In Hollywood, ideology trumps profits. At least, that seems to explain why the movie industry has so zealously guarded its films against minor editing to remove foul language or nudity, despite a large potential audience for these "cleaner" versions. The decision by BYU's Varsity Theater to close up shop as the new school year begins is evidence of this bizarre set of priorities.
Because the Varsity Theater is a part of Brigham Young University, which is owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, it would in years past routinely clean up parts of popular movies to make them less offensive to the audience that came to see them. The theater was enormously popular. Then, however, a nearby theater in American Fork ran into trouble from a studio when it edited a popular film. Soon, Sony Pictures asked BYU to stop editing, and other studios likewise rejected the university's request to show films that had been edited similar to the way they are edited before being shown on airlines.
Left with little choice but to show old movies and the few G and PG films that come out of Hollywood these days, the theater was unable to attract enough people to make it profitable.
Producers and studio executives will, of course, argue for the need to guard their rights to free expression and to avoid censorship. But in many cases those arguments fall apart when politics and shrewd marketing are taken into account.
For example, some in Washington have begun criticizing the movie industry for marketing R-rated movies toward teenagers, most of whom are too young to attend such movies without an accompanying adult. That has led some producers to shoot two different versions of certain scenes — one that is graphic and filled with foul language, and one that is tame. If, when the movie nears release, the Motion Picture Association of America is on the verge of giving the film an R-rating, the producer can quickly substitute one of the cleaner scenes and use that as an argument for a PG-13 rating, which would keep politicians at bay.
So much for artistic integrity. It would be more accurate to say the film industry suffers an irrational fear of producing anything that is wholesome or good.
The Varsity Theater's decision was inevitable, given the tide of popular entertainment. Even some airlines have begun showing uncut versions of movies on flights that offer each passenger a personal video viewer on the back of the seat in front of them. The tragedy is that vast audiences with discriminating tastes and the money to spend on quality entertainment are left with nothing to see.