Clearplay: Watching movies on your own terms
There's a rich irony in Hollywood today. If you look at where Hollywood makes the most money, the vast majority of its cash comes from PG-13, PG, and G-rated films. R-rated films? It's hard to find any in a list of Hollywood's all-time highest grossing films at the box office.
Indeed, within the top-25 highest grossing films of all time, only one rated-R film even makes the list, The Matrix: Reloaded at number 28. If you include the top 50, only one other R-rated movie (two total) makes the list. In the top 100? Only 11 R-rated films.
So why are more and more movies (perhaps intentionally) laced with content that guarantees an R rating and poor attendance?
I don't know. I can't imagine it being anything other than a cynical, smug Hollywood attitude that insists on adding "that one scene" in the name of art, pretending that it knows what audiences really want.
For those interested in watching movies on their own terms, or who have children that you'd really like to see Saving Private Ryan, for example, but you think the gritty violence may be too much, you now have a choice.
It's called Clearplay, a 100-percent legal DVD player and software service that edits movies on the fly without actually altering the physical DVD. As such, it gets a free (but begrudging) free pass from the Directors Guild of America, which successfully sued into oblivion Cleanflicks and other DVD editing services (though it's still possible to buy edited DVDs online).
How does Clearplay work, and why would you want to use it?
You can think of Clearplay like you would a remote. Instead of you physically managing the remote to fast forward through "that one bad scene," Clearplay does it for you. Clearplay doesn't physically alter the DVD, which keeps it legal, and allows you to watch the same DVDs you rent or buy through Netflix, Blockbuster, or Wal-Mart, but on your own terms. Most interestingly, you can actually set the levels of sex, nudity, violence, profanity, vulgarity, etc. that you'd like to watch.
For me, I can do without the sex, nudity, profanity, and vulgarity: All of it. In most movies, this means that I miss all of 30 seconds of a movie that some Hollywood director threw in to appeal to her audience (conveniently overlooking the fact that an R rating might make a director cool with her peers, but it's a virtual guarantee that her movie is going to be a financial flop, comparatively speaking). As for violence, I watched 3:10 to Yuma the other night and I felt that a certain amount was necessary to tell the story, so I turned the violence option to "Moderate." I saw all the gunplay without the gore.
For those Europeans reading this, you probably would do the inverse settings: Maybe sex and nudity doesn't offend you but you could do with less violence. With Clearplay, you can easily set your preferences to scrub movies of the aspects you find distasteful.
Or maybe you want to see the full monty, but you'd like your kids to be able to watch the same movie, but with sex or violence or whatever removed. Clearplay makes that a cinch. You can watch the movie unedited while having your kids watch it later, completely edited on your terms.
It's a fantastic service, one that makes Hollywood more money while allowing people to enjoy Hollywood's creations on their own terms. I rent more movies because I don't have to see "that one scene" or the gratuitous profanity or violence.
The Clearplay DVD player costs $67.95 or $79.99, depending on the version you get. This prices includes a year of filter updates. Thereafter, the price is $7.95 per month. In other words, you get a new DVD player for as cheap (or cheaper) than you can buy one in the store, but you get a valuable service, too.
The Clearplay service isn't without its faults. The DVD player doesn't support high-definition DVDs. Also, the editing of the profanity and vulgarity isn't as clean as the editing out of violence and sexuality, because it mutes all sound when it bleeps out a swear word. (If Clearplay were physically altering the DVD it could alter the voice track while leaving the background sounds/music untouched, but it can't technologically do this with its process, at least as I understand it.)
Even so, I heartily recommend the service to anyone who wants to watch movies on their own terms, not someone else's.
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
There are so many legal and not so legal options out there on the internet to watch movies instantly, whenever and wherever you want, and free. This must be the future. Nothing else can work.
After you've tasted ambrozia, you're not going to go back to sugar.
Some great places to watch online free: Hulu, Fancast, Sidereel, TV-Links.eu, Surfthechannel, Tvshack, FlickPeek, Watch-movies.
Use them. Good day.
Second, you might want to try a more accurate list of top-grossing films -- one that adjusts for inflation. When taking such things into consideration, I think you will find that about 10% of the top grossing movies have been rated R.
Third, your logic is faulty, as the vast majority of films on your list would have been released recently, but the number of R-rated releases has decreased dramatically since 1990. So of course there will be fewer on the list.
But hey, if your tender mind needs to see a G-rated version of The Godfather...whatever.
You mean the director? Thanks for creating a post clearly showing what a pu$$y you are. How anyone can take you seriously now is a mystery.
BTW, it's clearly obvious why R-rated movies makes less money. The target audience is smaller. Yes some people choose to make art that emulates life..all of it and can still make a handy profit. What's next, putting covers on nude statues? Hell is the day I have to live in the sanitized 'Beaver Cleaver' world of Matt Asay.
Some films are not made to be blockbusters(most of them are extremely insulting movies), some are made for the sake of the artistic vision of the filmmaker. Sometimes that vision warrants an R rating. Money is what gives us so many craptastic movies.
