Jack Valenti worked for presidents. Now he works for Hollywood - and he tells Hugh Linehan that ending tax breaks for film will leave Ireland barren.
If the US film industry were a country, it would probably be one of the world's most successful economies. Generating many billions in profits every year, employing hundreds of thousands of people, holding vast reserves of wealth in the form of intellectual copyright, share values and retained profits, it is a serious and influential global player.
Forget for a moment the glitz and the glamour, US film is big, big business. And the man who has been representing its interests for 37 years is Jack Valenti. Visiting Dublin this week at the invitation of Screen Producers Ireland to speak at an Institute of Directors lunch, the spry 82-year-old president and chief executive of the Motion Picture Association of America warned in apocalyptic language of the threat posed to his industry by digital piracy. And he suggested the Government should think again about its plan to scrap tax incentives for film-makers.
"I do not pretend to give advice to prime ministers," said the man who speaks for the world's most powerful film industry. "But, in this modern world, not to have a film tax incentive is to leave a country impotent. All the English-speaking countries in the world have tax incentives. If you repeal this you leave Ireland barren." Later in the day, sitting down with a cup of coffee, Valenti offers an example of what Ireland might lose. "Last night I saw In America, this remarkable movie by Jim Sheridan, and I wept. I hugged Jim afterwards and told him he had moved me." Valenti believes Sheridan's new film is a strong contender for Oscar nominations next year.
Born in Texas in 1921, Valenti was decorated for bravery as a bomber pilot in the second World War before returning home to found an advertising agency in Houston, Texas. In 1960 Lyndon Johnson, the Democratic vice-presidential candidate, asked him to handle John F. Kennedy's campaign in his home state.
"In Texas there was only one overriding issue: religion," he recalls. "A Catholic had never been elected to statewide office in Texas. Johnson knew we had to override this issue, because if we didn't tackle it head-on, meet it and overcome it, we were dead. We arranged a meeting of about 30 or 40 Protestant ministers, mostly Baptists, right-wing ministers, to meet with Kennedy in a crowded ballroom. He came out alone, sat down and looked at those ministers as if to say, all right, take me on. He issued a brief opening statement to say he was Catholic, he'd always be Catholic, but if he was elected his Catholicism had to take second place to his duty as president. He blew 'em away. It was an extraordinary encounter, which was taped, and the Democrats played it all across the South, wherever there was a religious issue, to show Kennedy at his best. We carried Texas by 36,000 votes."
Three years later Valenti was in the presidential motorcade through Dallas on the day of Kennedy's assassination. "I sped to the hospital, and people were standing around, shocked," he says. "Suddenly I was tapped on the shoulder by one of Lyndon Johnson's political aides. He says: 'Jack, I've been looking for you. The vice-president wants to see you right now. I'm going to take you to him.' Then he hesitated, and in a very soft voice he said: 'The president is dead, you know.' I literally became unhinged, and he said: 'You have to compose yourself.' I was put on Air Force One, which had been removed to a far corner of Love Field [Airport, in Dallas\] and was being guarded by a very heavily armed cordon of menacing-looking men. Johnson sat down, beckoned to me and said: 'I want you to join my staff and come with me to Washington DC.' "
Valenti was with Johnson when the new president was sworn in. There's a photograph of Johnson taking the oath, a shocked Jackie Kennedy by his side, still wearing her blood- and brain-spattered suit. On the left of the picture is Valenti.
For the next three years he worked as special assistant to the president, leaving in 1966 to become chief executive of the Motion Picture Association of America - the organisation's third leader since its foundation, in 1922. What is the MPAA? Essentially it represents the interests of the main US studios in their dealings with their own and other governments. It is responsible for America's voluntary ratings system, which Valenti was instrumental in liberalising in the mid-1960s. Most importantly, it fights to protect the commercial interests of America's multibillion-dollar audio-visual entertainment industry, that entity often simply known as Hollywood.
"There is no Hollywood," says Valenti. "It's a fragmentary name for seven majors, about 10 or 12 mini-majors, about 50 or 60 independents, 100,000 members of the Screen Actors Guild, 10,000 members of the Directors Guild [of America\], 8,000 members of the Writers Guild [of America\] . . . . It is a diverse community. My job as I see it is to make sure that the American movie can move freely and unhobbled around the world. That's what I've done for 37 years. People will have to make their own judgments as to whether I've been successful or unsuccessful."
By any judgment he's been pretty successful. Films are among America's most successful exports. Across the globe, from Stockholm to Seoul, US films dominate cinemas. In many countries they represent more than 85 per cent of box office (in Ireland the figure is closer to 95 per cent). Everyone loves American movies. Everyone except the smaller, national film industries that have withered in the face of US dominance, and except for those who argue that cultural diversity is being destroyed by homogenised popular culture.
