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Directors Guild of America is Fighting Edited Films
BoyPlankton writes "According to this article in the Salt Lake Tribune, film directors are gearing up to battle companies that are making a name for themselves selling/renting out edited films to consumers. The film directors claim that it's censorship and that it's morally, ethically, and legally wrong. The companies doing it claim that consumer rights trump the artists rights in this case, and that the artists don't have the moral ground to stand on because they already edit their films for T.V. and planes. Is this issue going to further erode our rights as a consumer, or will lawmakers take this opportunity to shore them up?"
I was a bit surprised to notice that the chain Blockbuster Video wasn't mentioned in that article; I seem to recall they've been bowdlerizing their videos for years. But OTOH, they're owned by one of the studios, aren't they?
IMO, there's a substantial difference between selling edited copies of a tape and using a system to overlay your own "edits" onto a full version you've bought. The former is an unauthorized motification, but the latter is within your personal rights for fair use, and not any different from simply hitting the mute or the fast forward button.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
The DGA is probably the only film industry body more fascist than the MPAA. They attempted to FORCE George Lucas to put his name at the beginning of Star Wars in 1978. He refused, they fined him, and he left the organization.
On the current issue, who do they think they're fooling? "Edited for television" has been around at least since I've been allowed to stay up that late. Studios chop scenes out against directors' wishes all the time. What's next, a fight against chapter menus because everybody skips to the Good Parts?
If people are willing to edit your movie to supply the demand for such a thing (ala The Phantom Edit) then why don't movie makers pick up on the demand themselves, and re-release the movies in the way that the audience wants to see them? I know that I'd glady pay another $20 for an official Phantom Menace DVD that had the bright yellow "New and improved! No Jar Jar!" sticker on it...
"Chances of RHIC-induced Armageddon are exceedingly rare, but... you never know." - MIT Physicist Bob Jaffe
What I've seen a lot of people do for movies is to buy it as is, and then either have someone personally edit out portions they don't like or just have some sort of electronic filter that has a set of edit points stored in memory. I frankly don't see how content providers are going to be able to stop this.
I think what the article is getting at is that the director may have something called "Moral Rights" over the work. Essentially this means that the item is a work of art that was produced for a fee and that the author of the work has the right to object to derogatory treatment of the work (i.e. censoring scenes).
The idea being that once a piece of art has been created the author has his/her name attached to it, and thus any treatments of the work done later that do not fit the artist's vision taints the artist's reputation.
I don't know how this works with film, because there are limitations to this when an artists produces work for an employer.. so it may be that the studio owns the moral rights, and I'm also not sure how this works in the US, but the UK and Canada both have moral rights. I'm not entirely sure as IANAL.
But.. here is a link for my karma-whore points... Moral Rights .
Legal issues aside, I understand the Directors feelings. Certainly when you get a competent director who make thoughtful stuff, like Stanley Kubrik or Dave Fincher or Quentin T., it's an insult to have people watching your movies under some sanitary cut. This isn't a plane or TV, where the audience will like the movie and then go to view the real thing. This is either really pathetic people not wanting to be offended, or parent's trying to show your art to children in a butchered manner. I think there is a difference, and I'd be damn pissed off if I took the time to create A Clockwork Orange, Se7en, or Fight Club, or Pulp Fiction, only to have people stipping it's essense out and changing the experience.
Again, it's not the same as the TV or plane version, because the goal here is not to open the movie for a wider audience (who can then go and see the real thing), it's a viewer asking someone else to protect them permenatly from the scenes that often make the movie.
But I guess I am sort of a sadist when it comes to these things, and prefer movies that make me uncomfortable and show raw humanity at it's best and worst. Also, note that if you think Stanley's, David's, or Quentin's work sucks, pick another director - the point still stands.
_sig_ is away
Greedo never pulled a gun on Han. In the 'update' Greedo drew first, thus making Han's shooting of Greedo an act of self defense, instead of cold blooded murder.
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When Ted Turner colorized all those movie classics. Or the choice to release a movie in a foreign market dubbed (I'm talking about foreign films brought to the US and only released dubbed by the distributor).
The owner of the rights to the film can do with it what he choses. Simple.
Turner owned those reels of movies and he did what he wanted. Of course the public backlash stopped it in the end.
Similarly local distributors in a country count as the owner's proxy in those states. But the general dislike of dubbing has stopped them from releasing dubbed versions of Crouching Tiger and Life is Beautiful. Of course it has also limited the distribution of foreign movies (the assumption being people don't like dubbing but only film critics like to read subtitles so you can only release it in art houses).
Like an earlier poster said, anyone who doesn't own rights to a movie but works on it is just an employee.
A good example is Fox owning the original Star Wars. Lucas had to buy it back from them. Of course when he did he added in "Greedo shooting first."
Originally Fox could have stopped him from adding it. Later they couldn't. Neither could the LucasFilm employees or Harrison Ford.
Control of the final product is one of the benefits of being a big time director.
What is music when you despise all sound?
There is a large enough market here to justify the additional cost. There are a variety of companies in Utah that have sprung up to fill this need. The company in question has found people all over the country that want to see cleaned up movies. If Hollywood would simply provide the toned down versions that they have already made of these movies on DVD they could realize additional revenue.
This is not censorship. Censorship is when someone else decides what you get to watch. This is consumers deciding for themselves that they don't want to view particular content. I doubt that many /.ers can respect that, but they should be able to see the difference.
Certainly if I buy a book I am free to rip out any pages that I want. The magic of DVDs allows you to "rip out pages" without doing so permanently. Why hasn't this technology been supported by Hollywood?
