PHOTOS: Cleanflix sign

Joshua Ligairi » 5.10.11 »

In a day and age when everyone is throwing computer generated 3Dimensional text into practical environments (including us on Skeleton Picnic), I thought it would be cool to get in there with some actual hefty props.

These are some rescued signs from real Cleanflix store locations that we had kicking around from when we were in production on the film (in fact, Robert Perry probably wants his back). I think they make for some fun promo shots. We certainly had a blast screwing around with them.

Unfortunately, not everyone on the crew was at the photoshoot, but we got some good shots with those who will be my primary Icarus A&E collaborators going forward.

Huge thanks to Sharon Rowan for snapping these Cleanflix photos for us. Check 'em out!



Sharon was also kind enough to give us all the rights to these Cleanflix photos so, as with all content originating from Icarus A&E on this blog, feel free to re-post these anywhere you like--but please remember to credit Sharon Rowan. Check out Sharon's other work, both still photos and graphic design, here.

NEWS: Cleanflix Filmmakers on RadioActive

Joshua Ligairi » 08.11.10 »

Cleanflix Co-Directors Joshua Ligairi and Andrew James appeared on KRCL's RadioActive this evening for a live radio interview with Flora Bernard as part of RadioActive's preview of the Salt Lake City Film Festival.

You can listen to a podcast of the radio show here or download it from iTunes.

PRESS: Doc Movies' Cleanflix Interview

A great interview with Doc Movies editor, Kobi Shely, preceeding the Traverse City Film Festival screening of Cleanflix. Direct link to the original post at the Doc Movies site here.


Kobi Shely » 07.20.10 »

Mormons & Hollywood Fight It Out in Cleanflix Doc

Let’s say you’re a movie-loving Mormon who wants to check out “Titanic,” but your religious leaders won’t let you because of that one scene where a naked Kate Winslet is getting her portrait done by a way-too-happy Leonardo DiCaprio. What do you do? Well, in the early 2000s, you just went to one of the many video stores in Utah that rented out “clean” versions of Hollywood blockbusters, with the R-rated bits digitally removed by enterprising self-appointed censors. Directors Andrew James and Joshua Ligairi (both of whom have ties to the Mormon church) track the rise and fall of these film-sanitizing operations, whose do-it-yourself film revisions brought on the litigious wrath of Hollywood (including Robert Redford, Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg) for their sins against copyright. DocMovies the great pleasure to interview CLEANFLIX Directors, Andrew James and Joshua Ligairi and producer, Amber Bollinger. CLEANFLIX will be screening Jul 30 and August 01 at Michael Moore's Traverse City Film Festival.

DM - CLEANFLIX explores the ethical questions raised by the marketing of morality by taking audiences behind the scenes of the sanitized movie industry and shedding light on the Mormon culture that spawned it. What is your conclusion regarding the questions raised by your film?

JAMES - I think one of the conclusions that I draw from the film is that repressed sexuality has the ability to manifest itself in damaging ways. I think sexually oppressive cultures tend to create an atmosphere of shame that can, in some cases, lead people to act out. But I also hope that audiences will draw their own conclusions about the nature of sexual representation in cinema and the question of sanitizing films. We have tried to craft a film that allows audiences to answer these types of questions for themselves.

LIGAIRI - I think it is important to mention that the film really ebbs and flows. It is not just an issue film. It is not just a character piece. We were following this story as it unraveled and each turn brought another question. And so, for me, the film is not about coming to conclusions. It is more about recognizing the strangeness, complexity, and diversity that makes up our world, even in a culture that most would think is pretty homogenized.

BOLLINGER - We have screened the film at festivals all over the world and every audience has had a slightly different reactions to the subject matter. I think that is the best compliment to the job these guys have done. Viewers can walk away with their on interpretation of what the message is. We want to start a discussion or help it keep going without telling the audience what to think.

LIGAIRI - We will be having our Utah premiere soon and I think we are all really curious how the film will be received there.

