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Fans of Michael Mann, the catalyst behind such stylish NBC series as "Miami Vice" and "Crime Story," might have been surprised Sunday night to see the director's credit when NBC aired the 1995 heist film "HEAT": Alan Smithee.

That's the DGA-assigned moniker used by helmers who don't want to be associated with a film. Use of the moniker for the TV versions of feature films is unusual. But Mann said he was so appalled by network editing to fit a three-hour timeslot that he had little choice but to pull his name.

The film originally ran two hours and 52 minutes, and NBC wanted to cut it for a three-hour slot. Mann offered to lend new heat by adding footage cut from the original to fit a four-hour slot.

The helmer tried to get very involved, taking time from the Disney feature he's shooting to try and convince the network to air the film over two evenings to preserve most of its original content, saying "I think it would have been a better selling point for them."

Mann said there was a lot of back and forth between him and the network, and he was irate when NBC chose to edit the original.

"They cut so much out of the movie that they destroyed the narrative of the film along with its integrity," said Mann. "Artistically, I deplore what they did and I also criticized it as being piss-poor management of an asset they paid a lot of money for."

When Mann pulled his name, the network attempted to compromise: "They came back and offered to put back 17 minutes, and I said, ' Fine, then you can call it a Michael Smithee or Alan Mann film.'” The film, which marked the first screen pairing of Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, was in its broadcast premiere, but came in fourth in its slot among adults 18-49.

NBC did not comment.

Fitting a lengthy film into a three-hour timeslot makes hacking inevitable, since at least 48 minutes of that time goes into commercials and promos. Among the material cut from the original that Mann wanted to reinsert were scenes fleshing out the thief played by Tom Sizemore, and more sleuthing work by the detective (Pacino).

"The continuous narrative of cinema made those scenes unnecessary, but when you break into 11-minute periods, you need dynamic acts leading up to commercial breaks,” said Mann. "I'm not opposed to films showing on TV, but the question is how do you make the network work for you, how do you provide an act break that hooks the audience over the commercial breaks?"

Mann used his clout to retain character arcs to provide a complete look at the characters on both sides of the law and how they ended up in a final conflict over a bank robbery. "Too much time was taken out of the film that wasn't due to language or other content," said Mann.

" 'Heat' worked as a movie because you were personally involved in the world of all these people. You were engaged in their fortunes and what happened to them. To have that taken away by some amateur hacking away at the footage to make it fit a timeslot was unacceptable."

Mann is nearly finished shooting his Touchstone pic, which stars Russell Crowe as tobacco whistle blower Jeffrey Wigand and Al Pacino as former "60 Minutes" producer Lowell Bergman. He has not yet figured out what to call it. "There has been some movement," he said. "It has gone from ‘Untitled Michael Mann’ to 'Untitled Tobacco project.' "

"Honorable members of Congress, I speak to you as a person who has spent 60 years in the motion picture industry. You must know by now that many American moviemakers have an enormous grievance about the way their work is mutilated and their reputations damaged, without any chance, whatever, to put up a legal defense. It is difficult to imagine that this can happen in a civilized country which is supposedly proud of having actually invented the motion pictures that we know today.

"According to present law, the copyright holder has the right to have any number of scenes cut out of the film to make room for advertising, to have the projections speeded up to fit a TV time slot, to change large figures into close-ups or to take a black and white movie and colorize it by computer. "CITIZEN KANE" was about to be destroyed in this way when a clause was found in the contract which put a stop to it.

"Speaking for myself, two pictures which I directed, "THE SEARCH" and "THE SEVENTH CROSS," have already been colorized. I understand the result was horrendous. There have been public protests about it. I wonder if this will happen to other films I have directed such as "FROM HERE TO ETERNITY" or "HIGH NOON," where I deliberately adopted an old fashioned primitive style of photography to make the film look like a newsreel.

"There exist laws that protect all sorts of work by all sorts of artists: writers, painters, composers, photographers, sculptors. Why are filmmakers not protected in the same way? Films are not just the property of the copyright holder, they are part of our heritage. Future generations must have the right to see them in their original form. If they have been tampered with, their titles should be changed as they are no longer the same films.

"As members of Congress, you gentlemen are supposed to be the guardians of our civilization. As taxpayers and voters, the filmmakers are asking you to respect our moral rights by giving us a strong federal law so that we can challenge injustice in the courts of this country. We ask you to do it soon before film, as an art form, has been destroyed. You are responsible to us." 

In our last issue, we presented you with a transcript of a videotaped testimony to Congress made by John Huston outlining his reasons for asking lawmakers to pass laws that provide protection for filmmakers to defend alterations to their works that equal the protection that other artists have. This month, we present you with a transcript of one of Huston’s contemporaries — director Fred Zinnemann — who was equally concerned with the need to pass laws to protect our films from alterations.

"Honorable members of Congress, I speak to you as a person who has spent 60 years in the motion picture industry. You must know by now that many American moviemakers have an enormous grievance about the way their work is mutilated and their reputations damaged, without any chance, whatever, to put up a legal defense. It is difficult to imagine that this can happen in a civilized country which is supposedly proud of having actually invented the motion pictures that we know today.

"According to present law, the copyright holder has the right to have any number of scenes cut out of the film to make room for advertising, to have the projections speeded up to fit a TV time slot, to change large figures into close-ups or to take a black and white movie and colorize it by computer. "CITIZEN KANE" was about to be destroyed in this way when a clause was found in the contract which put a stop to it.

