The players: behind the glitter, the movie industry is just another favor-seeking special interest

Behind the glitter, the movie industry is just another favor-seeking special interest.

Hollywood has long eyed Washington - the other city of power and illusion - with hungry fascination. As the Clinton administration dawns you can almost hear studio moguls licking their chops.

Maybe Bill Clinton wasn't the first presidential candidate to attract the Hollywood swarm, but he clearly won the '92 battle of the stars. So many big names in film and TV made campaign appearances that several reportedly were forgotten when inaugural invites went out, prompting a scramble to salve bruised egos. Still, so many stars showed up inaugural week that some of Washington's own celebrities were cast into shadow. "Having watched Hollywood descend ... makes me more convinced than ever that the vice president was right," William Kristol, Dan Quayle's chief of staff, carped to the New York Times. "Hollywood's utter preoccupation with image, and their disdain for real problems and real issues, is amazing even to those of us who have been around Washington for a while."

And who knows how many voters warmed to Clinton because of TV's hitmaking dramedy team, Harry Thomason and Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, who produced Bill and Hillary's cinema verite convention entrance, the gauzy "The Man From Hope" bio-pic and the inauguration festivities to boot. As if the Clintons' close friends hadn't done enough, their company, Mozark Productions, gave the Democratic ticket $60,000 toward the president's win.

Washington itself seems like Studio East these days. Eddie Murphy's The Distinguished Gentleman, written and produced by former Mondale speechwriter Marty Kaplan, features cameos by numerous Washington well-knowns, including Union Station and National Public Radio's Nina Totenberg. The shooting of Ivan Reitman's comedy Dave, due out next summer, involved a half dozen U.S. senators, various Inside-the-Beltway somebodies and a Who's Who of Washington media, including the entire McLaughlin Group and - again! - Nina Totenberg. (The president is replaced by a look-alike; Kevin Kline stars). Also due next summer is the Clint Eastwood thriller In the Line of Fire. (The president's Secret Service agent hunts down a political assassin played by Nina Totenber. Actually, it's John Malkovich.)

The two cities have played off each other practically since Garbo spoke, as Ron Brownstein's 1990 book, The Power and the Glitter, chronicled in fascinating detail. But he may have been too quick to conclude that "Hollywood's participation in national elections is less important for its influence on who wins than for what it reveals about the mysterious interaction between culture and politics."

In fact, the Hollywood movie-star glamor diverts attention from the more earthly political interests of the motion picture industry. In the halls of Congress and the regulatory agencies, the big movie studios are no different from big oil, the tobacco kings or any of the other corporate interests seeking favorable treatment while plying Washington with political money and lobbyists. And we're not talking about Dustin Hoffman giving $25,000 to the Democrats last fall, or Richard Gere testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee as a special envoy of Tibet's exiled Dalai Lama.

The movie industry, along with tobacco, liquor and Wall Street, was a top special interest contributor to the Clinton effort. Sony Corp. led the pack with more than $200,000, including $75,000 from Sony Pictures Chair Peter Guber. MCA, together with chair Lew Wasserman, contributed $150,000. Walt Disney Studios and its chair, Jeffrey Katzenburg, chipped in more than $120,000. So did producer David Geffen. The Jon Peters Organization contributed $80,000. Twentieth Century Fox was in there with 50 grand.

The industry's last-minute effort to snuff the cable TV regulation bill last fall offered a rare public glimpse of its political pressure tactics, even if it didn't win that round. But that was just a preview. Here are just a few of the big deals the movie industry hopes to close in Washington:

SYNDICATION RIGHTS: The industry got some bad news days after Clinton's victory. A federal appeals court threw out a federal rule issued in 1991 that protected the movie studios' biggest cash cow: the $5 billion program syndication market.

