A review of our film, Cleanflix, by Metro News film critic Michael S. Grant (warning, some spoilers). Direct link to the original post at the Metro News site here.
Michael S. Gant » 02.24.10 »
At first, Andrew James and Joshua Ligiri's fascinating documentary Cleanflix seems to be about a no-brainer issue. Uncomfortable with sex, nudity and (to a lesser extent) violence, Mormon consumers want to watch cleaned-up DVD versions of mainstream Hollywood fare. Some canny entrepreneurs fill the need by creating Clean Flicks, an operation that uses digital editing software to cut out the swear words and stray boobs from hit movies and then rents the sanitized versions out of franchise stores in and around Salt Lake City.
Of course that business plan rankles advocates of artistic freedom—not to mention copyright-conscious directors and movie studios. But wait. Directors have long stood still for bowdlerized versions of their films on TV and airplanes; many DVDs are recut to have more sex and violence than the theatrical version—so much for the integrity of the original release. If there is such a lucrative market for these DVDs, why doesn't Hollywood just step in and rake off the profits?
As the film progresses, motives and methods grow murky. The founder of Clean Flicks ends up in competition with some of his own franchisees; two store owners start a running feud. The legal arguments used to skirt obvious copyright violations soon succumb to a concentrated assault of big-firm suits. But a guerrilla market flourishes as the most dedicated and weirdly charismatic of the censored DVD sellers, Daniel Thompson, keeps finding ways around injunctions and other sanctions. By turns creepy, theatrical and even sympathetic, Thompson proclaims his mission to keep Mormons entertained but unoffended, even acting something of a cult leader to the grateful members of his DVD club.
From there, Cleanflix cruises to a twist ending that no screenwriter would have dared propose. The film features many fascinating interviews, with an appearance by director Neil LaBute, who turns out to have a Mormon background. It's a terrific tale, even if the film never does answer the essential question, why would Mormons even want to see Kill Bill or The Big Lebowski in any form?
Direct link to the review at MetroActive.com. Follow Michael S. Gant on Twitter @Michael_Gant.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
BLOG: Schaefer's minimal posters win
Joshua Ligairi » 2.23.10 »
I was pretty happy with myself for finding those Ibraheem Youssef minimalist Quentin Tarantino poster all by myself (see post here), but I quickly learned that you just can't compete with these movie news guys. Just a few days later, my friend Jordan Duke (This Is the Duke) informed me that Peter Sciretta from /Film had not only beaten me to the punch, but kicked my sorry butt.
At the risk of being redundant, I'm sharing these posters from Massachusetts-based graphic artist Brandon Schaefer (which can be seen at his site and purchased as prints from inPRNT.com) because they are simply the best minimalist poster art I have seen so far. I would buy the Rear Window and Back to the Future prints in a heartbeat and all of them have either a great concept or great design, if not both. I've posted some of my favorites below.
Minimal Rear Window poster by Brandon Schaefer
Minimal Ghostbusters poster by Brandon Schaefer
Minimal Life Aquatic poster by Brandon Schaefer
Minimal Murder by Death poster by Brandon Schaefer
Minimal 8 1/2 poster by Brandon Schaefer
Minimal One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest poster by Brandon Schaefer
Minimal Inner Space poster by Brandon Schaefer
Minimal Back to the Future poster by Brandon Schaefer
Minimal Empire Strikes Back poster by Brandon Schaefer
Minimal Sleeper poster by Brandon Schaefer
Minimal The Wizard poster by Brandon Schaefer
Minimal Child's Play poster by Brandon Schaefer
The biggest difference between Schaefer's work and others I have seen (Youssef's, for instance) is that his designs actually serve a purpose. First of all, most of the posters are for a free film screening series (I'm guessing is held in Massahusates) that looks to be the coolest screening series ever. Then, there are Scaefer's BluRay sleeves. Makes me want to throw out all of my old DVD cases right now for something a little sleeker. My only worry is that these stylish sleeves may promote illegal downloads, but I know you think that is lame.
Minimal Jaws BluRay sleeve by Brandon Schaefer
Minimal Groundhog Day BluRay sleeve by Brandon Schaefer
Minimal Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure BluRay sleeve by Brandon Schaefer
Minimal Science of Sleep BluRay sleeve by Brandon Schaefer
Minimal Office Space BluRay sleeve by Brandon Schaefer
Other favorites not-pictured are minimal posters for Annie Hall, Manhattan, Planet of the Apes, and Network. Also, I have to take issue with the poster for The Wizard for being so California-centric when one portion of the film clearly takes place in Utah. You may think that is a minor complaint, but it's not. Those LA people think they are the center of the universe and it drives me crazy. Still, nice poster from a movie I haven't seen for a VERY long time. It was just one of those movies that was instantly dated, but would probably be fascinating to see now. In fact, these posters have made me want to see all of these movies again, which is exactly what a poster is supposed to do, and why I think these particular posters are such a success.
Congratulations to Brandon Schaefer for making, in my opinion, the absolute coolest alternative posters around. If anyone is looking for a birthday gift for me (wink), you can visit Brandon Schaefer's site Seek&Speak here (remember, Rear Window). Follow him on Twitter here. These posters came to me via @slashfilm and @thisistheduke. Thanks guys! You are geekier than I will ever be.
I was pretty happy with myself for finding those Ibraheem Youssef minimalist Quentin Tarantino poster all by myself (see post here), but I quickly learned that you just can't compete with these movie news guys. Just a few days later, my friend Jordan Duke (This Is the Duke) informed me that Peter Sciretta from /Film had not only beaten me to the punch, but kicked my sorry butt.
At the risk of being redundant, I'm sharing these posters from Massachusetts-based graphic artist Brandon Schaefer (which can be seen at his site and purchased as prints from inPRNT.com) because they are simply the best minimalist poster art I have seen so far. I would buy the Rear Window and Back to the Future prints in a heartbeat and all of them have either a great concept or great design, if not both. I've posted some of my favorites below.
Minimal Rear Window poster by Brandon Schaefer
Minimal Ghostbusters poster by Brandon Schaefer
Minimal Life Aquatic poster by Brandon Schaefer
Minimal Murder by Death poster by Brandon Schaefer
Minimal 8 1/2 poster by Brandon Schaefer
Minimal One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest poster by Brandon Schaefer
Minimal Inner Space poster by Brandon Schaefer
Minimal Back to the Future poster by Brandon Schaefer
Minimal Empire Strikes Back poster by Brandon Schaefer
Minimal Sleeper poster by Brandon Schaefer
Minimal The Wizard poster by Brandon Schaefer
Minimal Child's Play poster by Brandon Schaefer
The biggest difference between Schaefer's work and others I have seen (Youssef's, for instance) is that his designs actually serve a purpose. First of all, most of the posters are for a free film screening series (I'm guessing is held in Massahusates) that looks to be the coolest screening series ever. Then, there are Scaefer's BluRay sleeves. Makes me want to throw out all of my old DVD cases right now for something a little sleeker. My only worry is that these stylish sleeves may promote illegal downloads, but I know you think that is lame.
Minimal Jaws BluRay sleeve by Brandon Schaefer
Minimal Groundhog Day BluRay sleeve by Brandon Schaefer
Minimal Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure BluRay sleeve by Brandon Schaefer
Minimal Science of Sleep BluRay sleeve by Brandon Schaefer
Minimal Office Space BluRay sleeve by Brandon Schaefer
Other favorites not-pictured are minimal posters for Annie Hall, Manhattan, Planet of the Apes, and Network. Also, I have to take issue with the poster for The Wizard for being so California-centric when one portion of the film clearly takes place in Utah. You may think that is a minor complaint, but it's not. Those LA people think they are the center of the universe and it drives me crazy. Still, nice poster from a movie I haven't seen for a VERY long time. It was just one of those movies that was instantly dated, but would probably be fascinating to see now. In fact, these posters have made me want to see all of these movies again, which is exactly what a poster is supposed to do, and why I think these particular posters are such a success.
Congratulations to Brandon Schaefer for making, in my opinion, the absolute coolest alternative posters around. If anyone is looking for a birthday gift for me (wink), you can visit Brandon Schaefer's site Seek&Speak here (remember, Rear Window). Follow him on Twitter here. These posters came to me via @slashfilm and @thisistheduke. Thanks guys! You are geekier than I will ever be.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
PRESS: Missoula Red Tape's Cleanflix-Related Column
Cleanflix is just the jumping off point to talk about human rights in this short column, but they gave us a nice little pull-quote. Direct link to the original here.
Keila Szpaller » 02.17.10 »
WHERE REALITY PLAYS ITSELF
That’s what happens at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival. Tonight, one of the films on tap is Sweetgrass. Last night, Cleanflix was one of the offerings. The film showed that one community’s desire to censor violent and sexual content in film doesn’t mean R-rated content is dead in their actual lives.
