Jack Valente to retire!

[Ricky Retardo]

All together now...

na na na na
na na na na
hey hey
goodbye!

[El Duderino Diablo]

So who's taking his place?

[Jeremy Knox]

I'll miss the old bastage. He had his good side. I'm just dreading the guy who's replacing him.

JK13

[Ellen M.]

Couldn't have happened soon enough!

Ellen

[GiGi]

Who the hell is Jack Valente?

[The Baron]

He's the head of the MPAA. You know, the committee of old farts that censors the movies we see in theatres, enabling producers to come up with greater profit margins by putting out dvds with all the stuff cut out of the movie in the first place.

[GiGi]

LOL Oh. Ratings mean nothing to me really. I do avoid G movies unless its a cool cartoon because they are usually Gay.

[Furious D]

Jack Valenti's also the man who lobbies hard to keep Canada's film industry from making movies people actually want to see.

His fave tactic is threatening to cut off the supply of Yankee movies to Canadian theater chains and distributors unless they bury their domestic product to the barest minimal release possible.

Amazing that he's only now going into retirement considering that he actually predates the invention of cinema.

An old rumour will probably resurface that Bill Clinton will be his replacement. If he does replace Valenti you'll all know what that means. More WALKIN TALL movies and lots of dem dere girlies with no clothes on, heeyuck!;)

[Ellen M.]

I hate to admit this, but I kinda miss old Slick Willy! What a perfect comeback role for him!

Ellen

[The Baron]

Originally posted by Furious D
An old rumour will probably resurface that Bill Clinton will be his replacement. If he does replace Valenti you'll all know what that means. More WALKIN TALL movies and lots of dem dere girlies with no clothes on, heeyuck!;)

You say that like it's a bad thing...

The three things I look for in a really great movie:

1) Car chases

2) Explosions

3) Tits

Thank you. :D

[ankitovich]

Originally posted by GiGi
Who the hell is Jack Valente?


http://history.searchbeat.com/lbj-swornin.gif

Jack Valenti is on the left just above the head of the Judge who is swearing in Vice President Johnson.

[Furious D]

Originally posted by ankitovich
Jack Valenti is on the left just above the head of the Judge who is swearing in Vice President Johnson.

And if you carefully study the Zapruder film you can see the top of his head on the Grassy Knoll.;)

[Joseph Piglet]

I wish I could say goodbye to him by shitting on his face.
I hope he has a stroke soon.
Worthless, evil pigfucker.

[GiGi]

You want to poop on him? LOL
Seriously, Im so over all that. I dont think anyone really pays attention to ratings and so forth. Althogh it really sucks if it's keeping films from bieng released at all. That 's ugly censorship.

[Ellen M.]

Well, I will give the man props for always having good hair & a tan... must be pals with George Hamilton & Robert Evans!

Ellen ;)

[flick]

I wrote an article about Jack Valenti. He used to make fun of our Heritage / Culture Minister because she tried to protect our culture:

Vive Le Canada (http://www.vivelecanada.ca/article.php?story=20030827125257517)

http://www.vivelecanada.ca/article.php?story=20030827125257517

She's been ousted more harshly than him, though, by the appease-hollywood camp.

[drsweetscience]

Who will replace him?
Jack Valenti was a tool. He was a steppinfetchit to Washington DC. He would carve any movie to please right-wing reactionaries.

There's no real standard to the rating system. The MPAA employs people to watch movies and arbitrarily assign what they personally feel is an appropriate rating. And they charge you for a rating. Major studios resubmit movies until they get a sympathetic reviewer or they cut out a second at a time. Low budget films cant afford that many resubmissions or recuts.

The MPAA also appointed itself control over movie promotions. It's the MPAA who approves trailers "for all audiences". Posters too. The MPAA stopped the original Sleepy Hollow poster because it featured a severed head. The MPAA for a time was going to ban the word hell from movie posters. So, you couldn't name a movie with a hell- title, because you wouldn't be able to put it on a poster. Who would these rules hurt the most? Independent movies and low budget, like "Hellraiser". Movies that the majors want to squash.

The major studios strategy for independent cinema has always been the same. Not to make better studio fare, but to crush the independents with dirty tricks.

The only reason the hell ban never went over is because too many major films have a hell title or tagline.

Will the next MPAA head be an equal sized douche in a younger container?

[ankitovich]

Originally posted by drsweetscience
He would carve any movie to please right-wing reactionaries.

He worked for Jack Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson you tool.

[Rory L. Aronsky]

Ok, come on, ankitovich. That kind of name-calling is uncalled for here. Settle it down.