The issue concerns the "fin-syn" (financial syndication) regulations, which largely bar ABC, CBS and NBC from owning or selling reruns or game shows. The original fin-syn regs were adopted in 1971 to loosen the television networks' monopoly on syndications, prevent them from denying programs to independent TV stations and stimulate new program sources. As a result, the movie studios moved into syndications, and now control about 75 percent of primetime network series. Distributing reruns has become an important studio profit center. The Tony Danza sitcom "Who's the Boss?" inexplicably fetches Sony-owned Columbia Pictures an estimated $2.5 million per episode, for example.

But two years ago, the financially troubled TV networks vigorously pressed the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to abolish the fin-syn regs, arguing that they're obsolete, stifle competition and favor foreign-owned movie studios over U.S. TV networks. The FCC agreed in part, but added new restrictions. The net result of the 1991 decision: little help for the networks.

By rejecting the 1991 rule, however, the court decision threw the whole fin-syn mess back at the FCC, forcing the movie companies once again to protect their lucrative turf. "It's the hottest issue in town where Hollywood is concerned," a broadcast industry spokesperson says. ("Gimme a break," retorts a spokesperson for the Motion Picture Association of America, or MPAA, the industry's trade group. "What do the networks know about what's our hottest issue?")

Some critics say the two industries deserve each other and perhaps the FCC should lift the syndication rules altogether and let them fight it out in the marketplace. In the meantime, expect the movie industry to weigh in on Clinton's upcoming FCC appointments, particularly his replacement for retired chair Alfred Sikes, who sided with the TV networks on fin-syn.

TRADE BARRIERS: As much as the French probably enjoy Tony Danza, he isn't likely to be seen in Paris during prime time. Thank the new European Community domestic content guidelines for continental television. France, for example, now requires that half its primetime programming be produced in French and another 10 percent be made in Europe.

American studios consider the European restriction a major threat to their burgeoning export market. "Our mind had better damn sure be concentrated," MPAA President Jack Valenti testified last summer, "because if it isn't we will approach the trade gallows much like a fellow bleeding from a dozen wounds, stumbling, lurching and still unsure of how the rope got around his neck." ("I could go on," he said later, "but I would have to gulp down a bucket full of Advil to stay the course.")

CABLE TV ROYALTIES: That was Jack Valenti on "The Tonight Show" last fall promoting his novel, a Washington political potboiler. But Valenti didn't share a word with Jay about the real intrigue he left simmering back at the capital.

Valenti and a handful of Hollywood studio bosses in fact were helping the Bush administration try to defeat the cable TV regulation bill at the same time the Bush campaign was trashing Hollywood as a hotbed of family-values-corroding cultural elitists. Bush and the studios lost the battle, and it wasn't the finest hour for a big name lobbyist like Valenti who's thought to have immeasurable clout and connections after 25 years of skilled schmoozing in Washington. "[A]s always, I have tried to work with you to address your concerns," Sen. Dan Inouye (D-Hawaii) huffed in a letter to Valenti. "I am sorry that it is necessary for me to remind you of my effort."

The studios jumped into the cable fray because the "retransmission consent" clause would give local TV stations - but not movie studios - the right to demand that cable TV operators pay them a fee to broadcast their programs. But lawmakers, more focused on consumer angst than the movie industry's needs, passed the bill and overrode Bush's veto.

Expect to see this fight on a new battlefield. Congress is poised to rewire telecommunications law this year. While the ground shakes as the Baby Bells, the long-distance phone companies and the newspaper publishers fight for the spoils, the studios will have a chance to attach an amendment that provides them with a piece of the cable TV action - especially since House Judiciary Committee Chair Jack Brooks (D-Texas), who sided with Hollywood during the cable debate, is pushing telecommunications reform.

Valenti scoffs at the notion that the movie industry is well positioned in the new Washington, saying, "the prospect for great triumphs is an illusion."

One of Hollywood's favorite portraits of Washington (as in The Distinguished Gentleman) is of a city lousy with slick operators who grease pliant lawmakers to procure political favors. It's a system the studios obviously understand.

COPYRIGHT 1993 Common Cause Magazine
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group