With his long career as the chief voice of the American movie industry drawing to a close, MPAA president and CEO Jack Valenti sat down in the office he will soon vacate with The Hollywood Reporter national correspondent Brooks Boliek for a wide-ranging conversation on everything from the importance of fun, copyrights and why the late Pat Tillman is a modern "Man for All Seasons."

The Hollywood Reporter: Jack, the last time we did a Dialogue in November, I think the last thing you told me was that you'd quit when it stopped being fun (HR 11/7). So when did it stop being fun?

Jack Valenti: It hasn't quit being fun, but I have another quip -- isn't it in the Bible? -- that there's a time to reap and a time to sow, there's a time to get out and to go out under your own steam and your own schedule, and I might add, immodestly, at the top of my game rather than stay on as I could for a few more years and begin to hear those old mutterings, "When is that old son of a bitch going to leave?"



THR: How's the search for your successor going?

Valenti: We now have a professional head-hunting firm named Spencer Stuart doing this executive search. I know your next question is going to be when, and I'll tell you, I don't know.



THR: Is everything going according to whatever plan you have, if there is one?

Valenti: Well, we had a little more lethargy there in the beginning than I wanted, but now I think it's moving. There is a plan, and there is a timeline set. There has to be an interview process, and that takes time. But I am convinced that we are now moving in a flowing manner.



THR: Do you think by the end of May? There has been some speculation that that's the date.

Valenti: I don't know. I have not formally stepped down as CEO, and I will do that before the successor is announced, but it will be, if not coincident shortly before it.



THR: But we are coming to the end. When you look back at your long, distinguished career in the MPAA, what sticks out in your mind? Are there any eureka moments where you say: "Damn. That's why I'm doing this job," or "Damn, I wish I didn't have this job?"

Valenti: This is not a cliche, I can say that I wake up every morning and am eager to be about my chores. From the first day; from my first board meeting. I can't remember the exact date in May in 1966. It was a time so long ago that a Warner brother was still in command, Jack Warner. There was Darryl F. Zanuck. There was Spyros Skouras and Barney Balaban, from Paramount. Lew Wasserman, Arthur Krim, Abe Schneider and Louie Nizer. Disney wasn't a member then. From that day on, I've really had a lot of fun.

THR: So much fun? Dealing with all those studio big shots with their big egos sounds like a big headache to me.

Valenti: Being around the creative community is exhilarating. It's never dull. As I've often said, I count dullness the one sin for which there is no absolution.



THR: I'm not sure how to phrase this, but it has come up a couple of times now that it seems we're in another big technology fight. Everyone wants to paint the motion picture industry as anti-technology, and one of the things they are so fond of is throwing up those words you said during a Senate hearing around the time of the Betamax case when you said: "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."

Valenti: I like to say: How many people have ever said anything that stays so memorable for 22 years, and the answer is, not many. Nobody seems to want to put it in context, which for me at least is a grand omission. We've never been against technology. Long before I came here, in the '40s and '50s, television was beginning to sprout. The studios didn't want it because they were afraid of it, but Lew Wasserman wasn't. He's the one who saw (that) movies were going to big on TV in the '50s, so he bought the pre-1950 library of Paramount. Lew Wasserman during that time had a partnership with a Japanese company that made the (VCRs). We were never against the VCR.



THR: But you had a pitched battle with the consumer electronics industry that went all the way to the Supreme Court.

Valenti: What the fight was all about was not to abolish the VCR but to get a copyright royalty fee to be placed on every blank videocassette. ... What I said was, there would be massive piracy in the analog world, and there has been. We lose over $3 billion a year in analog piracy. What I wanted was a small copyright royalty fee that would go to the copyright owners to partially compensate them for thievery. That's the way they do it in Europe. But to get Congress to pass that law, the Supreme Court had to say that the VCR infringed on copyrights. Once you had that, then we go to Congress and get the copyright royalty fee. But in 1982 or '83, on a 5-4 vote -- and I've been told one justice switched at the last minute -- they said it didn't infringe because it had noninfringing uses. What Betamax said was you could copy off the air free TV for time-shifting purposes. That's all. So when people add more to that, they really are exaggerating with flimsy evidence.



THR: So you think the perception that the movie industry is anti-tech is all wet?

Valenti: The idea (that) we're Luddites is foolish. Contrary to popular notion, there are many terrifically smart people in the movie business who have vision and know where the industry is going. When you see what's going to happen in the next 18 months to two years, then you'll realize there's a lot of evidence for some of my outbursts of pain. Caltech has FAST, where a movie can be downloaded in five seconds, (and) Internet II, which is a consortium of scientists, has brought it down in one minute. That's the stuff that will be in the marketplace in 18 months to two years. We have to begin now to develop (technology) that will allow us to protect our works. Then we'll use the most astonishing delivery system ever -- the Internet -- and we'll have thousands and thousands of movies available for download to homes at a family's choice of time and genre that is available at a price set by the consumer, not the distributor. Now that's the grand strategy.



THR: That's pretty grand. But wouldn't that make HBO obsolete?

Valenti: No, because HBO makes their own original programming. Keep in mind (that) people look for things people want to watch. So in the next couple of years, if they have the equivalent of "The Sopranos" or "Sex and the City" or "Six Feet Under" or "Curb Your Enthusiasm," people want to watch what they like or what they've heard about. On the other hand, they may decide to watch "My Darling Clementine" with Henry Fonda.



THR: Is that the biggest challenge, going forward, for the guy that's sitting in this office?

Valenti: Or woman.



THR: Yes. I guess I should say person.

