[Infowarrior] - MPAA Chief Job Proving Tough to Fill

[Richard Forno]

A Casting Call for Hollywood’s Chief Lobbyist

By BROOKS BARNES

Published: November 27, 2010

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/28/business/28steal.html?_r=1&hpw

The Motion Picture Association has been looking almost a year for its next chairman. The late Jack Valenti held the job nearly four decades, until 2004.

HOLLYWOOD is used to casting tricky roles, but one seems to have the industry stumped: chief lobbyist in Washington.

The job, as chairman of the Motion Picture Association of America, is supposed to be one of the most coveted gigs around. Mingling with moviedom’s A-list. Hosting Champagne-soaked screenings for star politicians. A $1.2 million salary. What’s not to like? The late Jack Valenti held the position for nearly four decades, and he not only wielded incredible power but also found time to maintain a Malibu tan.

Yet three studio chairmen, aided by headhunting firms, have been trying for almost a year to find a new leader to replace Dan Glickman, the former nine-term congressman from Kansas who stepped down earlier this year after succeeding Mr. Valenti in 2004. (Mr. Valenti died in 2007.)

The search committee came close over the summer, zeroing in on Bob Kerrey, the former Democratic senator from Nebraska and president of the New School. But negotiations fell apart.

Now a new round of interviews is under way. According to a headhunter with knowledge of the search, but who asked for anonymity because the search is private, one candidate is Christopher J. Dodd, the powerful Democratic senator from Connecticut, who is retiring. Bill Richardson, the exiting governor of New Mexico, is also in the mix, this person said.

One of the more out-of-left-field names under consideration is Vickee Jordan Adams, a former executive at the communications firm Hill & Knowlton and daughter of Vernon Jordan, the senior adviser to former President Bill Clinton. (The candidate pool is filled with Democrats because it reflects the political leanings of Hollywood power players.)

Spokesmen for Senator Dodd and Governor Richardson did not return calls seeking comment. Efforts to reach Ms. Adams were unsuccessful. A spokesman for the Motion Picture Association declined to comment.

Studio executives say Bob Pisano, the association’s president who has been serving as interim chairman, is well liked in the movie capital and has done a stellar job. But Mr. Pisano, who formerly did stints as C.E.O. of the Screen Actors Guild and general counsel for Paramount Pictures, has signaled that he is not interested in the position long term.

The difficult job search underscores how much Hollywood has changed since the heyday of Mr. Valenti, who earned his political stripes by working as an adviser in the administration of Lyndon B. Johnson.

For starters, the job has become less fun. The association still holds screenings at its 80-person theater two blocks from the White House. But last year, the studios cut the group’s budget by 20 percent, or about $20 million, making lavish events harder to pull off. Stricter lobbying rules also restrict grandiosity.

And when it comes to influence, Hollywood has also been surpassed by Silicon Valley. Given a choice between meeting George Clooney or Google’s C.E.O., Eric Schmidt, the more coveted invitation for many Washington hands is the latter.

In Mr. Valenti’s era, studios were stand-alone entities whose interests in Washington were in lock step over issues like movie standards. Mr. Valenti fought back state and local efforts to censor content, for example. The association gave Hollywood moguls a government stage but also kept Washington out of the movie business by starting and running the movie rating system, which it continues to do.

But today the association’s six members — Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, 20th Century Fox, Universal Pictures, Walt Disney Studios and Warner Brothers — are all embedded deep within global media conglomerates. All employ  their own lobbyists and often have competing interests.

For example, the News Corporation owns 20th Century Fox along with MySpace and newspapers, putting it at odds in many instances with the legislative needs of a Sony, which also owns a movie studio but is more concerned about its electronics business.

As a result, Mr. Glickman said, “it has become much more difficult for the film industry to speak with one clear voice.”

Consider what happened last year when the Motion Picture Association, addressing the issue of who controls the Internet released a statement to the news media saying that studios were “not proponents” of government regulation of the Web. The chairmen of two studios — Sony and Fox — hit the roof, worrying that the statement sent a message that they did not want the  government help to fight piracy. The association ultimately released a more nuanced second statement.

Indeed, the delay in finding a new leader appears to stem in large part from an identity crisis at the association. Should the job go to a seasoned Washington hand, preferably with bipartisan support? Or is younger and hungrier the way to go? Do the studios want a hard-charging leader — somebody like Mr. Valenti, who would knock heads together from time to time to gain consensus — or do they want more of an errand runner?

The personality of the new chairman is more important than one might think, as evidenced by the troubles that greeted the affable and low-key Mr. Glickman, who was secretary of agriculture during the Clinton administration.

“I certainly was not Mr. Glamour,” he said. “The leader of the M.P.A.A. needs to have a fair amount of both sizzle and steak. Having one quality and not the other diminishes your effectiveness.”

WHICH handful of issues should the association put its muscle behind? Piracy is perhaps the industry’s No. 1 problem, highlighted earlier this month when about 25 percent of “Harry Potter and the Deathly-Hallows: Part 1” was stolen and put online before the movie’s release.

But lobbying could help the film industry deal with an array of challenges, including how to convince China to lift restrictions on the distribution of Hollywood pictures and how to maintain state and federal tax incentives for filming in places like Michigan and Louisiana.

One thing is clear, Mr. Glickman said: Pressure is building on the industry to make a hire. “In Washington, you can quickly get out of sight, out of mind,” he said. “This is too important of a job not to get filled very soon.”