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)

TRADE PRACTICES IN MOTION-PICTURE INDUSTRY I7 trade papers, even seen by the exliibitor himself, the distributor must, under pain of imprisonment in the penitentiary, furnish the land of synopsis described. It is this provision which has given cause to persons in the industry to proclaim that the measure sought to be enacted by this section of the bill is punitive in purpose and intent. The producer of motion pictures is interested in knowing what types of motion pictures will appeal to the public. He must make has estimates man,y months in advance of production since in the selection of the scenario and cast, and in the actual making of the picture, considerable time is consumed. Because of the mutual advantages to be derived, both an exhibitor and a distributor will have made a contract for the motion picture before it is finished, yet before it is finished the producer will make countless changes in the story as suggested by the author, and in treatment as the director discards after previews some treatments and substitutes others by "retakes." A statutory regulation which permitted an exhibitor to cancel the contract if the picture differed from a prescribed true and complete synopsis recounting scenes and incidents, must have the effect of preventing the making of such changes as would seem to be required in the course of production. The producer would always be under the fear that, if the motion picture he produced did not in all respects correspond to the synopsis furnished by his distributing agency at the time of negotiation for a contract, he would be accused of having made a knowingly false statement in the synopsis, and therefore liable to incarceration. Pictures remade after audience-reaction tests would have to be foregone. Spontaneity in a creative art would be stifled. The commercial conduct of the industry underlying the art would be so restricted that both might perish. The destruction and injury to the industry apprehended by those engaged therein might conceivably be justified if there were present evils which subject the American public to vicious or immoral motion pictures and the measure had relation to the eradication of such evils. At the hearing before the subcommittee the sponsors of the measure and all those who appeared in support thereof were in unanimity of agreement with the opponents of the measure upon the point also that it was not desirable for the Federal legislature to impose a bureaucratic censorship to control the contents of American motion pictures. There was also agreement on all sides that American motion pictures have had steady and continuing inaprovement in their quality morally, artistically and educationally. When the measure was reported out of the Senate Committee on Interstate Comm.erce of the second session of the Seventy-fourth Congress (S. 3012, June 1936) in the report of the committee there was reference to the improvement in the quality of motion pictures in the 2 years prior to its report. The report was dubious whether such improvement could be expected to be continued or m.aintained. Three additional years have elapsed and in all fairness it must be stated that improvement has been maintained and has continued progressively. It is true that the American public is entitled to choose even as between good pictures, but it cannot be said upon the record made at the hearings that a legislative finding would be warranted that the American public is anywhere prevented from choosing among