AFI at 30 Moves Into More Commercial Role

On June 16, the American Film Institute unveils the results of its much ballyhooed poll of great American films in a three-hour CBS special titled “One Hundred Years . . . One Hundred Movies.” In its planning and execution, this endeavor represents a melding of art and commerce.

After the CBS telecast, there will be several other affiliated commercial presentations. Ten hourlong specials on TNT produced by Time magazine film critic Richard Schickel and co-producer Mel Stuart will provide a more in-depth look at the 100 films, with extensive footage from the movies and commentary from filmmakers.

Turner Classic Movies will broadcast many of the films in a summer-long program. A special Newsweek issue detailing 100 years of movies will use the AFI list as its centerpiece. And the major film studios are packaging the 100 titles under the banner of the AFI Centennial Collection. The video and other promotions will be sponsored by General Motors’ Cadillac division.

In fact, the 100th anniversary of movies (which actually occurred in 1996) came at just the right time for the 30-year-old AFI. The nonprofit film organization created by then-President Lyndon B. Johnson has recently seen its NEA subsidies virtually disappear--from $3 million or $4 million a year down to about $100,000, according to AFI Chairman Tom Pollock. By contrast, the British Film Institute is subsidized to the tune of $60 million a year.

AFI Director Jean Firstenberg has been forced to reexamine AFI’s mandate. “It’s an issue we’ve put a great deal of thought into,” says Firstenberg. “What is a national not-for-profit cultural organization at the end of the 20th century, and what is our model for the next century?”

Having thus far stressed such academic concerns as film preservation, film studies and research, Firstenberg is now putting greater emphasis on “promoting our cultural heritage, which means thinking of ways to achieve our objectives through marketing to a national audience in order to secure the funding to continue our work. If we don’t, we may not survive.”

Until now, the AFI’s primary national fund-raising venture was the annual broadcast of its Life Achievement Award. But those broadcasts were modest in scope. And hardly anyone could quibble over the Life Achievement recipients--Alfred Hitchcock, James Stewart and more recently Martin Scorsese.

But attaching its name to a list of 100 films representing the best the U.S. has produced in a century is almost an invitation to criticism. The final selection, by its very nature, will be subjective, Firstenberg admits. Critics and film buffs alike will take exception to the inclusion of one film and the exclusion of another--even if the title “One Hundred Years . . . One Hundred Movies” itself lays no claim to these films as the definitive “best” or “greatest.”

The sidestepping of such minefields has characterized the endeavor from the very start. The 100 films are being selected from a preliminary list of 400 feature-length fictional movies produced between 1912 and 1996, which was compiled by an AFI panel. The five criteria were popularity, critical approbation, cultural impact, historical significance and award recognition.

That rather exhaustive list of 400 includes everything from “Adam’s Rib” to “Young Mr. Lincoln.” It’s hard to argue with many of the titles. Wouldn’t any list of great American movies include “The Maltese Falcon,” “The General,” “The Wizard of Oz,” “Raging Bull” and, of course, “Citizen Kane”? If the definition is broadened to include movies that had cultural influence, “The Jazz Singer,” “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” “The Lost Weekend” and even “Kramer vs. Kramer” would have to be included. In terms of popularity alone, “Jurassic Park,” “Star Wars” and “The Godfather” would be on the list.

Vivian Sobchack, associate dean at UCLA’s School of Theater, Film and TV at UCLA, is the sole academic on the AFI’s current board. She admits to being a bit leery “about what was going to emerge as the base [of the 400 films]. You start to play these games with lists.” But as she went through the top 400, she was surprised to find many of her favorites, including the definitive B-melodrama “Gun Crazy” and the darkly idiosyncratic “Freaks.”

Another concern for Sobchack was that because the selection process included not only scholars but industry professionals (actors, directors, executives) there might be a preponderance of films made after 1980 “because memory is so short,” as she tactfully puts it. But of the final 400, more than 75% were produced before 1980, though there are only about 20 silent films on the list.

The top 100 films were selected by about 1,500 voters, including leaders in the American film community and President and Mrs. Clinton.

The hard part came after the results were tabulated: convincing the major film companies to waive their usually substantial broadcast fees for film clips. It’s here that the muscle of a former studio head like Pollock helped.

“In the past the industry has cooperated on more modest AFI projects, but something on this scale is unprecedented,” says Schickel, one of the producers of the 10-hour TNT series.

Schickel is no stranger to the high costs of historical film programs. “The AFI would have seen no profit if they had to pay the going rate for movie clips. For a guy who’s done a lot of clip shows, it was wonderful just to get [the footage] and not have to [bargain] for it.”

This doesn’t mean that the studios will make no money on the enterprise. The hype around the AFI list should serve as a strong promotional tool for video stores to stock some classic titles from studio vaults (most video retailers truly have a short memory).

“The studios hope it’s going to give the video stores a real good excuse for stocking 100 older titles,” says Pollock. “They’re generally not interested in libraries. But the studios are interested in pushing their libraries. If Blockbuster buys 100 copies of all 100 movies, it becomes like ‘the great books’--the basis for a film library. That’s really good for the film business.”

Turner Classic Movies will use the 100 movies cache to tout the titles that are part of Turner’s extensive MGM library when the cable network airs them throughout the summer.

And the day after the results are broadcast on the CBS special, Newsweek’s commemorative look at 100 years of movies will hit the stands. Though the issue will be broader in scope than the AFI list, says special issues editor Ken Auchincloss, the 100 list will be the magazine’s centerpiece. “It was by happy coincidence that we heard about the AFI’s project. The fit seemed ideal.”

The TNT specials are crucial to the overall picture. “The CBS show will be more pop-oriented,” Pollock says. “It was a conscious decision. But we didn’t want to do this without the opportunity to explore the films in more depth.”

The specials will be divided not by decade or even by genre, says Schickel, who interviewed 50 filmmakers for the series, including Steven Spielberg, Woody Allen, Robert Towne and Scorsese. “We broke them up in slightly eccentric ways: There’s a show about antiheroes and that can include everything from western outlaws to a Cary Grant role. There’s a show on monsters, not only conventional monsters but human monsters of a certain type.”

As for the inevitable quibbling over the final 100 list, Sobchack welcomes “anything that heightens the public’s awareness of the impact of cinema on American culture.”

Schickel echoes and amplifies those sentiments: “All 100 films are movies that reward a second look or a first look if you’re a young folk.” As to potential criticism from film purists: “How can you be a purist about a medium so impure as movies? Historically speaking, movies are in crisis. The memory loss is serious. I lecture college film students and, if they haven’t seen ‘Double Indemnity’ or a Charlie Chaplin movie, they should be encouraged to see them. I’d push a peanut down the road with my nose to get people to watch these movies.”