Valenti on the VCR

I came across this interesting passage from page 110 of J.D. Lasica's book this afternoon at lunch: In the late 1970s and early '80s, Universal City Studios and Walt Disney Productions sued Sony, trying to stop the sale of VCRs. Hollywood claimed VCRs violated federal law by letting viewers time-shift programming and build home libraries of videotaped movies without the copyright owners' permission. Jack Valenti famously told Congress in 1982, "The VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston Strangler is to the woman home alone." What a short-sighted dick.

I found the transcript of that testimony, for which he brought a bunch of Hollywood bigwigs (including Clint Eastwood) with him to testify in front of a House judiciary sub-committee. Extended excerpt:

Mr. VALENTI. And 6 out of 10 films do not retrieve their total investment period. Now, what are you going to do right on top of that? There is going to be a VCR avalanche. Exports of VCR's from Japan totaled 2.57 million units in 1981. No. 2, the United States is the biggest market. No. 3, February 1982, which is the latest data, shows the imports to the United States are up 57 percent over 1981. This is more than a tidal wave. It is more than an avalanche. It is here.

Now, that is where the problem is. You take the high risk, which means we must go by the aftermarkets to recoup our investments. If those aftermarkets are decimated, shrunken, collapsed because of what I am going to be explaining to you in a minute, because of the fact that the VCR is stripping those things clean, those markets clean of our profit potential, you are going to have devastation in this marketplace.

Now, is this all? Is it going to get any bigger? Well, I assure you it is. Here is the weekly Variety, Wednesday, March 10. Head1ine, "Sony Sees $400 Billion Global Electronics Business by the Decade's End," $400 billion by the decade's end. In 1981, Mr. Chairman, this United States had a $5.3 billion trade deficit with Japan on electronic equipment alone. We are going to bleed and bleed and hemorrhage, unless this Congress at least protects one industry that is able to retrieve a surplus balance of trade and whose total future depends on its protection from the savagery and the ravages of this machine.

Now, the question comes, well, all right, what is wrong with the VCR. One of the Japanese lobbyists, Mr. Ferris, has said that the VCR -- well, if I am saying something wrong, forgive me. I don't know. He certainly is not MGM's lobbyist. That is for sure. He has said that the VCR is the greatest friend that the American film producer ever had.

I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.

The VCR avalanche, I told you about that. Now, what about the VCR owners. Now, from here on out, Mr. Chairman, I am going to be speaking about a survey done by the Media Statistics Inc., which is a prestigious firm out of Silver Spring, Md. We, meaning the MPAA, did not commission this survey. We bought it after it was done when we heard about it. So, this was not a case -- we have commissioned a lot of things, but this is not one of them.

Now, I want to tell you about it because I think it is absolutely fascinating. This survey was taken in October 1981. It is the newest and freshest data available. Here is what it says. Median income of a VCR owner is between $35,000 and $50,000 a year. Not a lot of what we call today the truly needy are buying these machines. One-third of all the owners have incomes of more than $50,000. Now, here is the next one: 87 percent, 86.8 percent of all these owners erase or skip commercials. I have here, Mr. Chairman, if you are not aware of how this works -- this is Panasonic. This is a little remote control device that you use on machines. It has on here channel, rewind, stop, fast forward, pause, fast advance, slow, up, down, and visual search, either going left or right. (Note: Oooooooh! Woooow!)

Now, let me tell you what Sony says about this thing. These are not my words. They are right straight from McCann Erickson, whom you will hear from tomorrow, who is the advertising agency for Sony and here is what they say. They advertise a variable beta scan feature that lets you adjust the speed at which you can view the tape from 5 times up to 20 times the normal speed.

Now, what does that mean, Mr. Chairman? It means that when you are playing back a recording, which you made 2 days or whenever -- you are playing it back. You are sitting in your home in your easy chair and here comes the commercial and it is right in the middle of a Clint Eastwood film and you don't want to be interrupted. So, what do you do? You pop this beta scan and a 1-minute commercial disappears in 2 seconds.

The rest goes on to show what a short-sighted control-freak whiny-ass he was and is.

