I guess my first question is about the Motion Picture Association of America. Could you describe the mission of the organization, and how it's changed over the years, if it has?
JV: Well actually, the mandate hasn't changed, although the environment has. The mandate is very simple and very concise: to try to make sure that the American movie and television program can move freely and unhobbled around the world. That is our mission. And it is one to which we have devoted ourselves for many years, and that's it. The mission remains the same. It's just that the environment now is more complicated and complex than it was
.
How is the environment more complicated?
JV: In two ways. One, there is new technology and new magic, which is both good news and bad news. The good news is that it offers us a chance to reach many more millions of people, in many more countries. The bad news is that it has given birth to an Ebola virus called piracy, which is a cancer in the belly of our business. It is a daily threat to us around the world. And two, more and more we are finding ourselves being confronted with barriers that try to restrict us, to shrink our free movement within a territory; to exile us; to make it difficult for us to do business. And so against these restrictions, and discriminatory treatment, as well as piracy, we spend a considerable amount of our labors.
On the piracy issue, I think many members of the public are unaware of how large the problem really is. Could you outline it?
JV: Well, the problem is large for what is called "intellectual property", which is movies, television, home video. And then other arenas, which are not part of my mandate: books; musical recordings; and computer software. Wherever intellectual property flourishes, thieves abound. In the movie and television industry alone, we estimate (that) we lose approximately 2 billion dollars or more annually to these pirates, on all the continents.
That's a staggering number. In that regard, are you satisfied with the highly-publicized pact with China? Do you think that turned out okay in the end?
JV: I worked hard on that, and I pay tribute to Ambassador Mickey Cantor, the United States Trade Representative, and his disciple, with whom he worked very closely. As a result, I believe that over time, this trade agreement will be immensely valuable. Not only to us, but to the Chinese as well, because the entertainment industry of this country will be investing money in China--in theaters, and in the manufacture of laser discs there--in all of the creative apparatus of the business that we're in.
On the trade barrier problem: there was considerable publicity about the French stance on this issue. Many people in France are taking the position that American films threaten to overwhelm, and even ultimately wipe out, their own domestic film industry. Have they modified their position at all?
JV: They're in the process right now of having, I think, hospitable dialogue with the countries of the European union. As a matter of fact, I'm going to the Cannes Film Festival in three days, and there I will be meeting with European producers from all over the continent. We're continuing our meetings, and the aim is to try to find a way to move into the future with all this new magic technology, and new delivery systems, and video-on-demand, and all the other leisure domain which will offer consumers all over the world a multiplicity of choices as to what they want to watch.
I think in time, we will settle up our differences. I'm looking forward to it. I'm very respectful of France, its great reservoir of talent, and the people in their creative community. It's a question of, "How do we go into the future?" To try to reconcile whatever small differences we have, and I think we will.
That's encouraging. Why do you think American movies are so incredibly popular throughout the world?
JV: Our popularity depends on the choices made by people in Latin America, Africa, Europe, Asia, the Middle East. Most people in the world find the stories that we tell, the way we tell them, more exciting than almost anything else. Most countries would like to see their own movies first. But inevitably, they like American movies second. In some countries, American movies are overwhelmingly popular. But those are decisions made by the citizens of each of those countries. They want to watch, and they seem to like what we do better than anybody else. It's a great tribute to the American creative community that we are the best story tellers in the world. Visual story tellers.
That's a good way of putting it. The motion picture ratings system seems to get a lot of attention, and criticism. Are you satisfied overall with the way the system has worked out?
JV: The ratings system will be twenty-seven years old this year--they were born in 1968, on November first. I must tell you in all honesty, nothing lasts that long in a volatile marketplace unless it is providing some benefit to the people that it aims to serve. In this case, the ratings try to serve the parents of America. I think most parents are grateful for the rating system. It helps them guide the movie-going of their young children, and that's precisely what the ratings were intended to do. As a matter of fact, in nationwide surveys taken every year by the Opinion Research Corporation of Princeton, NJ, an overwhelming number of parents with children under 13 find this ratings system very useful. Last year, 77% of such parents counted this ratings system very helpful to them in guiding their children's movie-going.
