Hollywood Eyes Movies Via The Web

Americans could be watching newly released movies via the Internet as soon as mid-2005 as the industry speeds development of a secure delivery system, Hollywood's chief lobbyist said Wednesday.

"I really do believe that we will be able to have some — maybe by this time next year — we'll be able to have the beginnings of some really sturdy, protective clothing to put about these movies," Motion Picture Association of America chief executive Jack Valenti said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Valenti said he would like to see movies go straight from the big screen to the Internet, where customers could download or view them on demand well before DVDs and videos reach the store shelves. "We want to use the Internet," he said.

Fighting piracy it says is putting its financial health at risk, Hollywood is working with high-tech experts, including Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard and universities, to develop a secure system for delivering movies, he said.

Valenti said the industry has no current plans to sue pirates, as the music industry is doing, but isn't ruling it out because he has seen surveys showing music piracy is being taken more seriously since the lawsuits began early this year.

"As long as stealing movies and music is high-reward and no risk, people are going to do it," Valenti said.

Valenti, a lifelong Democrat, said California's new Republican governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, could be exactly what the budget-strapped state needs and he urged the media to give the former actor a chance.

"He's going to shake up things," said Valenti, who attended the governor's inauguration this week. "Do not write him off. If anyone can do it, he can do it."

During the interview with the AP, Valenti, a political consultant who was in the motorcade in Dallas 40 years go when John F. Kennedy was assassinated, gave a poignant recounting of that day and how Lyndon B. Johnson brought him back to Washington on the plane with Kennedy's body to work in the White House.

Valenti called it a day "that will live in perfidy." Even now he recalls every second, from Jackie Kennedy's refusal to change her bloodstained blouse to his first assignment from Johnson: to track down the wording of the oath of office so Johnson could be sworn in as president aboard Air Force One.

"It is so seared in my memory I literally, sometimes at night — not often, but once or twice a year — I relive that day," Valenti said. "Because it was an apocalyptic intrusion. I think the nation's life changed and I can assure you mine radically changed."

On Infinity Radio's Imus In The Morning, he said Johnson that day made historic, and correct, decisions. "He was determined to be the coolest cat on the plane, and he was."

Valenti said Johnson insisted on taking the oath of office before his plane left Dallas. "He wanted a picture of him sworn in flashed around the world before he landed ... to show the nation goes on."

In the AP interview, Valenti expressed outrage over a television documentary that aired this week on the History Channel alleging that Johnson helped plot Kennedy's assassination. Valenti called it the "slimiest piece of garbage I've ever seen on television."

He and others have issued a statement condemning it. The History Channel has said the film was meant to present a point of view and that the channel wasn't saying the Johnson theory was correct.

On other issues, Valenti:

• Said he didn't see any need for movies to include smoking but wasn't ready to make it a factor in the movie rating system. Valenti said that he feels it is a free-speech issue and that directors should be allowed to have film characters smoke. He noted that tobacco is a legal product and said he was concerned that considering it when rating movies could lead for pushes to include liquor and other legal products in the ratings.
• Said he plans to step down as chief executive officer of the motion picture association within the next several months but remain on as chairman.

  "I'm going to stay on as chairman but will pass on the CEO duties to someone else," he said Thursday on Imus. Infinity, like CBSNews.com, is part of Viacom.

  Valenti said he would prefer to see someone familiar with Washington such as a former Cabinet secretary or member of Congress take over as the lobby group's chief. Members of the film industry he sought out as possible successors weren't interested, he added.

• Remarked that he doesn't personally know Democratic presidential hopeful Howard Dean — who is leading polls in early primary state New Hampshire by double digits — but views him a cult figure who has built his campaign around opposition to the war in Iraq. Valenti said he didn't mean that as a criticism.

  "People vote viscerally, not intellectually, for a candidate," Valenti said.