Export Showdown Expected in Cannes

Suppose high executives from eight big companies controlling 90% of the American market for their product get together in a room.

If they jointly decide to quit shipping their widgets to Ohio because they don’t like the tax laws, that’s probably a criminal monopoly.

But if the same executives decide to shut off Thailand for a while . . . it might be just another meeting of the Motion Picture Export Assn. The MPEA is Hollywood’s answer to OPEC--and its annual session here is one of the most potent, if least understood, rituals of Cannes.

Unlike OPEC, the MPEA doesn’t fix prices.

But the association, which includes all the major U.S. studios, has plenty to say about the terms under which American movies--one of the hottest export commodities on Earth--are sold abroad.

First a word about alphabet soup, however.

The MPEA is substantially the same organization as the much better known MPAA--or Motion Picture Assn. of America. Both are Washington-based, both have the same members, and both are headed by diplomat-lobbyist-orator Jack Valenti.

(To complicate matters further, Valenti is also president of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, or AMPTP, a parallel group that negotiates labor contracts for the entertainment industry.)

When lobbying a congressman about problems with a local cable-TV operator, the studios wear their MPAA hats. But when cracking down on video pirates in Panama or wrestling with trade restrictions in Japan, the studios switch to their MPEA chapeaux because U.S. law, while stringently forbidding monopoly at home, permits companies to act in unison in many situations abroad.

As the MPEA, studio officials meet with Valenti three times a year--once in New York, once in Los Angeles and once (hey, everyone’s entitled to a little fun) in Cannes.

The Cannes meeting is set for Thursday at the Hotel Gray d’Albion, and it promises to be a hot one. The precise agenda is secret. But the studios will consider invoking their most severe sanctions--complete withdrawal of American movies and a formal complaint to the U.S. trade representative--against an unidentified country that, according to Valenti, has somehow violated the association’s notion of fair play.

“Countries are like people. Sometimes they won’t act unless they know you can hurt them,” said Valenti, here for his 22nd festival and acknowledging that he doesn’t mind slipping off to the Hotel Du Cap for a little bit of tennis when the serious stuff is over.

The MPEA-MPAA-AMPTP chief declined to identify this year’s principal offender, because, he said, the issue is “politically sensitive,” and he expects that the ministers of country X will probably see the light before the studios have to do something tough, like hold up delivery of the next Spielberg movie.

According to Valenti, the studios have never even had to file what is technically known as a “Section 301” unfair trade practices complaint. The mere threat of joint action is usually enough.

Most recently, the movie companies cracked down on South Korea for what they said was a broad range of unfair restrictions that made it almost impossible to grab a box-office won in Seoul.

Valenti prepared a Section 301 complaint and showed it to Korean officials--gently reminding them that President Reagan, a former Hollywood actor and movie buff himself, could theoretically retaliate against $5 billion a year in Korean textiles, electronics and other exports to the United States if the complaint were found valid.

Why risk your economy just to keep “Rambo” from eating the local film makers alive? The Koreans modified the restrictions.

Twenty years ago, the studios shut off product to Great Britain for a year. Valenti now says he can’t remember what the problem was.

The Thais were shut off for “five or six years” for trade abuses. And Spain suffered an MPEA boycott that ended after the death of Franco--although Valenti still isn’t happy about a law that requires the exhibition in Spain of one Spanish picture for every American one shown.

“We can live with it,” said Valenti, who figures the studio representatives will need “eight or nine hours” on Thursday to deal with the season’s crop of such problems from around the world.

And then, maybe, a little tennis at the Du Cap.