Our friend Carl writes:

Russ, I hope I have not given you the impression that I view filthy DVD movies, because I don’t.

And here I was thinking your waiting with bated breath for the ClearPlay release of “Debbie Does Dallas”. 😉 (Actually, I make that joke to mention that this discussion reminds me of a short series they had on BravoTV called “Good Clean Porn”. They took porn movies and removed the porn and showed just the, ahem, acting. Not surprisingly, the 90-minute porn movies barely held enough non-porn content to fill the 22-minute show.)

I beg to differ with you about watching a movie in the way the director intended. Do you do that? When you sit down to enjoy your DVD, do you watch the whole thing, or do you fast-forward sections that don’t appeal to you?

I watch the whole thing. If I find myself in the middle of a movie that is not appealing to me, I don’t watch the rest of it. I see a movie as a complete work of art. I might ask you, when you play a song on your CD player, do you listen to the whole song, or do you fast-forward through the guitar solos?

Still, don’t confuse my opinion about ClearPlay’s DVD system with what I believe are your rights. You own the DVD; watch it any way you want to. Rewind and freeze-frame and skip chapters all you like. Just like if you bought a Picasso, it would be your right to have at it with a switchblade. It’s yours.

Again, my whole concern is that there is a third-party involved that makes a profit from creating an unauthorized version of the film. Just like I would find objectionable a company that paints black X’s over the naughty bits in paintings or a museum that clothes David and Venus in pasties. The artist intended the viewing of breasts or penises as part of the over effect of the artwork, just as a director throws in salty language or nude scenes to set the tone of a film (or, as you’ve pointed out, as just a cheap ploy to get the right rating or attract a certain audience.)

Yes, ClearPlay doesn’t affect the original DVD, but that is irrelevant. It’s the interpretation of those bits on the disc that makes the “movie”, the disc itself is just the media for the bits. ClearPlay creates a new “movie” for you, clearly against the wishes of the director. For another comparison, suppose I advertised that I was going to read aloud from Alex Haley’s “Roots”, but then I skipped over the nasty slave-beating parts. It wouldn’t be “Roots”, now, would it?

And what about the beginning and ending credits? Do you sit through them while reading about all of the “interesting” people that had a hand in putting that film together? If the director saw the importance of including all this information on your video disc, how do you think he would feel if he knew you skipped over all of that good stuff? 🙂

Ah, but that’s a slightly different animal. The credits are not the director’s vision, they are the label of the movie’s ingredients. I don’t watch every credit of a movie that I watch just like I don’t read every ingredient on a Snickers bar that I eat. That said, if a company was making a profit by magically editing out the credits of a movie, I’d be just as concerned as I am about wiping out profanity and nudity and violence in a movie.

(This is another peeve of mine: credits. When movies or TV shows are re-run on TV, the station usually speeds them up and shrinks them down to a fraction of the screen until they are so small and fast you could not possibly read them. I know they’re trying to keep people from clicking over to a different station, but I find the credit-shrinking offensive.)

Depending on the circumstances, what is wrong with “having your cake and eating it too”? With ClearPlay, I can do just that. Allow me to explain: “Regarding Henry” is one of my favorite films. The only parts of the movie that I bristled at were the robbery shooting, the scene where the title character wanders into a porno theater where you can clearly hear the grunts and groans coming from the motion picture that is playing, and the ever-present four-letter words. With ClearPlay editing, the robbery shooting was shortened, and the porno theater scene was completely skipped over. And of course, no profanity. In my opinion, ClearPlay actually improved the film. May I have some ice cream with that cake, please? 🙂

I’ve seen that movie. By shortening the robbery scene, you lessen the emotional impact of the crime. If Mike Nichols just wanted you to feel bad for Harrison Ford, he wouldn’t have needed to include the violence. The violence is there to add reality to the scene and to foster sympathy for the character.

The scene where he wanders into a porno theater highlights how the character is so lost in his new world. The discomfort you might feel from hearing the grunts and groans helps you understand the discomfort the character feels.

The ever-present four-letter words? Reality. People curse. Especially people whose lives were ruined in a robbery and whose lives have been completely obliterated.

In other words, we both watched “Regarding Henry”, but only I experienced what Mike Nichols meant to express.