Were you surprised by the decision of, is it "Showgirls", to seek the NC-17 rating?
JV: I don't think Showgirls has even been rated yet. As far as I can tell, the rating board has not informed me that it's even come up for a rating yet. We'll just have to wait and see how the rating board finally confronts it, as a finished picture. It hasn't been rated yet.
NC-17 is a relatively new category, isn't it?
JV: Well, we always had an "X" category, which meant a picture that we thought that children 16 and under should not see. It doesn't mean pornographic, and it doesn't mean obscene. Those are legal terms. It simply means that what's on the screen may be something that children, whose minds are not fully formed, and who can't absorb alternatives yet, ought not see. It doesn't describe the quality of that film, or the lack of quality. It merely says, "This is a film that only adults ought see." And I think that's a very legitimate rating. Because you can't make movies at the level of 10-year-olds. And there might be some movies that are adult in variety, from which children would be barred but which adults, if they chose, could see. And so the NC-17 is merely a change of name of the X. Two years ago, the X rating, because it wasn't trademarked, was used by kind of outlaw, maverick filmmakers -- double X, triple X, quadruple X -- and it took on a patina of meaning that was nowhere in the original definition. So we said, "Let's just change the name, and copyright it, so that no one can use NC-17 unless they have actually submitted a picture." And so we hoped that this would kind of legitimize an adult category, from which children would be barred at theaters in this country.
You recently stated your opposition to the so-called "Moral Rights" concept of filmmakers, which Steven Spielberg and others have advocated. Could you clarify your point of view on this?
JV: Steven Spielberg is one of my dearest friends. I think he's probably the foremost screen genius of this generation. And I wouldn't get in any public debate with Steven Spielberg, I love him too much.
Okay, but if we leave him aside, this idea of moral rights of filmmakers affects the concept of intellectual property. That somehow, if I own a film and I decide to colorize the film, I'm infringing on the so-called moral rights of the director of the original product. Is that a threat?
JV: I'm not going to get into that. I talk quietly, with friends in the Guilds, and it's a rational and, I hope, intelligent debate. But I'm not going to get into that one.
All right. On the average coast of making a major studio film, which recently soared to more than 50 million dollars -- that's a number that you've referred to as "a beast of a number." Why is it so high?
JV: That's because the cost of everything in moviemaking is going up, just as baseball players of five years ago got a million dollars. Now, a fellow who's hitting 250 gets 7 million dollars. Basketball players that used to get a million dollars a year are making 15 million. Talented people are in demand. And if you can be a Michael Jordan, or a Shaquille O'Neal, or Charles Barkley, and cause people to want to come to a basketball arena to see you play, then you get a lot more money. If you are a movie star or a director whose name on a film will cause people to want to see it, you'll get a lot more money. And therefore, the costs have been rising. Also, special effects are now commonplace, and special effects are very, very expensive. And finally, authenticity, trying to replicate an arena, or environment, or a landscape, or a set of circumstances, costs a lot more money. In the old days, all the movies were made on movie sets. Everything was artificial. Now, it's real, and as a result, the costs have gone up. I'm just saying, to people in the business, at some point, we're going to have to scale back the rapid increase in these costs. Otherwise, you get to a point where it would be almost impossible to retrieve investments.
So in another decade, if the trend continues, we could see a 100 million dollar average cost.
JV: Well, yes, and you could probably see Michael Jordan owning the Chicago Bulls.
Right. And I guess the economics will come into play, and it's either scale back or fail, if it comes down to that. By the way, what was the average cost when you started out ?
JV: I think it was about 3 million dollars. Something like that.
But then again, whenever you say that to somebody they can say, do you remember what the average salary was at the time, or the average rent in New York City?
It's all a matter of waiting for inflation, and cost of living. If I said that 25 years ago I paid $100,000 for a house, that had seven bedrooms, they'd say, "Wow". That same house today would probably cost a million and a half. It's just that you have to deal with what the dollar's worth, what the cost of living is, etc. So you can't judge the costs of one era by the standards of another.
