Cleanflix (2009) - A Shockingly Interesting Discussion on Art and IP

good doc about an industry of editing/renting/selling "clean" versions of movies

First, this movie could not have opened in any more of a cliched, repetitive way as it blares the song "Sex and Violence" by the Sex Pistols...as it opens to a scene in Utah...just like SLC Punk. i thought this was just going to be Mormom bashing but the middle third was pretty good

after a while of indirect conservative/Mormon bashing, it gets into the story about the industry itself

the concept is fascinating, in that a religion restricts itself from watching a movie rated in a way by a private, non-religious organization. ignoring the whole ignorance/conformity issue, and it's remarkable how the whole relationship works

the philosophical debate is an interesting one regarding intellectual property. hollywood is upset that its art is edited by the common man for his common usage. does SFP have the right to buy a movie and then edit it, then show it to others? is this wrong?

on the flip side, the commercial arguments of hollywood clearly fail. the distributors operated under a "one to one" ratio. they weren't just making mass copies of these movies. for each they edited, they purchased an original

hollywood had people arguing that the editor-distributors claim to know what the audience wants, but they can't, which is also a failing argument because these operations were successful so there CLEARLY was a market for these edited movies

this movie is a good movie showing some severe flaws in the IP system in America, and how Hollywood uses this governmental monopoly (plus a lot of hubris) to make terrible business decisions. ironically, these bad decisions affect the bottom line of the studios who COULD finance more artistic ventures for the directors' bleeding vaginas

also, it was interesting because the man who dominates the second half of the movie is an obvious closet case...Mormon. Maybe not, he was busted for getting a 14 year old (girl0 to suck his dick on camera