In motion pictures
Senate Committee on Commerce,
Hearing on:
“The Impact of Smoking
in the Movies on Children”
On behalf of the member companies of
THE MOTION PICTURE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA
By
Jack Valenti
President and Chief Executive Officer
May 11, 2003
Washington , DC
To put it plainly, I oppose smoking on the screen. But I am not a movie-maker.
A movie is a dramatic narrative. It is visual story telling in its purest form. Its intent is to so entice an audience that they will cry or laugh or be held in suspense or whatever emotion the script attempts to rouse. That is the artistic task of the cinema-maker. If smoking by some actors is essential to the time and place of the story, and is indispensable to quickly identify the actor’s demeanor and character to advance the narrative, no one ought to intervene in a director’s design for telling his story the way he chooses to tell it.
As a former combat pilot in World War II, I’m hard pressed to imagine a movie like Saving Private Ryan or Schindler’s List without soldiers smoking cigarettes. In World War II, cigarettes were actually issued by the military in ration kits. Which probably is why we ought not judge actions in one age by the standards of another age, which is also why it’s difficult to restrain story-telling today when the movie is set in a different time.
Omnipresent in this nation are a good many legal products and behavior that have, alas, a capability for inciting tragedy in the lives of too many of us.
How to deal with those dark facts of real life in the art of visual story-telling? How do creative artists confront conflicting themes of the human condition as they try to construct a dramatic narrative? The question is not conspiratorial, not at all. I am a passionate partisan of the First Amendment, as one who believes in those forty-five words that comprise the one clause in our Constitution which guarantees all the others. Therefore, I am awfully reluctant to offer counsel to creative filmmakers about how to shape their story, what to put in and what to leave out.
I have on a good many occasions discussed the philosophic tracings of motion pictures and the responsibility of filmmakers with many directors, writers, producers, actors and studio executives. I must admit that I only offer my opinion, never a command.
Senator Ensign, Attorney General Curran and four State Attorneys General representing a group of 25 participated in two such sessions I organized this past January in cooperation with the Directors Guild of America. We conducted two meetings. One was with the DGA. The other was with studio production executives as well as high-level officials from all of the creative guilds--Directors, Actors, Writers. We had constructive and open dialogue that resulted in the development of an on-going program to educate the creative community about the potential influence depictions of smoking have on impressionable young people. We also learned about the conclusions of the Dartmouth Medical School Study, linking smoking initiation among teens with viewing depictions of smoking on screen.
While I continue to have questions about some elements of the Dartmouth study, I believe it was important for the filmmaking community to become familiar with the findings that were published. Filmmakers should be aware of any and all information that suggests that smoking in the movies may be linked to influencing young people to begin smoking. That’s why we are fully cooperating with the creative guilds to educate and sensitize their members and our executives about this issue. Ultimately, filmmakers must decide what story to tell and how to tell it, though others may be unsettled by what they see.
My staff has surveyed, all of our member companies. I have personally talked with scores of producers, directors and actors. I have been unable to discover any evidence today of paid product placement of cigarette brands by the tobacco companies. It is my understanding that the master settlement agreement strictly prohibits such transactions. This is evidenced by a number of letters from the big tobacco companies, such as RJR and Phillip Morris, to the Chief Executive Officers of my member companies. This correspondence supports the proposal I received by 25 state Attorneys General for the motion picture industry to reduce or eliminate depictions of smoking scenes in movies. These letters also denied their permission for the use of their tobacco products or trademarks in films. The letters further urge the motion picture industry, and I quote, “ to voluntarily refrain from portraying or referring to cigarette brands or brand imagery in any movies.”
I offer some additional information and perspective for this committee to ponder as it examines depictions of smoking in the movies and reviews the data and the testimony from others that has been presented today.
* In late 2003, the American Legacy Foundation, which is funded by the nationwide tobacco settlement, issued national survey results, finding that 23 percent of high schoolers said they had smoked tobacco in the preceding month—a drop of 28 percent since the last time the survey was conducted, two years earlier.”
* There is similar data from the Center for Disease Control Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report from November 2003, the last available review of Tobacco Use Among Middle and High School Students in the United States during the period 2000 to 2002. Current use of any tobacco product among, and I quote, “high school students declined significantly from 34.5% to 28.4%, and cigarette use decreased from 28.0% to 22.9%.”
According to a recent report of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, obesity in the United States has risen at an epidemic rate during the past 20 years. The Center also stated that obesity is close to overtaking smoking as the number one cause of death in the United States.
I provide those sets of statistics simply to illustrate a confirmable fact: There are no absolutes when judging human behavior and attempting to ascertain the cause and effect. “Correlations,” as brought up in the Dartmouth Study, raise the possibility of a “causal” relationship, but provide no proof of one, according to the acceptable standards of social science research. It is necessary to recognize the infirmities of drawing absolutes from social science research, particularly when attempting to influence a change in what is believed to be the root cause of a particular human behavior.
This country thrives on our ability to freely tell stories on film and on paper without the fear or government influence or intervention. Your predecessors wrote the First Amendment not to protect popular speech, but to protect unpopular speech.
That is why I pledge to you that MPAA and its member companies will continue to work with members of Congress, the State Attorneys General, and the creative guilds to inform producers, directors and actors about the use of tobacco products in the motion pictures they make.
Action on Smoking and Health
(ASH)
701 4th St. NW / Washington, DC
20001 / (202) 659-4310
A national nonprofit, scientific and educational organization founded
in 1967.
All donations are fully tax deductible.