For years, Hollywood moguls and studio chiefs have sought to use their influence, voices and money for numerous political and social causes, from apartheid, AIDS and migrant farm workers to Democratic candidates for state and national office.
But the one issue over which the Hollywood hierarchy has direct control and responsibility -- violence in films -- has left industry executives uncharacteristically silent. In fact, the moguls and studio chiefs whose violent films are even more popular abroad than in the United States, seem like a herd of deer caught in the headlights of Washington's focus.
Left unspoken is a tenet that Hollywood executives are almost reluctant to acknowledge: violence sells.
In the aftermath of the killings at a Colorado high school in April, angry criticism among lawmakers in Washington has included accusations of Hollywood's irresponsibility and demands for controls over the marketing practices of the film, recording and video game industries.
President Clinton, who has raised tens of millions of dollars for the Democratic Party among the Hollywood elite, unexpectedly announced on Tuesday that he had asked the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission to study whether the entertainment industry was implicitly luring children to watch violent films, listen to sexually explicit music lyrics and play video games that depict mayhem and murder.
Producers and studio executives here insist that Hollywood is an easy target, especially for lawmakers who are loath to take on the gun lobby. Moreover, executives say, holding the entertainment industry responsible for youth violence -- especially after the high school killings that took 15 lives in Littleton, Colo. -- is not just unfair but wrong.
''When people become outraged, they look for someone to blame it on,'' said Jack Valenti, chairman of the Motion Picture Association of America, the studio's lobbying arm, in Washington. ''And movies, being so high-profile, become an inviting target.''
But this hardly explains the resolute, and surprising, silence of most top executives in town. Mr. Clinton's most vocal supporters in Hollywood, David Geffen, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Steven Spielberg, who run Dreamworks, declined to talk about violence. A spokeswoman at Warner Brothers, which has produced films like Oliver Stone's ''Natural Born Killers,'' with its brutal and horrific murders, and the jokey but violent ''Lethal Weapon'' series, said Mr. Valenti would handle all questions about violence.
Similarly, executives at several other major studios said, through associates, that they would not discuss the issue.
One top producer, who makes his share of violent films and who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said simply: ''By going after the movie business, it's like taking a high-powered rifle into a field and shooting a cow. The cow is standing there. It's the easiest target in the world. It's as simple as that. What do we do? We make movies. We make excitement. We don't make movies to create killers.''
Although their underlings are silent, corporate titans like Time Warner's chief executive, Gerald Levin, and Seagram's chief executive, Edgar Bronfman Jr., have briefly spoken out and accused Washington of trying to use Hollywood as a scapegoat, and indicated that the entertainment industry's output is not an important factor in the violent behavior of children.
Mr. Levin, whose conglomerate includes Warner Brothers and the WB network, criticized the political opportunism and moral arrogance of Washington for faulting Hollywood but failing to deal in any major way with the gun issue. And Mr. Bronfman, who owns Universal Studios, has accused Washington of finger-pointing and chest-pounding on violence issues.
But, within Hollywood itself, the issue among those who actually green-light films seems more complicated. For one, the movie business, and perhaps the nation itself, has an ambivalent attitude toward violent films in contrast to movies that deal with sexual issues. It is commonly known in Hollywood, for example, that movies dealing with sex have a far more difficult time with the the Motion Picture Association's ratings board than those that are extremely violent.
Just recently the creators of ''American Pie,'' a light-hearted comedy that opens next month, about Midwestern teen-agers struggling with sex, were compelled to go four times before the Motion Picture Association's rating board to finally get an R-rating as opposed to a prohibitive NC-17, which would have effectively killed the movie commercially.
By contrast, the ratings board fails to raise substantive questions about extremely violent films like ''Natural Born Killers'' and ''The Basketball Diaries'' and, more recently, ''Pulp Fiction,'' ''Con Air,'' ''Payback,'' ''8 MM,'' ''Scream'' and numerous others. All were awarded R-ratings.
Why are films dealing with sex given more rigorous treatment by the ratings board than those that are violent?
''We're dealing with subjectivity here,'' Mr. Valenti said. ''Sex is easier to define. There are only so many ways to couple. Language is easier to define, too. But what is too much violence? The ratings board has to decide. Is 'Schindler's List' too violent? Is 'Saving Private Ryan' too violent? What about 'The Wild Bunch'? There are so many ways that violence can be committed.''
But Irwin Winkler, a veteran producer of films like ''Rocky'' and the four other ''Rocky'' movies, and classics like ''Raging Bull'', ''The Right Stuff'' and ''Goodfellas'' , said pointedly that the ratings system had failed to deal with the violence issue.
''I don't understand the ratings board,'' he said. ''If you cut off a woman's breast, it's probably not as terrible as showing her nipple. They're very free about violence and puritanical about sex.''
So far television has responded a bit to Washington's accusations. At the WB network, executives recently pulled the series finale of ''Buffy, the Vampire Slayer,'' because it dealt with a high school graduation ceremony that exploded into violence. The episode will be shown later this summer.
At the same time, CBS decided not to pick up ''Falcone,'' a Mafia series, for its fall lineup but held out the possibility that it could be shown later in the year. Leslie Moonves, the CBS network president, said: ''We felt a responsibility not to put it on now. It just didn't feel right.'' The network has, however, several action shows with violence on the air.
What impact the current debate will have in Hollywood is, of course, unclear. No one expects studios to stop making violent films as long as many of them are so successful, especially overseas. (The recent ''Lethal Weapon 4,'' for example, took in $130 million at the domestic box office, barely making back its cost. It also took in $155 million abroad.)
''I do sense that there is an unusual sensitivity now to this issue -- and I hope it's more than lip service,'' said Steve Tisch, a producer of movies like ''Forrest Gump'' and ''American History X.''
Mr. Winkler echoed Mr. Tisch. ''I think people are taking it seriously now, partly because they're being attacked.'' But he added, ''I don't think people took it seriously in the past.''
Source: New York Times
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