Santa Ana : Ruling on Recording of X-Rated Films Expected

A Superior Court judge is scheduled to decide Monday whether an investigator employed by the City of Santa Ana will be allowed to continue recording X-rated movies at the Mitchell Brothers Theatre--where he had secretly taped films for 11 years.

Last Monday, Superior Court Commissioner Jane D. Meyers denied a request to allow investigator Robert McGuire immediate access to Mitchell Brothers. Instead, Meyers set a hearing for Monday, at which time attorney James J. Clancy, representing Santa Ana, can ask Judge Harmon G. Scoville to stop the theater from barring the undercover investigator.

Clancy said the delay could cost the city, which has been battling for more than a decade to shut down the theater, an extra $2,000 to $3,000. That’s the weekly cost of putting together presentations of the adult movies that investigator McGuire views each week, Clancy said.

Tom Steel, attorney for Mitchell Brothers, criticized the amount of money Santa Ana is spending to shut down the cinema as “absolutely shocking” and “total madness.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard of anything like that. I do a lot of adult movie cases,” Steel said following the afternoon hearing. “You’re talking about $400,000 to $600,000 in a few years just to produce these compilations of still photographs.”

“The court would be doing the City of Santa Ana a vast service if they would bar them from coming into the theater,” Steel said.

The $2,000-plus tab covers the processing of McGuire taping--with a motion picture camera and a tape recorder--scenes from the different movies shown each week at the theater at 1565 West 17th St. One still photo is taken from every three seconds of film, Clancy said. They are then developed and pasted on board, with the dialogue in a caption under the photo, Steel said. The $2,000 to $3,000 weekly figure does not include attorney fees, Clancy said.

Santa Ana has paid $115,546 so far this year on the Mitchell Brothers case, in addition to about $193,000 spent through the years, City Atty. Edward Cooper said.

“The City Council is well aware that this will cost several hundred thousands,” Cooper said. “That’s a policy decision which the City Council has made and appropriated funds for.”

“For the time spent, the bills seem appropriate,” Cooper said.

The city has filed 29 lawsuits--24 in the past five months, or about one per week--against Mitchell Brothers, Clancy said. McGuire, a former Los Angeles Police Department vice officer, provided the film the city used in its presentations--until he was uncovered.

Theater security discovered McGuire and his 8-millimeter movie camera and escorted him out. For 11 years, he had walked into the theater with the equipment hidden under a brown towel and successfully recorded what he saw on the screen.

Clancy unsuccessfully argued Monday that McGuire needed to return to the theater this past week to view the latest three films. The films are changed each week. They run from Wednesday through Tuesday and McGuire won’t have enough time to prepare the week’s presentation if he has to wait until Monday to go back to the theater, Clancy said.

Last week’s hearing involved unusual courtroom procedure that has become standard for the Mitchell Brothers case: All parties talked via telephone because Steel was in San Francisco. More than 20 hearings have been conducted over the telephone so that Steel would not have to fly to Orange County, Clancy said.