Varsity making comeback with clean flicks

Before the Varsity Theatre stopped showing editing movies, between 30 and 40 percent of movies were versions edited by the movie studios for airlines. BYU's movie committee edited the rest on campus.

In December 1997, Sony Pictures asked BYU to stop editing its films.

After ending edited movies, the Varsity Theatre “has been mostly empty for the past seven years, first home to poorly attended movie classics and then to the university's International Cinema program.”

Ron Jones, campus-involvement coordinator, said, “We received permission last fall from the administration to show movies again at the Varsity Theatre, but we will not accept any edited movies, we will not edit them ourselves and we must preview all the movies to make sure they meet BYU standards.”

"We're looking for movies that don't need to be edited, and we're finding some," he said.  "Our purpose is to provide clean entertainment for our students.  Rather than trying to make money with our films, we want to provide students with inexpensive choices for on-campus entertainment."

The Varsity will show a single move on one weekend a month until next fall, when it will start showings on two weekends a month.  Before movies could return to the Varsity, the administration had to drop a requirement that the theater be profitable and allow the theater to deal with Swank Motion Pictures Inc., the company that distributes movies to colleges and universities in the United States.  Swank charges $721 to show a movie, plus 50 percent of the box office.  Sellouts don't produce enough revenue to offset the cost, overhead, and the wages for several employees.  The goal now is to use the theater to enhance campus life.

The Varsity Theatre has 794 seats.