DM - What inspired you to get involved with these people and make this film? How did you discover them?

JAMES - I had heard about the lawsuit and was interested in doing a doc about the question of sanitized movies.

LIGAIRI - The main inspiration for me was the desire to take a hard look at my own community and examine this movement that I didn't agree with. As we got into it, the convictions and contradictions of these people were really fascinating to me. I knew we were showing a specific cross section of America that most were unfamiliar with.

DM - How did the project come together? Was it difficult to get this film off the ground and into production? What were the major challenges?

LIGAIRI - Andrew and I agreed that we wanted to do the project together over lunch and we were literally shooting within days. Because we both owned our own equipment, it was pretty easy to do the project out of pocket with the two of us just doing everything.

JAMES - We were both in Utah and the timing just sort of worked out. We followed many different threads throughout the process. We did a lot of traveling and investigating and we spent a lot of time on the phone.

LIGAIRI - Andrew was good with the prank phone calls! [laughter] Additional crew and costs really came into play as we hit post-production. I knew the exact people that I wanted to work with to bring the movie home and Amber was definitely at the top of the list.

BOLLINGER - Through our previous relationships, the rest of the crew was quickly assembled to complete the film. I feel really lucky to have been a part of that process and to be working with such talented directors.

DM Are there any particular scenes you like the best, or that you think audiences should really take note of?

BOLLINGER - My favorite parts of the film are the interviews with some of the great directors and producers of our time. There are clips from Michael Mann, Steven Soderebergh and Irwin Winkler to name a few. It is really important to hear these filmmakers speak out in protection of their work. Their points of view are vital to the story.

LIGAIRI - I like the scenes where we are uncovering new mysteries about the rental stores, because that is what it felt like making the film--mysterious. We were always discovering new bits of information and trying to figure out how they fit into the puzzle. Our composer, Chris Ohran, really brought a lot to those scenes as well.

JAMES - I really like the scene with Daniel [Thompson] near the end when he describes his evaluation. For me, that scene ties the whole film together.

LIGAIRI - That is almost a spoiler. [laughter]

DM - Since 2002 DocMovies shares information about the doc industry for filmmakers, a question for our filmmakers readers, how did you deal with copyright issues, did you show clips from Hollywood movies? Were you asked to pay royalty?

LIGAIRI - We cited fair use for the majority of our movie clips. It is interesting because we are a film about people abusing fair use and, at the same time, we are a film that attempts to utilize fair use responsibly. There are some great online resources that lay out best practices in fair use for documentary filmmakers. We were very concious of those guidelines as we constructed the film.

JAMES - Then, we hired an attorney who specializes in fair use and she advised us on how to use each clip properly. We had to change, cut, trim, and alter a lot of different film clips in order to fall within those guidelines, but it was important to us to respect the law as well as the films that we used.

DM - How did you get your subjects to interview for the movie, did they deny your request to appear in CLEANFLIX at first?

JAMES - Many of our subjects denied our requests at the onset and it did in fact take some convincing from time to time. In some instances, permission was never granted. Many of our subjects were worried about legal troubles. Interestingly, we do have a hidden interview in the film. We had a subject who wanted to speak with us, but was worried about getting in trouble. So we suggested doing a hidden interview and it worked out great. Other people were even unwilling to go that far. Everyone is different. You just need to gauge the situation and try and come up with solutions. It also helps to be persistent.

LIGAIRI - And it helps to form relationships of trust. We were very upfront with our subjects and let them know that regardless of our personal points of view, we would always strive to be fair and honest. And then, that is a trust that we had to live up to throughout post-production. We didn't manipulate people's words or sentiments. Everyone has a chance to tell their side of the story.

DM - What were the major challenges?

LIGAIRI - One of the other major challenges was time. This was a huge time commitment. We're not talking Hoop Dreams level of commitment, but we were literally shooting for two years straight and ended up editing for almost another year.

JAMES - The film was relatively easy and inexpensive to shoot. The real challenges came during post-production.

