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(2009) Director: Andrew James, Joshua Aukai
Ligairi Note: It's the 25th anniversary of The Unknown Movies this year, and what better way to mark the occasion by reviewing a movie (specifically, a documentary) about, well, movies!
Although
the
hobby that I love more than ever is watching unknown movies and
subsequently writing reviews of those unknown movies, I have a lot of
other loves in my life. One of them is comics. Now, I don't collect
comic books, and I seldom take a peek at what is brand new on the racks
at my local store, I have a great interest in comics and their
cartoonists/writers. There are three specific cartoonists/writers that
I'd like to briefly talk about here, because although their main career
thrusts have nothing to do with movies, their attitude towards their
art illustrates a specific viewpoint I have towards the certain handling of motion
pictures by certain parties. One of those cartoonists/writers is
Charles Schultz, another is Al
Hartley, and the third is Johnny Hart. The specific reason I want to
talk about them is in regards to their handling of religion in their
comics. Charles Schultz, as you probably know, was the creator of the
comic strip Peanuts.
From time to time he would inject some religion into his comics, and
you know what? I didn't mind. That's because not only was the religious
material only occasionally injected in, Schultz always portrayed it in
a way that didn't seem preachy at all. It was instead presented in an
almost casual and matter-of-fact manner. Heck (I won't say "hell" in
respect to
Schultz), sometimes he would use religion just to make a humorous gag
in his
comic strip! The second of those cartoonists that I mentioned, Al
Hartley, you have probably never heard of. He was one of the
cartoonists under the Archie
banner. He became a born-again Christian in the late 1960s, and he did
start to inject Christian content in the Archie comics he drew and
wrote. I actually didn't mind these particular Archie comic stories for
the most part, because Hartley usually portrayed the Christian material
in a way that both Christians and
non-Christians could identify with - universal human values, in other
words. In fact, Hartley managed to convince Archie
president John L. Goldwater to let him use the Archie characters in
Christian comic books printed by another company. I read some of these
Christian comic books
as a child, and while they were definitely a lot more Christian than
Hartley's
work at Archie,
he
was still careful to make the comics readable and entertaining for a
wide audience,
from the attractive art style to writing that was informative yet
breezy, and full of love and compassion. Still those basic human
values, even if he was reporting the Bible's official words on these
matters. And then there is the case of Johnny Hart, who was the creator of the comic strip B.C., which he drew and wrote from 1958 to 2007. For most of the strip's run, he didn't raise all that much controversy... though I have seen some of his early strips that today would surely have him being accused of misogyny. But in the mid 1980s, he suddenly decided that he would start bringing in his Christian beliefs into the comic strip. While he didn't do this with every strip he subsequently made, when he did do this, it created a lot of controversy amongst his readership, so much so that he not only got protests from Jewish and Muslim groups, newspapers at times outright refused to print these particular comic strips. For example, one of his controversial Sunday strips was devoted entirely to showing a Jewish menorah morph into a Christian cross, with text suggesting the "true" religion may have once been Judaism, but was now Christianity. While I don't think Hart was trying to offend anyone, and had the best interests of his readers at, ahem, "hart", I do have to admit that sometimes in my eyes his injection of Christianity crossed the line and became pure overkill. And that brings me to the topic I really want to discuss: I almost always do not like it when so-called religious do-gooders try to give a heavy-handed treatment on any form of art in order to advocate for their extreme radical religious beliefs... and I'm not just talking about in comics, but other art forms such as books, television, and music. And of course, movies. It seems that since the 1896 silent short film The Kiss that these kinds of stuffy prudish types have been trying to supress the cinematic art form. And as you probably know, many of these people happen to be extremely Christian in their beliefs. I'm not sure why a lot of time Christians find stuff in modern movies so offensive. After all, doesn't the Good Book contain stuff like approval of slavery, plus rape, warfare, incest, general violence, and downright threats to the public to shape up or else? If what's considered a "Good Book" can have that stuff and more, why can't other people put this same stuff in other media? Sometimes I get really sick of and frustrated by the Bible thumpers who want to put Hollywood under their thumb, namely by
censoring the content of Hollywood films. It makes me want to go to a
vanity publisher and print hundreds of Bibles with severe alterations,
such as having Adam and In case you don't know the full true story that Cleanflix
documents, don't worry, I won't spoil things for you by revealing the
eventual outcome. But whether you know all the details or not, I think
there's a good chance that like me, you wonder how this documentary
portrays both sides of the coin - the CleanFlicks people, and the
movers and shakers in Hollywood. I guess you could also be curious
about the legal teams on both sides too regarding their arguments and
so forth. First, I will report on how I reacted to the side of the
movie
focusing on the CleanFlicks people and their loyal customers. Well,
these "moral majority" types certainly do come across as sincere and
passionate. Cleanflix
documents that, at least initially, they were trying to follow the law
by doing such things as buying one unedited DVD to make an edited DVD.
