To prohibit and to prevent the trade practices known as "compulsory block-booking" and "blind selling" of motion-picture films in interstate and foreign commerce .. (1939)

14 TRADE PRACTICES IN MOTION-PICTURE INDUSTRY would be unworkable in the United States, although such is the law in England. It has been said of the English experience as compared with the American practice: In England no picture can be offered for sale until the exhibitors have had an opportunity to view it. Two objections are raised to compulsory previewing. One is that only an insignificant number of exhibitors ever avail themselves of the privilege. This is undoubtedly true, though perhaps for certain purposes the fact that the opportunity was present might serve. The other objection is raised by the production department itself. Exhibitors usually desire to enter into a contract which will give them definite assurances of pictures for many months in advance, in order that there may be no chance of their screens "going dark" or to insure receipt of the certain much-desired pictures. To meet this demand, and at the same time to have these pictures available for previewing, would render it impossible to alter production plans so as to be able to capitalize on changes in public fancy. The element of timeliness would be sacrified. It is quite certain that in this country at least such a required previewing would necessitate a thoroughgoing revision of production policies. In any event it may be said that the exhibitor is in no different position from that of the man who subscribes to a magazine for a year or more in advance (H. T. Lewis, Distributing Motion Pictures (1929), Harvard Business Review, vol. 7, pp. 267, 274.) The bill proposes as a substitute that no negotiation take place unless the distributor furnish specified information which supposedly would inform the exliibitor of the "contents" of the films for wliich a contract is solicited by either the distributor's sales representative, or the exliibitor or his film buyer. It is of course appreciated that a provision wliich undertakes to prescribe how the "contents" of film in project or in the course of production, by a producer shall be disclosed to an exliibitor, essays no mean task. Motion pictures, although they now talk, are none the less pictures and none the less moving m their essence. Before the moving pictures are taken, developed, edited, and printed and made to move in rapid succession by projection, they hvea no "content." Even after they are taken, developed, edited, and made to move by projection, what they provide remains largely indescribable in words. Their "content" is apprehended by seeing, not by readmg. The synopsis required by section 4, supposedly designed to reveal the content of a film to an exhibitor who for good reason, wishes to negotiate a contract before the fihn can be seen in the "screening room" of the exchange, or on the screen of his theater, may be summarized from the text of section 4 as follows: 1. Outline of — (a) story, and (6) incidents depicted, and (c) "scenes" depicted. 2. Statement describing manner of and treatment of — (a) dialogs concerning — (1) vice (2) crime, or (3) suggestive of sexual passion. (6) scenes depicting — (1) vice (2) crime, or (3) suggestive of sexual passion. The number of scenes and incidents depicted in a motion picture runs into the thousands. Motion pictures are moving scenes which dissolve one into another. As for treatment of scenes and dialogs of vice, crime, or suggestive of sexual passion, nobody yet has been able to comprehend what the statement describing such manner of