In 1981, Ken Tipton was living the American Dream. He and his wife Carol had just opened Video Library, the first video rental store in St. Louis, and business was booming. Throughout the 1980s, the chain expanded through franchising, with stores in Missouri, Illinois and Texas.

Trouble was brewing, though. From the start, the Tiptons’ high-profile stores were the targets of the Rev. Donald Wildmon’s fundamentalist Christian organization, the National Federation for Decency (NFD). The NFD insisted that Video Library remove from its inventory movies that they deemed “…obscene or a detriment to the community and its children.” Among the ranks of these moral spine-benders were Hail Mary, Taxi Driver, Agnes of God, Blazing Saddles, Animal House, Mr. Mom and Splash.

Splash, a silly little fish movie, a ticket to Hell? According to Vesta Ward, one of the leaders of the NFD, it was a movie that promoted sex with animals…because Tom Hanks gets it on with a mermaid.

That particular incident became a hilarious scene in Tipton’s film, Heart Of The Beholder, a personal passion play over a decade in the making that details the entrepreneur’s unbelievable struggle, from his humble beginnings as an idea guy in search of the right opportunity to his loss of everything to “Reverend Brewer’s” misguided moral crusaders.

“My main mission in making this movie was to show what was really going on behind the scenes,” says Tipton, an occasional actor who served as John Candy’s stand-in on Planes, Trains and Automobiles. “Most people see the picket lines on TV, and that’s it. Really, the harassment techniques that groups like this use can get very creative.”

One of the most effective methods that the NFD used at the time was filling out thousands of magazine subscription cards in Tipton’s name.

“It worked, because it really pissed us off,” Tipton recalls, “like the constant phone calls with people reciting Biblical scripture, and the people following us around and just pointing. It sounds like goofy intimidation, but it freaks you out, especially if you have small kids like we did.”

A scene in the movie that one might chalk up to dramatic license for the sake of entertainment is the one in which the main character’s young daughter is kidnapped by a mentally unwell zealot intent on sending her “back to God to be reborn to parents who worship the Lord.” This was a depiction of the heated weeks after Tipton decided to rent Martin Scorsese’s controversial 1988 film, The Last Temptation Of Christ. But it really happened.

“About 80% of the movie was as it happened,” Tipton explains. “The biggest change was the length, as my original script came in at 500 pages [one page being one minute of screen time].”

Tipton’s mentor, Hollywood legend Robert Wise, inspired Tipton to streamline the script to a manageable shooting length.

“He talked with me a lot about the amount of truth,” Tipton notes, “and told me that only 15% of his The Sound of Music was reality. In our case, we took it as close as we could, but with people hocking their houses to fund the film, you have to make sure they get that entertainment value, too.”

And it is an entertaining, polished little movie. While there are no big stars, as the film had a very modest $500,000 budget, there are familiar faces, like Anne Ramsay (”Six Feet Under”), Michael Dorn (”Star Trek: The Next Generation”) and “MADtv” sweetie Arden Myrin. The story (which Tipton points out is about the abuse of power and not dissing Christians), is easy to relate to, and should serve as a touchstone for free-thinkers everywhere.

Just as the NFD has morphed into the American Family Association, so too has the group’s methods of harassing Tipton.

“They’ve gotten smart about it,” he says. “They’ve learned that pickets and protests only create curiosity, so they sign up on the website to find out when the film will be showing at festivals. They show up at the festivals and give the film the lowest vote possible.”

While this kind of passive-aggressive badgering may, according to Tipton, be keeping the film from getting a theatrical or video distributor, he takes it in stride, confidently readying the story of the film’s long journey to the screen in Heart Of The Beholder - The Sequel: Virgin Territory.

“My attitude toward the whole thing is best summed up on my license plate,” Tipton says, brightly. “‘TBRIS,’ it says: ‘The Best Revenge Is Success.’”•••

Learn more about Heart Of The Beholder (and even download it) at www.Beholder.com.