Speaking of The Matrix, I always have felt it deserved a PG-13. There is nothing all that graphic in the movies, and the star wars movies had way more violence yet were rated PG. At any rate, only the first one was worth watching.
I can't believe you'd endorse equipment for altering my artistic creation in the privacy of your own home.
Likewise, I do not support your use of the fast forward button on your Tivo. Advertising executives produce ads to express themselves, not to give you the pleasure of skipping them.
I do not support your use of the rewind button. If you don't catch my artistic subtleties the first time around, I don't want you going back to figure them out.
I do not support your use of the pause button. Please get your popcorn and take your bathroom breaks before watching my movie in your home. The pause button breaks the flow of my artistic creation.
You just don't get it.
Why can't we go back to the 50's (the Beaver Cleaver era) when these technical improvements weren't available?
Love,
Hollywood
P.S I have some suggestions on parenting for you...
you sir, are a dork.
If you don't want violence, sex or whatever you find offensive, don't watch the offending piece of creative material. Or... you can wait for it to come on ABC Family channel like every other adult dork.
I'll admit, the network edited version of Fast Times at Ridgemont High was a work of genius... Lines like "Hope you had a helluva **** Arnold" being dubbed with "Hope you had a heckuva break Arnold" don't really change the movie, do they? Changing the graffiti on the wall from "Big Hairy *****" to "Big Hairy Beard" doesn't change the comedic effect of the film at all. And now, you don't even have to worry for your kids to see a movie that has a ***** in it at all... gratuitous or not.
I sit and watch every show with my kids at least once. I might not stick around for the endless repeats, but I've seen 95% of what they have, and explain carefully and unendingly what's happening to them so they don't turn into mindless idiots.
I dunno Matt... your normally lucid column has taken a turn down a weird road.
Maybe you need glasses to walk through a museum, and they can automatically cover the naked chicks in paintings and sculptures with clothes.
Shielding yourself from what you perceive as gratuitous is fine, but it reeks of avoidance and sugar coating reality.
good luck
When I couldn't get edited movies for years, I simply didn't watch them. My life was no worse. But now I can watch movies and it gives me something else to do with my spare time. I'm not sure why anyone would find this offensive. I certainly don't mind when people opt not to read this blog because they don't agree with the point of view. Why would anyone worry about whether or not I'm seeing those naughty bits of a movie?
These comments prove my implied point about Hollywood. It's not business sense that drives the inclusion of gratuitous sex and violence. It's the same elitist attitude that people are displaying in these comments. One of my all-time favorite movies is Rushmore - I've never seen it unedited. Guess what? I don't care. Neither should you. It's still a great movie without the profanity and vulgarity. Perhaps I even think it's a better movie without it.
"Indeed, within the top-25 highest grossing films of all time, only one rated-R film even makes the list, The Matrix: Reloaded at number 28"
or
"So why are more and more movies (perhaps intentionally) laced with content that guarantees an R rating and poor attendance?"
The first quote shows how little thought went into your writing.
The second shows how amazingly greed-centric your mindset is. Let me guess, you have an MBA, the lowest common denominator of degrees.
"No one is forcing you to edit your movies. I'm certainly not."
No, but you're advocating Hollywood should make movies only for the sake of money and the artistic vision of the director should be ignored.
If your post had omitted the first four self-righteous and arrogant paragraphs I wouldn't have had any problem with it. Just because you want yourself and your children to be sheltered from the world around you, doesn't mean the rest of us do. I shouldn't be surprised, since many if of not most of your blog posts exhibit this lack of awareness. Plenty R-rated movies make A LOT of money. That you ignore this only proves my point.
Trolls with no reading comprehension.
Freedom on the internet has just become a euphamism for childish self-centred uncontrolled behaviour.
It sickens me to read the comments to this blog entry.
Matt you have my sympathies; and I for one am glad for you that you choose not to fill your mind or that of your children with purile images in the name of entertainment - good for you - that's your CHOICE.
- by matt_ryan August 11, 2008 10:36 AM PDT
- Matt,
- Reply to this comment
-
(18 Comments)You asked: "So why are more and more movies (perhaps intentionally) laced with content that guarantees an R rating and poor attendance? I don't know." Fact is, those things are put into movies to make them addictive. I don't buy the whole artistic integrity argument. I think in truth the creators of movies know that adding that type of content will compel more people to watch even if the actual plot and theme are garbage.
It really is surprising the revolt you get for daring to imply that you might wish to enjoy your version of the movie. That's akin to saying you shouldn't use OpenOffice.org unless you plan to use all of the features or that you shouldn't buy a CD if you plan to ever skip any of the tracks.
Makes me wonder if, when the emperor paraded about in his "new clothes," whether the people ostracized the child for declaring that the emperor was naked. Or whether they would have, if the child had in fact been an adult. Kudos to you Matt, and to Clearplay.