The setting was the Mormon community in the Salt Lake City area, and it reminded me of another interesting bit on the non-discrimination ordinance coming soon to a (political) theater near you.
A Montana Human Rights Network organizer said Salt Lake City adopted last fall an ordinance similar to the one heading Missoula’s way, and with support from the Mormon church. One reason? It didn’t touch marriage. Here’s a transcript on the Deseret News site from a Latter-day Saint spokesman.
Salt Lake City adopted its ordinance unanimously. The documentary festival runs through Thursday. OMG. That’s tomorrow. Schedule here.
Direct link to the column at Missoula Red Tape.
Keila Szpaller » 02.17.10 »
WHERE REALITY PLAYS ITSELF
That’s what happens at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival. Tonight, one of the films on tap is Sweetgrass. Last night, Cleanflix was one of the offerings. The film showed that one community’s desire to censor violent and sexual content in film doesn’t mean R-rated content is dead in their actual lives.
The setting was the Mormon community in the Salt Lake City area, and it reminded me of another interesting bit on the non-discrimination ordinance coming soon to a (political) theater near you.
A Montana Human Rights Network organizer said Salt Lake City adopted last fall an ordinance similar to the one heading Missoula’s way, and with support from the Mormon church. One reason? It didn’t touch marriage. Here’s a transcript on the Deseret News site from a Latter-day Saint spokesman.
Salt Lake City adopted its ordinance unanimously. The documentary festival runs through Thursday. OMG. That’s tomorrow. Schedule here.
Direct link to the column at Missoula Red Tape.
Labels:
Big Sky,
Cleanflix,
Deseret News,
Icarus Arts,
Icarusae,
Joshua Ligairi,
Misssoula,
Montana,
Salt Lake Tribune
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
PRESS: BSDFF Cleanflix Interview
An interview with Cleanflix co-director Joshua Ligairi by Sarah Truckey of the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival. Direct link to the original blog post of this interview here.
Sarah Truckey » 02.16.10 »
MORMONS CUT IT OUT IN CLEANFLIX
Cleanflix is a documentary about the phenomenon started by the Mormons in Utah who edit violence, sex and profanity from certain films so they are "clean" enough for their people to watch. Is this sanitization process acceptable? What about the artists whose films are being censored?
Joshua Ligairi of Cleanflix, screening as a U.S. Premiere Tuesday night at 7.45pm, talks with Big Sky Documentary Film Festival about his connections to the Mormon culture, his struggle with objectivity, and the relationships he fostered with his subjects.
BS: How did you hear about this subject matter of censored videos?
JL: We both lived in Utah when we decided to make the film, and edited movies were kind of in their hayday. You couldn't miss them. Andrew had a lot of experiences with them in college; his roommates watched them all the time. I think seeing Steven Soderbergh's Traffic edited, which is one of his favorite films, was a pretty traumatic experience. I had never actually seen one before we started the film, but it was a subject that interested me a great deal. For me, the most interesting aspect when we began was the notion of self-censorship.
BS: Are you Mormon? Did you grow up around Mormons?
JL: We both grew up Mormon, but not in Utah. We both moved around a lot growing up, Andrew in places like Georgia and Michigan, me in places like California and Idaho. We both eventually made it to Utah.
BS: What drove you to make a film about this topic? Was there a personal connection?
JL: Neither of us were supporters of edited movies. We both had Mormon heritage and we were both filmmakers (not to mention huge cinephiles), so all of that played into it. However, I'm not sure either of us felt any specific personal connection. For me, I just saw a story and it was a story that I knew I could tell. Still, I do think our experience with Mormon culture was a huge help when making the film.
First, we understood the mindset of the people who were editing the movies, even though we didn't necessarily agree with their point of view. I think it would be really easy to paint this issue black and white, but I feel like being able to empathize with the culture made for a much stronger, much more nuanced film. For some people that is a problem with the film. They want to feel superior to these people whose actions they disagree with. We didn't want it to be that simple.
The other advantage is that we had access. I think these guys would have been a lot more suspicious of outsiders than they were of us. That familiarity with the culture gave us a lot of freedom and opened up a lot of doors that a complete outsider could have never opened.
BS: Why do you feel this topic is an important one to show the public?
JL: There are so may issues at play here. First, again, it is just an interesting story. It is entertaining. It is real human drama. If you wrote it, nobody would believe it.
Second, the film deals with questions for which there are no easy answers. Should corporations be able to tell us how to use their products if we have purchased them? Is it different if those products are also art? What if censorship comes into play? These are really grey areas that I struggled with for three years while we made the movie and I want the audience to struggle with them, too, because they are not going away once our film is over. As we become immersed in the digital age, people are going to be re-mixing and re-mashing their media in ways that we haven't yet imagined. How will artists respond? How will copyright holders respond? Cleanflix could be seen as a little test case of things to come.
BS: Where is most of the film shot?
JL: Well, 90% of the film was shot in Utah Valley, commonly known as "Happy Valley." We also went to California, Idaho, New York, and Washington DC during our journey, but we kept coming back to Utah. There were edited movies in other places, and there are certainly similar attitudes in other places, but, as I've said a lot when talking about the film, we focused on Mormons in Utah because it took that culture to create edited movies.
BS: What do the subjects think of your film? Have they seen it?
JL: Unfortunately, we haven't yet been able to show the film to many of our subjects. Robert Perry, one of the store owners went to Toronto for the World Premiere and he wrote about his experience on his personal blog. He was the exception to the rule. We have contacted Daniel Thompson, who kind of emerges as the main character in the second half of the film about showing it to him. Hopefully that will happen this week. Ray Lines and Allan Erb, the main guys behind CleanFlicks, don't watch R-rated movies, so we plan on getting them a toned-down version as soon as we have time to create it.
BS: Do you feel as if you shot the film objectively?
JL: When telling a story there is no such thing as complete objectivity, but we really made an honest effort to tell it like it was. Which was hard because you start to form relationships with your subjects when you spend two years filming them, you become friends and you feel bad including footage that you know may hurt them, but we always approached Cleanflix with strict journalistic integrity, and I hope they will all appreciate that as much as Robert did.
BS: Did many of your subjects comply immediately or did they resist your interviews?
JL: It was really hard to get some of these interviews and even harder to find out the truth behind what they were telling us. A lot of these guys were operating illegally and we were trying to figure out how the whole operation worked. Sometimes I am a little sad that we present the information so matter-of-factly because, until the film came out, we were literally the only people that knew most of this stuff. In the end, we made the choice to keep ourselves out of the film, and I am glad that we did.
BS: Why documentary?
JL: I love being transported to a part of the world that I have never been to and I appreciate a filmmaker who is willing to stay back behind the camera and let the subjects speak for themselves. Cleanflix shines a light on a very specific segment of the culture and I think there is a lot to be gleaned from that. The more specific it is, the more universal it becomes.
You can find more information and view the Cleanflix teaser trailer at cleanflixthemovie.com
Direct link to the interview at Big Sky Doc Blog or follow Sarah Truckey's BSDFF coverage on Twitter @BigSkyDoc.
Sarah Truckey » 02.16.10 »
MORMONS CUT IT OUT IN CLEANFLIX
Cleanflix is a documentary about the phenomenon started by the Mormons in Utah who edit violence, sex and profanity from certain films so they are "clean" enough for their people to watch. Is this sanitization process acceptable? What about the artists whose films are being censored?
Joshua Ligairi of Cleanflix, screening as a U.S. Premiere Tuesday night at 7.45pm, talks with Big Sky Documentary Film Festival about his connections to the Mormon culture, his struggle with objectivity, and the relationships he fostered with his subjects.
BS: How did you hear about this subject matter of censored videos?
JL: We both lived in Utah when we decided to make the film, and edited movies were kind of in their hayday. You couldn't miss them. Andrew had a lot of experiences with them in college; his roommates watched them all the time. I think seeing Steven Soderbergh's Traffic edited, which is one of his favorite films, was a pretty traumatic experience. I had never actually seen one before we started the film, but it was a subject that interested me a great deal. For me, the most interesting aspect when we began was the notion of self-censorship.
BS: Are you Mormon? Did you grow up around Mormons?
JL: We both grew up Mormon, but not in Utah. We both moved around a lot growing up, Andrew in places like Georgia and Michigan, me in places like California and Idaho. We both eventually made it to Utah.
BS: What drove you to make a film about this topic? Was there a personal connection?
JL: Neither of us were supporters of edited movies. We both had Mormon heritage and we were both filmmakers (not to mention huge cinephiles), so all of that played into it. However, I'm not sure either of us felt any specific personal connection. For me, I just saw a story and it was a story that I knew I could tell. Still, I do think our experience with Mormon culture was a huge help when making the film.
First, we understood the mindset of the people who were editing the movies, even though we didn't necessarily agree with their point of view. I think it would be really easy to paint this issue black and white, but I feel like being able to empathize with the culture made for a much stronger, much more nuanced film. For some people that is a problem with the film. They want to feel superior to these people whose actions they disagree with. We didn't want it to be that simple.
