Word: valenti
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...gigantic new market in videos and, 15 years later, in DVDs; digital sales and rentals now account for more than half of the industry's income. But like any lobbyist who sees change as a threat to be forestalled by protective legislation, bombs to be fought with bombast, Valenti often couldn't see past his and his employers' fears. In 1974 he warned that the infant cable industry would become "a huge parasite in the marketplace, feeding and fattening itself off of local television stations and copyright owners of copyrighted material. We do not like it because we think...
...later years, Valenti and the MPAA fought movie piracy, using some bizarre strategies, like denying DVD screeners of year-end Oscar hopefuls to movie critics. Piracy saps plenty from the producers' coffers, but they're still making zillions: from a sturdy domestic box office, from an increasing domination of worldwide exhibition and from somehow persuading consumers to pay for what they once saw for free (in the burgeoning market of old TV shows on DVD). With Valenti as their spokesman - and with his successor, Dan Glickman - they've been doing fine...
...know people who hated Jack Valenti, or rather hated the ratings system he created and sustained. Kirby Dick's documentary This Film Is Not Yet Rated makes a good case for the prejudice the MPAA showed in favor of major-studio product and against the more adventurous indies. Francis Coppola once said that all of modern cinema, from art films to blockbusters, uses only about 5% of the medium's potential artistic vocabulary. We may need another revolution - not of content but of the means of distribution - to allow filmmakers to explore the other...
...would quarrel with the substance of some Valenti decisions, but I enjoyed the man's style; I was amused by his presumption. With the build of a miniature bulldog and his fondness for a wildly ornate, orotund oratory, he was a throwback character out of Preston Sturges or Allen's Alley. He may have raised winces on the faces of the new-breed, laid-back moguls. But I'm guessing Valenti didn't mind being smiled at. If he was a figure of fun, he had fun being that figure...
...Jack surely loved those "strangler" metaphors. But he retired, three years ago, with his own neck untouched. He came to Hollywood an unknown quantity and left this world its most legendary hypester. Veni, vidi, Valenti...