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)

16 TRADE PRACTICES IN MOTION-PICTURE INDUSTRY There is no suggestion that "blind selling" or "blind buying" by the exhibitor is "compulsory." The label "compulsory" is omitted from its description. Exhibitors, if they wished to, could now limit their contracts for motion pictures to those motion pictures wliich have alread}?" been produced. They negotiate for pictures before they are produced or conclude a contract before seeing them because of many legitimate reasons. One of the main reasons is to insure prompt delivery of a picture upon release to take advantage of something new and of the publicity that emanates from the studios and from the producing and distributing companies' publicity departments at the time of the release of a new motion picture. After all, what the exhibitor sells is something intangible, namely entertainment. What he would like to be assured of most of all when he makes a contract for motion pictures is that they will entertain. He has come to rely upon agencies witiiin the industry even more than official censorship bodies or penal statutes prohibiling the transportation or showing of lewd or indecent motion pictures, that the motion pictures will not be obscene or vicious. He depends in large measure for the entertainment value of a motion picture, upon the amount and kind of publicity done by the distributor in connection with the motion picture. He cannot tell from a mere story of a plot how much entertainment value the picture is going to have. He sometimes can predict the entertainment value of pictures with certain stars or directed by certain directors. As one exhibitor, in connection with this provision of the biU has pointed out: I challenge any man alive to read a synopsis of It Happened One Night or Mr. Deeds Goes to Town and faintly sense the charm or distinction of these pictures. A distributor's blind selling or an exhibitor's blind buying of motion pictures, in the case of the pictures of producers of established reputation contracted for by exhibitors of experience and competence, is no more blind than is a commission to an author or a composer to write a novel or compose a symphony. The requirement of the prescribed synopses under criminal penalties, applies in the case of motion pictures produced, reviewed in the press, and seen by the exliibitor. How much better can an exhibitor be given information of the contents of a motion picture than by providing opportunity for the exhibitor to see the motion picture? Yet by this section even if the motion picture is finished at the time of the negotiation and the exhibitor is given an opportunity to see it and thus learn of its contents, the distributor must still furnish a prescribed "complete and true synopsis" as summarized above. This appears to be contrary to the asserted pui'pose of this section carried as a clause in the section itself that the object is to permit the exliibitor to make an informed selection, but there is not a word in the entire section which eliminates the duty of the distributor (and the corresponding duty of the exhibitor) not to negotiate for a contract for a motion picture, even if the exliibitor has just finished viewing the picture, unless the distributor furnishes the s3mopsis required. In the formula prescribed for the synopsis there are the words "depicted or to be depicted" which indicate that it contemplates that with a finished motion picture available for viewing, reviewed in the 1 I