Plus, it is illustrated throughout that there was (and apparently still
is) a big market out in the public (not just the American public) demanding movies
that had bad stuff cut out from them. At the same time, however, the
documentary illustrates (without showing bias from the filmmakers) that
there was some curious thinking by these individuals. None of them
really defines what is "too much" when it comes to stuff like violence
and sex; we see the woodchipper scene from Fargo was
unedited, yet a reference to circumcision was edited out. And in the
nude scene in Titanic,
we get to see one (but not both) of Kate Windset's breasts covered up. One Cleanflicks individual
refuses to get into why Brokeback Mountain
was totally rejected. At one point, a consumer complains about
Hollywood "pushing an agenda", yet the irony that comes across when
seeing what Cleanflicks and their ilk were doing is apparently lost
on the consumers and manufacturers of these edited movies. Another
interesting observation is that Cleanflix
also illustrates without comment that many in the Mormon faith not only
won't question what Mormon prophets (such as the one in the opening
video from a
1986 Latter Day Saints "Prophetic Counsel" denouncing and warning of
modern entertainment) and other Mormon leaders dictate, they won't even
think of doing
some questioning. The inevitable questions that come up are how and why the Mormon church came up with its warning of popular entertainment, but also why few individual Mormons don't think about this. We do learn that many Mormons are heavily indoctrinated from birth, which certainly plays a part. And in the opening of the movie, we see Mormon prophet Ezra Taft Benson state to all Mormons, "Obedience is a virtue." However, Cleanflix for the most part doesn't explore its Mormon subjects too heavily. For example, with Ray Lines, the founder of CleanFlicks, we don't learn practically anything about his background that might illustrates what drove him to found the business. Another person introduced later, a Mormon man named Daniel Thompson, becomes the most passionate figurehead for the edited movie business. There is extensive footage of him speaking his beliefs with great passion, and his never-give-up attitude does for a time make him interesting to follow. Yet at the end of the documentary, we don't learn anything of his history before Cleanflicks or most of his private life... except for a very surprise revelation towards the end that I won't get into, except to say that it will severely alter any viewer's viewpoint of this guy. Though to be fair, Cleanflix does also drop the ball sometimes when it illustrates the view of Hollywood towards the idea of people editing their movies. Except for a few quick clips of Hollywood figures (taken all from TV news reports - no new footage shot of them) like director/producer Irwin Winkler (Busting), we don't get much of Hollywood's side of the story. The DGA (Director's Guild of America) refuses to comment save for a standard quote whenever they are asked about the subject, the studios immediately launch lawsuits as soon as they get any whiff of their intellectual property being (to them) mismanaged, and the studios claim that there is "no market" for them to make them want to edit movies despite the apparent demand for them... but that's about all we learn from Hollywood's side. Probably directors Andrew James and Joshua Aukai Ligairi didn't have the pull or resources to talk to Hollywood bigwigs, which is unfortunate, since the documentary's focus is almost all on the other side. On the other hand, directors James and Ligairi do manage
to do some other things that can get you understanding why Hollywood
was so annoyed at CleanFlicks and their ilk. Edited clips from movies
like Saving
Private Ryan and The Weather Man
are shown, and they sure don't make that much sense. Also, the
documentary shows that despite the best intentions of Cleanflicks and
their competitors, piracy soon became rampant. In fact, the competition
between Cleanflicks and their rivals eventually starts to produce a lot
of very unChristian backstabbing behind the scenes, showing that the people
behind these
edited video outfits were, well, secretly like us regular folks with
all of our flaws. Towards the end of the movie, even the so-called
savior of the edited video market Daniel Thompson (who almost get to
tearing up at times when discussing his passion) keeps going with his
dream despite major setbacks, and I could almost relate to that
particular passion when I think about all the times I have been
passionate about things (like my website) despite the odds being
against me many times. But at the same time, I could identify with the
complaints uttered during those old news clips from Hollywood figures:
I agree that if you work on something for years, you don't want it
changed, especially if your name is on the finished creation. Also
something to consider is the old statement, "If you don't like it,
don't watch it." When it came to watching Cleanflix, I did
like what I saw overall. It's not a perfect documentary by any means.