DM - Michael Moore hand picked your film for "Traverse City Film Festival" , what are your aspiration for this film, do you see an acadmey award nomination?

LIGAIRI - Any young filmmaker dreams of an Academy Award at some point, but I have zero expectations. Having said that, I think that the film is something that those in the industry could really embrace and get behind if they had the opportunity to see it. Premiering at Toronto was a great start and hopefully the support of Michael Moore will continue to get the word out.

BOLLNIGER - It was quite an honor to have our film picked by Michael Moore for his festival. It is a unique festival because you can't just submit your film for consideration. Michael [Moore] only selects pictures that have resonated with him from that year. To have our work supported by a titan in the industry is such a compliment and we are absolutely honored to be part of the fest.

JAMES - We are very excited about all of our festivals we've screened at and its great that someone like Michael Moore appreciates the film, but the Academy Awards don't seem very likely to me. I think what we want the most is just for people to see the film. We are proud of the finished product and are excited to share it with audiences.

LIGAIRI - My biggest aspiration for the film is that it sticks around. Staying power is becoming increasingly difficult in the digital age. Whether it is on BluRay or an iTunes playlist or bookmarked on Hulu, I want the film to last. It is an interesting and important portrait of a time and a place that I think will become more strange and more exciting as technology progresses.

Read the original article on the Doc Movies website or follow @DocMovies on Twitter.

PRESS: Flick Sided Cleanflix review

A brief review of Cleanflix, and three other Cinequest films, by FlickSided Lead Critic and an Associate Editor, Mike Smith. Direct link to the original post at the Flick Sided site here.


Mike Smith » 03.15.10 »

Let’s say you want to watch a popular movie, but your religious beliefs prevent you from watching any films that feature foul language or any sexual content…bummer, right? Wrong! You can order edited DVDs of any movie…same great film, but with all the naughty bits cut out. This documentary explores the edited film industry, which is rooted in Salt Lake City, Utah and is heavily influenced by the beliefs of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latte-day Saints. At first focusing on both the legal aspects of editing and reselling home video (pesky copyright laws) as well as the people involved, the film takes an unexpected but rewarding turn in the third act, shifting from a straight delivery of fact to a scathing indictment of the hypocrisy behind religious fundamentalism.Direct link to the review at FlickSided.com. Mike Smith can be contacted at Mike@According2Mike.com.

PRESS: Metro News Cleanflix review

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.

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.

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.

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.

PRESS: In This Week's Cleanflix Interview

An interview with Cleanflix co-directors Andrew James and Joshua Ligairi by In This Week's Spencer Sutherland. Direct link to the original article at In This Week's website here.


Spencer Sutherland » 09.22.09 »

CLEANFLIX AT FILM FESTIVAL IN TORONTO

Looking for all the action, adventure, and comedy of Hollywood's biggest hits -- without the pesky sex, swearing, or violence? For no-R-rated-movie-abiding Mormons, CleanFlicks and its edited films were a godsend. The only problem was that the films' copyright holders weren't happy with the idea of someone else chopping up their intellectual property.

In their new documentary, CleanFlix, Utah filmmakers Andrew James and Joshua Ligairi tell the story of the rental chain -- and the culture that spawned its success -- while following founder Daniel Thompson through a bitter lawsuit and public sex scandal. Throughout the film, the directors refuse to take sides (even they seem to have different opinions on the matter), but certainly raise plenty of questions about censorship, religion and Hollywood.

IN recently caught up with the two filmmakers as CleanFlix made its debut at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Why was this was an important story to tell?

James » It is a topic that is widely misunderstood. We also wanted to ask questions about art, censorship, religion and sex, and I think the film brings up a lot of ideas that are worth talking about.

Ligairi » I'm interested in art that expands understanding of the human experience. We're showing the world this specific cross-section of American culture that many people have no idea even exists. But the film is even fresh for those that think they know the culture and the topic.