Valenti: Yes. That right now is the central issue facing the movie industry. It is the prime priority. Now I may have given you a bleak picture, but my optimism tells me the movie industry is talking every day with the best minds in the IT community. I'm absolutely confident (that) over the next two years, we'll have innovative technology with more than adequate protection to deploy these movies over the Internet. I believe that.



THR: I'd like to say I believe that too, but I think I had this same conversation with you two years ago, and it seems like this is something that stays two years in the future.

Valenti: Well, we've made a lot of progress in the last two years in digital rights management. More and more companies are involved in this. Our chief technology officer is monitoring dozens and dozens of new encryption designs and DRM designs. The technology is moving with seven league strides.



THR: You've got plans for after you leave?

Valenti: I've got some. There's a nice void out there. But I've learned in my, some would say checkered life, that my two most fascinating careers came out of the blue. In my wildest conjuring, I would have never thought I'd serve in the White House -- my office next door to the president of the United States. I never would have believed when I was 14 years old and an usher in a second-run theater in Houston called the Iris ... that I would be one of the leaders of this industry. But they both happened. The one thing I know is I will spend six or seven days a month working for Friends of the Global Fight against Malaria, TB and AIDS. Something I've been interested in is the control of disease. That will give me some inner satisfaction that I'm doing some little tiny jot to help out.



THR: It's kind of a jump going from the motion picture industry to controlling the global spread of disease.

Valenti: It wasn't something where I just had an epiphany two weeks ago. I've been interested in this for sometime. ... There's hope there that we can handle all three of those, malaria, TB and AIDS, if you do it right. As I said, that's four or five or six days that leaves a whole lot of time.



THR: Are you going to write a memoir?

Valenti: I'm not going to say what I'm going to write or not write. It takes a year or a year-and-a-half to do that, and we'll see what happens.


THR: You went through this indecency thing when you created the MPAA ratings system, we went through this on the TV ratings system; I say we, I mean you. Is there something different this time?

Valenti: No. It's just that they pressed the detonator, with Janet Jackson's gross performance with (Justin) Timberlake and Howard Stern. I would call that tasteless but not indecent -- one of the hazards of dealing in this subjective arena. If you're going to charge someone, you are going to have to specifically and precisely define what he did wrong. Burglary is breaking and entering a house with the intent of stealing something of value. So if you're caught in a house that's not yours with a handful of jewelry, you have per se violated the law. But what is indecency?



THR: I know there's a definition. Something about sexual or excretory functions as compared to community standards.

Valenti: Keep in mind the Supreme Court of the United States to this hour can't define pornography. They say it violates community standards. Now that's a hole big enough to send 40 Humvees side by side through. I'm reluctant to get involved or support anything that charges people with something that violates the law, but you can't define what the crime is. I'm hard-pressed to say why a four-second exposure of a breast is a violation. You can go into museums and see Venus de Milo, one of the greatest pieces of art ever known, and children study that in school. Why is this different?



THR: One of the different wrinkles I've noticed in this debate is Congress' desire to go after the individual. They want to allow the FCC to fine someone up to a half-million dollars. So you go on Larry King or Don Imus or one of those shows. You, Jack Valenti, who's incredibly well-spoken but never one to shy away from a salty phrase here or there, says "bullshit" on the air; right then, you're eligible for a $500,000 notice of apparent liability from the FCC.



Valenti: The idea that you go after people for subjective reasons is not in the long-range best interests of the country. You know, I invented a ratings system, which understood two things: One, the First Amendment reigns. Freedom of speech. Freedom of content. The director is free to make any movie he wants to make and not have to cut a millimeter of it. But freedom without responsibility is anarchy. The director will know he can do that, but some of his films may be restricted from viewing by children. Now I thought that was a balancing of the moral compact. It'll be 36 years old in November. Very few things last 36 years.



THR: You've been as closely associated with Washington as you have with Hollywood, perhaps more so as this has been your hometown since the Johnson years; how has working here changed since you started?

Valenti: I think the most profound change is the level of partisanship. That didn't exist at this level when I first came to town. There's always been party politics, but it has become rampant.



THR: Johnson was a pretty political fellow.

Valenti: But Johnson could talk to Sen. Everett Dirksen. They could joke with each other and then cut a deal. They were always looking for equal ground. Johnson talking to Dirksen then would be like Bush talking to (Tom) Daschle today. You just don't see it happening. And there's the money. Campaign contributions are far, far more important today. That's reached a fever pitch, and that changes the town.



THR: Hollywood has always been thought of as a Democratic town.

Valenti: I take issue with that. There's a lot more independence than you think out there. I think people in Hollywood tend to be more independent than Democrat or Republican, and then there are many high-profile Republicans like (California Gov.) Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is on the way to being one of the greatest governors California has ever known.



THR: At the risk of offending some of your board, what's your favorite movie?

Valenti: "A Man for All Seasons." It came out about '66 or '67. The story of Sir Thomas More. It was written by Robert Bolt and directed by Fred Zinnemann, and it starred a fellow who I think is the greatest living English-speaking actor today, Paul Scofield.



THR: I've never seen that movie.

Valenti: Well, you should. It's the greatest movie ever made. It has relevance today. It's about a man who has a conflict between his conscience and his king; between what he believes and what his government wants him to do. Because he had such strong convictions, he was willing to die rather than stain his convictions. You might say that that man today is Pat Tillman (the former Arizona Cardinals football player killed in combat in Afghanistan last month). When I was watching him on television, I got misty-eyed. I almost cried. Here a man gives up a football contract worth millions a year because he believes he should be fighting for his country. God. That's fantastic.