VA Objects to ‘Article 99’ Screening : Movies: A UCLA film class set to see the film on veterans office property is moved to a site on campus.

Was the subject of the movie just too close to home?

That was the question going through a number of minds Wednesday night when a UCLA Extension class on current movies was moved from its usual site in the Wadsworth Theatre on Department of Veterans Affairs property in West Los Angeles.

The class was scheduled to see and discuss “Article 99,” a satirical indictment of federal government bureaucracy at a fictitious veterans hospital where conditions are so bad that the patients revolt.

But after the Department of Veterans Affairs objected to the showing of the movie on its property, the university moved the screening to Royce Hall on the UCLA campus.

Spokeswoman Kathrene Hansen said the veterans office merely leases the building to the university and has no control over the content of the film course. She initially denied the department had any role in moving the movie.

But Stephen Farber, the instructor of the weekly course “Sneak Previews,” said he “had a conversation with a veterans official who indicated the movie was a problem.” He responded that any attempt to alter the content of the course would be perceived as “an act of censorship,” and the matter then moved to higher levels.

Farber said students were told the class was moved because of the renovation of Wadsworth, “and to be fair, it was necessary work.” But, he said, “it seemed like kind of convenient timing.”

Carlotta Mellon, UCLA assistant vice chancellor for community relations, acknowledged “there was a contact (from the veterans administration). There was concern. They wanted to know if it would be possible to move the venue.

“Our people saw this as an opportunity to go ahead with the renovations. So it worked out to be mutually beneficial,” Mellon said.

The terms of the lease UCLA has with the veterans office requires it to make 40 passes a week available to veterans to attend the movies shown in the class. But one source at the hospital reported that a sign had been posted in a recreation building earlier this week announcing that the customary free tickets would not be available for “Article 99.”

When informed of UCLA’s explanation, Hansen attributed the department’s opposition to the film to “clinical” reasons. The hospital was troubled by the idea of psychiatric patients seeing the film, Hansen said, because it “might give them ideas about taking over the building . . . seeing it might agitate them.”

The Orion Pictures-distributed movie opens today on about 1,200 screens nationally. And the White House has asked for a print to be seen over the weekend.