Studios Squirm in the Hot Seat

Several years ago, President Clinton came to Hollywood for one of his bully-pulpit lectures about the entertainment industry’s need to tone down the explicit violence in film, TV and music. After his speech, then-Sony Pictures Chairman Mark Canton, caught up in the gravity of the moment, remarked, “I’m going to think about what the president said all weekend long.”

That’s been the customary Hollywood response to worries about entertainment violence: After a momentous speech or a tragic shooting, everyone spends a few days of soul-searching, then returns to business as usual.

But that was Hollywood B.C. (Before Columbine). Many industry leaders believe that things today are different. The studio brass still isn’t bold enough to make any comment on the record, but behind the scenes many top executives concede that the widespread public revulsion over entertainment violence has finally hit home.

Long accustomed to a hands-off attitude by the government, the industry suddenly finds itself the target of an unprecedented political probe into entertainment violence by the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department, two agencies with the subpoena power to obtain confidential documents and correspondence. Worse still, the probe focuses on one of Hollywood’s most vulnerable areas: marketing violence to teenagers.

In recent weeks, private debate has produced cautious action:

* 20th Century Fox, insiders say, recently canceled several teen horror projects because of the films’ violent content.

* Disney has decided to keep guns out of future movie ads.

* Miramax, having already changed the title of its upcoming Kevin Williamson film from “Killing Mrs. Tingle” to “Teaching Mrs. Tingle,” is toning down the violence in “Scream 3,” its teen horror film scheduled for release in December.

* One major studio has even considered moving the opening date of an especially violent film so that it won’t be in release when Congress is in session this fall, fearing that it could become a target of political attacks.

Meanwhile, sources say the Motion Picture Assn. of America rating board is reacting to the Columbine High School massacre and the new political mood in Washington by taking a closer look at violent scenes.

“Filmmakers are going up against a very different, stricter set of standards than they were a year ago,” said one studio executive. “If I were Fox, I’d be worried about how the board will react to ‘The Fight Club’ [a film by “Seven” director David Fincher set for an August release]. And I’ll bet Miramax has big trouble with ‘Scream.’ The board doesn’t want any politicians pointing fingers at them, demanding to know why this or that movie got past them so easily.”

That doesn’t mean Hollywood has had an overnight conversion. Many executives still sound angry and defensive. After Clinton announced his probe of the marketing of violent entertainment, one studio official promptly termed the investigation “a witch hunt.”

Industry leaders are especially furious with a pair of Senate Democrats--Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.), who still points to copycat killings inspired by “The Money Train” long after the story was proved to be unfounded, and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who voted for a Senate bill that would investigate youth marketing in the entertainment and gun industries. (Clinton took that ball away from Congress by ordering the investigation himself.)

But so far, the entertainment industry hasn’t done the one thing that would help stem the mounting tide of Hollywood bashing from politicians, pundits and parents: accept responsibility for being part of the problem. (The one exception being ABC Chairman Bob Iger, who said of his TV peers: “When the finger is pointed at them about violence, they say their media has no influence, but they turn around and say just the opposite to advertisers.”)

Since the Columbine, Colo., shootings, even while privately instituting changes, the industry has largely engaged in cosmetic public relations gestures. The WB network yanked a “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” episode featuring a high school student attack but said it would air the episode later in the year. CBS pulled “Falcone,” a Mafia drama, off its fall schedule, saying it was too violent, but network insiders say the real reason the show didn’t make the cut was that it didn’t test well with female viewers.

But when it comes to style over substance, nothing could top Sony Pictures, which released the bloody teen horror spoof “Idle Hands” right after the Columbine shootings but took down a huge billboard in its lot touting the film, replacing it with a poster of “The Donny and Marie Show.”

For years, Hollywood has kept the regulatory wolves at bay with its voluntary MPAA-governed ratings system. But for many parents, the rating system is barely a factor anymore, not when grisly thrillers like “Natural Born Killers,” “Seven” and “Payback” end up with R ratings.

To make matters worse, in the era of the multiplex, even the theater owners who honestly try to keep teenagers out of R pictures have trouble policing kids who have bought tickets for a PG-13 film but, once inside, duck into a theater showing an R-rated movie.

In fact, the entertainment industry’s biggest fear is that the way it markets violence to teenagers could easily be portrayed as hypocritical at best, deceptive at worst.

A classic example: “Starship Troopers,” a gory 1997 sci-fi thriller whose core audience was indisputably 12-year-old boys, was released by Sony as an R-rated film. If it was aimed at young boys, why wasn’t the violence watered down enough so it could be released as a PG-13 film? This summer’s “American Pie” from Universal is also rated R (for sexual high jinks, not violence), although it is also clearly being marketed at a young teen audience.

In the record industry, leaders are worried that investigators will focus on the widespread use of street marketing teams that, despite parental guidance warning labels, give away sample CDs of explicit hip-hop songs in teen clubs and malls.

With influential politicians like Lieberman warning that studios could be prosecuted for marketing violence to minors, industry leaders are concerned about being treated like the tobacco chiefs who were called before Congress to testify about the perils of their product. No one in Hollywood wants to see an investigator asking Sony chief John Calley to screen a few scenes from “8 MM” or have Universal chief Edgar Bronfman Jr. read some lyrics from Eminem’s new CD.

But taking responsibility is a complicated issue. As one studio chief recently explained, any industry leader who publicly admitted that movies played a role in teen violence would instantly put his studio in legal jeopardy; Time Warner is already facing suits claiming that “Natural Born Killers” and “The Basketball Diaries” inspired copycat teen murders.

So with the pressure mounting, Hollywood is in a bind. In the past, the studios relied on self-censorship. During the Red Scare, the studios organized their own blacklist, firing everyone themselves. When anti-sex and violence crusaders pushed for a new production code in the 1960s, the MPAA invented its own rating system, which has been adopted, in similar forms, by TV and the music industry.

Now the talk is of restricting R-rated movie advertising or agreeing to take guns out of movie ads entirely. Theater owners will feel the heat about more strictly enforcing teen admissions. Video stores will get similar pressure about preventing kids from renting R-rated films. There’s even discussion of a new R-type rating that would specifically label violent movies. (One producer, only half-jokingly, said that movies like “The Matrix” should come with warning tags on their ads saying, “Enjoy the Film but Remember: Uncontrolled Firearm Use May Be Dangerous to Your Health.”)

But it won’t be easy for Hollywood to squirm out of the hot seat. The connection between teens and violence is an especially profitable one. Teens go to more movies than any other age group; and action movies, the genre with the most violence, have the most profit potential in a global marketplace. Adam Sandler comedies have little overseas appeal, but “The Matrix” will, no doubt, more than double its domestic earnings around the world. Violence is a universal language.

After more than half a century of political attacks, the entertainment industry has an undeniable skepticism about the motivations of its critics in Washington. But many in Hollywood believe it’s time for some industry leaders to preach from a bully pulpit of their own. “Right now no one is being very honest on either side,” says one top studio executive. “But how do you get politicians not to act political and Hollywood not to act arrogant? Until we start trusting them or they start trusting us, it’s going to be a very stormy time.”