The other advantage is that we had access. I think these guys would have been a lot more suspicious of outsiders than they were of us. That familiarity with the culture gave us a lot of freedom and opened up a lot of doors that a complete outsider could have never opened.
BS: Why do you feel this topic is an important one to show the public?
JL: There are so may issues at play here. First, again, it is just an interesting story. It is entertaining. It is real human drama. If you wrote it, nobody would believe it.
Second, the film deals with questions for which there are no easy answers. Should corporations be able to tell us how to use their products if we have purchased them? Is it different if those products are also art? What if censorship comes into play? These are really grey areas that I struggled with for three years while we made the movie and I want the audience to struggle with them, too, because they are not going away once our film is over. As we become immersed in the digital age, people are going to be re-mixing and re-mashing their media in ways that we haven't yet imagined. How will artists respond? How will copyright holders respond? Cleanflix could be seen as a little test case of things to come.
BS: Where is most of the film shot?
JL: Well, 90% of the film was shot in Utah Valley, commonly known as "Happy Valley." We also went to California, Idaho, New York, and Washington DC during our journey, but we kept coming back to Utah. There were edited movies in other places, and there are certainly similar attitudes in other places, but, as I've said a lot when talking about the film, we focused on Mormons in Utah because it took that culture to create edited movies.
BS: What do the subjects think of your film? Have they seen it?
JL: Unfortunately, we haven't yet been able to show the film to many of our subjects. Robert Perry, one of the store owners went to Toronto for the World Premiere and he wrote about his experience on his personal blog. He was the exception to the rule. We have contacted Daniel Thompson, who kind of emerges as the main character in the second half of the film about showing it to him. Hopefully that will happen this week. Ray Lines and Allan Erb, the main guys behind CleanFlicks, don't watch R-rated movies, so we plan on getting them a toned-down version as soon as we have time to create it.
BS: Do you feel as if you shot the film objectively?
JL: When telling a story there is no such thing as complete objectivity, but we really made an honest effort to tell it like it was. Which was hard because you start to form relationships with your subjects when you spend two years filming them, you become friends and you feel bad including footage that you know may hurt them, but we always approached Cleanflix with strict journalistic integrity, and I hope they will all appreciate that as much as Robert did.
BS: Did many of your subjects comply immediately or did they resist your interviews?
JL: It was really hard to get some of these interviews and even harder to find out the truth behind what they were telling us. A lot of these guys were operating illegally and we were trying to figure out how the whole operation worked. Sometimes I am a little sad that we present the information so matter-of-factly because, until the film came out, we were literally the only people that knew most of this stuff. In the end, we made the choice to keep ourselves out of the film, and I am glad that we did.
BS: Why documentary?
JL: I love being transported to a part of the world that I have never been to and I appreciate a filmmaker who is willing to stay back behind the camera and let the subjects speak for themselves. Cleanflix shines a light on a very specific segment of the culture and I think there is a lot to be gleaned from that. The more specific it is, the more universal it becomes.
You can find more information and view the Cleanflix teaser trailer at cleanflixthemovie.com
Direct link to the interview at Big Sky Doc Blog or follow Sarah Truckey's BSDFF coverage on Twitter @BigSkyDoc.
Labels:
Big Sky,
BSDFF,
Cleanflix,
Documentary,
Edited Movies,
Icarus Arts,
Icarusae,
Joshua Ligairi
Thursday, February 11, 2010
PRESS: Missoula Independent's Cleanflix review
A review of our film, Cleanflix, by Missoula Independent writer Andy Smetanka (warning, spoilers abound). Direct link to the original post at Missoula Independent's site here.
Andy Smetanka » 02.11.10 »
A DIFFERENT LENS
Big Sky continues to change the way we look at documentary filmmaking. Welcome to the fascinating world of "clean" movies, and the clean-movie empire that flourished in predominantly Mormon Utah for roughly a decade. Ray Lines heard the call for grown-up movies with "the crap cut out" and went into business selling DVD copies of PG-13 and R-rated titles he edited himself. And made a crap-ton of money at it.
Cleanflix starts with Lines as its main personality but gradually shifts its focus to the engaging and infuriating person of Orem businessman Daniel Thompson. Thompson's flawless entrepreneurial timing (he bought up brick-and-mortar Cleanflix franchises up and down the Utah Valley as Lines and partner Allan Erb concentrated more on online sales and rental) helped him corner the Utah market in a matter of months, but with questionable long-term security. With no clear legal foundation, the clean-movie business was always on the verge of court-ordered extinction.
Clean-movie stores and distributors, as we learn in the movie, justified their after-market movie existence by buying one copy of a feature DVD for every copy they altered and sold, the rationale being that Hollywood would keep looking the other way as long as it wasn't actually losing money. Directors and producers minded, of course: The Hollywood interviews here are a gallery of snarling condemnations. What finally put Hollywood on the attack was Thompson's endless media grandstanding. A shameless and skilled self-promoter, his TV antics and skyrocketing fame eventually brought certain unsavory extracurriculars to light, to the ruin of his business and the horror of the original Cleanflix partners, Lines and Erb.
I had sort of hoped going into Cleanflix that it would take a pan-century view of movie sanitizing. Not censoring, but sanitizing commercial product to open new markets and hence make more money. It's interesting that Steven Soderbergh and Curtis Hanson have so much bile reserved for the Mormons when you never hear of directors complaining about how their artistic vision has been compromised for, say, in-flight viewing. Why has no one explored the issue before? Of course, clean-movie editors are outraging someone else's art. But so are the people who edit movies for television. Or who used to, anyway.
Not surprisingly, the Mormon moguls of Cleanflix reveal no great love of film, except as unchallenging family entertainment. They care not a fig about what their actions mean for the creators involved; even among the clean-movie editors, appreciation of film art seems limited to a grudging admiration for how cleverly a movie thwarts the Mormon filter—as though it were "constructed" that way for no other reason.
There's also a shocking double standard for clean-movie violence compared with sex and unacceptable language, as before-and-after clips of Saving Private Ryan and Fargo demonstrate. In the latter case, the notorious wood-chipper scene goes untouched, but an interview with prostitutes is scrubbed for scant mention of a circumcision.
But they do make a point, these clean-movie people. There is clearly a huge market for cleaned-up PG-13 and R movies, and you can't otherwise buy or rent them anywhere. That's fascinating when you think about it, not least because it pits law-abidingness against family entertainment in the moral balance of pious Mormons. Really, though, why should you have to starve on an airplane just to see an inferior version of an already inferior movie when you could just as easily rent a copy online?
Showing: Tuesday, Feb. 16, 7:45 p.m. Cleanflix is a finalist in the feature competition.
Direct link to the review at Missoula Independent. Link to Big Sky.
Andy Smetanka » 02.11.10 »
A DIFFERENT LENS
Big Sky continues to change the way we look at documentary filmmaking. Welcome to the fascinating world of "clean" movies, and the clean-movie empire that flourished in predominantly Mormon Utah for roughly a decade. Ray Lines heard the call for grown-up movies with "the crap cut out" and went into business selling DVD copies of PG-13 and R-rated titles he edited himself. And made a crap-ton of money at it.
Cleanflix starts with Lines as its main personality but gradually shifts its focus to the engaging and infuriating person of Orem businessman Daniel Thompson. Thompson's flawless entrepreneurial timing (he bought up brick-and-mortar Cleanflix franchises up and down the Utah Valley as Lines and partner Allan Erb concentrated more on online sales and rental) helped him corner the Utah market in a matter of months, but with questionable long-term security. With no clear legal foundation, the clean-movie business was always on the verge of court-ordered extinction.
Clean-movie stores and distributors, as we learn in the movie, justified their after-market movie existence by buying one copy of a feature DVD for every copy they altered and sold, the rationale being that Hollywood would keep looking the other way as long as it wasn't actually losing money. Directors and producers minded, of course: The Hollywood interviews here are a gallery of snarling condemnations. What finally put Hollywood on the attack was Thompson's endless media grandstanding. A shameless and skilled self-promoter, his TV antics and skyrocketing fame eventually brought certain unsavory extracurriculars to light, to the ruin of his business and the horror of the original Cleanflix partners, Lines and Erb.
I had sort of hoped going into Cleanflix that it would take a pan-century view of movie sanitizing. Not censoring, but sanitizing commercial product to open new markets and hence make more money. It's interesting that Steven Soderbergh and Curtis Hanson have so much bile reserved for the Mormons when you never hear of directors complaining about how their artistic vision has been compromised for, say, in-flight viewing. Why has no one explored the issue before? Of course, clean-movie editors are outraging someone else's art. But so are the people who edit movies for television. Or who used to, anyway.
