Trouble & Attitude 1/Trouble and Attitude - Issue 01.iso/pc/pctext/bizval.txt

Text File | 1995-06-02 | 16.3 KB | 357 lines

JACK VALENTI,
with Jonathan Braun

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.

I hope you'll tune in to our magazine on the World
Wide Web.
JV: Terrific. Thank you.