‘Dazed and Confused’ Ad Battle Widens : Movies: Gramercy Pictures calls the MPAA’s rejection of a review quote ‘censorship.’ Jack Valenti calls it nonsense.

The president of Gramercy Pictures fired off a letter Thursday to the heads and marketing presidents at all of the Hollywood studios soliciting support for a protest of what he believes is the Motion Picture Assn. of America’s unfair censorship of review quotes in movie ads.

As the Times reported Wednesday, the MPAA rejected a 30-second TV spot and a print ad for the Richard Linklater movie “Dazed and Confused,” which opens today, because a review quote from US magazine--”Deliciously accurate in its portrayal of the generation that fell between LSD and R.E.M”--violated its guidelines restricting references to drugs.

The MPAA also rejected the ads because they contained the line: “Finally! A Movie for Everyone Who DID Inhale.” But it is the MPAA’s rejection of the quote that particularly irks Gramercy.

In his letter, president Russell Schwartz said, “It’s one thing to restrict advertising copy,” but “censorship of a quote from a legitimate media outlet” sets a “new, alarming precedent.

“Are we to assume that the MPAA is now the arbiter for the American public of what constitutes a legitimate commentary from the press?”

While Schwartz contended that this is a “new restriction” by the MPAA, association president Jack Valenti insists quotes have always been subject to the guidelines.

“This is absolutely not new. We’ve had these policies for years,” Valenti said. “From time to time people use the rating system as a whipping boy. It’s a way to get free publicity for films.”

Valenti charged that such a publicity tack has been enlisted frequently in the past by Schwartz when he was head of marketing at Miramax Films. “My good friend Russell Schwartz is very clever and innovative. But old ashes are being stirred.”

Schwartz argues, “I have never run up against a quote being banned from a legitimate reviewer.” He said his problems with the MPAA at Miramax were over rating flaps for such films as “Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down,” and “The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover.”

Exemplifying ways in which the MPAA has rejected quotes in the past, Valenti said the association continuously rejects review quotes that suggest a film is acceptable viewing for the entire family when it applies to anything other than a G-rated picture. Just three weeks ago, he said the MPAA turned down advertising containing a critic’s quote referring to a certain PG-13-rated film as “a family film.”

A number of studio marketing executives said the only times they recall the MPAA restricting review quotes was in that context.

Mike Kaiser, executive vice president of marketing/creative advertising at 20th Century Fox, said that while it has been his experience that the only time the MPAA restricted review quotes was when they violated specifics of a rating, he does not view it as a censorship issue:

“If you accept that you’re going to have a ratings system, the fact that its guidelines can extend to quotes you can use in the selling of a movie is fair--that’s the rules of the game,” he said.

Schwartz said the intention of his letter is to “begin a dialogue about a decision that is sure to have a chilling effect on all future creative marketing campaigns.”

Buffy Schutt, who runs marketing at TriStar Pictures with Kathy Jones, said that while she is not opposed to such discussion or a review of the MPAA’s practices, “it must be done in a meeting room and not in the press.” She said she agrees with Kaiser that “if you’re a member company of the MPAA, it’s fair game.”

Valenti said he believes the marketing campaign for “Dazed and Confused,” about teens in the drug-crazed ‘70s, does promote drug use--a violation of MPAA’s guidelines. “Ninety-nine percent of the families in America find drugs abhorrent, they don’t find it hip at all,” he said. “They can’t use quotes that glorify or glamorize something parents would think of as anti-social behavior.”

Schwartz said the Gramercy campaign is “a reflection of the movie and its time, and does not promote drugs at all.”

One studio marketing executive defended Schwartz’s position, saying, “the MPAA is still living in the early ‘70s . . . their standard is out of whack with the times.”