You are so right when you say that no one is forcing me to watch films with strong ratings. And for the most part, I stay clear of them. But since ClearPlay can be programmed to remove the objectionable content that contributes to such strong ratings, some PG, PG-13, and R-rated films are now a whole lot more palatable to viewers of more discriminating tastes.

Right. And if you take the milk out of ice cream, sundaes are a whole lot more palatable to people with lactose intolerance. But it ain’t a sundae.

Without ClearPlay’s expert editing, there is no way I would sit through such profanity-riddled films as “A Few Good Men” and “Crimson Tide”. If I am watching ClearPlay’s “remix” of these movies, as you say, then so be it.

I guess my strongest concern is, why do you feel you need to sit through “A Few Good Men” and “Crimson Tide”? Because everyone else is?

This may be something I can never understand. I have this discussion with my mom and I always end up in the same place as we are now. I just don’t understand how hearing profanity or seeing a boob or a gunshot wound is so threatening a concept as to be avoided at all costs. I have the opposite problem: I cannot watch a movie that has been “edited for television”. When I see hear a gangster say something like “you stupid mother father, I’ll kill you, you gosh darned son of a gun!” I immediately lose interest in the movie because I can’t believe the character. Gangsters curse.

Censorship — even self-imposed — fascinates me. It seems like a futile attempt to deny reality. It’s hard for me to even imagine the idea of obscenity. How is it that when you change just one vowel in “Meet the Fockers”, it’s obscene? Why does hearing a certain syllable cause such a severe reaction?

On 2/9, you said that you fear any meddling with an artist’s vision. But now are you saying it’s okay to do that as long as the the artist gets some kickback? Isn’t that somewhat hypocritical? Please do not get offended by my question. I just want to know how you feel about this.

I don’t think I said that. What I’m for is cooperation between ClearPlay and directors. If a director gives his permission for a ClearPlay edit, then fine, let ’em do it, and let’s see that the director gets a cut. But if a director refuses (a la Spielberg not letting ABC cut “Saving Private Ryan”) then ClearPlay should be legally barred from offering a service for that movie.

Russ, even though we may not see eye-to eye on certain”unauthorized” editing, I can see where you are coming from. On 2/9, you made reference to someone taking liberties in editing the Bible. Well, that has already happened. In the original manuscripts of the Bible, God’s name Jehovah (or Yaweh) appeared about 7,000 times. But superstitious Jewish scribes removed it from their copies, fearing that no human was worthy of saying the Name or even writing it. They then substituted God’s name with the words “Lord” or “God”. In the King James Bible, the Name appears four times. In the New King James Bible, as well as other modern translations, God’s name has been wiped out completely. How wrong!

The Bible was a series of oral histories that were passed through generations and finally cobbled together in many separate pieces by a literate priest class. Throughout the ages its true words have been meddled with by that priest class while the masses who followed the Bible remained illiterate. As the church progressed, it became the de facto political power… and we all know how politicians can screw up a document.

So, anyone who tells me “the Bible says…” immediately gets cut off by me responding, “which version? which translation? or can you actually read ancient Aramaic?” Then I tell them that anyone who takes the Bible word-for-word literally is missing its point.

But it’s funny to me how you bring up superstitious Jewish scribes who couldn’t bear to hear or write “Yahweh”. They ended up changing some of the fundamental meaning of the Bible, wouldn’t you say? It’s almost as if those scribes were an ancient ClearPlay that erased any vain references to deity for their audience. I wonder how the Bible’s author felt about that unauthorized editing.

I realize that not everyone is in favor of ClearPlay’s methods. Only time will tell if ClearPlay and the Directors’ Guild of America will ever reach some kind of agreement. I sincerely hope they do.

Why wait for ClearPlay and DGA? Why not found a movie studio that produces nothing but smart, engaging, complex “G”-rated films? There is obviously an audience for this. Have you seen “Napoleon Dynamite”? Fantastic comedy, filmed on a shoestring budget in Preston, Idaho, a movie in which the most severe curse word is “flippin’ idiot!”, the most shocking nudity is a shot of a cow’s malformed fifth teat, and the most egregious violence is a slap in the face. And it was very successful.

Final thought: A director makes a movie. It’s her vision of reality. It is a piece of art. ClearPlay has no right to alter that director’s vision, and you have no right to purchase modified art.

“Radical” Russ — how do you walk down the street, what with all the people who just might curse within earshot?…

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