You are heavily ingrained in both the art of film and Utah culture. Is there a clear-cut right and wrong in this story from either side?

James » Yes and no. It's clearly wrong to make money by altering and selling copyrighted material that doesn't belong to you. That's as clear-cut as it gets, at least for me. However, if there were legal ways to do it, I think that question becomes much more difficult to answer.

Ligairi » The movie answers a lot of questions, but it also challenges the audience to ask some questions of themselves. There are a lot of gray areas here. I have varying opinions on the issue depending on what angle I am looking at it from. The idea of censorship is very troubling, and that is key here, but if we look beyond that for a moment, there are all kinds of other issues at play. Making the film has helped me realize how nuanced the potentially polarizing discussion actually is. The film is full of information (and hopefully insight), but it also requires some work on the part of the viewer. I'm more proud of that than anything else.

As a filmmaker, what would be your response if you found that edited copies of CleanFlix were floating around?

James » I would be upset, especially considering the fact that we've talked about doing our own "clean" version of the film. We've spent three years making it and labored over every little decision. It would be frustrating to see a lot of that work being arbitrarily changed by a third party.

Ligairi » Personally, I could care less. I don't believe in auteurs. Art belongs to the world. While there is great meaning for me personally in the act of creation, I can't deny that the film changes depending on the viewer. Each audience member brings something different to the table and what they bring literally has the power to change the meaning of the film--if only to them.

The end user has some rights. I'm not talking about this in the capitalistic sort of way that the sanitizers often do--the 'I bought it and I can do what I want' argument. I'm speaking from the theoretical standpoint that, as a filmmaker, my transmission hasn't served its full purpose until it is decoded by a receiver, and try as I might, I can never control the way it is received. If that answer is pretentious or over-intellectualized, the shorter answer is that we are toying with doing our own clean version anyway, so it probably won't come up."

If clean movies were ever able given a legal green light, do you think there is a market for edited films outside of Utah?

James » People often talk about this large market for sanitized films outside of Utah, and I suspect that there probably is, but one can only speculate. People tend to point at polls or cultural identity as a way to identify such a market, but CleanFlicks and companies like CleanFlicks never really took off in other places, so it's difficult to say.

Ligairi » Time will tell. All indicators point to a considerably large market. My guess is that it is as big as the market for unrated films, for instance. CleanFlicks had about 70 locations across the United States and was substantially bigger online. In the end, 80 percent of their business was online and outside of the state. We focus on Utah because it took Mormon culture to create CleanFlicks, but it was spreading everywhere and they were still growing at a rapid rate when they were shut down.

Because Walmart refuses to sell CDs with an Explicit Lyrics label, any artist who wants to sell records puts out a clean version. Would filmmakers be willing to do the same if a big retailer said 'No more R-rated movies'?

James » Filmmakers edit their films for airlines and television, so I imagine that they probably would, but again, that is just speculation. I guess it depends on the studios that own the films in question.

Ligairi » The music industry is probably the best comparison, yet it almost never comes up. Mainstream artists like Eminem, or whoever, don't complain about doing their clean versions because it is just part of the industry--the same way television and airline edits are part of the movie industry. A lot of cooler independent musicians opt-out and decide that they would rather leave their music intact than have it play on the radio or be sold at Walmart. That is a financial sacrifice that they make for their art. You don't see a lot of filmmakers willing to do that right now.

Though James and Ligairi are busy showing the film off at foreign festivals, they hope to have their U.S. debut at Sundance in January. Until then, Utah audiences can follow the movie's journeys at www.cleanflixthemovie.com.

Direct link to the interview at In This Week or check out Spencer Sutherland's blog The Sutherland Manifesto.

PRESS: /Film review of Cleanflix

A review of our film, Cleanflix, by /Film editor Peter Sciretta. Direct link to the original post at /Film's site here.

Peter Sciretta » 09.19.09 »

When I first found out that a documentary about CleanFlicks was playing at the Toronto International Film Festival, I immediately added it to my must-see list. I’ve always been interested and outraged at the concept of Cleanflicks.