In the vanguard of such arguments are the French, who have been a constant irritant for the US with their insistence on their right to maintain their own cinematic culture through a range of subsidy and quota systems. Those arguments came to a head during negotiations for the Uruguay round of the GATT world trade agreement in the early 1990s, when, to the fury of the US studios, France won a "cultural exemption", giving it the right to continue protecting its own (and, by extension, parts of the EU's) audio-visual industry.
"After that I decided that confrontation was a waste," says Valenti, who had previously been awarded the Légion d'Honneur by President Mitterand. "I began what I called conciliation, co-operation and collaboration with the French. Today we have a rapprochement. Last year I signed the Cannes declaration with the French culture minister, which said we would fight piracy together, that the MPAA would not fight quotas or subsidies, that we were for the status quo. I have great friends in the French film industry, and I don't want to live in the past. The French are making pictures now that can reach beyond their borders. As I said many times to my French comrades, the MPAA don't make pictures for New York or California, we make pictures for a global audience. That's the prime difference. If you can't export your films your industry will remain anaemic."
Some of the issues may arise again in the present world trade negotiations, he agrees. "There are a number of countries, including France, which want to put cultural diversity to the fore, through UNESCO. I have no problem with that. I've met with French emissaries who've asked me to support a declaration of cultural diversity. I said of course. I'd like to read it first, but I'd like to support it. But I also said that the whole business of intellectual property rights ought to belong in the WTO [World Trade Organisation] and not in any other organisation. Because when you make a film it's culture, but the minute you put that film in a theatre and try to sell it you're in commerce. It's a sort of a stormy marriage, but it's always been that way and always will be, unless you just want to make your film, put it in a museum or a cinematheque and never sell it to anyone."
Fundamental differences remain between the two sides, but what's of greater concern to Valenti and the MPAA is digital technology and its implications for audio-visual piracy. In his talk to the Institute of Directors he reels off a list of the evil monsters threatening the world. They sound like cartoon baddies from a fantasy blockbuster: Kazaa, Morpheus, eDonkey. These are the file-sharing Internet services through which people can access music and films for free. Internet piracy, according to Valenti, is "a black gargoyle we have to conquer. Some 400,000-600,000 movies are being downloaded illegally every day".
And this is just the tip of the iceberg, he believes. Although it still takes an awfully long time to download a film, all that will change. "I was in the CalTech [California Institute of Technology\] laboratory last week," he says. "They have an experiment called FAST. They have downloaded a DVD high-quality movie in five seconds. Let me repeat that: five seconds. Internet2, which is a consortium of European and American scientists, has an experiment where they despatched 6.7 gigabytes - a movie is 4.6 - half way around the world, over 12,000 miles, in one minute. I asked the head of CalTech lab: 'How soon can this get on the marketplace, three, four, five years?' He said: 'If some company wants to take it over they can get it running in less than a year.' If that's not a portent for fear and anxiety I don't know what is. Unless we put in place some technological battle plates we're going to be overrun.
"When I speak about this people say, oh, Valenti, you Hollywood guys are always whining, why don't you get a new business model? I say that's a great idea, except no business model from the hand or brain of man can compete with 'free'. Can't be done. In the end it's going to come down to technological research and some kind of concord between the consumer-electronics people and the movie industry. We need to make sure we're protected, or the afflictions which have been visited on the music industry will surely come raining down on our shoulders."
But he claims to be confident the problem can be solved. "Within the next year or two we will have enlisted the finest brains in the technology industry, and we will be able to withstand this. Once we can protect these movies we will have thousands of movies on the Internet which can be downloaded by the consumer at a fair price."
Although the MPAA is calling for stricter controls and laws on copyright and piracy, perhaps it's unsurprising that for many people this is not an issue of great concern. It can be difficult to feel much sympathy for huge corporations that make comfortable profits selling what is often a pretty inane and sleazy product. What does Valenti think of the criticisms often levelled at Hollywood films?
He sees the issue in terms of the right to free speech under the US constitution. "If you're going to be a First Amendment person, as I am, you have to accept in the marketplace that which you find antagonistic, meretricious, tawdry, profane, unwholesome and even slimy, so that your own free speech can remain alive. However, the First Amendment is a double-edged sword. I have the right to make any movie I like. You have the right not to listen or to watch. I find that a marvellous bargain that allows freedom to flourish. There are some films that go beyond my own parameters of taste. There are some films I wouldn't defend if my career depended on it. But for the most part I believe American films are pretty good. And some are quite superior."
