BOUND FOR CHINA : Exported U.S. Movies and TV Shows Reflect Some Curious Choices

“Talk to me,” drawls actor Rod Steiger in the opening scene of “In the Heat of the Night.” Steiger plays a bigoted Southern sheriff coming to terms with a smart black police detective (Sidney Poitier) stranded in Steiger’s town.

It is a quintessentially American film, pitting a small-town, slow-moving white sheriff against an urban black detective in a murder mystery. It won the Best Picture Oscar for 1967 and was literally played to “shreds” in the People’s Republic of China, according to director Norman Jewison, who lent a print to a Chinese official 10 years ago.

Although American movies and TV shows have been feeding images of American life to the world’s audiences for decades, nowhere are they more ravenous for those images than in China.

After an isolation from the West that began when China became a communist nation in 1949, the People’s Republic made such American diversions legal again in 1979. Since then, however, the shows have barely trickled in.

But much more U.S. entertainment is about to be exported to China. Dozens of movies and TV series are being dubbed for the Chinese market.

“It’s almost like a man breaking out of jail,” said Lorimar-Telepictures executive Michael Solomon.

Shanghai TV is scheduled to begin airing 850 hours of Lorimar movies, miniseries and TV shows in October. They’re scheduled to run in prime time, called “golden time” in China, and to air seven days a week. The menu includes prime-time fare ranging from the NBC cop-action series “Hunter” to movies such as “A Streetcar Named Desire” starring Marlon Brando and “Carbon Copy,” a comedy with George Segal as the reluctant father of an illegitimate black son. Also scheduled are a batch of miniseries including “Ellis Island,” “World War III,” “A.D.” (dramatizing the beginnings of Christianity) and the steamy melodrama, “The Two Mrs. Grenvilles.”

(The Chinese passed on “Falcon’s Crest” and “Knot’s Landing.”)

The Shanghai deal is part of a movement among some provincial stations to challenge the supremacy of CCTV, the conservative, government-run station that is China’s only national TV network. Hollywood is fueling both sides of the competition.

Until now, the only major American stars to appear regularly on CCTV have been Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck. Instead of raw entertainment like the aforementioned Lorimar package, CCTV has favored news, sports and nature specials from CBS.

But with Shanghai TV bringing in the American lineup, CCTV is picking up the pace with “Family Affair,” “Marcus Welby, M.D.” and “Murder, She Wrote,” set to begin in January, and is acquiring “Little House on the Prairie” and other American shows. 20th Century Fox says it has a commitment with CCTV for 52 of its feature films to start airing weekly in October.

After student demonstrations for more democracy in China last year, and a change in China’s Communist Party leadership in January, buyers from CCTV showed up at CBS headquarters in New York and picked up their glitziest purchase ever from the network--the Sidney Sheldon miniseries, “If Tomorrow Comes,” starring Madolyn Smith as a glamorous burglar.

Recalled Jayne Ferguson, director of advertising sales for CBS Broadcasting International, “All they said was don’t show us anything with pickets.”

One reason for the recent flurry of deals is that American TV is regarded as a great lure for getting the Chinese people to buy more television sets, says American businessman John Eger. A former telecommunicators adviser to Presidents Nixon and Ford, Eger helped “open up China to TV advertising” in 1983 as an executive with CBS. Now, as president of the Worldwide Media Group, he deals in China as the representative for three Hollywood studios--Universal, Paramount and MGM/UA.

China is in a “rush” to bring its “telecommunications infrastructure” up to snuff and to equip its population of 1.2 billion people with TV sets, he says. The TV industry is still in its infancy in China. But the number of TV sets owned in China has increased from 5 million to 95 million since 1980, according to CCTV, swelling viewer numbers exponentially.

Since so many Chinese live in crowded conditions or watch TV in communal situations, CCTV estimates an average audience of 450 million per show. Like other underdeveloped nations, Eger said, China needs more programs to meet the appetite of TV stations springing up throughout China.

China has become a leading producer of TV sets and, at an average price of $300, the sets are said to be of better quality than American sets (they have finer resolution and thus render a clearer image) but the $300 price represents about six month’s salary for the average Chinese wage-earner.

Therefore, says Eger, the People’s Republic is using capitalist ingenuity (that is, Hollywood) to produce, promote and finance programs for Chinese TV.

“It’s a complicated, delicate balancing act,” Eger said. Referring not only to China but to “underdeveloped” nations at large, Eger noted that “If we (Americans) are commercially diplomatic and sensitive to the politics of sovereign nations, the opportunities are huge, I’m talking hundreds of millions of dollars.”

The Chinese version of glasnost also has had a positive effect on U.S. movie trade with China. There will be more American movies, shown more widely in Chinese theaters than ever, if things are “very pleasant” between China and American distributors, said Zeng Desheng, the senior director of international sales for China Film, the government-run Chinese distribution company that oversees all theatrical movie sales and theatrical showings in China.

