Jack Valenti
Encyclopedia : J : JA : JAC : Jack Valenti
Jack Joseph Valenti (born September 5, 1921, in Houston) was "special assistant" to Lyndon Johnson's White House. Valenti was present in the famous photograph of [Lyndon Johnson's swearing in] aboard Air Force One following the assassination of President Kennedy. In 1966, he resigned and became the president of the Motion Picture Association of America. During his tenure there, he was generally regarded as one of the most influential pro-copyright lobbyists in the world. His salary in 2004 was reported to be $1.35 million, which made him the seventh-highest paid Washington trade group chief, according to the National Journal. He has been married to Mary Margaret Valenti since 1962, and they have three children: actor John, Alexandra and movie producer Courtenay Valenti, who attended The Madeira School. Jack Valenti appeared in a 2006 documentary about the school.
Movie Rating System
In 1968, Valenti created the MPAA movie "rating system." The system was initially comprised of four distinct ratings: G, M, R and X. The M rating would soon be replaced by GP (later changed to PG). The X rating immediately proved troublesome as adult dramas such as Midnight Cowboy and A Clockwork Orange were placed into the same categories as hard and soft-core pornographic movies such as Deep Throat. The MPAA could not control the content of these films. In 1990 the NC-17 rating was introduced to provide an "art house" X rating for "legitimate" adult oriented drama. The PG-13 rating was added in 1984 to provide a greater range of distinction for audiences. The system that Valenti instituted in 1968 eventually proved to be effective in reversing negative trends in box office revenue for the major Hollywood studios. The MPAA rating system allowed for studios to explore more commercially successful, albeit 'sinful,' themes.Valenti on New Technologies
During the late 1970s and early 1980s, Valenti became notorious for his colorful attacks on the Sony Betamax VCR, which the MPAA feared would devastate the movie industry. He famously told a Congressional panel in 1982, "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." Despite Valenti's prediction, the home video market created by the VCR ultimately came to be the mainstay of movie studio revenues throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s, until the DVD displaced the VCR in the American living room.2003 Screener Ban Injunction
In 2003, he found himself at the center of the so-called screener debate, as the MPAA barred studios and many independent producers from sending screener copies of their films to critics and voters in various awards shows. Under mounting industry pressure and a court injunction Antidote Int’l Films Inc. et.al v MPAA (Nov. 2003), Valenti conceded to the injunction in 2004, narrowly avoiding a massive and embarrassing antitrust lawsuit against the MPAA. The Coalition of Independent Filmmakers Jeff Levy-Hinte, IFP/Los Angeles executive director Dawn Hudson and IFP/New York executive director Michelle Byrd said in a joint statement, “By obtaining a court order to force the MPAA to lift the screener ban last December, the Coalition enabled individual distributors to determine when and in what manner to distribute promotional screeners.” It was viewed as Valenti’s greatest professional loss in an otherwise brilliant lobbying career.In August 2004, Valenti, then 82 years old, retired and was replaced by Dan Glickman.
|- style="text-align: center;"
Books by Jack Valenti
- Speak Up With Confidence (2002; ISBN 0786887508)
- Protect and Defend (1992; Doubleday; ISBN 0385417357)
- A Very Human President (1976; ISBN 0671808346)
- ''The Bitter Taste of Glory (1971)
- ''Ten Heroes and Two Heroines (1957)
External links
- [An interview conducted by a GNU/Linux user from MIT]
- [An MP3 recording] of a debate with Lawrence Lessig
- [Jack Valenti's Long Goodbye, Washington Post]
- [Testimony of Jack Valenti before Congress in 1982]
- [The Last Mogul -- Valenti's Ties to Hollywood Kingpin] Lew Wasserman
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.