lot of people out there who want to view PG-13 or R-rated movies without the sex and/or violence.

"I've known for some time that there's a need for this," Lines says.

We see specific instances of how movies are edited. Violence is taken out of "Troy"; sex is taken out of "Traffic"; a shot of a woman in a bra is taken out of "Mean Girls."

You could argue that some of the edits are merited; others seem silly. (The woman in the bra is, after all, wearing more than women in bathing suits.)

The report is respectful of both points of view. It doesn't denigrate those who wish to excise content they find objectionable, nor does it downplay the legal and ethical rights of the directors to their intellectual property.

"As the director of a film, I decide how to tell that story. . . . Somebody coming in and deciding that it's not important to tell it that way is trampling on whatever time I spent on the film," says director Irwin Winkler.

"They are marketing materials that they don't own . . . and which they're not collaborating with us, to unsuspecting customers," says director Michael Apted. "So we feel they are coming between our business and our audience."

Lines makes the point that for each edited DVD he sells, he buys one uncut DVD, thus increasing Hollywood's bottom line. The directors object to his messing with their artistic statements.

One point "Bleeped!" ignores is that consumers who purchase edited DVDs are supporting the production of R-rated films they object to. And it doesn't question the ethics of that.