"Speaking for myself, two pictures which I directed, "THE SEARCH" and "THE SEVENTH CROSS," have already been colorized. I understand the result was horrendous. There have been public protests about it. I wonder if this will happen to other films I have directed such as "FROM HERE TO ETERNITY" or "HIGH NOON," where I deliberately adopted an old fashioned primitive style of photography to make the film look like a newsreel.

"There exist laws that protect all sorts of work by all sorts of artists: writers, painters, composers, photographers, sculptors. Why are filmmakers not protected in the same way? Films are not just the property of the copyright holder, they are part of our heritage. Future generations must have the right to see them in their original form. If they have been tampered with, their titles should be changed as they are no longer the same films.

"As members of Congress, you gentlemen are supposed to be the guardians of our civilization. As taxpayers and voters, the filmmakers are asking you to respect our moral rights by giving us a strong federal law so that we can challenge injustice in the courts of this country. We ask you to do it soon before film, as an art form, has been destroyed. You are responsible to us." (1991)

The picture may speak a thousand words, but even a million words may not be enough for Hollywood's creative artists to change seemingly invulnerable copyright laws.

Yet, spurred by advancing technologies that can alter the film image far beyond what a film's creators originally conceived -- as well as a generation of Hollywood cineastes such as Martin Scorsese who believe in the primacy of film as art -- a cadre of directors, writers, cinematographers and other visual craftspeople are organizing as never before.

A key element in their frontal charge is the Artists Rights Foundation, a non-profit organization founded by the DGA in 1991 and quickly bolstered with an alliance including the Writers Guild, the American Society of Cinematographers, the American Cinema Editors, the Screen Actors Guild, the Society of Composers & Lyricists and the International Photographers Guild.

"The DGA," foundation president Elliot Silverstein explains, "was largely paying the freight for this effort initially, but everyone who is involved on the artistic side of filmmaking realized that this effort was in their interest. The light a cinematographer intends for a scene can be altered with colorization, or the color of costumes can be changed digitally in an instant. From the Directors Guild's side, we realized that we didn't have to be unilateral about this, and so we reached out to everyone in the creative community."

The foundation's fundamental purpose is to educate those in the industry and the viewing public about growing threats to the integrity of movies as filmmakers conceive them, with the ultimate goal of the U.S.' adhering to the internationally recognized artists rights contained in the Berne Convention, the international copyright convention to which the U.S. is one among 100 signatories.

While other Berne signatories such as and recognize not only the individual's commercial rights inherent in copyright but the moral rights of the creative author of the work, the has interpreted these provisions differently. "Berne intends to protect the rights of the individual," says Silverstein. "The tries to get around this by identifying corporations as persons."

Hollywood's moral rights advocates, led prominently by directors Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and Sydney Pollack, cinematographer Allen Daviau and actor-producer Tom Cruise, argue that the following American reading of copyright protection flies in the face of Berne. They cite this clause in Berne as bolstering their claim to artistic rights: "Independently of the author's economic rights, and even after the transfer of said rights, the author shall have the right to claim authorship of the work and to object to any distortion, mutilation or other modification of, or other derogatory action in relation to, the said work, which would be prejudicial to his honor and reputation."

With rare exceptions (such as the late John Cassavetes), filmmakers do not own their films outright, and have not been able to claim artistic ownership in a court. The result, foundation members say, has been some dramatic alterations and distortions of movies as they are seen on video, laser disc or TV broadcast:

TV airings of "LAWRENCE OF ARABIA” that adopt the pan-and-scan technique to electronically pan across a widescreen image will show either Peter O'Toole's Lawrence blowing toward a candle, or the candle itself, but cannot show both.

Colorization of "IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE" changes the mood of James Stewart's nightmare into a bright, bubbly Bedford Falls, not the dark, black-and- white moodiness of Frank Capra's original.

Such meticulously crafted sequences as the climax of George Cukor's "GASLIGHT" can now be electronically "speeded" so they fit into a TV broadcast's timeframe.

And beyond the frequent trimming of a movie from its theatrical release for its life on a video shelf or a TV screen, comes now the inclusion of a scene from one work into another, such as scenes from Spielberg's "DUEL" inserted into "THE INCREDIBLE HULK." With motion picture authorship in the exclusive hands of corporations comes, Silverstein argues, "an absurdity. A corporation claiming to be a person is absurd."

But because of this linkage of commercial and moral rights held by corporate entities, what Silverstein terms the "gang rape" of movies continues.

Foundation supporters freely describe their efforts as "uphill" and "long-term," but the group's various projects appear to be gathering momentum. Robert Wise is preparing a feature film, "WHO DID THAT?", while Joe Dante is readying a short, " NOW YOU SEE IT, NOW YOU DON’T," both of which will serve as educational tools to dramatize the effects of serious alterations and distortions of the movie image.

The first issue of a newsletter for foundation supporters is set for distribution at the end of November, while the foundation’s new web site (www.artistsrights.org) is already up, with enhanced graphics and more expanded user tools being added weekly.

While the foundation's usual work -- such as the annual John Huston Award for Artists Rights (won this year by Scorsese) and symposia -- continues, its legal defense fund supports an ongoing effort to find a test case of artistic rights violations by which the Berne provisions can be tested.

"We've come close to a test case," Silverstein says, "but we want to be very careful, so our lawyers feel they can prevail in court."