Clinton Presents Three-Pronged Approach to Curb Violence in Media

Turning up the heat on Hollywood, President Clinton on Saturday urged the movie industry to reevaluate its film-rating system with an eye toward rooting out “too much gratuitous violence,” especially in the PG-13 category.

The president also called on the entertainment industry to ban guns in all movie ads and previews, and said theaters and video stores must more strictly enforce the ratings system by screening young patrons.

“You should check IDs, not turn the other way as a child walks unchaperoned into an R-rated movie,” he said.

Clinton said Hollywood has helped reduce violent images seen by children with the program ratings system and the V-chip, but added: “There is still too much violence on our nation’s screens, large and small.”

The president issued the three-pronged challenge in his weekly radio address just hours before arriving in Los Angeles as the star attraction at a Beverly Hills fund-raiser. The event, attended by Hollywood moguls and entertainers, brought Democrats more than $2 million in campaign funds for the battle to regain control of Congress in 2000, organizers said.

Since the Littleton, Colo., school shootings, which claimed 15 lives, Clinton has launched a crusade to curb the pervasive violence in American culture, identifying Hollywood and the gun industry as two prime culprits.

His remarks Saturday elicited various responses from the entertainment industry, with some representatives supporting his proposals and others calling for tighter controls in other markets.

At the Cannes Film Festival in France, Regent Entertainment partner Mark R. Harris said he would back a ban of guns in movie trailers.

“I think guns should be outlawed, so I would be a hypocrite to enhance my own monetary gains by” featuring guns in trailers designed to promote a film, he said.

But John Hegeman, executive vice president of worldwide marketing for Artisan Entertainment, disagreed.

“Gratuitous violence at any level should be curtailed. But this is just a knee-jerk reaction that’s hitting the easiest target,” Hegeman said.

Artisan’s film “The Limey,” being screened at the festival, stars Terrence Stamp as a father who comes to Los Angeles to avenge his daughter’s death. “Instead of blaming Hollywood for all of society’s ills, maybe we should focus on taking on the NRA,” Hegeman said.

In Los Angeles, Dan Fellman, president of theatrical distribution for Warner Bros., defended industry standards on movie trailers and advertisements, adding: “I personally hope the country moves for stricter laws for gun control. That’s where I want to see some action.”

Clinton’s hardening stance on Saturday might be seen as an antagonistic move toward an industry that has ardently befriended, and generously donated to, Democrats in general--and him in particular.

But as Saturday night’s planned bash at the Greystone Mansion appeared to demonstrate, Clinton and the besieged entertainment industry remain close allies.

Indeed, the president’s proposals--if embraced by Hollywood--could preempt harsher measures that some members of the GOP-dominated Congress are considering.

“Our administration is fighting to do all we can to protect children,” Clinton said in his radio address. “The entertainment industry should do everything it can too.”

Terry Press, marketing executive with DreamWorks SKG, called Clinton’s proposals “noble” but said the demand for profits could limit how widespread they become. “Hollywood can dance around this one all they want,” Press said. [But] “you are responsible for the images you put out there.”

On Thursday, the president is scheduled to take his anti-violence campaign directly to Littleton, where he will console grief-stricken residents and speak out again on the importance of reducing media violence and curbing access to handguns.

“I want us to have a national campaign to make our children’s lives less violent,” Clinton told supporters at Friday’s $500,000 fund-raiser at the Portola Valley, Calif., home of Walter Shorenstein, a developer and longtime Democratic Party patron.

Saturday night’s “Majority 2000” gala was hosted by the DreamWorks trio of David Geffen, Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg.

The president’s scolding of the industry did little to dampen Hollywood’s enthusiasm for the fund-raiser, which also featured Democratic congressional leaders Tom Daschle, the Senate minority leader, and Richard A. Gephardt, the House minority leader.

Among the estimated 100 attendants, to pay between $25,000 to $100,000 per couple, were Meg Ryan, Dennis Quaid, Goldie Hawn, Kurt Russell and Whoopi Goldberg.

In his after-dinner remarks the president repeated his challenge to the industry that he had outlined in his radio address. The audience, seated on a patio overlooking the city lights, had no noticeable reaction to that part of the speech.

The president is on a four-day, six-event fund-raising journey in the West that is projected to raise a total of $3 million for his party, with stops in Seattle, Northern California, Los Angeles, San Diego and Las Vegas.

He spent part of Saturday visiting with his daughter, Chelsea, at an undisclosed private residence.

In recent remarks, Clinton has unabashedly touted decreasing welfare rolls, improvements to education and environmental quality, and “the longest peacetime [economic] expansion in our history” as achievements of his administration.

But he has repeatedly and ardently dwelt on two subjects--America’s violent culture and the “ethnic cleansing” in Kosovo, both inspired by blind hatred, he said.

In his remarks Friday night, the president cited as symptoms of irrational rage last year’s dragging death of James Byrd Jr., an African American, in Texas; the killing of gay student Matthew Shepard in Wyoming; and the 1995 bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma.

Although issuing a direct challenge to the entertainment industry to do more to reduce violence in its products, the president in his radio address called on parents and educators to do their part.

“Making progress requires taking responsibility by all of us. That begins at home,” he said. “Parents have a duty to guide children as they grow and to stay involved in their lives as they grow older and more independent.

“Educators have a responsibility to provide safe learning environments, to teach children how to handle conflicts without violence and how to treat all young people, no matter how different, with respect. They also need to teach them how to get counseling or mental health services if they’re needed.”

At the same time, the president said, communities must reach out to children--”especially those who don’t get their needs met at home.”

The government’s responsibility, Clinton said, is to “keep guns out of the hands of criminals and children.” He promoted anew legislation to require all gun dealers to conduct thorough background checks before selling their wares.

He commended the Republican-controlled Senate for passing a measure last week to raise the age for handgun ownership from 18 to 21, but called on senators to do more--namely to “close the gun-show loophole” that allows buyers at such events to acquire handguns without what Democrats regard as adequate background checks.

Although the GOP plan approved by the Senate on Friday would mandate background checks for those buying firearms at gun shows, Democrats said it would create a new class of exemptions and allow too little time--24 hours instead of three to five days--for background checks.

Clinton said Saturday that the GOP measure is “riddled with new loopholes--permitting convicted felons to get guns at pawn shops, no questions asked.”

“If the Senate wants to fix the problem, it should fix the problem, not make it worse,” he said. The Senate is also expected to adopt a proposal to require safety locks to be sold with handguns.

In touting his “common sense” proposals to reduce violence in the media and restrict gun access, the president said Saturday that a typical American youth now sees 40,000 dramatized murders by age 18.

“There are those who say they can or should do nothing about this. But I believe they’re wrong. . . . Members of the entertainment community can make a big difference.”

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Staff writers Amy Wallace in Cannes and Richard Nordwin in Los Angeles, and correspondent Richard Natale in Los Angeles, contributed to this report.