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These films are Rated C Mail Tribune / Bob Pennell Dan Doshier, owner of a Christian bookstore in Central Point, wants to provide families with popular movies that have the sex, violence and foul language expunged. He buys videos edited at a Utah company called CleanFlicks and loans them out to members of his CleanFlicks video co-operative. As in 'clean,'as Hollywood movies are presented without the sex, violence and foul language By JOHN DARLING I f you've ever thought there's too much gore, sex and cursing in movies, you can now rent CleanFlicks - popular films with the profanities muted and the lurid stuff simply chopped out. Two area video outlets offer the cleaned-up viewing: Zions Bookstore in Central Point and CleanFlicks in Grants Pass. If Zions' owner Dan Doshier does well with the video line, he hopes to move it to a central Medford location and open other outlets in Ashland and Klamath Falls. "We've had an overwhelming response," said Scott Richardson, owner of CleanFlicks in Grants Pass. "And it's mainly from people who want to watch movies that have good stories and good acting, but they're tired of being afraid about bringing videos into their home because of the shock factor for their kids." Doshier said his bookstore has about 50 to 100 members who borrow from their 220-title library of movies. The bookstore has been open for six years and Doshier began offering CleanFlicks about a month ago. Titles available through CleanFlicks' Web site "Braveheart "Breakfast Club" "Dead Man Walking" "The Devil's Own" "Die Hard" "The Firm" "Gladiator" "Happy Gilmore" "I Know What You Did Last Summer" "The Jerk" "Never Been Kissed" "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" "Platoon" "Raising Arizona" "Robo Cop" "Scent of a Woman" "Scream" and its sequels "Starship Troopers" "Terminator" "True Lies" Movies CleanFlicks will not edit "Pretty Woman" "Liar Liar" "Blair Witch Project" "The Story Of Us" "American History X" "Caddyshack" "Eyes Wide Shut" "Basic Instinct" "Showgirls" "Gross Pointe Blank" "Primary Colors" "Rounders" "Election" "Analyze This" "Face Off" "It's great not to have to see and hear what would normally be offensive," said Zions customer Melanie Clement, a mother of three and the wife of Central Point resident Terry Clement. "We don't watch R-movies, so this has opened up a wide variety of entertainment for us. "We just watched 'The Green Mile' and it was great. But we hadn't been able to see it 'til now because it had lots of use of the Lord's name in vain. And yes, the movie still made perfect sense without all that." The videos are altered at CleanFlicks headquarters in Pleasant Grove, Utah, then offered to franchisees at about twice the normal price, said Doshier. The firm avoids copyright infringement by altering tapes and not dubbing them, claiming on its Web site, "as long as you own the videotape, you can do whatever you want to with that particular tape." And for about $14 per tape, CleanFlicks will edit movies that individual customers send in. In a lawsuit filed against CleanFlicks by Hollywood producers in 2000, the court ruled that owners of videos could edit or do anything else to them as long as they weren't rented commercially, said Richardson. He, Doshier and other franchisees get around that by forming co-ops, which "loan" the videos to members. They pay monthly or annual fees about on par with other video stores. The franchises have a range of membership options, from a $30 per year member fee with a $3 per title use fee, to $15 membership fee per month with eight free movie use fees. In the sanitized videos, the treatment is a lot like Alfred Hitchcock's movies, which managed to thrill viewers by showing the knife coming down, then showing the victim, but skipping the guts spilling out on the ground, said Richardson. You'll see smooching, but none of what happens past the bedroom door, said Doshier. If non-marital sex is a central theme of a film, as in the story of the prostitute in "Pretty Woman," CleanFlicks dealers won't even try to clean it up; they just won't carry it, he said. Many clients with conservative family values wanted to see the Oscar-winning "Saving Private Ryan," said Doshier, but it contains 22 "f"-words and 31 "negative deity references" (using the Lord's name in vain). Without these and several other scenes of graphic violence, the movie came across as a powerful and important story that the whole family could handle, he said. "Customers joke with me that 'Gladiator' or 'Braveheart' must be about 15 minutes long after editing, but, really, they're still great. The violence is still there - just not the in-your-face gore. We don't rewrite what Hollywood made and we don't try to change the theme. We just tone them down so that people with strong family values and moral issues can bring them into their home." CleanFlicks franchisees, said Richardson, are not on a crusade against Hollywood. "We're only doing this because they won't. Our clients don't rent Hollywood's (uncut) R-rated movies and most of the PG stuff anyway. So, if they provided clean movies, they'd take our business away. But what they're making is junk, it's garbage. It's a cancer on our children and we're doing our part to get rid of it." "We've become so accepting of this (graphic sex and violence), that it doesn't bother people anymore," said Zions customer Cynthia Wright, the Central Point mother of five and wife of David Wright. "We have more violence and immorality because we see it in our homes every day." Wright either views movies before letting her children see them or evaluates them by doing research on the Web, she said. No other video stores in Southern Oregon are carrying CleanFlicks, because the firm's contract with Doshier and Richardson guarantees them right of first refusal to market them anywhere in their respective territories - basically Western Oregon, said Richardson. John Darling is a free-lance writer living in Ashland. E-mail him at [email protected] Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.