[The Baron]

Originally posted by flick
I wrote an article about Jack Valenti. He used to make fun of our Heritage / Culture Minister because she tried to protect our culture:

Thanks for posting your article, Flick.

Not surprizingly, we here in the USA would never normally even know about the issues you've brought up. If our media here were to allow that, it would most likely be deemed "unamerican."

Whereas I'm not in favor of runaway production, (because it has cut heavily into my personal income,) I would love to see more movies and other entertainment from Canada and other countires world-wide. Sadly, most Americans live in a bubble, and don't realize that we don't have the market cornered on greatness and talent.

VIVA LE FREE FLOW OF INFORMATION!

[Brad Slager]

Coming this week Film Threat is going to run an involved story about another campaign that Jack Valenti is going to undertake before his departure. It should be as inflamatory as his other efforts to preserve Hollywood's stranglehold on the market.

[joeswanberg]

I won't miss Valenti at all. Nor will I miss his replacement when he/she retires. The MPAA is an evil organization that rests firmly in the studio's pocket, while they shut down any chances for indie films that don't play by the rules to be seen by a large audience. It's a bunch of rich, white, old puritans who don't represent an average slice of America. This is the group that originally rated "Clerks" NC-17 because of vulgar language. LANGUAGE!!!! Not to mention they charge you to watch your movie and apply their bullshit rating. Thousands of dollars. What no-budget film even has a chance?

During the commentary on the "Easy Rider" DVD, I think it's Peter Fonda who tells the story that they took the film to some major festival, and right before they showed it, Jack Valenti had just delivered some major speech saying that more films ought to be like Disney's "The Jungle Book." I love "The Jungle Book," but I disagree that motion pictures ought to be wholesome family fun. Fuck the MPAA.

[Furious D]

The thing that got on my one remaining nerve about Jack Valenti was that he didn't believe a single thing he said, and that he expected everybody else to believe him and think the sun, moon and stars shone out of the collective back passage of the studios.

When he calls for more family films he's just playing along telling the family values politicos, Republican and Democrat alike what they think their voters want to hear. Mr. & Mrs. Average American will always say they're all for family films, but if you actually try to take away their action movies or the videos Mr. Average American rents from the back room they'll raise bloody hell.

As for the ratings system, I like to think of it as more chickenshit than bullshit. Chickenshit contains the right note of pettiness and pointlessness.

The ratings system was devised to bring about more freedom of expression in the movie business because the irrational Hays Code had outlived its usefulness by about 40 years. But the problem is that those ratings are dispensed on a completely subjective level and there's a hell of a lot of pressure from the studios to keep the dreaded R off their flicks.

Hence you get completely freaky decisions where people are punished for language, while Sly Stallone blows up hundreds of people safe with his PG-13 rating.

Now a rating system's supposed to be just a guide for parents, but it's evolved into a freaky law of its own, causing problems when it was supposed to solve them.

It's what I call a self fullfilling idiocy.:p

[Jeremy Knox]

Hopefully, they'll take the opportunity of Valenti's retirement to update the outdated rating's system. I hate to say it, but when Quebec has a fairer system than just about anyone else's, something is very wrong.

I think the first thing they should do is bring the X-rating back. Porn Producers will most likely be glad to self-apply it. This isn't 1978 when skin flicks still played in theatres. Hell, this isn't even 1990 when that practice was dying out. Be honest, how many porn theatres still exist? So why even maintain a rating's system to keep them out of movie houses?

NC17 should be for movies with sex and/or gore that goes beyond a simple R-rating yet aren't porn. Porno would be relegated to the X rating.

If they bring up the bullshit about not being able to tell porn from a real movie I'll just tell them to use the "Emmanuelle" factor. Basically, if there's more continious sex and nudity in a film than in the old Emmanualle movies, it's porn. If there's less, it's not porn. Simple.

How long did it take me to think this up? Ten seconds? Hundred bucks says it takes them years and a couple of million dollars to come to the same conclusions.

JK13

[Mark Bell]

Has anyone seen the home movie of Jack's that was leaked on the internet? So far I've only seen it referenced here (http://www.slamdance.com/mirvish/respectboot/enjoymovies.html).

[Rory L. Aronsky]

Has anyone seen the home movie of Jack's that was leaked on the internet

No, no. You've got it all wrong. That was the infamous "Jack in Gorbachev" that wasn't pleasant to watch. It made "Dead Alive" look like a visual wonderland.

[The Baron]

There are a couple of problems with bringing back the X rating.

