Is Hollywood Pulling Punches?

In early drafts, the script of “Big Momma’s House,” an action-comedy starring Martin Lawrence that starts shooting next month, began with a violent motorcycle chase that left the streets of San Francisco strewn with bullet-riddled bodies. But thanks in part to the public outcry about violence in Hollywood after spring’s massacre at Colorado’s Columbine High School, that scene--now excised from the script--will never be filmed.

“I’d be lying if I said it didn’t influence us,” said producer David Friendly, who is making the film--about an FBI agent who poses as a Southern grandmother to catch an escaped killer--for 20th Century Fox. “We talked about it, post-Columbine, and decided the scene was inappropriate to the movie and inappropriate for the time. We said, ‘This movie doesn’t need it, we don’t want it, let’s take it out.’ And it cost too much, anyway.”

Eight months after two teenagers gunned down 12 classmates and a teacher before killing themselves in Littleton, Colo., no bills concerning entertainment violence have been passed by Congress. A Federal Trade Commission inquiry into the marketing of violent entertainment, launched by President Clinton in June, is moving slowly, with no report expected until late next year. But in the behind-the-scenes world of Hollywood, at pitch meetings and script conferences and green-lighting decisions, violence is still on the industry’s mind.

Quietly, in small ways that are sometimes hard to measure, Hollywood is pondering its impact on and responsibility to the culture. The soul-searching is less altruistic than economic, for in a business that thrives when it is in sync with popular tastes, many say it is perilous to ignore the public’s concerns.

But the public sends Hollywood mixed messages. “The Matrix,” the shoot-’em-up cyber-thriller that pitted sleek, trench-coat-wearing Keanu Reeves against computers that ruled the world, opened just before the Columbine massacre and went on to do a whopping $171 million at the domestic box office. By contrast, even mega-star Brad Pitt couldn’t lure people to “Fight Club,” in which men beat one another to a bloody pulp to combat the deadening effects of materialistic society. Since opening Oct. 16, it has brought in a paltry $36 million.

Still, it is becoming harder, some in Hollywood say, to produce markedly violent entertainment in the name of giving the people what they want. Especially after Time magazine revealed earlier this month that the two Columbine killers had fantasized about the kind of movie their story would make--predicting that directors would “be fighting over this story” and debating whether Quentin Tarantino or Steven Spielberg would do a better job--industry insiders are finding it tougher to pooh-pooh Hollywood’s impact on the culture.

“Events in society, political pressures and an increasing thoughtfulness have combined, I believe, to make this issue what it should be: a permanent thing for Hollywood to grapple with. . . . 1/8And that 3/8 will play a big factor in what movies get made over the next year,” said producer Sean Daniel (“The Mummy”), who noted that especially in the upcoming election year, ignoring the issue will be all but impossible. “You cannot have a presidential election in America without Hollywood being kicked a few times along the way.”

Grappling with the issue, of course, will never mean doing away with cinematic violence altogether. Among those who make and sell mainstream studio movies, the consensus is that violence is acceptable--and often highly marketable--when it is employed in the service of storytelling.

And with the rise of cable, which pipes uncut motion pictures and uncensored programming into millions of American homes, network television executives continue to feel pressure to make their content more edgy and explicit to compete.

Nevertheless, in the words of one studio executive, Hollywood’s “consciousness has been raised, no doubt about it” by Columbine and its aftermath. Films under the Disney banner, for example, won’t have guns displayed in future movie ads. Warner Bros. sliced all gunplay out of “The Matrix” trailer for its international release. And the title of New Line Cinema’s “Sugar and Spice and Semi-Automatics,” a black comedy (scheduled for release next year) about high school cheerleaders who rob a bank, has been changed to simply “Sugar and Spice.”

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Industry insiders still balk at the suggestion, made by some lawmakers, that Hollywood is a primary culprit in the recent spate of teenage shooting sprees. And there is continued resentment, even now, about the way President Clinton ordered an FTC investigation that focused only on entertainment marketing and did not address access to guns.

“I believe the government would have found 1/8Hollywood 3/8 people a little more open to discussing 1/8the issue 3/8 if they didn’t try immediately to put everyone on trial,” said the same studio executive, who asked not to be named. “The political opportunists hurt their cause. Everybody 1/8here 3/8 was feeling, ‘We’re not going to be your whipping dog.’ ”

Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Assn. of America, acknowledged, “Last year we made over 700 films, and we don’t have enough talent to put out 700 first-class films. So you’re always going to have movies that stumble . . . and become unreasonable.”

Nevertheless, he said, a current proposal by Sens. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) to create a commission on youth violence that would take a hard look at Hollywood is too limited in its scope.

“I don’t see how you can have a commission to study the culture without studying guns,” said Valenti, who is particularly concerned about a proposal to give the commission subpoena power.

To the extent that some of 1999’s legislative proposals appeared to encroach on the 1st Amendment, Hollywood remains alarmed. In June, for example, the House rejected a measure that would have made it a crime to expose children to certain graphic images, raising the question: Who would decide what is graphic?

“How do you define what’s appropriate?” asked Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Mission Hills), who opposed the measure. “Everybody thinks that ‘Saving Private Ryan’ was a useful contribution and that parts of ‘Schindler’s List,’ as horrible and disgusting as they were, helped to portray the true impact of the Holocaust. So how do you protect the ‘good’ violence that serves a useful purpose while getting rid of the ‘bad’? How do you distinguish between ‘Saving Private Ryan’ and ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’?”

The answer, according to people who work in the film industry, is simple: Individuals at all levels in Hollywood must consult their own consciences. And yes, they insist, they have them.

