Hollywood saw Jack Valenti (1921-2007), its silver-haired spokesperson/lobbyist/crowbar, as a leading man. In their slew of prepared statements, studio execs were, predictably, remorseful and praise-heavy for the man who, as head of the Motion Picture Association of America for 38 long years, invented the ratings system, fought fiercely to protect the entertainment industry's IP and made sure there were no impediments to Die-Hard VII playing on three screens in every multiplex in Europe. (Favorite quote, from Sony: "Perhaps a fitting way to describe Jack is to say this man is rated “G” – for Greatness.") AOL's Ted Leonsis remembered Valenti as a guy who did lots of pushups.
Those who consider Hollywood a bullying, soul-crushing industrial complex usually paint a different picture of Valenti. He was a force behind the short-sighted, greedy push to end protections for other country's national cinemas (no friend of European art films, this one), helped push through Congress the dread Digital Millennium Copyright Act (which, among other things, made it a FEDERAL CRIME to use protected material to, say, make a video mash-up at home). He helped extend copyrights, impeding critical and artistic reevaluation of pop culture. And he led his troops to do it all in a secretive, cabalistic way. Kirby Dick took him and the MPAA to task in his docu This Film Is Not Yet Rated.
And there have been little digs at him through out the blogosphere: a fucktard here and a miserable little man (which the impish Valenti surely wasn't) there. One headline: "Ding Dong the Witch is Dead"; and another: "Good Riddance, asshole." Plus polite remembrances from right and left.
The Defamer called him "an enemy of the movie-pirate menace so terrifying that a future generation of unauthorized downloaders will trade apocryphal stories about the copyright-defending bogeyman in hushed tones while watching illegal copies of Spider-Man 16, visibly trembling as they hear once again how a DVD-ripping friend of a friend's grandfather once awoke to find Valenti's hook embedded in the side of her computer and the message STOP RAPING HOLLYWOOD scrawled in blood on the bedroom wall."
And Ain't It Cool wondered if he had been killed by Grindhouse.