Jack Valenti Dies at 85

Well, I see that Jack Valenti, of whom I have been quite critical in the past, has passed away.

I prefer not to speak ill of the recently deceased, so I have marked the passing by adding some categories to his Wikipedia page and starting one for his MPAA ratings board appointee, Joan Graves. (This was the woman shown as a cartoon in This Film Is Not Yet Rated.)

Good Movies and TV I've Been Watching Over the Last Couple of Weeks

Some videos I've enjoyed in the past couple of weeks, all of which I strongly recommend:

• Hill Street Blues: Season One -- This may be my favorite TV show of all time. If not, it's certainly in the top five. HSB is discussed at length in Steven Johnson's book Everything Bad Is Good for You, specifically regarding the revolutionary way in which it demanded that viewers keep up with an ensemble cast and multiple plotlines strung out along many episodes, without the "benefit" of exposition every ten minutes. Here's my exposition: I LOVE THIS SHOW. There are varied opinions as to when it jumped the shark, and it definitely did jump at some point in the mid-to-late 80s ("Let's do it to them before they do it to us..."), but the first season really stands the test of time and then some. And Howard Hunter is awesome! He gets into an argument with Henry Goldblume in which Goldblume accuses him of wanting to use napalm on criminals. Hunter's response: "You don't know the first thing about Napalm!" Goldblume: "I know enough to know that..." Hunter (interrupting, seeing this as an argument-ender): "What are the three principles of napalm?" (For juxtaposition, I watched a couple of episodes from the first season of Adam-12. Good show for what it is, and it also started out with a roll call, but at this roll call the sergeant spent most of his time cautioning the men about keeping their uniforms creased and their badges shined. The vignettes were basically self-contained and wrapped up in seven minutes or less. Quaint.)


• This Film Is Not Yet Rated -- I mentioned this the other day. If you are at all interested in independent, non-formulaic films, see this movie! I have previously commented on my distaste for MPAA godfather Jack Valenti. This film only cemented my views. There were three different things going on in this documentary: 1) Filmmakers and actors (Kevin Smith, Maria Bello, Kimberly Peirce, John Waters, et al.) philosophizing about why certain things (mostly having to do with sex) are verboten and certain things are allowed (mostly having to do with violence) and how mass-market blockbusters usually have potentially offensive material custom-tweaked so as to juuuuuust slip through the inconsistent standards of the ratings board; 2) A pair of middle-aged lesbian P.I.s tracking down the identities, phone extensions, and lunch preferences of the super-secretive MPAA Ratings Board; and 3) A self-referential meta segment in which director Kirby Dick submits the very film we are watching to the MPAA for a rating. The three parts all worked in different ways, and didn't always mesh perfectly, but that's only a minor criticism, and there's nothing else like this movie out there. One other criticism, though: The film "reveals" that there are two representatives of the clergy who are involved with (Members of? Advisors to?) the MPAA Appeals Board. It didn't come right out and say that they were members of the religious right, but it kinda sorta implied it. One of the two was a guy named James Wall, who has authored some articles that I have read. Mr. Wall seems to me like he would fit in just fine at any Upper-West-Side intellectual salon that you would see in any Woody Allen movie. (Note: This is meant as a compliment.) Not only that, but as for the whole secrecy thing, here's a short profile of him from a seminar he gave in 2001 that clearly states he is a member of the Appeals Board.

