Jack Valenti, 1921 - 2007.

Jack Valenti, who became a confidant of President Lyndon B Johnson and then a Hollywood institution, leading the Motion Picture Association of America and devising a voluntary film-rating system that gave new meaning to letters like G, R and X, died yesterday at his home in Washington. He was 85.

David M Halbfinger, New York Times.

For 38 years until retiring in 2004, Valenti headed the Motion Picture Assn. of America, guiding the trade organization from a clubby group of movie studios led by autocratic moguls into a collection of global media conglomerates involved in television, the Internet and an array of other media businesses.

Updated through 4/30.

[...]

With his silver mane, custom-tailored shirts and suits, and polished cowboy boots, Valenti was one of the most recognizable figures in the nation's capital. Despite being a loyal Democrat, he skillfully worked both sides of the aisles, possessing one of the town's best Rolodexes. Along the way, he became nearly as much a celebrity as the stars - such as Kirk Douglas - he befriended, addressing the worldwide Academy Awards TV audience each year.

James Bates, Los Angeles Times.

Jack Valenti had, for better or worse, as profound an impact on American cinema as almost anyone this side of Orson Welles. And while I know it remains fashionable to dis Valenti (and the MPAA itself) for allegedly stifling free speech and repressing freedom of expression, I nonetheless find myself begrudgingly grateful for his efforts during the 1960s, when he found himself "caught between Hollywood's outdated system of self-censorship and the liberal cultural explosion taking place in America," and yet somehow "abolished the industry's restrictive Hays code, which prohibited explicit violence and frank treatment of sex, and in 1968 oversaw creation of today's letter-based ratings system." Trust me: Without the MPAA ratings system, we likely would have seen dozens (if not hundreds) of local censorship boards popping up throughout the United States from 1966 onward.

Joe Leydon.

Updates: Richard Corliss for Time: "He politicked hard and heartily with his old Washington friends for favorable tariff rulings, and in the process maintained Hollywood's status as one of the few national cinemas not subject to government censorship. (It's also one of the few to receive no direct government subsidies for film production, so I guess that's a fair swap.)... 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."

"I always admired his tenacity and skill set," blogs David Poland. "The guy was a perfectly coiffed bulldog. And he protected the film business more aggressively and more successfully than 99.9% of people can begin to imagine."

Nikki Finke collects comments from "Studio Moguls."

Nick Dawson at Filmmaker: "Jack Valenti's death is a reminder that his legacy, namely the system he created at the MPAA, has always favored studio films while, as [Kirby] Dick's potted history of the MPAA's 'quirky' decisions reveals, indie filmmakers have been the ones disadvantaged by the censors' double standards. And no doubt will continue to be."

Updates, 4/28: In the NYT, Michael Cieply assesses Valenti's legacy, the ratings system: "For the major studios the system has been a bulwark against outside interference, though it has often galled filmmakers and hasn't done enough for many parents, who increasingly want to know more about what their children are going to see in a picture.... Yet it was Mr Valenti's genius to have devised an apparatus that is not bound by precedent, changes its definitions at will and, ultimately, serves the motion picture industry by becoming, at any given moment, as permissive or restrictive as the prevailing climate seems to demand."

Vanity Fair runs an "expanded version" of George Wayne's interview with Valenti that ran in the March issue.

Updates, 4/30: "We were both privileged to work with Jack Valenti and to know him well," begins an appreciation from Sherry Lansing and William Friedkin in the LAT. "Jack was a leader and a healer. He was persuasive but never offensive. He loved movies. He was our greatest cheerleader, and he accomplished more for the industry than anyone ever has."

Leonard Klady at Movie City News: "As far as the public was concerned the prime purpose of the organization was to rate movies for theaters when in reality that part of its work maybe amounted to 5 percent of its energy. Film theft aka piracy similarly is not the primary focus of the organization. It is now and forever about hammering out favorable trade agreements. Entertainment is, after all, America's biggest export industry."

"Abroad, he was a tenacious and often successful fighter for retaining and opening markets to Hollywood entertainment," writes Christopher Reed in the Guardian. "This made him an irritant in Europe with his incessant skirmishings against domestic film subsidies and quotas, and his implacable defence of US 'cultural dominance.'"

"Valenti seldom objected to a film industry that was content sometimes to turn the movies into a kind of ghetto for violent dreams," blogs David Thomson. "We don't know exactly how that climate leads to events like the Virginia Tech shootings - but an enquiring mind is bound to wonder. Valenti's grin seldom had such a mind for company. He was a PR flack for an industry that has little respect for the imaginations it reached." Yes, he really wrote that. Click his name and see.

Posted by dwhudson at April 26, 2007 10:22 PM