But for Chinese audiences, who are said to have a powerful curiosity about the West, the immediate increase in movies imported from America may amount to one step forward and two steps back.

Only a handful of American films has played widely in China, but the range has been pretty bold--notably “First Blood” (the first “Rambo” picture), “Superman” and “Love Story.”

At exclusive screenings during American film weeks in 1982 and 1985, select audiences saw “Black Stallion,” “Star Wars,” “On Golden Pond” and “Kramer vs. Kramer.”

But even after Chinese audiences have had a taste of what’s new, or fairly new, in American films, the three American movie studios with a virtual lock on distributing in Chinese theaters are pushing their stock of old movies.

Among them, Paramount, MGM/UA and Universal have fielded many of the biggest success stories in recent movie history, including “E.T.,” “Back to the Future,” “Flash Dance,” “Beverly Hills Cop,” “Top Gun” and the Bond movies. But you won’t find any of the latest and biggest hit movies from those studios on the list of titles bound for China.

In March, the studios launched their three-year, 21-film contract with China Film with “Love Story” (1970), called “Aiquing Gushi” in China, the movie that made a movie star out of Ali MacGraw playing the doomed college-girl heroine. “Love Story’s” successful Beijing opening was followed by the enduring “Spartacus” (1960), starring Kirk Douglas, and “Roman Holiday” (1953). “In the Heat of the Night” will be released later this year.

The studios operate as a three-way partnership out of the office of Far East Enterprises at MCA-owned Universal Studios.

According to MGM/UA president Steven Silbert, the list of follow-up candidates submitted to China Film includes “Twelve Angry Men”(1957), “The Pride and the Passion” (1957), “The Apartment” (1960), “The Magnificent Seven” (1960), “Topkapi” (1964), “The Alamo” (1960), “Exodus” (1960), “The Miracle Worker” (1962), “The Great Escape” (1963) “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World” (1963), “Lilies of the Field” (1963) and “Khartoum” (1966).

Although “Love Story” proved very popular in China, MCA’s strategy of saturating Chinese theaters with older movies is going to “backfire,” in the opinion of Peter de Krassel, a Santa Monica-based businessman who is partnered with Lorimar in its Shanghai TV deal.

“These are the exact audiences who also saw ‘Rambo’ in the theaters,” he said. “To all of a sudden give Chinese audiences movies that have been re-run hundreds of times (elsewhere in the world) since the ‘50s is, in a sense, demeaning.”

For the moment, however, MCA’s contract gives it a dominating influence over American movies played in Chinese theaters. No other major studio has a contract with China Film.

Likewise, in a package of films from Fox to begin airing in October on CCTV, only one of the 52 movies is newer than 20 years old. Starting with “The Sound of Music” (1965) and “Patton” (1970), the movies include “How Green Was My Valley” (1941), “Broken Arrow” (1950), “Broken Lance” (1954), and six Shirley Temple movies--”Heidi” (1937), “Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm” (1938), “The Little Colonel” (1935), “Curly Top”(1935), “Bright Eyes” (1934) and “Captain January”(1936).

Officials at MCA and Fox explain that the Chinese want movies that harken back to the days when American movies (like “King Kong,” 1933) dominated the Chinese box office, before 1949, when Mao Tse-tung proclaimed the People’s Republic of China and American entertainment was banished.

“Their tastes are about 30 years old,” said Janet Yang, who “recommends” titles to the Chinese as the director of Far East Enterprises. Yang would not give many specifics of the selection process, but she said, “Most people are always worried, ‘Oh God, they’re going to want the best and the newest’ and that most often is not the case.”

However, one source knowledgeable about MCA’s dealings in China says the studios are pushing their old movies and holding back new ones until China agrees to pay more for movies. (Until now, the Chinese have paid extremely low prices ranging from a few thousand dollars to $15,000, according to Xiaolin Chen, president of the L.A. branch of China Film. She says that MCA will get “not much more” than that, although its movies are expected to play more widely than others have.)

Whatever their cultural value, the newer films represent a steeper investment than the older movies.

Asked what MCA’s response would be to a request from China for “E.T.,” the biggest grossing movie of all time--with a worldwide box-office gross of $637 million to date, --Yang’s boss, Charles S. (Skip) Paul, president of MCA Enterprises, replied, “I’d say, ‘Let’s wait a while,’ not only for commercial reasons but also because it’s science fiction. Audiences there haven’t encountered fantasy.”

But China expert Jonathan Pollack, a senior researcher with the Santa Monica-based Rand Corp., said, “I would think that China is ready for ‘E.T.’ That would go over fairly big. And there’s nothing in its storyline that would offend.”

So far, by all accounts, almost any Western entertainment has been embraced by Chinese audiences. When the rock group Wham! went to China last year, notes Pollack, “The place went nuts.”

While some Chinese may harbor fond memories of old American movies, more than half of the country’s moviegoing audience is less than 20 years old, according to China Film.

