Mr. KASTENMEIER. Now we would like to call on Mr. Roger Mayer.

Mr. MAYER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the committee. My name is Roger Mayer, and I have been an executive in the motion picture and television industries for about 36 years. I am currently president and chief executive officer of the Turner Entertainment Company, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Turner Broadcasting. Prior to that, I was with MGM for 25 years, most notably as senior vice president of administration and president of the MGM Laboratory, and my main duties at MGM included overseeing the operations of the MGM studio and the MGM libraries of film which Turner later acquired.

Our great libraries, and we own three of them, contain many thousands of old black and white movies, which despite their intrinsic entertainment value do not command an audience today because today's audiences are conditioned to look at movies in color. They simply cannot be persuaded, cajoled or bullied into watching them in black and white, and we have tried.

By changing these old movies to color, we have revitalized interest and found an audience for them, and we can show that. We hope to familiarize this subcommittee with our position and with its merits.

Rumor has it that once a black and white movie is colored the original version is lost forever. Just not so. Not only do the black and whites remain, preserved and restored by us, in their original form, but they remain available. This is true of movies that had some life of their own before colorization such as The Maltese Falcon and it is true of those that have had little life of their own such as Captain Blood. Whatever life a black and white movie had before coloring remains after coloring, absolutely unaffected by the new version. This summer we will release on videocassette the fine old movies Father of the Bride and Adam's Rib. Both will be released in both color and in black and white. The public will then have its choice.

The public also has access to a whole world of film clubs, schools and museums where black and white films are perpetually available to film buffs, and I can assure Mr. Canby that anytime somebody wants a black and white print we have it available.

And, of course, the vast majority of TV sets have a knob that can be turned down to eliminate color if that is your desire. So those who color old movies present a choice, another version and not a substitute.

Nor is this really a contest between art and commerce. These movies were made as entertainments in commercial ventures by production companies who assumed all the risk. Those who helped make them took no financial risk and were paid, often handsomely. They did not return their salaries with an apology if the movie flopped.

It is crucial to point out that the broadest possible ownership rights were obtained from directors and others through collective bargaining and personal negotiation in exchange for those large salaries and sometimes profit participations and residuals. The owners, in return, received control of the methods and manner of

distribution, advertising and the use of the various media, such as TV, videocassettes, and now color conversions.

These owners not only have the clear legal right to color their old movies, but we think they also have a moral right. Despite propaganda to the contrary, these old movies were not the immaculately conceived children of the director. They were made in the heyday of the old studio system and are basically the children of the studio moguls and their staff producers who oversaw every aspect of each production. They chose the property, worked on the script with the writer or multiple writers, and assigned all others to the film, including the director, who was replaced midway through a production if his work was not satisfactory.

The spiritual heirs of these moguls and producers are today's copyright holders who want their pictures admired and enjoyed by as many people as possible.

When anti-colorists deny the right to color black and white pictures we feel they are calling for censorship. Although obscured in a cloud of sometimes hysterical rhetoric, at issue here are matters of taste and choice. Taste and choice should not be subjects for legislation.

Legislation directed toward colorization can only be based on the belief that the public lacks the wisdom and the sophistication to make a choice.

You can't appreciate Bizet's Carmen? Their elitist arguments, imply. Tough. I have banned the jazzed up version, Carmen Jones. There is currently a rock version of Carmen showing in Vienna.

You don't enjoy the King James version of the Bible. Unfortunate, but I am burning all versions written before or since including those you may find more palatable.

You don't want to watch a movie in the form that I consider proper and pure. Too bad. But no way will I let you see that movie in another form that you might enjoy or might not enjoy.

Certainly no one wants to slap yellow paint on the original Van Gogh Irises or to paint a moustache on the original Mona Lisa. That would be to destroy the one-of-a-kind works of art. When dealing with movies, however, you are dealing with multiple copies, mass distributed. You may color some copies, but multitudes of others exist. Always replaceable. Always available so long as the master or the negative remains untouched, and it must remain untouched or you cannot make additional copies.

History teems with examples of works that have been reinterpreted with no damage to the original. Moreover, we would all maintain that our lives would be immeasurably impoverished were it not for this rich and ancient heritage of artistic alteration and adaptations.

That these old movies remain preserved-and there has been some discussion of preservation here, so we would like to reassure you in that regard. That these old movies remain preserved in black and white is due mainly to the efforts of the owners of the great film libraries. For our library alone, we have spent more than $30 million of private money on preservation in recent years, and the reinvestment continues at the rate of a million dollars a year.

