Hollywood Hates You
I’ve been meaning to blog about this ever since I saw Joshua Steimle’s excellent post on the court ruling against CleanFlicks, CleanFilms, Family Flix USA, and Play It Clean Video. The skinny of it is that U.S. District Judge Richard Matsch ruled that the distribution of edited movies (which have been scrubbed of objectionable content) violates copyrights. Here were his words:
“This court is not free to determine the social value of copyrighted works. What is protected are the creator’s rights to protect its creation in the form in which it was created.”
Now don’t get me wrong, I agree with the ruling, but I can’t help but find the case, brought to the the table by the Directors Guild of America (DGA), utterly despicable. Why? Because any other industry would offer its customers what they want. There’s definitely a market for sanitized videos, and studios could easily serve that market with their own self-sanctioned sanitized versions. But they don’t. Studios could offer alternatively rated versions on the same CD at almost no additional cost. But they don’t. Studios could enter into some kind of licensing agreement with film sanitizers. But they don’t. The very least Hollywood could do is turn a blind eye to the film sanitation industry –after all, these companies bought legitimate copies of each movie and are only using edited copies to reach a valuable market segment that Hollywood refuses to accommodate.) But they don’t.
Why do they do none of this? It’s because Hollywood hates you. Unlike any other industry on the planet, it doesn’t want to give you what you want, even though you’ll pay extra for it. Instead it wants to jam profanity, graphic violence, and sex down your throat and the throats of your children, whether you want it or not. Any option (legal or not) to view a film without Hollywood’s insertion of mind-numbing filth undermines it’s evil control of content and culture, and that’s the issue here.
Of course, the DGA claims it’s a different issue:
“Audiences can now be assured that the films they buy or rent are the vision of the filmmakers who made them and not the arbitrary choices of a third-party editor.”
My response: “Thank you from protecting me from those malicious sanitizers! My children will finally be protected from accidentally viewing a nudity-free ‘Titanic’! Thanks to your bitter reluctance to give your paying customers what they want, society can finally rid itself of the harmful effects that occur when children aren’t exposed to graphic violence and soft porn on a regular basis. Again, thank you Hollywood for looking out for me and mine!”
Obviously I’m pretty ticked about this. I’ve got a lot more to say about it, but this rant is already getting too long. For now let’s just say this: Hollywood and the DGA must not want you to be happy with their product. Put differently, the studios must value other interests or agendas more than you and your money. And if you’re not willing to be a full participant in Hollywood debauchery, the studios (even Disney) will hold you in contempt, even claiming that they are protecting you from products that you seek out and buy at a premium. In short, the film industry wants you to be unhappy.
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Tags: Business, CleanFlix, Copyrights, Corruption, Culture, Customer Satisfaction, DGA, Director's Guild of America, Entertainment, Hollywood, Josh Steimle, Litigation, Media, Money, Morality, Politics, Sanitized Movies, Utah
July 20th, 2006 at 3:23 pm
“In short, the film industry wants you to be unhappy.”
That doesn’t sound fair at all. I think the real thing is that the movie industry is still dominated by archaic directors who rightfully view their work as art. Up and coming young musicians are for the most part, okay with the idea of remixing, especially if they are getting paid, which these directors are. Clean Films is nothing more than a remix of a work of art. Once Hollywood gets some younger talent in there, I’m sure the idea will spawn again.
July 20th, 2006 at 3:41 pm
I interpret this just a bit differently: Hollywood doesn’t want you as a customer. If you don’t want their complete, unsanitized films, they’d rather you forego seeing the films at all and don’t give them any money at all for the privilege.
Or, at least, that’s what must necessarily follow from their insistence that you can’t have a clean version.
July 20th, 2006 at 4:48 pm
“Hollywood Hates You”
That’s fair. I hate them.
July 20th, 2006 at 5:38 pm
[comment trimmed]
… I have a cousin who works for Fox and I was stunned to find out they don’t even do market studies before they make a pilot TV show. They just have an idea they think will work then they make a pilot and then they see how their “screenings” I call them focus groups react. No wonder so many TV shows do not air after one or two seasons…
July 22nd, 2006 at 12:49 pm
This is why I don’t support Hollywood. I never buy DVDs just as I long ago stopped buying CDs. If they want to play dirty & mistreat their customers I’m not going to support them with my money.
July 24th, 2006 at 11:45 am
Um, yeah. I think you’re missing something. When you buy a scrubbed movie, the producer of the “dirty” movie *still* gets their money.
Now if I’m the Hollywood producer, and I’m in business to succeed financially (so I can create more of my art), and I see loads of copies of Titanic flying out the window, how should I interpret that information? Your purchase, scrubbed or not sends a message to the producer: make more of it.
You can’t call something evil on the one hand and then grant your sanction on the other by financing it. If you think those movies are bad, pay to see movies you think are good. When is the last time someone forced you to see one of these movies you so strongly object to? I’m bettting never.
The reason these movies continue to exist is that people willingly pay for it. They want it, and are willing to exchange their honest work for it.
Then again, maybe I should just make a clone of your blog and cut out the parts I don’t like.
