Directors Tackle Studios, Media Giants Over Creative Rights : Movies: Geneva copyright conference pits top creators against big corporations and the United States.

Proponents of artists’ rights in Hollywood are making their case abroad this week, in the scenic town of Geneva, Switzerland, where an international copyright conference convened Monday. The debate positions some of filmdom’s biggest creative names against many of the nation’s biggest media and entertainment corporations.

Representatives of the Directors Guild of America delivered a statement Monday that argues for “the right to object” to any defacement of their work--a right they contend that U.S. law does not allow. The directors, as well as other members of the creative community, feel they lack the means to challenge colorization, editing and other new technological factors that alter the movies they created.

But the U.S. government took the position in Geneva that the country already is in basic compliance with the Berne Treaty of the World Intellectual Property Organization that governs the rights of artists worldwide. According to Dorothy Schrader, general counsel for the U.S. Copyright Office, when the Senate ratified joining the Berne Treaty in 1988, it acknowledged that existing state and federal laws and statutes already provided safeguards for the “moral” rights that other nations grant to creators. Schrader is in Geneva this week, part of the U.S. delegation headed by Registrar of Copyrights Ralph Oman.

Also attending the conference is Norman Alterman, an executive of the Motion Picture Assn. of America, an umbrella group for the major studios. Its position, opposite that of the DGA, is essentially the same as the government’s.

The DGA’s decision to take its case to Geneva represents the second major effort in as many months by the creative community to bring attention to the issue of artists’ rights. In a separate move, directors Steven Spielberg and Barry Levinson spearheaded a fund-raising drive in May that quickly generated $100,000 in campaign contributions for Long Island Rep. Robert Mrazek, a champion of artists’ rights who faces a tough re-election battle this November.

Paul Bjorklund, a legislative assistant to Mrazek, said the size of the contributions (unusually large for any congressional candidate) from Hollywood indicates a desire “to send a signal to other members of Congress that there are other players in Hollywood--that it’s not just the producers and studios” who can lobby, donate money and play the political game.

“The sleeping giant is finally awakening,” said Elliott Silverstein, chairman of the DGA President’s Committee, which is coordinating the guild’s effort. Silverstein is attending the Geneva conference with DGA executive director Glenn Gumpel, and they are working there in tandem with Writers Guild of America West Coast executive director Brian Walton and WGA president George Kirgo.

Before leaving for Europe at the end of last week, Silverstein said the DGA would argue that U.S. law isn’t enough to meet even the minimal requirements of the Berne Treaty. He believes that if other nations adopt model legislation detailing artistic rights, it may “pressure Congress to upgrade our laws.” The main legal deficiency, as the DGA sees it, is that the creative community has no status to even file a lawsuit to object to what they see as a “defacement” of their work.

“What you’re seeing is an alternative point of view emerging,” he added.

The artists’ “alternative point of view,” however, runs counter to that of many of the companies that employ them--the major motion picture studios.

The efforts by the DGA and the political fund-raising by such directors as Spielberg and Levinson also upsets the conventional wisdom that only the producers and monied executives have political clout. Further, these efforts are reviving the centuries-old confrontation between art and commerce. In this case, who controls the fate of finished motion pictures--the artists who create them, or those who pay for their production?

Among the contributors to Spielberg and Levinson’s pitch for Democrat Mrazek were such major talents as Woody Allen, Warren Beatty, Francis Coppola, Tom Cruise, David Geffen, Dustin Hoffman, George Lucas, Michael Ovitz, Sidney Pollack, Rob Reiner, Martin Scorsese, Don Simpson and Bob Zemeckis.

On the other side is a Washington-based lobby known as the Committee for America’s Copyright Community, formed in early 1989. According to Michael R. Klipper, counsel for CACC, its members include such powerful industry groups as the MPAA, the National Association of Broadcasters, the Recording Industry Assn. of America, the Assn. of American Publishers, and such corporations as Time Warner, Times Mirror, Turner Broadcasting, McGraw-Hill and Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

The issue comes down to a matter of “corporate greed,” Spielberg charged at a luncheon he and Levinson gave at the Creative Artists Agency for Mrazek. “Who controls the future of a piece of art? What’s to stop Ted Turner from turning ‘Gone With the Wind’ into a rock opera?” Spielberg said that with the rapidity that technology is changing show business, there no doubt will always be as-yet-unknown ways that movies can be altered. “I used to trade on technology to make my movies more effective. Now I fear technology because it is going to make my movies more defective,” he said.

The director cited advances in the technology of colorization, panning and scanning, and time compression (speeding up a film to fit it into a specific TV time slot).

“For all the power I think I have, I don’t own the negatives to my films,” Spielberg added, noting that his own success allows him to speak out against the positions of many companies and executives he’s worked for.

“We have no rights now,” Levinson said. “(Movies can) become no more than a canvas to be altered and we have no right to object.”

The campaign contributions came flowing because, as Spielberg noted, it’s no easy task to buck the existing copyright laws and the forces that maintain them. Mrazek and others in Congress have tried, but without much success.

In 1987, Rep. Richard Gephardt (D-Mo.) made a splash in Hollywood during his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. He dabbled a bit in the anti-colorization efforts of the moment. He even appeared with Woody Allen at a Capitol Hill press conference. But the creative community’s support of his candidacy remained limited.

Eventually, in the face of strong opposition from many of the same corporations who now form the backbone of the Committee for America’s Copyright Community, Gephardt let the issue slide. When he was accused of using the anti-colorization drive as a way to attract Hollywood money, The Times quoted him as saying, “The idea that this was a political effort is completely wrongheaded. It probably has hurt my efforts,” because, he suggested, many studio chiefs and others are opposed to it.

Mrazek’s chief of staff, Tom Barry, speculated that Los Angeles-area members of Congress haven’t had a high profile on the issue because “they have constituents on both sides of the issue. (In Long Island) we don’t have a constituent economic interest.”

Two years ago, Mrazek, with the help of Rep. Sid Yates (D-Ill.), sponsored legislation creating the National Film Preservation Act, which became law in 1988. For the first time, it provided government recognition of movies as an art form. It granted special status for the designation of 25 vintage films each year to be added to a roster of “protected” works. If they are colorized in any format, they must be labeled as such.

Most attempts at “moral rights” legislation have failed. One case in 1988 attempted to amend the U.S. Copyright Act to grant authors and creators the rights of “paternity” and “integrity.” The proposal, known as the Berne Convention Implementation Act, was intended to bring the United States into conformity with the Berne Convention Treaty. Portions of the act were adopted but not the specific moral rights or artists’ rights wording that the directors’ and writers’ guilds would have liked. However, the legislation was sufficient to allow the U.S. to become a signatory to Berne.

Following the 1988 debate, the Committee for America’s Copyright Community was formed to represent producers, studios and publishers.

In a position paper, the CACC contended that it is the economic incentives given by producers to authors and creators that “encourages the creation and dissemination of new works.”

While the committee opposes changing the copyright laws that cover so-called “works for hire,” it is neither for nor against the Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990, sponsored by Rep. Robert W. Kastenmeier(D-Wis.) and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), which is pending in the Senate (and already passed by the House).

CACC’s counsel Klipper said that the proposed act would grant “attribution and integrity” rights to artists for limited-edition and single-copy works--”a very narrow category,” he added.

But that’s a distinction the DGA and the contributors to Mrazek would not find relevant.

“This effort is about respect for film as an art form,” Levinson said. “We don’t want finished films changed. They (the CACC) feel film can be recycled . . . the CACC doesn’t want to lose rights because films have proven to be reusable in whole new frontiers.”