Cut! Hollywood is being taken to the cleaners

The movie looks like Erin Brockovich, but it sure doesn't sound like Erin Brockovich. In the scene where the title character, played by Julia Roberts, finds a parking ticket on her car, she screams "Oh!" a couple of times in a way that strongly suggests a more forceful word is about to follow.

Except it doesn't. And her head does this funny jolting movement that suggests either a debilitating nervous disease or a particularly cruddy piece of film editing.

In this version of the movie, utterly unauthorised but being distributed nonetheless through one of the fastest-growing video rental chains in the United States, the famously foul-mouthed Erin Brockovich has had her tongue scrubbed clean.

In the similarly sanitised version of The Godfather, Sonny Corleone does not die in a hail of bullets pounding relentlessly into his car. He just ... well, he's sort of there one minute and gone the next.

One can only imagine what Saving Private Ryan looks like without the gore on the Normandy beaches (other than being much shorter). Or Mulholland Drive without the kinky lesbian sex (could it be even more incomprehensible than the original?).

Still, this is what is on offer from a Utah-based chain called CleanFlicks, an operation that began with a couple of guys and a DVD editing machine a couple of years ago but now has grown into a nationwide phenomenon, with nearly 70 outlets across the West and Midwest – a growth rate of Starbucks proportions.

"No more unpleasant surprises," the company proclaims in its logo, and the promise may hold true for "family values" conservatives who believe they have a duty to protect their loved ones from degenerate liberal smut. The Hollywood directors whose work has been bowdlerised, though, find the practice extremely surprising, and not remotely pleasant.

They are already forced to approve cleaned-up versions of their films for rebroadcast on television or aircraft. But in this case the modifications have been carried out without their consent, and nothing is guaranteed to infuriate self-respecting film directors more than the suspicion that others are messing around with their work.

Last month, a dozen prominent members of the Directors Guild of America were considering a lawsuit against CleanFlicks, claiming copyright infringements and demanding that the doctored tapes be withdrawn from commercial distribution. The aggrieved parties included Robert Altman (whose Gosford Park is on the CleanFlicks list), Norman Jewison (The Hurricane), Curtis Hanson (LA Confidential) and Michael Mann (Heat, Ali).

But then a subsidiary of CleanFlicks, with outlets in Colorado and Idaho, decided to strike first, and filed its own suit in federal court in Denver. The suit sought not redress, merely a judicial declaration stating that the company's practices were not in violation of copyright law. To generate maximum publicity, the 16 defendants named in the suit included most of Hollywood's top-drawer directors – Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Mr Altman, Robert Redford, Sydney Pollack and Steven Soderbergh.

"We are taking the bull by the horns," said Pete Webb of CleanFlicks in Colorado. "We want to get our suit into court before the DGA does." A couple of things seemed odd immediately, though. CleanFlicks sued directors rather than the studios that hold the copyright to the films. Also, some named defendants, such as Mr Scorsese, do not have films in the CleanFlicks catalogue – giving the whole thing the appearance of a crude publicity stunt.

The DGA, meanwhile, has gone silent, removing material on the subject from its website and sticking simply to a formal statement. "We believe it is the plaintiffs who, through their unauthorised altering of original works, are in violation of the law," it says. "Perhaps they are unaware that the United States Constitution directed Congress to pass laws to ensure that the creators of original works had the "exclusive right" to their work and prohibited their unauthorised exploitation by others for financial gain."

CleanFlicks' argument is based on the legal concept of "fair use". They say that since they purchase the unadulterated version of the films in the usual way, and since their customers are members of a private club – CleanFlicks works on a monthly subscription basis – nobody is losing out financially and nothing is being misrepresented.

Legal experts are divided on which side has it right. The directors certainly have a powerful artistic argument, but violating good taste is not, in itself, against the law.

What seems particularly astonishing is the popularity of CleanFlicks. It made a certain amount of sense in Utah, where devout Mormons are prohibited from seeing R-rated films. (CleanFlicks has come up with its own "E" rating, for everyone). But why would anyone want to see a sanitised Saving Private Ryan, given that the brutally realistic depiction of battle is the whole point?