Not surprisingly, the Mormon moguls of Cleanflix reveal no great love of film, except as unchallenging family entertainment. They care not a fig about what their actions mean for the creators involved; even among the clean-movie editors, appreciation of film art seems limited to a grudging admiration for how cleverly a movie thwarts the Mormon filter—as though it were "constructed" that way for no other reason.
There's also a shocking double standard for clean-movie violence compared with sex and unacceptable language, as before-and-after clips of Saving Private Ryan and Fargo demonstrate. In the latter case, the notorious wood-chipper scene goes untouched, but an interview with prostitutes is scrubbed for scant mention of a circumcision.
But they do make a point, these clean-movie people. There is clearly a huge market for cleaned-up PG-13 and R movies, and you can't otherwise buy or rent them anywhere. That's fascinating when you think about it, not least because it pits law-abidingness against family entertainment in the moral balance of pious Mormons. Really, though, why should you have to starve on an airplane just to see an inferior version of an already inferior movie when you could just as easily rent a copy online?
Showing: Tuesday, Feb. 16, 7:45 p.m. Cleanflix is a finalist in the feature competition.
Direct link to the review at Missoula Independent. Link to Big Sky.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
BLOG: Minimal movie posters go Tarantino
Joshua Ligairi » 2.09.10 »
The minimalist movie posters that gained some popularity a while back have reached a new degree of cool with the release of the Quentin Tarantino series by artist Ibraheem Youseff. The most famous were the Star Wars and Back to the Future trilogies which were both quite clever, but my favorites up until now have been the genius minimalist posters for Jurassic Park and The Shining.
Now, Ibraheem Youseff has created the limited edition Quentin Tarantino series featuring mostly-amazing minimalist posters for Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, Kill Bil Vol 1, Kill Bil Vol 2, Death Proof, and Inglourious Basterds. What, no My Best Friend's Birthday? I'd also liked to have seen partial Tarantino's like True Romance, Natural Born Killers, Four Rooms, From Dusk Till Dawn, Sin City, and a Grindhouse double-bill get the minimalist treatment. I think I would have actually broken down and bought a Grindhouse print. I'm still debating a few others. Full size prints are for sale at Youssef's site, IbraheemYoussef.com for $95 (smaller prints for $32). As I mentioned, the series is limited, so if you like them, you'd better act now. They come signed and numbered by the artist.
Minimal Inglourious Basterds poster by Ibraheem Youssef
Minimal Death Proof poster by Ibraheem Youssef
Minimal Kill Bill posters by Ibraheem Youssef
Minimal Jackie Brown poster by Ibraheem Youssef
Minimal Pulp Fiction poster by Ibraheem Youssef
Minimal Reservoir Dogs poster by Ibraheem Youssef
My biggest problem with most of these minimalist posters, including the Tarantino series, is that you have to be familiar with the film in order for them to make sense. While that is arguably the most appealing element for movie geeks, I'd be more impressed to see a minimalist poster that could actually work in theaters. A poster that pulled of the minimalist vibe but didn't require any knowledge of the finished film to be appreciated would be awesome.
Death Proof is probably the only of these Tarantino posters that works on this level. In that sense, the Pulp Fiction poster may actually work better for Kill Bill. The best example of these not working would have to be Kill Bill and Jackie Brown, where even fans of the films are sometimes left scratching their heads (The Jackie Brown poster would actually work as a theatrical poster for Up In the Air). The others would dumbfound the uninitiated, but are instantly recognizable to fans. My personal favorite is far and away Reservoir Dogs, which is ironic because, even though it is among my least favorite of his films, I am strongly considering a purchase. It is just too cool.
By the way, if anyone is wondering, I am all for the re-working of Tarantino's work on Youssef's part--just as long as Tarantino gets a free set of posters.
Visit Ibraheem Youssef's site to purchase Tarantino prints and view other works like a minimal Curb Your Enthusiasm poster.
The minimalist movie posters that gained some popularity a while back have reached a new degree of cool with the release of the Quentin Tarantino series by artist Ibraheem Youseff. The most famous were the Star Wars and Back to the Future trilogies which were both quite clever, but my favorites up until now have been the genius minimalist posters for Jurassic Park and The Shining.
Now, Ibraheem Youseff has created the limited edition Quentin Tarantino series featuring mostly-amazing minimalist posters for Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, Kill Bil Vol 1, Kill Bil Vol 2, Death Proof, and Inglourious Basterds. What, no My Best Friend's Birthday? I'd also liked to have seen partial Tarantino's like True Romance, Natural Born Killers, Four Rooms, From Dusk Till Dawn, Sin City, and a Grindhouse double-bill get the minimalist treatment. I think I would have actually broken down and bought a Grindhouse print. I'm still debating a few others. Full size prints are for sale at Youssef's site, IbraheemYoussef.com for $95 (smaller prints for $32). As I mentioned, the series is limited, so if you like them, you'd better act now. They come signed and numbered by the artist.
Minimal Inglourious Basterds poster by Ibraheem Youssef
Minimal Death Proof poster by Ibraheem Youssef
Minimal Kill Bill posters by Ibraheem Youssef
Minimal Jackie Brown poster by Ibraheem Youssef
Minimal Pulp Fiction poster by Ibraheem Youssef
Minimal Reservoir Dogs poster by Ibraheem Youssef
My biggest problem with most of these minimalist posters, including the Tarantino series, is that you have to be familiar with the film in order for them to make sense. While that is arguably the most appealing element for movie geeks, I'd be more impressed to see a minimalist poster that could actually work in theaters. A poster that pulled of the minimalist vibe but didn't require any knowledge of the finished film to be appreciated would be awesome.
Death Proof is probably the only of these Tarantino posters that works on this level. In that sense, the Pulp Fiction poster may actually work better for Kill Bill. The best example of these not working would have to be Kill Bill and Jackie Brown, where even fans of the films are sometimes left scratching their heads (The Jackie Brown poster would actually work as a theatrical poster for Up In the Air). The others would dumbfound the uninitiated, but are instantly recognizable to fans. My personal favorite is far and away Reservoir Dogs, which is ironic because, even though it is among my least favorite of his films, I am strongly considering a purchase. It is just too cool.
By the way, if anyone is wondering, I am all for the re-working of Tarantino's work on Youssef's part--just as long as Tarantino gets a free set of posters.
Visit Ibraheem Youssef's site to purchase Tarantino prints and view other works like a minimal Curb Your Enthusiasm poster.
Monday, February 8, 2010
PRESS: Toronto Screen Shot's Cleanflix Interview
An interview with Cleanflix co-directors Andrew James and Joshua Ligairi by Toronto Screen Shot's James McNally. Direct link to the original article at Toronto Screen Shot's website here.
James McNally » 02.08.10 »
Interview: Andrew James and Joshua Ligairi
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 below) 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.
James McNally (JM): I’ll start by asking you how difficult it must have been to decide where to go with the film once the scandal around Daniel breaks. What were your discussions like about how much of the film you wanted to give over to that story?
Andrew James (AJ): In the beginning, we viewed Daniel more as a resource. It wasn’t until about two-thirds of the way into shooting that we realized that there was more to this Daniel guy, that maybe he could help guide the film a little bit, so we started focusing more on him. But it wasn’t until we started editing the film that we realized how significant he was to the film we were making.
Joshua Ligairi (JL): We were focusing on a couple of other store owners just as prominently as him that didn’t even make it into the film.
JM: I guess the contrast with Robert (another store owner), there was a real contrast between them.
JL: Which was nice. It was nice to see people who were doing it sincerely and then someone else who was manipulating the audience for their own benefit.
JM: In my opinion, you have about three films worth of stuff crammed into Cleanflix. One of the things I found interesting was just the exploration of Mormon filmmakers. You talked to Richard Dutcher, for instance. Strangely enough, there was just an article in Cinemascope magazine (here in Canada) about Richard Dutcher, and it got me wondering. What I wanted to ask was if you think there is any official encouragement given by the Church to Mormon filmmakers, to give people an alternative to Hollywood entertainment?
JL: No. The Church self-produces some films, but they’re more about the Mormon story, they’re about the founding story of the Church, they’re about Jesus. The Mormon cinematic movement that’s happening, in Utah especially, is not connected to the Church at all, although there’s appreciation for those films from the Church leadership.
JM: I know there are some that would never break out of Utah, but for instance Jared Hess has done really well.
JL: There was a World War 2 film, Saints and Soldiers, that won an Independent Spirit Award a few years ago, and stuff like that, so there are some crossovers.
JM: But the Church doesn’t have any official stance.
Amber Bollinger (AB): No.
JL: Richard Dutcher was actually very successful, but within the Christian evangelical culture in the United States, they’re not accepting of Mormons as Christians, so it was difficult to market those films to them.
JM: In the Cinemascope article, he talks about that and how he’s tried to make himself more of a spiritual filmmaker, but nobody trusts that. You’re either not spiritual enough, or you’re too spiritual. Why do you think that guys like Dutcher and Neil LaBute others end up leaving the Church? Do you think the pressure’s too much, that they can’t make films that explore spirituality?
