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Personal Statement of Jack Valenti, President Motion Picture Association of America October 7, 1968 In connection with announcement of new national voluntary film rating system This new voluntary film rating plan is the outgrowth of many months of hard work. I have personally held meetings, dozens of them, with MPAA distributor-producers, independent distributor— producers, exhibitors, the creative guilds, journalists, leaders of civic and religious organizations. From these meetings has come the new film rating plan, whose primary objective is a concern for children. It's our basic philosophy that: 1. Censorship and classification-by-law are wrong. We will oppose these intrusions into a communications art-form shielded and protected by the First Amendment. We believe the scteen should be as free for film-makers as it is for those who write books, produce television material, publish newspapers and magazines, compose music and create paintings and sculpture. At the same time I have urged film creators to remember that freedom without discipline is license, and that's wrong, too. I have, in the many meetings I have had with creative people in film, suggested that the freedom which is rightly theirs ought to be. a responsible freedom and each individual film-maker must judge his work in that sensible light. I'm cheered by the response to my suggestions. 2. We must never make motion pictures for just one audience. There are many audiences and if we seek out the lowest common audience denominator, we will find ourselves making movies that would be, as one Supreme Court justice put it, inane. We cannot allow children to set the boundaries for motion picture creativity, any more than we would allow children to or ganize our moral apparatus or our national priorities. But we can be concerned about children, In motion pictures that concern is made visible by setting apart those pictures we believe parents may not want their children to see. Opinions about art in any form will vary. What one person finds exciting, another “ill call absurd, and what one person might judge to be interesting, another will find repellent. Quality is not unanimously defined. fach person has his own definition of excellence. If we all thought alike, a stale cur- tain would drop, shutting out all creative progress. The creative film-maker ought to be free to make movies for a_variety of tastes and audiences, with a sensitive concern for children. That's what this voluntary film rating plan does -- assures freedom of the screen, and at the same time gives full information to parents so that children are restricted from cer- tain movies whose theme, content and treatment might be beyond their understanding. - Will this voluntary system work? I believe it will. ‘The fact that for the first time ali essential elements of the industry are in agreement is good xeason to think it will work. Much will depend on how well the new plan is communicated to the movie-going public. This in turn will depend on how many daily and weekly newspapers carry the rating legend on their entertainment page each day (so that audiences will know what the symbols mean) -~ and how effectively public opinion in each community urges individual theaters to participate in the plan and enforce the ratings. Of course, there won't be perfection. But then nothing, voluntary or legally sanctioned, is ever perfect. I would hope for 80-85% of theaters in this country to participate in this plan, which would account for about 95% of all boxoffice admissions. There is apt to be some confusion over the next several months because 211 pictures will not bear ratings. Pictures released after November 1 will carry these ratings. Since it is administra~ tively impossible to go back and rate all pictures now in release, there will be a minority of rated pictures for a time. But this gap will gradually close and within six to nine months, the rating system will near full effectiveness. A final word: There is no valid evidence at this time that proves movies have anything to do with anti-social behavior. That is why the MPAA has vigorously supported the President's two Con- missions -- on Violence, and on Obscenity. Perhaps from these in-depth studies will come some substantive evidence that is more than opinion or personal view. But in the meanwhile, the lack of viable proof ought not keep us from trying to take what we hope is a sensible step which in— dicates our concern for children. That is what we are doing now.

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