For those of you who don’t know, Mormons are advised not to watch R-rated movies because the language, sex and violence will contaminate and pervert your brain. The modern day prophets say the best solution is to avoid these things at all costs. A video rental store was opened in Utah to cater to to the sanitized beliefs. CleanFlicks would take Hollywood movies and professionally edit them in final cut, removing most of the “bad parts.”

The film features a number of comparisons between original theatrical cut and CleanFlicks re-edits, most of which are both hilarious and appalling. Swear words aren’t bleeped, scenes are suddenly cut, the CleanFlicks edits are actually remarkably well done, at least technically. But deleted shots, sequences, or conversations, often results in a completely different intention in the dialogue or moments of a film.

"Cleanflix is easily the most interesting topical documentary about movies since This Film Is Not Yet Rated."

The sanitized versions could be rented at the CleanFlicks store, or even be made available for purchase to the paying public (they did this using a 1:1 ratio, including an original purchased copy with each CleanFlicks copy). At one point the company was operating 10 corporate stores, in addition to almost 70 franchised dealerships. The documentary Cleanflix tells the story of the rise and fall of CleanFlicks and other edited movie dealerships in Utah, with a primary focus on Daniel Thompson, a CleanFlicks franchisee who became the de facto leader of Utah’s the edited movie revival. And Daniel’s story has just as many twists and turns as the headline story.

If I have any complaint about the documentary, it is that at one point it becomes too focused on Thompson’s story, and misses opportunities to talk about the ethics, present and future of the sanitized movie business. I would have loved to learn more about how and why Hollywood creates TV and airplane edits of films, but refuses to provide these edits to the Mormon audience. I would’ve liked to see a follow-up on the DVD players being created today that allow parents (or whomever) to selectively edit adult content out of a movie. This story doesn’t end with Daniel, and the movie shouldn’t end with him either.

But that said, Cleanflix is easily the most interesting topical documentary about movies since This Film Is Not Yet Rated. Cleanflix is a movie which continues hours after the credits, in the conversations and debates you will have with your friends and family. It creates a discussion about art, censorship, rights, religion, and technology. With popularized art, what are the rights of the creator (director), copyright owner/distributor (studio), and the art buyer (moviewatcher). And as technology grows, will Hollywood be able to contain the demand for sanitized movie edits?

Interestingly enough, the directors have said they would like to give the film a big premiere in Mormon country… Sundance, make this happen!

/Film Rating: 7.5 out of 10

Direct link to the review on /Film.

PRESS: CBC review of Cleanflix

A review of Cleanflix by Greig Dymond, Senior Producer of CBC Arts. Direct link to the original post at the CBC's website here.
Greig Dymond » 09.18.09 »

Last night I caught a compelling doc that deserves to find an audience beyond the festival circuit. Cleanflix is about a highly profitable business that sprung up in Utah about 10 years ago: several video-DVD rental outlets started to provide cleaned-up versions of Hollywood favourites for Mormons who liked movies but didn’t want their families exposed to any sex, violence or swearing. Case in point: a lot of these folks wanted to watch Titanic, but without that scene where Leo paints a portrait of the topless Ms. Winslet. Thanks to modern technology, it wasn’t that difficult to add in some clothing for her doomed character.

"A very smart and critical – but never dismissive – film about two vastly different worlds colliding."

Things were going along swimmingly: the owners of stores such as Clean Flicks and Flick’s Club were making oodles of cash and the customers were satisfied. But then some A-list Hollywood directors – including Michael Mann and Steven Soderbergh – found out about the rather radical changes being made to their films without their permission or copyright clearance. Needless to say, all heck broke loose.

Directors Andrew James and Joshua Ligairi grew up in the Mormon community and they’ve made a very smart and critical – but never dismissive – film about two vastly different worlds colliding over artistic censorship.

Direct link to the review at CBC Arts.