Charlie White complains that certain small production houses are using the new DV tools to edit the smutty parts out of movies for concerned parents. I think he’s right to complain, and the Director’s Guild does have a beef. Not because Art is necessarily being harmed by cutting nude scenes or violence from their oh-so-deep works, but because some of these companies are doing it for a profit. This is wrong. My feeling, though, is that tools like iMovie and iDVD are great for concerned parents who want their children to see personalized editions of movies they like (give or take an objectionable scene or two).
A lot of people don’t realize how easy it is now, and how little time and effort it would take for a creative dad or mom to rework, say, Terry Gilliam’s under-rated but overlong Adventures of Baron Munchausen and make it more palatable for their children. More power to the people in that corner, I say. They already do it with books. Why not with home video?