“We know the impact we have on society and take it quite responsibly as an industry,” said Paul Junger Witt, who produced this year’s “Three Kings” and has a string of TV and movie credits to his name. “We can all single out films that stepped over the line this year, where it wasn’t a matter of expression but of pyrotechnics. But I think the community has become more sensitive in terms of looking at their work and making judgments about the violence therein.”

Witt cites “Three Kings,” an R-rated film about the aftermath of the Gulf War written and directed by David O. Russell, as an example of how explicit violence can be used not to glorify bloodshed, but to show its consequences. The film includes scenes of a young mother being executed in front of her children and an unusual montage that follows the path of a bullet as it rips through a human body.

“If any film this year has been anti-violence, it’s this film, which accurately portrayed the fact that modern warfare’s victims tend to be civilians and that the weapons of war tear bodies apart,” said Witt. “There were some very difficult moments. But it was not a film anyone could walk away from thinking violence is cool. On the contrary, young people whose parents took them to see it came out with a very accurate perception of the damage guns can do.”

No movie in 1999 made violence look cooler than “The Matrix,” whose performance proved that the action movie is still a much-loved staple in the American film diet. Not surprisingly, Warner Bros., which financed the film, is developing not one but two sequels, and nobody’s expecting them to tone down the firepower.

“The action genre has been such a golden goose that you can’t just expect Hollywood to walk away from it. And as much as anyone wants to pay lip service to it, can you do an action movie without gunplay? Not for the target audience,” said Friendly, whose producing credits include “Courage Under Fire” and “Doctor Dolittle.” “That’s what the audience is telling us they like.”

And as long as parents do their jobs and monitor what their children are seeing, many say, there should be no problem with that. Witt, the producer, called “The Matrix” an “incredibly creative and expressive film” and rejected the idea that by putting guns in the hands of attractive, well-dressed movie stars Warner Bros. was implicitly telling kids that killing is OK.

“That assumes that normal children can’t define the difference between fantasy and reality, and between movies and real life. And the vast majority of young people in this country can,” Witt said. “We’ve got to be concerned about the effect we have, but if we start to alter expression because a lunatic fringe might be adversely affected, then we can say nothing creatively, nothing strongly. We can say nothing.”

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The fact that explicitness sells goes a long way to explaining why this year, like every year, Hollywood made vastly more R-rated movies than any other kind. Of the 575 feature films rated by the MPAA this year (through Oct. 31), 396 were rated R, 92 were PG-13, 51 were PG, 34 were G and two were NC-17.

But those were films, noted Thom Mount, president of the Producers Guild of America, that were conceived and created long before the mayhem in Columbine. Mount, whose own producing credits include films ranging from “Bull Durham” to “Natural Born Killers,” said that today studio executives and development people are raising the issue of gratuitous violence more than ever before.

“Violence is a public health issue in our country, and like any responsible citizen of a nation that has a problem, the citizens of Hollywood want to try to do something,” said Mount, who is organizing an industrywide summit on entertainment violence to be held early next year. “People bring it up these days, and they never used to bring it up at all. And I think that’s a healthy trend.”

What that trend will mean for moviegoers won’t be evident until next year at the earliest, given lengthy development schedules. But if the excised gunfire in “Big Momma’s House” is any indication, there may be a bit less extraneous killing on the big screen. And particularly since Columbine prompted theater owners to begin requiring identification for admittance to R-rated movies, some filmmakers say PG-13-rated projects are looking more attractive.

“On ‘The Mummy,’ the filmmakers and the studio together worked very hard to make sure it was a PG-13 movie,” said Daniel, the producer. “We set out to make one and we delivered one. And I believe that paid off in movie terms, in audience satisfaction and, frankly, in box office.”

“The Mummy,” released in May, has grossed $155 million to date. A sequel is in the works.

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HOLLYWOOD and VIOLENCE// A Timeline

April 20--Armed teenagers open fire at a high school in Littleton, Colo., killing 15.

June 1--President Clinton orders a Federal Trade Commission study of the marketing of entertainment violence to children.

June 8--Theater owners begin requiring photo identification for admission to R-rated films.

June 17--Congress turns back a proposal to put cigarette-style warning labels on violent music, movies and video games.

Sept. 22--A study finds TV and movie audiences in 1998 saw, on average, one act of serious violence every four minutes.

Nov. 18--The Motion Picture Assn. of America announces that movie marketing materials produced starting Jan. 1 will include explanations of ratings.

Nov. 19--Congress adjourns without passing a single bill concerning entertainment violence.

Early 2000--An industrywide summit on Hollywood violence is planned.

Late 2000--The FTC is expected to report its findings.

VIOLENCE SELLS... SOMETIMES

Here are five of the most violent studio films released this year and how they did at the box office.

MOVIE; RELEASE DATE; BOX OFFICE**

“Payback”; Feb. 5; $81.5 million

Mel Gibson relentlessly pursues a man who stole his money and left him for dead.

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“8MM”; Feb. 26; 36.3 million

Nicolas Cage, intrigued by a snuff film, seeks the truth about a stranger’s fate.

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“The Matrix”; March 31; $171.4 million

Keanu Reeves and Laurence Fishburne lead an insurgency against computers that rule the world.

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“Fight Club”; Oct. 15; $36.2 million

Brad Pitt and Edward Norton throttle each other in hopes of feeling more alive.

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“The Bone Collector”; Nov. 5; $62.4 million

Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie gather gruesome forensic evidence to track a serial killer.

* Still in theaters.

**Source: Exhibitor Relations Co., through Dec. 19