The first one, is when the MPAA was formed, they never bothered trade marking their codes. (G, M, R, X.) Pornographers took advantage of this by using the X, and creating the XXX rating for their own self-promotion. After all, if X was dirty, XXX would have to be filthy. Since they would never consider rating a pornographic film, and the public automatically assumes that X equals porn, the MPAA eventually dropped the X in favor of the NC-17.

In the years that followed, the MPAA trade marked their classification code, which we now know as G, PG, PG-13, R, and NC-17.

Pornographers still use XXX to advertise their films, even though there are relatively few porn theatres remaining. (In L.A., whose San Fernando Valley is the porn production capital of America, I know of only two porn theatres.) The video and dvd market has made pornography a multimillion-dollar business. Gone are the days of the "raincoat brigades." People watch porn in the privacy of their own homes. But the X rating is still, and probably always will be, tainted.

Sadly, the NC-17 is still the kiss of death to a movie, because unless the film has a big-name, legitimate-sounding director attached to it, most people are still going to think it's a "dirty movie." (But not as dirty as if it had an X!)

In my opinion, the rating system should be completely revamped in such a way that it tells the movie-going public exactly what to expect:

F=Family, P=Profanity, N=Nudity, S=Sexual Situations, V=Violence, G=Gore.

So, theoretically, you could have one movie that is assigned an "F", while another receives, "P-V-G-N". But instead of a generalized rating, with "contains strong language and sexual situations," the letters assigned tell people exactly what they're getting, and allow them to make an informed decision.

And frankly, it's shouldn't be up to the MPAA to tell us who can see what at an arbitrary age. That's why children have parents. (But that's a whole different rant. Don't get me started.)

[joeswanberg]

The NC-17 rating was invented in 1990 for Phillip Kaufman's film "Henry & June." Many people were very happy for the rating, because they felt that adult themed films could be released in theatres right alongside children's films, knowing that children would not be permitted. What happened was that certain newspapers wouldn't carry ads for the film, certain theatres wouldn't show the film, and the rating came to mean box-office poison. I really hoped that "The Dreamers" was going to do well, so that other companies would take a chance releasing something as NC-17, but the fact is, I don't care anyway. Fuck the MPAA. I would much rather people release films unrated and not give into the bullshit (or chickenshit, depending on your preference). It's a stupid system that's corrupt beyond belief, and I hope it goes away. I hope I can stay strong and never submit my films to them. I hope that more theatre owners have the guts to book unrated films.

[The Baron]

Originally posted by joeswanberg
It's a stupid system that's corrupt beyond belief, and I hope it goes away. I hope I can stay strong and never submit my films to them. I hope that more theatre owners have the guts to book unrated films.

I couldn't agree with you more, Joe. It's a corrupt, bogus system, and it needs to go. What's really sad is, not only do the theatre owners suck at the tit of the MPAA, but many mainstream media won't accept advertisments for unrated films.

[Ricky Retardo]

to quote Nelson "HA ha!".

good April Fooling!

[AmaiStina]

Originally posted by Joseph Piglet
I wish I could say goodbye to him by shitting on his face.
I hope he has a stroke soon.
Worthless, evil pigfucker.

i would have to agree with you .

except having a stroke seems too generous. he should get flesh-eating bacteria. more painful. a stroke may cause neurological damage that would render a person incapable of living by themselves (is he married or have kids? the horror), but a flesh-eating bacteria wont affect a person's cognitive abilities. thus, he'd feel the pain..the burn.

Or, if not flesh-eating bacteria. then he should get into some kind of car accident where not only does it take the paramedics & fire dept & cops to get to the scene 45-60 mins after he painfully struggled to dial 911, but the fire dept should also only be able to rescue him by amputating whatever limb is clamped under/around some part of his car thats now welded together. :D

Or, he should get his eyebrows plucked. i dont think he could take that kind of pain. ^*^

[El Duderino Diablo]

Yikes!

Mental note: Never anger Stina.
;)

[Furious D]

Has anyone read FT's April Fool's article about Valenti & IMAX?

What made it kinda scary is the fact that it sounds too much like something he'd do. I wouldn't put anything past him.

I still can't believe he's really going to step down. I figured it would going to take a silver bullet & a wooden stake to get him to leave office.

Plus there's still the unanswered question of who will succeed him.

PS Stina: Anger management.

[AmaiStina]

Originally posted by Furious D
[b]PS Stina: Anger management.

im working on it. i havent wished unsavory injury upon any incompetent drivers within the past couple of months.

but seriously, im just really creative! ^_~