JL: Both Richard and Neil have had very specific run-ins with Church leadership with regard to the content of their films, and I think that probably has something to do with it.
AJ: I also think there’s a constant struggle in how to reconcile your art with the values that the Church is espousing. Because they have very specific ideas about how media affects you. It’s talked about a lot in church. So I think filmmakers who are trying to be challenging really struggle with that. I know I do, and that’s probably one reason why I don’t go to church anymore. Josh is still practicing, and that’s great, but for me, I was having a hard time reconciling that, going to church and hearing people say all these things that I didn’t agree with.
JL: At Brigham Young University, in the film program, the guys there struggle with this all the time. They’re just starting out as film students and they’re trying to make these films that represent their artistic viewpoints, and even in university they’re not allowed to make some of the films they want to make.
JM: Just to give you a little bit of background, I have about 20 years of experience with the evangelical church, and have gone through the same process so I can feel where you’re coming from on a lot of these issues. I wanted to bring up that question of how working on the film affected your own faith. You’re free to tell me to mind my own business, of course. Andrew, since you’ve already told me about your struggles with your faith, do you think the film has had anything to do with that?
AJ: I don’t think so. It’s been an ongoing process for me. Without giving too much away, a lot of personal things in my life have led me down that path.
AB: Any chance for self-exploration, too. The film talks about, you know, why not, why not ask questions about what you believe? Through the film, if that’s part of it, or whatever means you can. I think media’s a great way to do that, to think about what it is you believe and why.
JM: My main criticism of the film is that I thought Daniel’s troubles allowed the audience to paint him as the villain, to enjoy that irony and then to forget about the issues that you’ve raised in the first part of the film. I was very curious to see how advocates of copyright reform from one side of the political spectrum would interact with people like Cleanflix from the other end of the political spectrum who are doing kind of the same thing but for a different reason.
JL: The sticking point for me and for those two communities is the censorship. I tend to come down on the side of the end user. The fact that they’re censoring something that they haven’t created is problematic for me.
JM: But are they not just “mashing up” the film?
JL: I think that’s something that Hollywood has to wake up to, and figure out how to have a relationship with those end users, because people are going to stop paying for it if they can’t do what they want with it.
JM: I think that’s what’s started to happen.
AJ: That’s a very interesting point. I totally see that point of view and I actually agree with that point of view. But it’s hard for me to wrap my head around it in terms of Cleanflix. I don’t feel like that’s what they’re trying to do.
JM: But aren’t we still fighting for the same thing?
JL: But that’s not what the mashup guys are trying to do either. They’re just trying to dance.
JM: Now we see video mashups too.
JL: We were talking about Brokeback to the Future or The Phantom Edit, where they took Jar Jar Binks out of Star Wars Episode 1. I think now that editing technology for films is going to become as available as it is for music technology, we’re going to see a lot more of this stuff.
JM: And we do laugh at those because they’re entertaining, but the films that Cleanflix makes are entertaining to a different audience. I think there’s a really good argument from those guys’ perspective that they’re just doing the same thing.
JL: Everything you are saying is exactly right. I have no problem with the end user remixing and remashing in any way they see fit. I have hard a time with this issue. The reaction is one of, do we want to live in a world where corporations tell us what to do with our property in the privacy of our home? The distinction here, and it is an important distinction, is censorship.
AJ: I wanted to comment on your criticism. I feel that, at least for me, the film is not an issue film. We’re trying to tell a story, and so I feel that that is why Daniel works in the film. Obviously, there are issues being explored in the film, for sure, but we feel like we’re trying to focus more on telling the story. I feel like you can’t tell the story of Cleanflix without telling what happened to Daniel, and I think Daniel helps inform that story, he sort of personifies that story.
JL: And you can see where that community can go wrong, where those kind of ideals can take a dark turn.
JM: I can see that but what I was disturbed at in my screening was that the audience was so very smug, like “oh, we’re liberals and it just figures that that guy is going to…”
AJ: They took so much joy in it.
JL: Yeah, they were laughing at some really dark stuff.
AJ: We were uncomfortable with that as well.
JL: When we were filming that, Andrew was in tears.
AB: That reaction was absolutely surprising.
JL: Our Sunday screening was a different story. No one laughed. Different audiences are always going to take something different from the film.
AB: And possibly, the audience that went to see it on the premiere night were people who expected a certain message from the film. Possibly the crowd mentality of the premiere night, let’s see what this film is about. Maybe those people had preconceived notions about what the film was about. As Josh was saying, our Sunday screening was very different, people did not laugh at those same parts. And when Daniel was kind of, headed downhill, if you will, there wasn’t laughter. It was different.
JM: That’s interesting to hear. I was disappointed in the crowd I was with, but I just hope that it doesn’t overwhelm the film.
AB: I don’t think that it will. I really feel that it may have been a premiere type of reaction.
JL: I think people think they know what the movie is already. They think it’s going to be funny and quirky and making fun of Mormons or something like that, and it’s not really that movie.
JM: And your soundtrack, and your editing does make it feel like that a little bit. Which leads me to ask if you’re finished editing the film now, after seeing the audience reactions at the two screenings.
AJ: Maybe some minor changes.
JL: We’re pretty happy with the film, for the most part. Now that we’ve had some feedback, it’s good.
AB: And seeing it on a gigantic screen always changes things. You can watch it on your biggest 50″ screen at home but it’s just different seeing it, with a crowd, first of all, and also on a huge screen. You’re like, Oh, didn’t notice that before.
JL: Little elements of production value that we’re definitely going to work on now.
JM: Those are things that people probably didn’t notice, but you did.
AB: Yeah, seeing it a thousand times.
JM: I noticed that you don’t have anyone from the Church on camera speaking about this issue. Was that a conscious decision or did no one want to talk to you?
JL: We did have someone at one point and we just realized…there were a lot of things we would have liked. I would have liked to show the diversity of the LDS community, for instance, because we were just focusing on this one group that watches edited movies. But it wouldn’t have made the film better. It would have made for a more nuanced discussion, and I would have appreciated that, as someone who’s from that community myself and probably other people of faith would have wanted to see that stuff, but it wasn’t furthering the story aspect of it. We were getting bogged down in that first half, because the balance was, how much do people need to understand about Mormons, and how much do people need to understand about edited movies before we can start telling the story.
AJ: We interviewed a guy who was like a “pseudo” representative of the Church.
JL: He was a media representative of the Church, but he wasn’t a religious figure.
AJ: And he sort of felt awkward speaking for the Church, but he did say some interesting things about the R rating, and how it was a cultural sort of thing.
JL: He was kind of disappointed in the idea that people would like edited movies. He had also been a professor at Brigham Young University and he said we get these students coming in and they don’t want to think for themselves, they want rules. And that was really disheartening for him to see that, too.
JM: I think that’s human nature. People want rules.
AB: Structure.
JM: I’m curious to see how Church leaders react to people who are so desperate to follow the letter of the law but who are kind of ignoring the whole spirit of it. I mean technically they’re not breaking the rules, but you know…
JL: The thing with the Mormon audience, though, is that in their minds they’re following the spirit of the law because they’re trying to take it even further than the commandment they’ve been given. So the thing is to avoid a certain rating and they’re going even further. In the Mormon religion, they ask you to abstain from certain things like alcohol and coffee, and you see that taken even further. So now we don’t drink Coke because that has caffeine in it and maybe that’s why they said don’t drink coffee. So people are always trying to go further, and self-censoring, and that was what was really interesting to me. Our film isn’t a doctrinal film, it’s a cultural film. The Church isn’t necessarily enforcing this but people are taking it upon themselves to self-censor and that was interesting to me.
JM: But isn’t there an audience that says that even those edited films aren’t going far enough?
AJ: Absolutely.
AB: Definitely. The sample of people in the film are the ones who are coming to Cleanflix so it definitely doesn’t represent every Mormon.
JL: There are people on both sides. There are people who say, I don’t care, I’m going to watch R-rated movies, and that’s a big portion too. And then there are some for whom Cleanflix isn’t good enough, who say we shouldn’t be supporting these Hollywood movies at all. Andrew has an interesting story about that, actually.
AJ: Yeah, I interviewed this woman who was a former employee at another edited movies store. One of the comments she made was “Who’s the creep in the back room watching R-rated movie after R-rated movie?” I think a lot of people have a hard time with the idea of Cleanflix, that someone actually has to sit through that filthy material, sort of to take one for the team. So there is a wide range of diversity on the issue. I think in a general sense, Mormons are trying to protect their families from what they consider harmful or evil elements.
JL: And in that respect, it’s not just Mormons. There are a lot of people throughout the world. This market is a big market, and I think people would embrace this if they knew…
JM: You guys must be reading my questions. I was going to suggest that the evangelical Christian market, which must be three or four times the size of the Mormon market, would be very interested.