“First Blood” is said to be the most popular American film shown in China in modern times. The movie was swiftly jerked out of distribution, reportedly by Chinese officials irritated by the movie’s violence. One senior Chinese film official, Zeng Desheng, acknowledges that “The mass audience liked that kind of film (‘Rambo’).”

The Rand Corp.’s Pollack said that some young Chinese audiences will watch a “dreadful” American film “eight or 10 times” out of curiosity for the details of Western life. Pollack quoted one young Chinese as saying, “We don’t watch it for the plot; we watch it for the way of life, the standard of living, the background shots.”

If Chinese audiences are not ready for “E.T.,” they had better get ready for new advertising with their old movies from America.

Advertising, prepackaged with American TV shows, is standard on Chinese TV, but MCA will be the first American company to introduce advertising to Chinese theaters.

According to Eger, who has the job of finding sponsors for MCA’s TV shows and movies, the MCA group has the exclusive right to sell two minutes of advertising before every movie shown in Chinese theaters, or about 160 films a year.

(Eger wouldn’t reveal any names of advertisers; he is in the process of lining up sponsors for MCA’s movie and TV shows.)

In addition to the screen time before each movie, Eger said, products may also be advertised at intermissions or at the end of films. China Film has agreed to let China Film employees pass out free samples of the products being advertised during intermissions or at the end of the films, he said. “Say we have a sponsor who wants to introduce a coffee or a soup. We can have those little packets passed out.”

Moreover, he said, “We can pull out scenes from the movies as well as characters from TV programs and use them to promote the product and the program on billboards.”

Advertising is the coin of the realm in the growing Chinese-American entertainment market. That’s because rather than paying money for TV shows, Chinese stations, including CCTV, trade advertising time for the shows. The American studios then can sell the commercial time. The studios then split the revenues with Chinese TV and film officials, who are widely regarded as very shrewd businessmen.

The problem is that there is not enough advertising to go around, which has added pressure to the already fierce competition among American companies trying to establish a presence in China.

Some potential advertisers have been scared off by the volatile political situation in China. “There’s no question it’s established doubt in a lot of worldwide companies’ minds,” said Jayne Ferguson at CBS. “They’re wondering, gee, is it really as open as we think it is?”

“It’s a daily, uphill slug-out to find (advertising) clients to come aboard the project,” says Art Kane, vice president of programs for CBS International, the company that pioneered in selling programs and advertising to China. Advertisers are drawn from the international market “because we cannot get all the sponsors we need in the U.S.”

MCA claims that it needs the advertising revenues to offset a lack of profits from the Chinese box office.

In the U.S., MCA has sometimes been accused (by actor James Garner, among others) of covering its own costs at the expense of profit participants in its TV shows and movies. Now the shoe is on the other foot. MCA officials say they will probably not see a profit in China until the 1990s. Sighed Yang, “When you’re sitting there struggling with China Film like we have been about (‘Love Story’) rental fees, most people would just walk away and say, ‘I can’t deal with this.’ ”

But the stakes are too high. The Chinese population represents the world’s largest audience. “You can’t ignore 1.2 billion people,” says Skip Paul.

Even by Chinese income standards ($600 a year), it is incredibly cheap to go to the movies in China. Moviegoing is a government-subsidized activity.

According to China Film, it has 500,000 employees to work at distributing movies in China’s 32,000 movie theaters. Only 3,100 of the theaters charge money for admission, it is said, bringing the average ticket price down to about 5 cents.

On a tour of Chinese movie theaters in 1985, MCA’s Paul came upon a theater in a farm community that, he said, operated like this: “It was just an open field with a sheet (for the screen) strung between two sticks and a guy peddling a bicycle generator to get the electricity going for the movie.” The people lined up to see the film were carrying pieces of brick to sit on, he said, and an egg or an ear of corn to “pay” for admission.

But--even there, people were lined up. To Hollywood executives, China has moviegoing statistics to swoon over, 25-billion admissions last year, according to China Film. By comparison, 1.01 billion movie tickets were sold in the U.S. in 1986.

For the studios, the opportunities in China are unique, especially if China’s price structure (ticket prices and the like) can be eased upward.

As a lure to help the People’s Republic justify higher ticket prices, several major American companies, including Warner Bros., MCA, Columbia Pictures and its parent company, Coca-Cola, have offered to build or upgrade theaters in China.

“China is the last remaining place in the world that we can do this to,” said Michael Solomon, “because I don’t think that Russia will ever be as liberal as China. We (Hollywood distributors) will be responsible for contributing to a change of ideas in Chinese society over a period of time.”

On the other hand, Solomon said, “Sometimes you might say that ignorance is bliss. I don’t know how good it is to see an episode of ‘Miami Vice’ and to see the problems with drugs. . . . I’ll be responsible for exposing some of those Western ideas, but then again, if I don’t do it, someone else will.”