Strike Days: The MPAA Will Stay On The Sidelines

Motion Picture Association of America chief Dan Glickman is one potential statesman who apparently won't be weighing in on the strike. Interviewed by the Financial Times this week, he declined to make any comment whatsoever about the increasingly bitter struggle. The longtime Kansas congressman also didn't wish to discuss his tenure as overseer of the spooks:

He also became chairman of the House intelligence committee, which was "very much involved in overseeing the CIA and other intelligence operations. I could tell you about it," he jokes, "but I'd have to cut your tongue out."

Valenti, who died of a stroke in April of this year after passing the reins to Glickman in 2004, was the author of a book on oratory called Speak Up With Confidence, and had been an open zealot for the studios--notably in 1982, when he drew flak for comparing the videocassette recorder to the Boston Strangler in testimony before Congress. Home video of course became a crucial cash cow for the industry, and is very near the center of the current strike's issues. (Valenti's latter-day cause was digital piracy, leading to a conspicuous misstep when he banned screeners that studios had been sending to Academy members, incensing the studios' Oscar-hungry specialty divisions --until a federal judge ruled that ban violated antitrust laws.

Glickman necessarily has adopted the anti-piracy crusading, setting up an anti-piracy division with a $40 million budget. He's also scored two significant victories by overseeing passage of an omnibus copyright protection bill, and the U.S. Supreme Court decision on curtailing movie downloading site Grokster.

Glickman's office said this year that even as the business racked up $9.5 billion in domestic box-office totals, (the second-best year the movies have ever had), piracy costs $3.5 billion annually in lost sales. (And that solely from traditional bootlegs of DVDs and videos--the tally of lost income from the peer-to-peer networks the industry has aggressively targeted in the courts is unknown.)

Glickman's time is divided between a kind of diplomatic calling, as when he'll visit China beseeching them to open their market to more than the current 20 American films each year, and meet-and-greet runs to Hollywood. He's emphasized that international sales are growing, despite the piracy issues. He's pointed out that the percentage of both theatrical and home video sales overseas is "well over 40 percent now. It's critical."

While in Mexico in March of 2005, Glickman toured a flea market where he saw 400 separate stalls selling pirated DVDs, CDs and burners. He may have been at some level amused to see among the pack was The Pacifier, a Disney Vin Diesel vehicle produced by his son Jon, which led its opening week of release and went on to earn $113 million domestically.

His ongoing challenge will be to shepherd the technology that makes movies both digitally protected and digitally friendly. He'll need to keep the competing studio and network chiefs in the same room, and just as important, include the Silicon Valley, tech industry geniuses with their ever expanding delivery options.

As a Clinton appointee, confirmed Democrat Blackman faced a cold welcome from Republican congressmen who had wanted one of their own in the supposedly non-partisan job. He brought in Stacy Carlson, a former GOP aide and D.C. representative of California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, to win support in Congress, but she failed to make inroads and was gone within a year. Pointing out that Valenti had never had an effective number two man, Glickman hired longtime industry exec Rob Pisano two years ago. Pisano's just-previous job had been running the Screen Actors Guild, whose contract with producers ends in June and whose interests are of course combined with those of the WGA and Directors Guild. Pisano presumably will be keeping mum on strike issues as well. Glickman will have enough challenges simply keeping his own C.E.O.'s in line--"Trying to find consensus is not always easy, he tells the Financial Times, adding in an uncharacteristic burst of rhetoric that as a sometime agriculture secretary in "I went from soybeans to the silver screen, from food for the stomach to food for the spirit and the soul."

(Then-agriculture secretary Dan Glickman testifies before a Senate committee on the US-China trade agreement, March, 2000; photo by Mario Tama/AFP/Getty Images)