Hollywood threatens Obama over SOPA

RT - 20 January, 2012
If you see the White House invaded by aliens, blown up by laser beams or bombed by terrorists in any of the big summer blockbusters this year, consider it a subtle hint to the Oval Office by way of Hollywood.

After US President Barack Obama demanded revamped provisions in the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, Los Angeles film executives are rescinding their support of the commander-in-chief.

While Hollywood hot-shots were in the past major contributors to the 2008 campaign for Barack Obama, movie execs are heated up over the presidents halting of SOPA. On the West Coast, filmmakers and affiliated are insisting that the move is a major blow to the movie industry and it will only further encourage an Internet already ripe with pirated motion pictures.

Under the proposed SOPA legislation, both websites and Web surfers involved in sharing copyrighted material would be imposed with hefty fines and imprisonment, imposing a government-sanctioned firewall of sorts to shut down a large chunk of the Web. Advocates for an open Internet have protested in droves against both SOPA and its sister legislation, the Protect IP Act, or PIPA, and a massive campaign against them both on Wednesday this week brought thousands of websites down to show the impact the laws could have. Search engine giant Google warned users of the acts’ implications on Wednesday, and both Wikipedia and Reddit turned their sites black for the day. On Twitter, users used the microblogging sight to tweet opposition to SOPA and for a while the term “Save Porn” became the top trending topic in America, as passed legislation would no-doubt cripple the online adult entertainment industry.

Although Obama has won the favor of much of Silicon Valley by striking down SOPA for now, downstate in the Hollywood Hills, executives are furious that the president has put his foot down on the legislation, potentially allowing for the sharing and pirating of films to continue endlessly.

In Los Angeles, execs are fearful of the consequences and are revoking their support. For Obama’s re-election campaign, that could be one big dent in his 2012 fundraising efforts out west.

President Obama has managed to garner substantial support from the Internet and computer tech industry, although the Democratic National Committee has, as of September 30, 2011, received around $1 million more from the Hollywood and entertainment industry than their Silicon Valley counterparts. Among those that are at the top of the donor list are DreamWorks CEO Jeffrey Katzenerg, who personally has raised more than $500,000 for Obama’s re-election so far and has contributed $2 million to a super PAC with similar viewpoints.

If the backlash already aimed at Obama is any indication, however, the amount in the money well might begin to dry up.

“We just feel very let down by the administration and Obama for not supporting us,” one anonymous movie exec tells the Hollywood-geared website Deadline.

Another executive, who is identified only as a well known movie mogul and a supporter of the administration until now adds, “At least let him remain neutral and not go against it until we can get the legislation right. But Obama went against it. I’m personally not going to support him anymore and not give a dime anymore.”

With Hollywood funding not just Obama but the Democrats as a whole, a rift is dividing the president’s own party as lawmakers are forced to take sides with anti-SOPA supporters and the entertainment industry.

Former Democratic Senator Chris Dodd campaigned for Obama in 2008 but today heads the Motion Picture Association of America. He called the blackout on Wednesday waged by anti-SOPA advocates “the height of irresponsibility” when speaking to MSNBC and equated it to children screaming until they hold their breath.

Others within the Hollywood elite, including Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks, have in the past donated large sums to the Obama campaign, which hosted three separate fundraisers at the Sony Pictures movie studio in Los Angeles before.

While 19 US Senators flipped their stance regarding SOPA on Wednesday alone and became opponents of the bill, the vast majority of them are Republicans.

Democrats, on the other hand, are largely in support of both SOPA and PIPA, with Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) personally raking in almost one million dollars from supporters of the legislation. In a report published by the Raw Story on Thursday, the top 20 beneficiaries of special interest money in favor of PIPA doubles as a roster of some of the left’s biggest names, including Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV), Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Sen. Patrick Leahy, among others. In all, writes the website, the total amount of money handed over to the Democrats on the list of supporters of the act from special interests favoring SOPA amounts to more than $7 million. Anti-SOPA lobbyists, in comparison, have only contributed $807,502 to those very same Democrats.