A major goal of this vast expenditure is historical preservation. But we have restored, without discrimination, without regard to current opinions of commercial value. Obviously, that which is commercially viable must be fully utilized in order to justify preservation expenditures; and, obviously, color enhancement is one way in which further commercial viability can be achieved and our investment returned.

The incentive to invest in motion pictures and the care for the great libraries would be chilled if some outsider could say, "You go ahead and spend the millions on preservation and we will decide how and if you can release the results."

In summation, we think coloring old movies is a matter of taste and choice which, in a democracy, nobody should want to legislate. There is an overwhelming precedent in all of the arts and throughout history, as well as in our own entertainment industry, for creating new versions out of old and for reinterpreting existing works. Coloring black and white movies is but one small aspect of this cherished and culturally enriching tradition. I point out that if people do not like the colorized versions they will not watch them and they will not be successful, and we are willing to live with that.

Above all, coloring an old black and white movie in no way affects the existence, integrity and availability of the original version. By adding color to old movies, we have given new life to pleasant diversions which for the most part have languished unappreciated for decades, and we have delighted new millions with the kind of wholesome entertainment we would all want for our families.

Finally, we have submitted an analysis of the Mrazek amendment, and respectfully ask, Mr. Chairman, that those written comments be made a part of this record. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. KASTENMEIER. Without objection, that will be done. We will be pleased to receive your written comments. Thank you, Mr. Mayer.

[The statement of Mr. Mayer follows:]

Over the past several years, Turner Broadcasting has spent $1.4 billion to acquire the MGM, RKO and pre-1950 Warner Bros. film libraries, including the colorization rights to the black-and-white portion of the libraries. More than 2,000 of the 3,400 theatrical films and half of the 1,000 hours of television programming are in black and white, accounting for perhaps one-third of the libraries' value.

Colorization rights are crucial to the worth of the black-and-white films and television shows, because colorization opens them up to the modern television and VCR audience, which is disinclined to watch black and white. In the last few months since their colorization, CAPTAIN BLOOD and THE SEA HAWK, two fine old Errol Flynn movies, have been seen by ten times as many people as in all the years since the close of their original theatrical exhibition. In fact, the colorization of a movie may actually increase the market for the black-and-white version.

Colorization does not affect the black-and-white original, which we carefully preserve; any argument that original works of art are "lost" is misinformed. In fact, Turner Broadcasting does actively market both colorized and black-and-white versions of the same films through cable, broadcast syndication and the videocassette market.

TBS spends several million dollars each year on the restoration and preservation of its films. For obvious reasons, the continued commercial viability of these films is a healthy inducement for those continuing preservation efforts. The additional revenues provided by colorization make a substantial contribution to this endeavor.

It is misleading to assert that the old movies in question were exclusively the director's vision, and thus the director has the right to control. In the vast majority of cases, movie-making was and is largely collaborative effort. The old movies are more the "children" of the studio moguls than of the directors.

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Colorization is only the latest step in a centuries-old human tradition of adaptation. Books have been adapted to plays, plays to stage musicals, and stage musicals to movies. Even Woody Allen has adopted this approach, as evidenced by his use of a Japanese film in "What's Up, Tiger Lily" a few years ago. Creative adaptation into new, alternative forms is an enriching aspect of our artistic culture.

90-655 O 89 - 6

WRITTEN STATEMENT FOR SUBMISSION TO THE COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY SUBCOMMITTEE ON COURTS, CIVIL LIBERTIES, AND THE ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, JUNE 21, 1988

My name is Roger Mayer and I am President and Chief Executive Officer of the Turner Entertainment Company, a wholly owned subsidiary of Turner Broadcasting. I have been an executive in the motion picture and television industries for approximately 35 years at only two other companies: Columbia Pictures and MGM. I was at MGM for 25 years, most notably as Senior Vice President of Administration and as President of the MGM Laboratory. administrative duties included the administrative control of the MGM Studio and the MGM Library.

My main

We are the owners of over 3,600 movies, 1,700 hours of TV programming, and 4,000 shorts and cartoons. More than 2,500 of the movies are in black and white and, except for a few classics, receive little or no exposure.

By adding color, we have

revitalized interest and found an audience for them. Our testimony today is intended to explain the reasons for this activity, and to familiarize the subcommittee with our view of the colorization

process.

There seems to be a belief in some quarters that once a black and white movie is colored, the original version is destroyed or gets locked away, never to be seen again, a portion of our cultural heritage lost.

Not so.

Not only do the old black and whites remain, preserved and