• Aguirre, The Wrath of God -- This is a Werner Herzog film that I first saw 12 years ago or so, and I'm pretty sure it was my first Herzog. It's a similar theme to that of Fitzcarraldo, and also was kind of Apocalypse Now-ish (or else Apocalypse was Aguirre-ish). It's a fictionalized account of an ambitious middle-management type from Pizarro's conquistadorization of Peru named Lope de Aguirre. Pizarro comes to a difficult river and sends a small party on ahead to scout for the legendary El Dorado, which is a great idea except for the fact that he has the lapse in judgment to make Aguirre second in command of this party. As soon as they get far enough out in the middle of nowhere, Aguirre rebels against the officer in charge of the scouting party, and Pizarro, and the King of Spain. He shoots the only guy dumb loyal enough to stand up for the senior officer, and acts batshit crazy enough to keep everyone else in line. Kind of like if Col. Kurtz had been the one on the boat looking for a place to call home, rather than having Willard on the boat looking for him. At one point Aguirre installs a dumb fat guy as emperor, though there is no illusion as to who is running the show. In the course of the installation, he writes a document laying out his rebellion against the Spanish Crown. Here's a translation of a similar document written by the real Aguirre. Excerpt: I demand of you, King, that you do justice and right by the good vassals you have in this land, even though I and my companions (whose names I will give later), unable to suffer further the cruelties of your judges, viceroy, and governors, have resolved to obey you no longer. Denaturalizing ourselves from our land, Spain, we make the most cruel war against you that our power can sustain and endure. Believe, King and lord, we have done this because we can no longer tolerate the great oppression and unjust punishments of your ministers who, to make places for their sons and dependents have usurped and robbed our fame, life, and honor. It is a pity, King, the bad treatment you have given us. I am lame in the right leg from the arquebus wounds I received in the battle of Chuquinga, fighting with marshal Alonzo de Alvarado, answering your call against Francisco Hernandez Giron, rebel from your service as I and my companions are presently and will be until death, because we in this land now know how cruel you are, how you break your faith and your word, and thus we in this land give your promises less credence than to the books of Martin Luther. How did things turn out? Let's put it this way. Lots of tourists visit Spain. None visit Aguirresylvannia.



• The Thin Blue Line -- This is another film I saw 10 or 12 years ago. It's directed by documentarian Errol Morris, and looks into the unfortunate case of a man named Randall Adams who was convicted of killing a Dallas police officer. All sorts of holes emerged in the prosecution's case, not the least of which was that there was this punk 16-year-old kid with a stolen car and a bunch of stolen guns named David Harris who went back home (to the hometown of the Texas KKK) and bragged about getting away with the killing. Long story short, Adams is now an anti-death penalty activist, and Harris ended up as a punk 25-year old who, by virtue of inclusion on this list is no longer on this list. Now with just that brief synopsis, I might be making it sound like a very special episode of CSI: Dallas, but this is a film that unfolds like a Rashomonic philosophical inquiry. (Maybe because Morris had a background as a P.I. and a degree in philosophy.)

I Have Totally Got to See This Movie

I have totally got to see the documentary This Film Is Not Yet Rated. Here's the Wikipedia page, here's the official site, and the producer's blog is now on the blogroll. CHUD interview here. I have made known my distaste for Mr. Valenti, and just the other day I was talking about The Italian Job's 1969 G-rating, which would never ever fly today.

Here's some of what Harry Knowles had to say about TFINYR: Do you hate the MPAA? (ed. note: No, I fucking hate it.) Do you loathe this system by which filmmakers are forced to edit their films to a specific rating in order to hit a certain demographic? Do you hate that you've no idea who the people that rate these films are like, though they're described as being safe normal family folks that have kids in the young impressionable range? Want to really know who the people in this STAR CHAMBER of Hollywood are? See THIS FILM IS NOT YET RATED…

…If you love cinema -- yet the ratings board drives you fucking bat nuts... this is the film for you. In addition to the investigation aspect... there's interviews with raped filmmakers like Kevin Smith (fucking hilarious as usual), Wayne Kramer, Matt Stone (fucking hilarious as usual), Darren Aronofsky, Allison Anders, Atom Egoyan, Kimberly Peirce, John Waters (fucking hilarious as usual -- his felching bit was great), Bingham Ray, Mary Harron and many others.

Bella Rossa NOTM Interview

OK, my aforementioned interview with Bella Rossa is up at her site. Check it out! (I suppose I shouldn't have made a big deal about not wanting to hurt anybody's feelings the same week I wrote about Jack Valenti. Oh well.)