JL: I think that’s why the Cleanflix guys tried to separate it from Mormonism, because they’re afraid that if it gets tagged as a Mormon thing, they can’t sell as many movies in the South.
JM: And I know that in Canada and parts of the States, there are conservative Muslim audiences, conservative Hindu audiences that would probably go for the same sort of edited movies. Do you know if the edited movie companies have tried to reach those markets at all?
JL: They were trying to reach out to those audiences when they were stopped, and they had 80 locations throughout the United States, they were doing online in Canada. They were spreading, and according to the store owners, everything was on the way up; they had just figured out their business model and they were about to capitalize on it when this all happened.
AJ: We could easily speculate that they would have had success in these other areas.
JL: We choose to focus on Mormonism because that’s where it started and that culture created it.
JM: You indicated too that some of these companies may still be operating online?
JL: That’s one of those things about the digital age. There’s no controlling it anymore, and it’s going to happen. And so if the studios were smart, I think they should figure out a way to handle this themselves because otherwise it’s going to happen without them.
JM: Did you get anyone representing the Directors Guild of America to talk to you?
AJ: We talked to their lawyers and PR people from the DGA who were fairly friendly and interested in helping us, but with all the big names involved and the bureaucracy, it was just hard for us to get at those people.
JM: Do you think they consider it a dead issue now?
JL: They would like it to be a dead issue, because they’ve won and they don’t want it to continue. So it’s good for them if it goes away.
JM: But you do reveal in the film that they do release edited movies for airlines, so what is stopping them from just expanding that?
JL: No one knows. The studios control the copyright and they’re not releasing them.
JM: I just wonder if they feel that the market is too small.
JL: They call it a small market.
JM: But it’s probably a lot bigger than they realize.
JL: An ABC News poll said 45% of the people in the United States would want edited movies if they could have access to them.
AJ: But the Hollywood Reporter said that the studios want to control this, and if people start editing, and releasing edited versions, demand would become too great and it might take away from the theatrical run of some of these films because people will wait for the clean version to come out on DVD.
JM: I guess they figure that the rating system is working well enough.
JL: They like the way it’s working for them.
JM: Have you seen Kirby Dick’s This Film Is Not Yet Rated? A lot of the same issues come up in that.
JL: Yeah, that film was a big help to us as we were getting into this.
JM: I wondered if you’d seen another film here at TIFF, called Dogtooth (review). It’s a Greek film about a guy who keeps his family locked in their house. His children are now in their 20s and they just play games all day, they’re kind of infantile. The director said it was about the extremes to which people will go to protect their families. Of course, it doesn’t end well. And I guess neither does your story. I wonder why the Church feels that keeping bad things from outside is going to make us better people?
AJ: There’s a lot of fear. People are afraid. I’m not going to speak for the Church, but I think culturally there’s a lot of fear that these things are going to get in and affect you, you know to pervert your sexuality as someone says in the film.
JL: If you open that door…
AJ: People don’t trust themselves. You know, if I look at this, I might have some bad thoughts and do something that I might regret.
JM: But you think of it as an outside influence and never something inside of us?
JL: It’s a question of purity, and the idea is that these things stain you, you can’t get rid of that stain. I mean they believe in the idea of repentance, but it’s better if you keep yourself pure of this stuff, and that’s better for you.
JM: I mean I’m curious, because the Christian doctrine is that we’re already born sinful and that we need to be forgiven.
JL: It is part of Mormon doctrine that we’re here to make mistakes and learn from them, but you avoid those mistakes and obedience is the big thing.
JM: So they think you learn more by not making the mistakes?
JL: I don’t know.
AJ: Totally. Yeah, that’s really weird.
AB: It’s not just the media. The Church also teaches you to surround yourself with good people, surround yourself with good things. You know, cleanliness is godliness, there are so many things.
JM: Which is totally common sense.
JL: And it’s not all avoidance. Within the culture it becomes avoidance. Within the doctrine of the Church, it’s “seek after good things.” One of the kids in the films says “I’d rather read a good clean book and watch a good clean movie.” Find the good things, but within the culture it’s easier to follow a rule.
JM: How do you know what’s good until you discover it?
AJ: One of the things that’s interesting to me about this is that I think a lot of these films could help open their eyes to some different issues, help them become aware of cultures in different parts of the world, human experience, help them build empathy with other human beings. And so by shutting themselves out from these films, when you’re living in Utah, or actually, anywhere. But if you’re living a sheltered life, sometimes a film is the only way to expose yourselves to outside things and I think it’s really sheltering to say no.
JM: Another film that this reminds me of is Son of Rambow. Have you seen that?
AB: Yeah. It’s the same.
JL: Yeah.
JM: It’s the same idea. You need some way to connect with the outside world and unfortunately some might choose bad ones, but you can also recommend good ones. What are your plans for screening the film in Utah?
JL: We would love to have our American premiere in Utah.
JM: But it’s going to be R-rated, isn’t it?
JL: We’ve joked about making a Cleanflix version of our movie, and it’s a joke but it would also be a great way to target that audience. Hopefully there are issues discussed in the film that they could benefit from.
JM: A lot of the humour came from showing both the unedited and edited stuff, though. I was just amazed at films like Fargo and The Big Lebowski being edited. I mean, how long was the edited version of The Big Lebowski, 30 minutes? So some of that stuff adds a lot of humour to it.
JL: Yeah, that’s unfortunate, but even with The Big Lebowski and Fargo, there’s a chance we could still get a PG-13 in the United States, and keep those clips in.
JM: I also find this issue in the evangelical Christian community, that violence is not as bad as sex, for some reason I don’t understand, and swearing is also bad, but you can shoot somebody. Somebody’s making these rules, but…
AB: That’s definitely cultural. That’s not doctrine from the Church.
AJ: That goes back to the idea of purity, don’t you think? Like swearing and sexual images.
JL: I mean if you’re not going to do that, you’re definitely not going to kill someone. And that’s another thing in the Church. It’s those little things. They’re guarding themselves against all those little things.
JM: I guess so. It’s a slippery slope. Can I ask you about what your next projects will be?
AJ: We’ve each got our own separate projects which are each exciting on their own terms. I’m working on a documentary about a guy from Peru, during the 80s strapping cocaine to his torso, creating this whole operation smuggling drugs into the United States disguised as a Mormon missionary. And he would take it to Utah and deal it himself and then he’d go back to Peru, go to the jungle and get his cocaine. He did this for two years, made a ton of money, and then eventually gave it up and became a US citizen. It’s his story, this man, and how he became American and his journey and asking some questions along the way.
JL: I’ve got two projects I’m working on. One is about gay Mormons, and that one is a little more Utah-centric, and there’s another project I have that’s more issue-oriented, it’s a little bigger in scope, it’s about people who are robbing Native American graves and then selling the artifacts to big collectors and to museums and other people who don’t know that they’re getting stolen artifacts. There’s a twist, that there are these guys who believe they are being cursed for robbing these graves. Horrible things are happening to these people, suicides, deaths, and they’re happening to all these people who are involved with it. And then we’re also just trying to enlighten people so that they’re not buying the stolen artifacts, we’re trying to highlight the artists and people who are doing it properly and then expose the people who are doing it illegally.
JM: Well I hope that all of those are successful. We also have Hot Docs here in the spring.
JL: Yeah, we would love to be involved with Hot Docs.
JM: Amber, are you working on one of those?
AB: Yeah, I’m actually working on the one with Josh.
JL: It’s called Skeleton Picnic, the Native American one.
AJ: That’s a great title.
JM: Well, they all sound good. I’m looking forward to seeing more from all of you guys. Good luck with the film and enjoy your time at TIFF!
Direct link to the interview at Toronto Screen Shots or follow James McNally on Twitter @toscreenshots.
James McNally » 02.08.10 »
Interview: Andrew James and Joshua Ligairi
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 below) 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.
James McNally (JM): I’ll start by asking you how difficult it must have been to decide where to go with the film once the scandal around Daniel breaks. What were your discussions like about how much of the film you wanted to give over to that story?
Andrew James (AJ): In the beginning, we viewed Daniel more as a resource. It wasn’t until about two-thirds of the way into shooting that we realized that there was more to this Daniel guy, that maybe he could help guide the film a little bit, so we started focusing more on him. But it wasn’t until we started editing the film that we realized how significant he was to the film we were making.
Joshua Ligairi (JL): We were focusing on a couple of other store owners just as prominently as him that didn’t even make it into the film.
JM: I guess the contrast with Robert (another store owner), there was a real contrast between them.
JL: Which was nice. It was nice to see people who were doing it sincerely and then someone else who was manipulating the audience for their own benefit.
JM: In my opinion, you have about three films worth of stuff crammed into Cleanflix. One of the things I found interesting was just the exploration of Mormon filmmakers. You talked to Richard Dutcher, for instance. Strangely enough, there was just an article in Cinemascope magazine (here in Canada) about Richard Dutcher, and it got me wondering. What I wanted to ask was if you think there is any official encouragement given by the Church to Mormon filmmakers, to give people an alternative to Hollywood entertainment?