“God knows how much money we’ve given to Obama and the Democrats and yet they’re not supporting our interests,” another anonymous Hollywood insider tells Deadline. “There’s been no greater supporters of him than we’ve been from the first day and the first fundraisers continuing until he was elected. We all were pleased. And, at its heart institutionally, Hollywood supports the Democrats. Now we need the administration to support us. This is a very important time for Hollywood.”

The Internet and computer industry has supported the Democratic Party to the tune of $52 million since 2007, which the Center for Responsive Politics says is up $12 million from the period of 2001 to 2006.

In regards to the week’s blackout, a senior Democratic congressional staffer close to the issue tells the National Journal, “Before this happened, the perception around here was that those who are in favor of ever-increasing copyright protections always won.” Because of Wednesday’s blackout, adds the staffer, “This may shift people’s expectations. It’s hard to say how much, but I think in a way that we haven’t seen in a long time. Folks on the Hill are realizing that there are a lot of people out there, and not just tech companies, that care about copyright issues.”

“This is something that could be repeated, but it couldn’t be repeated on just any issue. It resonates with people in having the freedom to go on the Internet and not be censored,” Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat from California and an opponent of the bills, adds.

Conflict of Interest, Hollywood-Style

Actors' Union vs. Movie Producers
By DAVID MACARAY  

I recently had lunch with David Clennon, the movie and television actor (Being There, The Thing, The Right Stuff, Syriana, Ghost Whisperer, thirtysomething, Saved, Boston Legal, etc.), at a coffee shop in Santa Monica.  We were there to share a meal and discuss some union issues.  In addition to being a distinguished actor, Dave Clennon is also a committed political and labor activist.  

How committed?  He once turned down a role on the hit television series, 24, because he felt the show’s depiction of torture indirectly contributed to the U.S. government’s use of torture as a legitimate form of interrogation, and, accordingly, to the public’s acquiescence or tacit approval of it.  In the real world, turning down a paying gig because of political principles is rare; in Tinsel Town, it’s practically unheard of.

As for the labor scene, what made the last couple of Screen Actors Guild (SAG) negotiations so frustrating and disappointing to Clennon and other SAG activists is the glaring conflict of interest that exists within the movie industry.  Indeed, when you hear it explained, it seems truly bizarre.   

The group with whom SAG (with 120,000 members) negotiates its contracts is the AMPTP (Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers), the people who more or less run the movie business.  On one side of the table you have the rank-and-file actors, looking for a larger slice of the pie, and on the other side you have the producers, looking to retain the whole pie.  At first glance this “actors vs. producers” scenario seems like any other labor vs. management scrimmage.

However, what makes this SAG scenario so different is that some of the union’s most influential members happen to be producers themselves.  It’s a concept that’s hard to wrap your mind around.  Recalling my days as a negotiator, Clennon asked, “How would you feel about having the CEO of the company you’re negotiating with also being an influential member of your union?”

And of all the successful hyphenates (actor-producers) in Hollywood, none is more successful or more formidable than Tom Hanks (Forrest Gump, Philadelphia, Saving Private Ryan), who owns Playtone, his own production company.  Not only does Hanks earn more as a producer than as a performer (and he’s very well paid as a performer), it’s been said that Playtone consistently employs more actors each year than any studio in town. 

Given his executive profile, his acting whiskers, and his unique role in the union, to say that Tom Hanks wields considerable clout is a gross understatement.  In truth, he is arguably the single most influential human being in Hollywood.  

Of course, the problem with having union members like Hanks (and Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin, Robert DeNiro, et al) is immediately apparent.  As successful producers or multi-millionaire actors (or both), their needs don’t coincide with the needs of SAG’s rank-and-file members who rely on such things as TV residuals and DVD sales to make their living.  

