Movie chief seeks happy ending on divide

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The president of the Motion Picture Association of America says Hollywood must build a bridge to the Republican-controlled Congress in order to deflate perceptions of a liberal bias.

MPAA chief Dan Glickman, former secretary of agriculture under President Clinton, borrowed one of his former boss's metaphors yesterday in describing efforts to shrink the divide many see between blue Hollywood and moviegoers in the red states.

"There's no question in the general world there's the perception that the entertainment community is to the left of the country as a whole," Mr. Glickman told editors and reporters at The Washington Times yesterday. "I've got to build bridges with the people who run the show."

The former congressman dismissed the notion that the movie industry acts as one entity, but admitted that's precisely how the public reacts whenever a handful of liberal actors back Democratic candidates.

Mr. Glickman said the industry's likely shift to more family features is a fine start. That smacks of good business sense, too, since PG and PG-13 films consistently outdraw R-rated fare at the box office.

He also promised to continue battling film pirates with a combination of legal salvos and technical savvy. The moderate Democrat promised to work with Republicans on matters of movie piracy and indecency.

Some will argue that even today's PG-rated films can be too much for young children. A Harvard University study released last summer showed a "ratings creep" over the years in which an R-rated movie back in 1994 might get a PG-13 stamp today. Most films aimed at the kiddie set, for example, can't resist flatulence humor or other below-the-belt gags.

Mr. Glickman said Hollywood can't take all the blame.

"There's been a culture creep in our society for the last 40 or 50 years," something he said the current ratings can handle. "The ratings system does a good job of describing what a parent should know."

He described the rating committee as a group of 15 to 20 concerned parents who count each offensive moment and then debate the film's maturity level.