July 27th, 2006 at 10:30 am
@ Eight Hour Lunch: “Um, yeah. I think you’re missing something. When you buy a scrubbed movie, the producer of the “dirty” movie *still* gets their money.”
I didn’t miss that. I mentioned it here:
“…these companies bought legitimate copies of each movie and are only using edited copies to reach a valuable market segment that Hollywood refuses to accommodate.”
@ Eight Hour Lunch: “You can’t call something evil on the one hand and then grant your sanction on the other by financing it. If you think those movies are bad, pay to see movies you think are good.”
I think your right here, but the same guys that make Garfeild 2 make NC17 teenage sex films, and I’m sure their investments aren’t compartmentalized by revenue source.
@ Eight Hour Lunch: “Then again, maybe I should just make a clone of your blog and cut out the parts I don’t like.”
Now that’s just silly. I said that I agree with the ruling –these companies *are* acting within their rights. I just think that there is a *huge* profitable market studios are purposely ignoring (at best), and I know that no other industry does that. What happened to “the customer is always right”?
July 27th, 2006 at 8:42 pm
“I think your right here, but the same guys that make Garfeild 2 make NC17 teenage sex films, and I’m sure their investments aren’t compartmentalized by revenue source.”
In my (admitedly limited) experience, they *are* compartmentalized. You only need look at the weekend paper to see individual titles and how much they’re grossing at the box office. Beyond that, most individual motion pictures are set up as their own corporation for liability reasons.
I agree that you should take an integrated look at the range of content a movie company provides (G to NC-17 as you say). But if they’re evil as you say (I disagree at least to a point), I’d argue that you shouldn’t sanction them on any level, not even the G-rated shows.
And by the way, I could swear there have been a lot of them. I’ve been to a lot of Sunday matinees with the whole family, and I can promise you I wasn’t letting my daughter see Sin City. Heck, *I* won’t even watch it.
Finally, I know you agree with the ruling. But I haven’t seen any evidence that would lead me to the conclusion that the Hollywood actually hates you (or us).
If there’s one thing we can probably agree on, it’s that Hollywood will do anything for a buck, including cranking out tons of plotless G-rated *and* X-rated content. It seems obvious to me that if there were truly the huge market potential you suggest that *someone* would have tapped it by now, if for no other reason than it helps them fund their “trash”.
Incidentally, I worked for a couple years for a local film company whose express purpose for business was to make movies for the G-rated family market. Our prices were reasonable, our selection was rather large, but our success was moderate.
More recently local films like Brigham City and The Work and the Glory have only been met with moderate success. Why? Because they just aren’t compelling. The plots are weak, the acting is bad and they don’t reach anywhere near the same level of production values (although I’ll admit they’re getting better).
My point is that these movies were offered to a national market, and the market rejected it.
Personally, I’m not nearly as concerned about arbitrary ratings as I am meaningful, well-crafted content. But then maybe we agree on that?
Regards,
Doug
August 1st, 2006 at 2:05 pm
@eight hour lunch: “It seems obvious to me that if there were truly the huge market potential you suggest that *someone* would have tapped it by now, if for no other reason than it helps them fund their “trash”.”
That’s the whole point of this post. There IS a market for it. It has been tapped. It WAS called CleanFilms, CleanFlix, …
Hollywood doesn’t need the money from these sales, and they don’t hate us. They just hate that we don’t want to participate in the filth. The number of clean movies for them is insignificant (maybe it’s not insignificant, but it’s certainly not huge).
This isn’t about art, it’s about someone disagreeing with them and them having the financial power to suppress that disagreement. It’s about them being able to force people to agree with their way of seeing life. Yeah…I know…”I haven’t ever been forced to see anything”…you get what I’m saying.
When I can no longer get the edited movies, I’ll stop watching the movies at all. Right now I would rather watch an edited rated-R movie than a PG movie.
August 2nd, 2006 at 9:34 pm
There are inherent problems with CleanFilms, CleanFlix et al. First, someone has to watch the “filth” to remove it for you. Are you ok with this?
Second, (and this is strictly my opinion), these businesses exist as parasites on the talent of writers and producers instead of creating content on their own. At least producers of movies like The Work and the Glory, or any of the Feature Films for Families fare are presenting something that by the standards of some shouldn’t be edited.
Finally, who gets to decide what is filth and what isn’t?
And I still don’t see any evidence that Hollywood hates you or wants to force you into anything. I doubt they even give the ideas so much as a passing thought.
August 7th, 2006 at 8:29 pm
Hollywood doesn’t hate you. It’s just that creators don’t want people cutting up their work. If you’ve ever created something you’ll understand this.
August 8th, 2006 at 1:54 pm
I understand this, as I have created things. But that’s not the issue. If I have written a book and sell it to you, I may not like it if you take it home and rip out a page before you read it. But do I have any legal recourse to prevent you from doing so? Apparently I do. But it just seems silly to me. You paid me for the book and now you’re only using it privately at home. If I were to whine about that, I’d feel like quite the cry baby.
August 10th, 2006 at 9:40 am
One thing is for sure–Holywood doesn’t really listen. Just read a Mark Cuban rant on that.
October 10th, 2006 at 7:56 am
Can I have my name back please. (We actually look alike)