Items of Interest

OK, the book room is coming together. The fiction is all in the order I want it -- not strict alpha, but close enough, and with concessions to book shape/size and available shelf real estate. It was cool, because I was able to put my hands on all my Mickey Spillane books all at once. Tonight I moved The ♥G♥'s computer desk in there and put it in front of the window and hooked up her puter. Now she can look out the window and see Junior. Junior is this five-year-old Mexican kid who lives across the street and always walks up and asks what ****** is. Junior is then given a brief synopsis of the item in question. He then asks "Why?". Given an answer, he again asks "Why?", ad infinitum.

A few things:

• I got two books out of the library this week, and I'm quite excited about both. I got Darknet: Hollywood's War Against the Digital Generation by J.D. Lasica (who did the "You Humped Me All Night Long" video I liked so much) and The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More by Wired editor Chris Anderson. Lasica and Anderson are both on the blogroll. I'm starting with Darknet. One of the first big impressions I get is one of renewed distaste for Jack Valenti, LBJ insider and Hollywood lobbyist extraordinaire. This is the guy who created the absurdly outmoded MPAA (among other things), born of the same Great-Society controlfreakism that gave us housing projects and The Vietnam War.
• The Pew Internet & American Life Project has a new study out on bloggers and blogging, commented on by (for one) the San Francisco Chronicle. Here are a whole bunch of other stories on the report. I skimmed the report; I hope to read it in full this weekend.
• I haven't seen the new Al Gore movie yet, but here's some interesting evidence regarding global warming:

Product Placement 2005

For all you fans of Navy NCIS (That's Navy Naval Criminal Investigative Service, as opposed to Air Force Naval Criminal Investigative Service -- add it to the RAS Syndrome list), you might be interested to read (thanks to The Memory Hole) the e-mails exchanged between the show's creators and the actual NCIS people. (You'll need Adobe Acrobat.) Full disclosure: I have seen this program twice. Once for eight minutes, once for three minutes. But, the spouse of one of the stars went to the high school across town from mine.

Cooperation between federal (or local, see below) government agencies and Hollywood is certainly nothing new; after all, Jack Valenti is like 100 years old. J. Edgar Hoover personally reviewed scripts for The FBI (the old show with Efrem Zimbalist Jr.). Government/network cooperation gives some great results sometimes, as when Baltimore Sun reporter David Simon spent a year shadowing the Baltimore P.D.'s Homicide Unit, which led to the couldn't-put-it-down work of non-fiction Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, which led to three fantastic seasons, one OK season, and three kind of lame seasons of the TV show Homicide: Life on the Streets.

However, you have to keep an eye on these things, and not only not believe everything you see on the news, but also not believe (or be carried away by the emotional impact of) everything you are entertained by. (You shouldn't believe everything you see that tells you not to believe something, either.) A few years ago there was a minor Clinton scandal in which it came out that the Office of Drug Control Policy had editorial control over certain TV scripts in return for the Feds excusing the shows' networks from certain public service announcement responsiblities. (Note: I may be an inconsistent libertarian, but I'm libertarian enough to know that it's ridiculous that the networks are burdened with PSA announcements at all, other than being required to report emergency weather or civil defense information.) The thing is, I never heard if that practice was stopped for good, or if the current administration has the option to try something similar with the War on Terror. Has anyone asked lately? Maybe that's why Armstrong Williams is going to guest in next season's "24."

One thing that troubles me slightly is that certain scenes in certain episodes of 24 and 4400 I have seen in the past year are practically cheerleading sessions for extending federal authority to disregard the established Constitutional rights of (non-criminal) individuals. The storylines are presented using such melodrama as "We have only five minutes to find the nuke hidden somewhere in downtown L.A." or "The returnees are exhibiting supernatural powers, and who knows if they're going to be violent?" and other post-9/11 MacGuffins, and such casual threats are made (to slightly weasely, but non-criminal characters) as "How would you like to never be able to fly on an airplane anywhere in the world ever again?" in such a manner that the average viewer identifies with the threatener rather than the threatee. I wonder what the thought-provoking 1998 thriller The Siege would be like if made today.

I have nothing against TV shows like this other than they are often lame and predictable and may be brainwashing us into accepting a curtailance of our liberties. Other than that, they are wholesome, violent fun.