Its kind of rough structure results in some inconsistencies (it can't
decide if it's spelt "Cleanflicks" or "Cleanflix", for example), and
some areas
definitely could have been better edited - but certainly not by any
employee of Cleanflicks or their many competitors. Despite a few other
minor flaws such as those, if you are a passionate fan of movies and
the subject matter of this documentary interests you, I think you'll
like watching Cleanflix
as I did - unless some religious so-called do-gooder got his or her hands on your copy before you
did. (P.S. - There's something I have to admit. At the end of Cleanflix, you know what? After learning so much about the Morman-founded Cleanflicks, I was very sorry that they never got a chance to come up here in Canada to set up shop so I could enlist their services. That's because I would have loved to have counfounded them by sending them movies to edit like Naked Killer, Robotrix, The Untold Story, Let My Puppets Come, Psychos In Love, Blood Diner, Fugitive Girls, Cinderella, The Secret Sex Lives Of Romeo And Juliet, Troma's War, Confessions Of A Serial Killer, The Hunting Party, The Nine Lives Of Fritz The Cat and the original Fritz movie, The Ten, Pray TV, Hey! There's Naked Bodies On My TV!, Strip Nude For Your Killer, Night Of The Demon, King Frat, Beer, The Christine Jorgensen Story, Because Of Eve, ...And God Spoke, Breeders, Thunderpants, Linda Lovelace For President, Preacherman, The Professional: Golgo 13, If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do?, The Convent, The Devil's Tomb, A Serbian Film, Antichrist, the Porky's series, Salo: Or The 120 Days Of Sodom, Life Of Brian, Dead Alive, the Friday The 13th series, The Wild Bunch, Caligula, In The Realm Of The Senses, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre series, Last House On The Left, The Devils, The Exorcist, Shortbus, Battle Royale, Basic Instinct and its sequel, Frankenhooker, the Jackass series, Sweet Sweetback's Baadassss Song, I Spit On Your Grave, Crash, Scarface, the Death Wish series, Straw Dogs, the Faces Of Death series, the Rambo series, Hardcore, Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!, The Last Temptation Of Christ, Kids, Viridiana, Ecstasy, Tokyo Decadence, Cruising, Pink Flamingos, Mandingo and its follow-up Drum, Total Recall, The Human Centipede series, Cannibal Holocaust, The Brown Bunny, The Passion Of The Christ, Street Trash, Killer Condom, Welcome Home Brother Charles, the Saw series, Irreversible, Men Behind The Sun, Showgirls, I Saw The Devil, Baise-Moi, Henry: Portrait Of A Serial Killer and its sequel, the Nightmare On Elm Street series, Vixen!, Natural Born Killers, House On The Edge Of The Park, the Ilsa series, George Romero's Living Dead series, The First Nudie Musical, Legend Of The Overfiend, Re-Animator, Forced Entry, Seven, Robocop and its sequels (at least the first sequel), Fight For Your Life, Porno Holocaust, Let Me Die A Woman, Romper Stomper, Santa Sangre, The Happy Hooker series, Maniac, Are You Still Reading This List, The Incredible Melting Man, Heavy Metal and the follow-up Heavy Metal 2000, Inside Deep Throat, Lady Terminator, A Party At Kitty And Stud's, Last Tango In Paris, Hellboy and its sequel and remake, Bloodsucking Freaks, American Gigolo, Sex And Zen, The Trip, the Hellraiser series, The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, Boxing Helena, Zombie, Man Bites Dog, Bound, Meet The Feebles, Humanoids From The Deep, The Raid and its sequel, the Prophecy series, Good Luck Miss Wyckoff, Sausage Party, Bad Lieutenant, Wonderland, Bound, Dead Heat, If You Don't Stop It... You'll Go Blind and its follow-up Can I Do It... 'Til I Need Glasses?, Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex * (* But Were Afraid To Ask), Lifeforce, and, of course, Orgazmo... for starters.) (Posted August 7, 2023)
Check for availability on Amazon (DVD) See also: The Devil's Rain,
If Footmen..., Years Of The Beast |
Eve
wearing bathing suits right from the start.
Then travel across North America and replace Gideon Bibles in hotel
rooms with 
