Movies Get a <i> Real </i> Screening in Utah : Films: Media Review Commission meets monthly to evaluate content. The descriptions are printed in local newspapers.

PROVO, Utah — Michael Medved, you have fans here.

In the most conservative towns in one of the most conservative states in the nation, film critic Medved’s campaign for less sex, violence and profanity in the movies is guaranteed to win boosters.

In fact, Mr. Medved, they’re way ahead of you here.

On one Wednesday each month, the 12 citizens of the Provo-Orem Media Review Commission gather at Provo City Hall for pizza and frank discussion of what Hollywood is sending to their towns’ silver screens. The citizen’s jury, which is sponsored and financed by the cities, reviews all new theatrical and video releases, breaking down plots and action into terse descriptions, which are printed in local newspapers and kept in binders at most video shops.

But don’t mistake these citizens for prudes. They don’t mind nudity, profanity or other Hollywood staples, as long as they are not, in their opinion, gratuitous. Nor are they censors, they say; they simply label each film’s contents, to help the conservative movie consumer.

“There are people in this area who want guidelines. They were raised with them and they want them all their lives, for everything they do,” said Sue Bartlett, the commission’s chairwoman.

Virtually everyone in the Provo-Orem sister cities is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which operates Brigham Young University here. Most people like the scrubbed-clean image of their town. And Utah in general is a tough state for risque movies. Hard-core pornography is banned by state law.

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But even by Utah standards, Provo-Orem is a tough area for racy movies. Under city ordinances, the police and city attorney can prevent the showing of any film that is found to fuel a “shameful or morbid interest in nudity, sex or excretion, or sexual responses over and beyond those that would be characterized as normal. (That) does not include material that provokes only normal, healthy sexual desires.”

“Among conservative communities, with 10 being the highest, this is a 9 1/2,” said Judy Bell, an Orem City Council member and longtime Media Commission member. “People here want to know what they’re going to see.”

When Sharon Stone uncrossed her legs in her now-infamous scene in “Basic Instinct,” for example, commission members took one look and called the police. The film ultimately escaped prosecution, but the commission’s warning was unusually detailed:

“Profanity: abundant, deity, sexual.

“Nudity: abundant, female full, male rear.

“Sex: abundant, intense, explicit, conversation, homosexual, sadomasochism, unmarried sex, violent.

“Violence: abundant, graphic, beating, bloody, fistfights, shooting, stabbing.

“Drugs/Alcohol: some, accepted.”

Despite the commission’s warning--or maybe because of it--”Basic Instinct” did just fine at the Provo box office.

Is it any surprise that Provo’s highest-grossing film of all time is “Beauty and the Beast” or that residents have been known to drive 40 miles to Salt Lake City to avoid being seen at a theater showing an R-rated movie?

Just sitting through some of the movies can be punishing for commission members. Then there are angry calls from the public, who often are upset that the commission has actually not been vigilant enough.

For example, the group was deluged with complaints in 1989 from moviegoers incensed that a reviewer had overlooked a nude portrait of a woman hanging in the background of one scene in “Batman.”

Even when the commission does raise a red flag, as it did with “Basic Instinct,” the city prosecutor has been reluctant to press charges ever since “the ‘Porky’s’ Incident” in 1982. The city went to court to shut down the teen-sex romp when it opened in Provo, but it lost on all counts; the bruising national media attention left many in town wondering why they’d bothered.

“I don’t know if we’d do it again,” Bell said. “Half of BYU went to Salt Lake City to see what they were missing.”

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Commission members acknowledge that their efforts might actually be viewed as an aid to those seeking a road map to raunch. When “My Own Private Idaho,” Gus Van Sant’s movie about young homosexuals, played in Provo in 1991, one commission member considered calling the law but put down the phone when it occurred to him that the resulting publicity might actually draw people into the theater to see what the fuss was about.

“Idaho” closed without a fuss after a four-day run.