The world honors directors like Steven Spielberg, Mel Gibson and Martin Scorsese, but at the end of the day, they may be money-grubbing hypocrites, not the artists they claim to be.

They joined other members of the Director’s Guild of America (DGA) in suing three small video rental companies that edited their films who to make them decent enough for families to watch together.

The rental companies, CleanFlicks, CleanFilms, and Play It Clean Video lost their court battle to the DGA when the Federal Court in Colorado ruled that cutting profanity and graphic scenes of nudity and violence from DVDs and then redistributing the sanitized versions violated U.S. copyrights laws.

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They didn’t cut much from films, just those moments of  gratuitous sex, violence and foul language that today’s filmmakers rely on to bolster their sagging box-office profits.  

The rental companies weren’t pirating films, as they purchased one regular copy for each sanitized copy they rented.

In a display of remarkable hubris, Michael Apted, President of the DGA said in news reports, “Audiences can now be assured that the films they buy or rent are the vision of the filmmakers who made them and not the arbitrary choices of a third-party editor.”

The reality is, if you want to see a butchered film, all you have to do is watch a movie on television. They are cut for sex, violence and foul language, but worse, they are also edited to fit the “time allotted.” That means a film is lacerated so you can see it run for 10 minutes before being interrupted by 5 minutes of commercials.

Why doesn’t Michael Apted’s high-minded, self-serving rhetoric on behalf of the DGA apply to the butchering of films that come across the air-waves or cable?  Nothing trashes a “director’s vision”  more than those animated promos at the bottom of the screen, or a cut to a hemorrhoid ointment commercial at a dramatic moment.

Apted’s comments should only be interpreted in terms of what Hollywood is best known for, and that is hype. “Director’s vision” has nothing to do with it. It’s about money. Studios could easily license their films to family-friendly companies for editing just as they license them to television.

If nothing else, this court case should remind us of something we already know, and that is, the values in Hollywood are not reasoned or mature. They can allow television cuts for a buck, but they cannot allow them to be made by companies like CleanFlicks, CleanFilms, and Play It Clean Video because these companies edit films for ideological reasons, one that puts the focus on morality and family values.  Hollywood can’t stomach that, so they cry copyright infringement, censorship and bring up questions of an “artist’s integrity” in an effort to legitimize the mind-garbage they often produce.

Hollywood is slow to connect the dots. The movie community insists on hyping dismal, anti-social films like “Brokeback Mountain,” which only grossed a paltry $83 million in U.S. release even though DGA member Ang Lee won the Academy Award for best Director. However, they are willing to attack rental companies that are trying to give viewers a product the studios refuse to provide.

Fortunately, Americans are wise to the great Hollywood moral swindle and are not going to the movies as much as they did in the past. Box office revenues have been slumping for several years, and even with this years crop of blockbusters, it is anticipated moving-going will rise an insignificant 1.7% this year.

If Hollywood producers, directors and studios really wanted big bucks and accolades, they would think twice about claiming the moral high ground when it comes to the content of their films, artistic vision or their courtroom victories. They would see that by doing so they are alienating the very audience they seek to enthrall.

 - DLH