JL: No. The Church self-produces some films, but they’re more about the Mormon story, they’re about the founding story of the Church, they’re about Jesus. The Mormon cinematic movement that’s happening, in Utah especially, is not connected to the Church at all, although there’s appreciation for those films from the Church leadership.
JM: I know there are some that would never break out of Utah, but for instance Jared Hess has done really well.
JL: There was a World War 2 film, Saints and Soldiers, that won an Independent Spirit Award a few years ago, and stuff like that, so there are some crossovers.
JM: But the Church doesn’t have any official stance.
Amber Bollinger (AB): No.
JL: Richard Dutcher was actually very successful, but within the Christian evangelical culture in the United States, they’re not accepting of Mormons as Christians, so it was difficult to market those films to them.
JM: In the Cinemascope article, he talks about that and how he’s tried to make himself more of a spiritual filmmaker, but nobody trusts that. You’re either not spiritual enough, or you’re too spiritual. Why do you think that guys like Dutcher and Neil LaBute others end up leaving the Church? Do you think the pressure’s too much, that they can’t make films that explore spirituality?
JL: Both Richard and Neil have had very specific run-ins with Church leadership with regard to the content of their films, and I think that probably has something to do with it.
AJ: I also think there’s a constant struggle in how to reconcile your art with the values that the Church is espousing. Because they have very specific ideas about how media affects you. It’s talked about a lot in church. So I think filmmakers who are trying to be challenging really struggle with that. I know I do, and that’s probably one reason why I don’t go to church anymore. Josh is still practicing, and that’s great, but for me, I was having a hard time reconciling that, going to church and hearing people say all these things that I didn’t agree with.
JL: At Brigham Young University, in the film program, the guys there struggle with this all the time. They’re just starting out as film students and they’re trying to make these films that represent their artistic viewpoints, and even in university they’re not allowed to make some of the films they want to make.
JM: Just to give you a little bit of background, I have about 20 years of experience with the evangelical church, and have gone through the same process so I can feel where you’re coming from on a lot of these issues. I wanted to bring up that question of how working on the film affected your own faith. You’re free to tell me to mind my own business, of course. Andrew, since you’ve already told me about your struggles with your faith, do you think the film has had anything to do with that?
AJ: I don’t think so. It’s been an ongoing process for me. Without giving too much away, a lot of personal things in my life have led me down that path.
AB: Any chance for self-exploration, too. The film talks about, you know, why not, why not ask questions about what you believe? Through the film, if that’s part of it, or whatever means you can. I think media’s a great way to do that, to think about what it is you believe and why.
JM: My main criticism of the film is that I thought Daniel’s troubles allowed the audience to paint him as the villain, to enjoy that irony and then to forget about the issues that you’ve raised in the first part of the film. I was very curious to see how advocates of copyright reform from one side of the political spectrum would interact with people like Cleanflix from the other end of the political spectrum who are doing kind of the same thing but for a different reason.
JL: The sticking point for me and for those two communities is the censorship. I tend to come down on the side of the end user. The fact that they’re censoring something that they haven’t created is problematic for me.
JM: But are they not just “mashing up” the film?
JL: I think that’s something that Hollywood has to wake up to, and figure out how to have a relationship with those end users, because people are going to stop paying for it if they can’t do what they want with it.
JM: I think that’s what’s started to happen.
AJ: That’s a very interesting point. I totally see that point of view and I actually agree with that point of view. But it’s hard for me to wrap my head around it in terms of Cleanflix. I don’t feel like that’s what they’re trying to do.
JM: But aren’t we still fighting for the same thing?
JL: But that’s not what the mashup guys are trying to do either. They’re just trying to dance.
JM: Now we see video mashups too.
JL: We were talking about Brokeback to the Future or The Phantom Edit, where they took Jar Jar Binks out of Star Wars Episode 1. I think now that editing technology for films is going to become as available as it is for music technology, we’re going to see a lot more of this stuff.
JM: And we do laugh at those because they’re entertaining, but the films that Cleanflix makes are entertaining to a different audience. I think there’s a really good argument from those guys’ perspective that they’re just doing the same thing.
JL: Everything you are saying is exactly right. I have no problem with the end user remixing and remashing in any way they see fit. I have hard a time with this issue. The reaction is one of, do we want to live in a world where corporations tell us what to do with our property in the privacy of our home? The distinction here, and it is an important distinction, is censorship.
AJ: I wanted to comment on your criticism. I feel that, at least for me, the film is not an issue film. We’re trying to tell a story, and so I feel that that is why Daniel works in the film. Obviously, there are issues being explored in the film, for sure, but we feel like we’re trying to focus more on telling the story. I feel like you can’t tell the story of Cleanflix without telling what happened to Daniel, and I think Daniel helps inform that story, he sort of personifies that story.
JL: And you can see where that community can go wrong, where those kind of ideals can take a dark turn.
JM: I can see that but what I was disturbed at in my screening was that the audience was so very smug, like “oh, we’re liberals and it just figures that that guy is going to…”
AJ: They took so much joy in it.
JL: Yeah, they were laughing at some really dark stuff.
AJ: We were uncomfortable with that as well.
JL: When we were filming that, Andrew was in tears.
AB: That reaction was absolutely surprising.
JL: Our Sunday screening was a different story. No one laughed. Different audiences are always going to take something different from the film.
AB: And possibly, the audience that went to see it on the premiere night were people who expected a certain message from the film. Possibly the crowd mentality of the premiere night, let’s see what this film is about. Maybe those people had preconceived notions about what the film was about. As Josh was saying, our Sunday screening was very different, people did not laugh at those same parts. And when Daniel was kind of, headed downhill, if you will, there wasn’t laughter. It was different.
JM: That’s interesting to hear. I was disappointed in the crowd I was with, but I just hope that it doesn’t overwhelm the film.
AB: I don’t think that it will. I really feel that it may have been a premiere type of reaction.
JL: I think people think they know what the movie is already. They think it’s going to be funny and quirky and making fun of Mormons or something like that, and it’s not really that movie.
JM: And your soundtrack, and your editing does make it feel like that a little bit. Which leads me to ask if you’re finished editing the film now, after seeing the audience reactions at the two screenings.
AJ: Maybe some minor changes.
JL: We’re pretty happy with the film, for the most part. Now that we’ve had some feedback, it’s good.
AB: And seeing it on a gigantic screen always changes things. You can watch it on your biggest 50″ screen at home but it’s just different seeing it, with a crowd, first of all, and also on a huge screen. You’re like, Oh, didn’t notice that before.
JL: Little elements of production value that we’re definitely going to work on now.
JM: Those are things that people probably didn’t notice, but you did.
AB: Yeah, seeing it a thousand times.
JM: I noticed that you don’t have anyone from the Church on camera speaking about this issue. Was that a conscious decision or did no one want to talk to you?
JL: We did have someone at one point and we just realized…there were a lot of things we would have liked. I would have liked to show the diversity of the LDS community, for instance, because we were just focusing on this one group that watches edited movies. But it wouldn’t have made the film better. It would have made for a more nuanced discussion, and I would have appreciated that, as someone who’s from that community myself and probably other people of faith would have wanted to see that stuff, but it wasn’t furthering the story aspect of it. We were getting bogged down in that first half, because the balance was, how much do people need to understand about Mormons, and how much do people need to understand about edited movies before we can start telling the story.
AJ: We interviewed a guy who was like a “pseudo” representative of the Church.
JL: He was a media representative of the Church, but he wasn’t a religious figure.
AJ: And he sort of felt awkward speaking for the Church, but he did say some interesting things about the R rating, and how it was a cultural sort of thing.
JL: He was kind of disappointed in the idea that people would like edited movies. He had also been a professor at Brigham Young University and he said we get these students coming in and they don’t want to think for themselves, they want rules. And that was really disheartening for him to see that, too.
JM: I think that’s human nature. People want rules.
AB: Structure.
JM: I’m curious to see how Church leaders react to people who are so desperate to follow the letter of the law but who are kind of ignoring the whole spirit of it. I mean technically they’re not breaking the rules, but you know…
JL: The thing with the Mormon audience, though, is that in their minds they’re following the spirit of the law because they’re trying to take it even further than the commandment they’ve been given. So the thing is to avoid a certain rating and they’re going even further. In the Mormon religion, they ask you to abstain from certain things like alcohol and coffee, and you see that taken even further. So now we don’t drink Coke because that has caffeine in it and maybe that’s why they said don’t drink coffee. So people are always trying to go further, and self-censoring, and that was what was really interesting to me. Our film isn’t a doctrinal film, it’s a cultural film. The Church isn’t necessarily enforcing this but people are taking it upon themselves to self-censor and that was interesting to me.