Do you think movies are too violent? That's a debate that continues to rage.
JV: The fact is that if you look at the twenty top grossing pictures in 1994, the twenty top, the ones that the people went to see -- only four of them are rated R. The other sixteen were rated PG-13, PG, or G. I think that movies are less violent, in the aggregate today of popular films. If you look at the films that are popular now -- While You Were Sleeping, A Little Princess, French Kiss, even Crimson Tide, which got an R rating for language and nothing else -- so that as far as violence is concerned, it is diminished. Sure, you can pick out one, three, four, five different pictures, but remember, the major studios last year put out 161 films. A total of over 500 films were produced in this country. But I'm talking about those that draw and entice the largest audience numbers. Paradoxically, they're the films with less violence in them. Now, that doesn't mean if you make a non-violent film that it's going to be popular. You have to tell a story. The story has to be extremely well done, skillfully written. Directing has to be terrific, and you need great actors. When you put that all together, you have an entertaining film. The rating itself has no meaning as far as the entertainment value of a film. What I'm saying is, it just so happens that enough talented people told such splendid stories in a way that violence was not a gratuitous part of it. And they became very popular.
That's an interesting insight.
JV: I might say the same of television. You take the top 25 highest-rated television shows, and they're not violent. And it could be somewhat violent and yet, its violence has been muted. I think NYPD Blue might be the most splendidly crafted TV show on the air today, and (in the show) good always triumphs over evil, so I'm very much for that.
Would you care to share with us any thoughts about how the political scene in Washington has changed in the nearly three decades that you've been there?
JV: Well, that's quite obvious. For the first time in forty years, the Republican party controls both Houses of Congress. There's nobody in Washington that I know that remembers 1954, the last time that happened. So, yes, I see change in the political party line-up as to who is in power. And that's changed the political landscape in this town in a radical form.
How about the overall style? People have talked about how much more mean-spirited debate seems to be today. Do you think there's any truth to that?
JV: Mean-spirited debate began fifteen years ago. When I came to Washington on November 22, 1963, I was in the motorcade in Dallas and President Kennedy was murdered, and the new President hired me that day and brought me to Washington. When I first came to Washington there was a spirit of collegiality. Republicans and Democrats, once they gave their word, they kept it. There was honorable debate. There was fierce debate, but always in the way that you would debate something on the floor of the senate, or in the senate you could rise and denounce the President but then that evening, they could dine together and talk together as old warriors who fought in the field, but who never got personal. And some ten, fifteen years ago, that began to change. There was an animus in the air that didn't exist before. Political parties and campaigns became scurrilous all of a sudden. Negative advertising became important. You go negative and increase your favorable ratings. And I think that the whole political campaigns thing today is tormented by acrimony that I find unsuitable. But listen, I don't make the rules, I just try to live by them.
I knew, and I forgot, that you were in the motorcade in Dallas that terrible day. I guess people have asked you over the years what that was like, and it seems like a stupid question.
JV: It was like a grotesque nightmare that you hoped you would wake up from, and the skies would be clear and the sun would be out, and all would be right with the world. Except you didn't. You woke up and the nightmare was now live, a great beast slouching towards you out of the dark. It's not a pleasant memory, but it's one that never leaves you, scarred into your consciousness forever.
Do you recall actually hearing the shots ring out?
JV: I was five or six cars back, but from that moment on, at Parkman hospital and aboard that airplane, I bore witness to one of the great calamities and tragedies of this country. Probably the singular unhappy event in this century.
I was in high school at the time, but I've often thought, and I'm sure a lot of people speculate about, how different everything would have been had that not happened. It just demoralized the country.
JV: There's no question about that.
Did you see Oliver Stone's film?
JV: Yes, I did.
What did you think of it?
JV: I spoke about that openly when it came out, and I denounced it because I thought it was a tissue of lies, and since then I must say that to my delight, Oliver Stone and I have made peace with each other. I count him as a great genius of a filmmaker. He and I just totally disagreed on that picture. But I vented my spleen, and we've become friends.
He is an exceptionally talented individual. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Valenti, I really appreciate this.
JV: Thank you.
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