While George Clooney no longer has to worry about residuals from “ER,” or his cut from future DVD sales, the majority of SAG’s membership still do.   Residuals and DVD sales are vital to them.  And, as happens at every negotiation with the AMPTP, the producers are reluctant to part with their money.  It’s always been a battle.  Which is why it’s so alarming to have as your union spokesmen people who, to put it bluntly, not only don’t need the money as much as you do, but may have an entirely different agenda. 

In February of 2008, a “secret,” invitation-only meeting was held to discuss the upcoming SAG negotiations.  Hanks, Clooney, James Cromwell, Mike Farrell, and Melissa Gilbert (former SAG president), among others, were in attendance.  They represented a group of SAG members called Unite for Strength, who were opposed within SAG by another group, a more activist faction, known as MembershipFirst, of which then-president Alan Rosenberg was a member.

Hanks and his supporters were worried that Rosenberg and company were going to enter the upcoming negotiations with a giant chip on their shoulder, that they were going to be overly aggressive in pursuing a new contract, particularly after concluding that the Alliance had screwed them out of money and benefits in previous negotiations.  The rumor circulating among the cognoscenti was that the MembershipFirst crew was looking for payback.  

The fact that the WGA (Writers Guild of America) were already on strike (they would stay out 100 days), was another burr under Unite for Strength’s saddle.  Clearly, the writers taking so militant a stand—and being out for so long a period—had put the fear of God into the moderates.  Unite for Strength was worried that Rosenberg, who’d been reported to be hanging out with Patrick Verrone, president of the striking WGA, was going to follow the writers’ lead and force the Actors Guild into a strike.

Normally, in the run-up to a negotiation, a rumor like this would be gold, a cause for jubilation.  Every union in America prays for the leverage provided by this kind of pre-negotiation notoriety, where you’re perceived as already being in full-blown strike mode—especially these days, when so few unions actually pull the plug.  Typically, when unions engage in saber-rattling displays, nobody (including their own membership) believes them, which is why management is so willing to call their bluff.  

But this was different; this threat was perceived as real.  Having the producers genuinely fearful that the bargain could wind up in a ditch was manna from Heaven.  Unfortunately, instead of parlaying this perception into dollars and cents, Hanks and others moved to squelch the opportunity.  They moved to squelch it because they were well-heeled company men who had absolutely no interest in rocking the boat.

On February 14, 2008, Unite for Strength took out full-page ads in the trade papers, urging the parties (SAG and AMPTP) to sit down together and “just talk,” ostensibly as a means of averting any hostility.  The damage that such a reckless tactical blunder can do in the run-up to a contract negotiation—publicly circumventing the elected leadership—is incalculable.  

Then, the next day, February 15, Hanks and Clooney took it a step further.  At what was presumed to be Hanks’ urging, they co-authored a letter to the editor that appeared prominently in the Los Angeles Times, in which they cautioned the actors to approach the negotiations in a rational, open-minded fashion. 

What this amateurish, sad-sack plea did was effectively strip Rosenberg of the only trump card a union has—i.e., evidence of unwavering membership solidarity.  Basically, the only thing that Hanks and Clooney’s letter succeeded in doing was to announce to the world that SAG was riddled with dissension.  Well done, boys.

Of course, what happened next was predictable.  The Alliance exploited the dissension, the subsequent contract offer was ratified, the MembershipFirst slate was soundly defeated in the next SAG Board of Directors election, and the “moderates” took charge of the Guild. 

So the question that Dave Clennon and others have raised remains unanswered.  And it’s a good question.  Indeed, it’s the same fundamental question that was made famous by the 1930s Florence Reece labor song of the same name:  Which Side Are You On?

Hollywood's Big Wall Street Smackdown

Big finance is used to getting its way in Washington.
But the movie lobby had other ideas.
By Nick Baumann | Mon Apr. 26, 2010

It was a Hollywood happy ending—for Hollywood, that is.