JM: But isn’t there an audience that says that even those edited films aren’t going far enough?
AJ: Absolutely.
AB: Definitely. The sample of people in the film are the ones who are coming to Cleanflix so it definitely doesn’t represent every Mormon.
JL: There are people on both sides. There are people who say, I don’t care, I’m going to watch R-rated movies, and that’s a big portion too. And then there are some for whom Cleanflix isn’t good enough, who say we shouldn’t be supporting these Hollywood movies at all. Andrew has an interesting story about that, actually.
AJ: Yeah, I interviewed this woman who was a former employee at another edited movies store. One of the comments she made was “Who’s the creep in the back room watching R-rated movie after R-rated movie?” I think a lot of people have a hard time with the idea of Cleanflix, that someone actually has to sit through that filthy material, sort of to take one for the team. So there is a wide range of diversity on the issue. I think in a general sense, Mormons are trying to protect their families from what they consider harmful or evil elements.
JL: And in that respect, it’s not just Mormons. There are a lot of people throughout the world. This market is a big market, and I think people would embrace this if they knew…
JM: You guys must be reading my questions. I was going to suggest that the evangelical Christian market, which must be three or four times the size of the Mormon market, would be very interested.
JL: I think that’s why the Cleanflix guys tried to separate it from Mormonism, because they’re afraid that if it gets tagged as a Mormon thing, they can’t sell as many movies in the South.
JM: And I know that in Canada and parts of the States, there are conservative Muslim audiences, conservative Hindu audiences that would probably go for the same sort of edited movies. Do you know if the edited movie companies have tried to reach those markets at all?
JL: They were trying to reach out to those audiences when they were stopped, and they had 80 locations throughout the United States, they were doing online in Canada. They were spreading, and according to the store owners, everything was on the way up; they had just figured out their business model and they were about to capitalize on it when this all happened.
AJ: We could easily speculate that they would have had success in these other areas.
JL: We choose to focus on Mormonism because that’s where it started and that culture created it.
JM: You indicated too that some of these companies may still be operating online?
JL: That’s one of those things about the digital age. There’s no controlling it anymore, and it’s going to happen. And so if the studios were smart, I think they should figure out a way to handle this themselves because otherwise it’s going to happen without them.
JM: Did you get anyone representing the Directors Guild of America to talk to you?
AJ: We talked to their lawyers and PR people from the DGA who were fairly friendly and interested in helping us, but with all the big names involved and the bureaucracy, it was just hard for us to get at those people.
JM: Do you think they consider it a dead issue now?
JL: They would like it to be a dead issue, because they’ve won and they don’t want it to continue. So it’s good for them if it goes away.
JM: But you do reveal in the film that they do release edited movies for airlines, so what is stopping them from just expanding that?
JL: No one knows. The studios control the copyright and they’re not releasing them.
JM: I just wonder if they feel that the market is too small.
JL: They call it a small market.
JM: But it’s probably a lot bigger than they realize.
JL: An ABC News poll said 45% of the people in the United States would want edited movies if they could have access to them.
AJ: But the Hollywood Reporter said that the studios want to control this, and if people start editing, and releasing edited versions, demand would become too great and it might take away from the theatrical run of some of these films because people will wait for the clean version to come out on DVD.
JM: I guess they figure that the rating system is working well enough.
JL: They like the way it’s working for them.
JM: Have you seen Kirby Dick’s This Film Is Not Yet Rated? A lot of the same issues come up in that.
JL: Yeah, that film was a big help to us as we were getting into this.
JM: I wondered if you’d seen another film here at TIFF, called Dogtooth (review). It’s a Greek film about a guy who keeps his family locked in their house. His children are now in their 20s and they just play games all day, they’re kind of infantile. The director said it was about the extremes to which people will go to protect their families. Of course, it doesn’t end well. And I guess neither does your story. I wonder why the Church feels that keeping bad things from outside is going to make us better people?
AJ: There’s a lot of fear. People are afraid. I’m not going to speak for the Church, but I think culturally there’s a lot of fear that these things are going to get in and affect you, you know to pervert your sexuality as someone says in the film.
JL: If you open that door…
AJ: People don’t trust themselves. You know, if I look at this, I might have some bad thoughts and do something that I might regret.
JM: But you think of it as an outside influence and never something inside of us?
JL: It’s a question of purity, and the idea is that these things stain you, you can’t get rid of that stain. I mean they believe in the idea of repentance, but it’s better if you keep yourself pure of this stuff, and that’s better for you.
JM: I mean I’m curious, because the Christian doctrine is that we’re already born sinful and that we need to be forgiven.
JL: It is part of Mormon doctrine that we’re here to make mistakes and learn from them, but you avoid those mistakes and obedience is the big thing.
JM: So they think you learn more by not making the mistakes?
JL: I don’t know.
AJ: Totally. Yeah, that’s really weird.
AB: It’s not just the media. The Church also teaches you to surround yourself with good people, surround yourself with good things. You know, cleanliness is godliness, there are so many things.
JM: Which is totally common sense.
JL: And it’s not all avoidance. Within the culture it becomes avoidance. Within the doctrine of the Church, it’s “seek after good things.” One of the kids in the films says “I’d rather read a good clean book and watch a good clean movie.” Find the good things, but within the culture it’s easier to follow a rule.
JM: How do you know what’s good until you discover it?
AJ: One of the things that’s interesting to me about this is that I think a lot of these films could help open their eyes to some different issues, help them become aware of cultures in different parts of the world, human experience, help them build empathy with other human beings. And so by shutting themselves out from these films, when you’re living in Utah, or actually, anywhere. But if you’re living a sheltered life, sometimes a film is the only way to expose yourselves to outside things and I think it’s really sheltering to say no.
JM: Another film that this reminds me of is Son of Rambow. Have you seen that?
AB: Yeah. It’s the same.
JL: Yeah.
JM: It’s the same idea. You need some way to connect with the outside world and unfortunately some might choose bad ones, but you can also recommend good ones. What are your plans for screening the film in Utah?
JL: We would love to have our American premiere in Utah.
JM: But it’s going to be R-rated, isn’t it?
JL: We’ve joked about making a Cleanflix version of our movie, and it’s a joke but it would also be a great way to target that audience. Hopefully there are issues discussed in the film that they could benefit from.
JM: A lot of the humour came from showing both the unedited and edited stuff, though. I was just amazed at films like Fargo and The Big Lebowski being edited. I mean, how long was the edited version of The Big Lebowski, 30 minutes? So some of that stuff adds a lot of humour to it.
JL: Yeah, that’s unfortunate, but even with The Big Lebowski and Fargo, there’s a chance we could still get a PG-13 in the United States, and keep those clips in.
JM: I also find this issue in the evangelical Christian community, that violence is not as bad as sex, for some reason I don’t understand, and swearing is also bad, but you can shoot somebody. Somebody’s making these rules, but…
AB: That’s definitely cultural. That’s not doctrine from the Church.
AJ: That goes back to the idea of purity, don’t you think? Like swearing and sexual images.
JL: I mean if you’re not going to do that, you’re definitely not going to kill someone. And that’s another thing in the Church. It’s those little things. They’re guarding themselves against all those little things.
JM: I guess so. It’s a slippery slope. Can I ask you about what your next projects will be?
AJ: We’ve each got our own separate projects which are each exciting on their own terms. I’m working on a documentary about a guy from Peru, during the 80s strapping cocaine to his torso, creating this whole operation smuggling drugs into the United States disguised as a Mormon missionary. And he would take it to Utah and deal it himself and then he’d go back to Peru, go to the jungle and get his cocaine. He did this for two years, made a ton of money, and then eventually gave it up and became a US citizen. It’s his story, this man, and how he became American and his journey and asking some questions along the way.
JL: I’ve got two projects I’m working on. One is about gay Mormons, and that one is a little more Utah-centric, and there’s another project I have that’s more issue-oriented, it’s a little bigger in scope, it’s about people who are robbing Native American graves and then selling the artifacts to big collectors and to museums and other people who don’t know that they’re getting stolen artifacts. There’s a twist, that there are these guys who believe they are being cursed for robbing these graves. Horrible things are happening to these people, suicides, deaths, and they’re happening to all these people who are involved with it. And then we’re also just trying to enlighten people so that they’re not buying the stolen artifacts, we’re trying to highlight the artists and people who are doing it properly and then expose the people who are doing it illegally.
JM: Well I hope that all of those are successful. We also have Hot Docs here in the spring.
JL: Yeah, we would love to be involved with Hot Docs.
JM: Amber, are you working on one of those?
AB: Yeah, I’m actually working on the one with Josh.
JL: It’s called Skeleton Picnic, the Native American one.
AJ: That’s a great title.
JM: Well, they all sound good. I’m looking forward to seeing more from all of you guys. Good luck with the film and enjoy your time at TIFF!
Direct link to the interview at Toronto Screen Shots or follow James McNally on Twitter @toscreenshots.
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