Ever cover a child`s eyes as the movie action suddenly heats up? Or worry about big-screen body counts and the buckets of blood?
Leah Duet, a California entrepreneur and soon-to-be-Texan, believes she has an answer-movies scrubbed clean of anything offensive.
Violence, nudity and bad language will be edited out of videotapes targeted to families with children and anyone else weary of decapitations and tired of titillating fare.
More Top Picks Best Gaming Headsets Under 150 Dollars
Those sanitized versions will be added to a list of 3,100 films chosen for their wholesomeness and offered to video outlets, catalog buyers and mass merchandisers nationwide by His Majesty`s Resources, a San Diego company Duet started in 1982.
In addition, HMR plans to franchise 2,000 video stores that will rent only pre-screened and edited movies.
”There`s a desire for parents to instill the appropriate values in their children. We need entertainment to reinforce those decisions, not to undermine them,” Duet said recently in Austin on the first leg of a 50-state promotional tour for her company. She`ll return soon to move to Dallas, drawn by the city`s central location.
While Duet expects her company to make $400 million by Christmas 1996, not everyone is thrilled with the arrangement.
”Filmmakers do have a major problem with alteration of their work,”
said Chuck Warn, spokesman for the Directors Guild of America. ”This kind of editing would certainly fall into that broad area that the Directors Guild and individual directors have a major problem with.”
Warn`s group is pushing the National Film Disclosure Act, a bill pending before Congress that would require changes made in a film to be prominently labeled.
”It`s a consumer protection concept, and it also would protect the artist …by not holding out this mutilated version as the original work,” he said.
Warn points out that most directors have little control over editing once their films are released. Producers hold that power, and they are often happy to generate additional income by selling editing rights, Duet said.
Although entire scenes will be removed, the company will try to maintain the artistic integrity of the films, Duet says. Harsh language, for example, can be voiced-over by an imitator or even the original actor to avoid losing the dialogue.
”We can`t guarantee that every film has no offensive language, no nudity and no violence because that would remove about every film out there,” she said. ”It wouldn`t be real life any more.”
HMR has identified 800 films as candidates for editing and has begun negotiating for their rights, she said.
Among the titles on HMR`s list are First Blood, the movie that launched Sylvester Stallone as recurring martyr Rambo, and Top Gun.
”We`re not interested in every movie,” Duet said. Basic Instinct, we wouldn`t touch it with a 10-foot pole. It`s not for our market; it`s not a family film.
”A lot of them you can`t (edit). The plots are wrong to begin with. What do you say about an alternate lifestyle movie? How can you bring that into the family situation?”
Family is the focus of HRM, and the current debate over ”family values” kicked up by Vice President Dan Quayle and other politicians has been a godsend.
”Timing is critical to the success to any venture,” Duet said. ”This is absolutely a boon. It`s awesome. We`ve always had family values, but for some reason we`re more conscious of it now.”
HMR began with a San Diego outlet slowly building a video library. An over- the-counter stock offering will help raise $24 million to finance a national expansion.
”Originally, it felt very much like (a crusade),” Duet said of offering untainted entertainment. ”But now it`s definitely business, and it`s big-time business.”
But if successful, HMR will do more than line Duet`s pockets. It will, she hopes, influence the entire entertainment industry.
With 2,000 outlets and sales of $3.5 billion projected by 1996, ”the possible result is you automatically dictate production,” Duet said. By fueling demand for clean movies, the film industry would have to respond, she said. HMR also has begun pre-production work on half-hour educational videos for children. Larger productions, up to motion pictures, may be undertaken in the future, Duet said.
More Top Picks Best Kindles
”People are already sending us manuscripts,” she said. ”We wish they wouldn`t, but there are just so many good plots that don`t get attention in Hollywood.”