Lasers Controlled Games!
it's that any idiot would try to take the swear words out of a film in the first place
If I buy a print of the Mona Lisa, do I have the right to draw on it? Yes, I do.
The idiot is the guy who thinks that Leonardo's artistic vision trumps my consumer rights.
This is the traditional American concept, but it is not true in most European countries, where there is a legally recognized "moral right" that cannot be sold, but that always remains with the creator of the work. For example, no matter how much money you pay in France for a classic work of art, you still can't deface it against the will of its original creator.
So... let me get this straight. You're cool with the scenes that depict horrible acts of cruelty and murder, but a scene which is "stimulating" and "sexual" has got to go? There is seriously something wrong with your outlook on life.
For the record, I wouldn't want to cut anything out of Schindler's List -- it's so powerful and effective as it is.
"The scene where there is a nude woman in the German officer's bed is stimulating and sexual. If I had kids, I would want to skip that scene."
Don't take this the wrong way.. I'm all for parents right to show what they want to their own children.. but I feel most adults view on children and sexuality is ridiculuous.
Who came up with the idea that children are totally non-sexual beings that need to be protected from anything remotely sexual? The truth is that children DO have a form of sexuality, and the ones that are actually uncomfortable with sexuality and children in the same sentence is adults.
This does not mean that I would show porn to my children, or extremely sexual movies, but I think the generic american and european view of children and sexuality is screwed up, and probably does more harm than good to kids. No kid takes any harm from seeing a naked body.
Oh please, you call this hypocritical and you don't even understand the difference between the action and the message.
There is a big, big difference in the intent of scenes that depict horrible acts of cruelty and the scene I am talking about. This may be difficult for you to understand but there is even a big, big difference in the intent of other scenes that depict full frontal nudity.
When the soldiers shoot the old one-armed man, that is a horrible act. It is shocking. I don't think young children should see that scene. But then, I don't think young children need to even know about the Holocaust so they can enjoy their damn childhood.
But when they get into junior high school and/or high school and start studying World War II, I think Schindler's List is appropriate and the scene where the old-man is shot, for all it's horror, is not gratuitous. I'm sure it happened all the time. The part where the German officer is shooting randomly at Jews is also not gratuitous. The part where hundreds of people are running around naked is not gratuitous. That's how the inspections happened, and I don't see any problem with my kids seeing that. It's not a sexual message, it's the horrible truth.
But why the behind-the-scenes look at the German officer's sex life? Why do we care that he has a hot topless mistress? What is the point of that? There is none. You know how I know that? Back in 1996 or 1997, they showed Shindler's List on television for the first time, commercial free (sponsored by Chevy maybe?) and almost completely uneditted. You know the only edit they made to that film? A floating fuzz-spot to obscure the nipple of the girl in the scene I am describing. Spielburg himself gave a speach before the airing of the movie talking about the importance of showing the whole truth and horror of the Holocaust. So then why this edit? Because I think that the network (NBC I think?) and Speilburg knew that this scene was gratuitous and had nothing to do with the Holocaust.
Later in the movie, the same German officer (I am too lazy to look up his name, forgive me) confronts the Jewish servant girl in a scene that has a lot of wet-shirts and sexual elements. I don't think it's hypocritical that this scene also doesn't bother me. I'm pretty sure there were a lot of German officers that took advantage of their helpless female Jewish servants. It also is critical in understanding why he ultimately lets Schindler rescue her.
So, I stand by my comments. As a parent, I have a right to choose what messages my children see. "German officers get laid a lot by hot German mistresses" just isn't a message I feel important enough to pass on in light of the other serious and important messages in that film.
- JoeShmoe
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-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
3. They're afraid that multiple versions of a tape may cause consumer confusion that weakens demand for videos in general.
This general principle is why so few people are using US quarters these days. It's also why the Pokemon game was so unpopular. It's also why no one went to see the 20th anniversary version of Star Wars, and why no one bought the video version. It's why the sales of DVDs are approximately zero (all those scenes! all those options! too confusing!)
Now, I know this will be hard, but I want everyone to take a deep breath and think about the issue for a second.
Third-parties are editing creative works that are not their own to meet their particular standards. They want to screen out tits, Jar-Jar, whatever. The argument that seems to be pretty popular here is that "we bought, we can do what we want with it." This is true, to a point. If I want to watch my own 30-minute version of Eyes Wide Shut that's my own business.
Where it gets complicated is that people are making that edit and then selling it. Even if it's marked, under what right are they doing this? They didn't create it. Like it or not, a film is a work of art. The entire film is an expression of the artistic vision of the creator. To alter it is to alter the message, which does a gross disservice to the creator.
What would Lolita be without a 14-year old girl (never mind that she was 12 in the book)? Clockwork Orange sans violence. Armageddon with no asteroid?
A film is not just some montage of scenes pieced together for you viewing. It has a point, maybe a moral--it's going somewhere. At the very least it is telling a story that has certain nuances.
My point is simple: the art is being altered and then being sold. Even if it's marked as edited, it's being sold under the original title. Let's say that Titanic is edited to remove the lovemaking between Winslet and DiCaprio? Is it still a James Cameron film? Hard to say, really, because you aren't seeing what he intended. Think about that, for a second. Consumer rights this, consumer rights that--what about artistic rights?
~Chazzf
No statement is true, not even this one.
European law has broad "moral right", but U.S. law does is much narrower. This is probably good. It gets rid of the argument that removing commercials violates the moral right of the corporate author of the derived work of a TV broadcast.