For weeks, big movie studios have been fighting an effort by two financial firms to launch a new market in movie futures that would allow investors to bet on box office takings. The financial firms think this is an Oscar-worthy scheme. The movie studios panned it. Wall Street is used to getting its way in Washington. But this time, the James Camerons of the world appear to have outsmarted the Gordon Geckos.

This Capitol Hill clash began with the Hollywood Stock Exchange [1] (HSX), a fake-money internet game in which players try to predict the box office takes of Hollywood's biggest flicks. In 2001, Cantor Fitzgerald, a Wall Street investment firm, bought the five-year-old HSX with the intention of perhaps starting a real-money market [2] along the same lines.

But then came the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Cantor was headquartered on the top floors of One World Trade Center, right above the impact zone. It lost 658 employees—two-thirds of its staff—in the tragedy. It wasn’t until 2008 that Cantor applied to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), which regulates futures trading, for approval for a real-money HSX.

At first, everything went according to plan. At the beginning of this year, anticipating that the CFTC would soon give the thumbs-up, Cantor began a publicity push to draw attention and potential investors to its new market. That’s when Hollywood got mad.

The studios freaked. They were worried that movie futures could be vulnerable to manipulation and insider trading, and that if investors lost confidence in a film it would bomb at the box office. The head of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), Bob Pisano—essentially Hollywood's top lobbyist—wrote (PDF [3]) to the CFTC, warning regulators that film futures would be the "economic equivalent of legalized gambling on movie receipts."

Despite these objections, the CFTC gave the green light. Both Cantor's proposed exchange and another submitted by Media Derivatives Inc (MDEX), were approved in mid-April.

The MPAA is a formidable foe, however. Over the past five years, the trade group has spent around $2 million a yea [4]r lobbying Congress. Its political action committee has handed out tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions to key members. It has what DC insiders call "suction."

Cantor Fitzgerald may be a big deal on Wall Street. But it doesn't have nearly as much pull on the Hill. It hasn't lobbied the Senate directly since 2002, according to disclosure databases. And while its employees give generously to congressional candidates, it doesn't have a PAC exclusively promoting its interests. MDEX—an Arizona-based firm started in 2007—is even less of a Washington player.

Hollywood’s lobbying paid off. On April 16, as MDEX executives were no doubt celebrating their good fortune, Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) released her draft financial regulatory reform bill (PDF [5]). In it, she proposed the first exclusion of a product from futures markets since angry onion farmers descended on Congress in 1958 to accuse Chicago-based traders of capturing the market and artificially driving down prices. The current law lays out rules governing the trade of derivatives of any product "except onions." If Lincoln’s bill passes, it will read "except onions and motion picture box office receipts (or any index, measure, value, or data related to such receipts)."

This unexpected plot twist has bipartisan backing. California’s two senators, Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer wrote to the CFTC last week, urging the agency to delay further approval of movie futures trading until Congress finishes work on financial regulatory reform. The letter was also signed by Al Franken (D-Minn.), Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH.), and George LeMieux (R-Fla.).

On Thursday, a House agriculture subcommittee held a hearing on the matter in which the overwhelming conclusion was that the proposal deserved to go straight to video. "What you’re basically talking about, then, is authorizing gambling," scolded the chairman of the agriculture committee, Collin Peterson (D-Minn.). "The bottom line here is we're not really talking about a commodity," said Virginia Republican Bob Goodlatte. "I would think the person who would vote for this thing would be absolutely insane," said Oregon Democratic Rep. Kurt Schrader.

The MPAA has no knowledge of "any" opposition in the Senate to Lincoln's ban on movie futures. And when Mother Jones caught up with Lincoln on Thursday, she said that "everybody seems to be on board" with letting the proposal join onion derivatives in the dustbin of history. The bottom line is, if you own any futures on movie futures, now’s a good time to sell.