PREPARED STATEMENT OF HASKELL WEXLER, FILM DIRECTOR, HASKELL WEXLER FILMOGRAPHY, ON BEHALF OF THE INTERNATIONAL PHOTOGRAPHERS GUILD AND THE AMERICAN CINEMATOGRAPHERS, HOLLYWOOD, CA

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I am Haskell Wexler, director of photography. I have been making movies for quite a while. I have received many awards including two Academy Awards and four nominations.

My art is to change words into pictures moving pictures. Until I do what I do, there are only words in the air, on paper, and hopes and dreams.

I say my art and not my craft, or job, or technical expertise. Technical skills are involved but those skills are the servants of an artist.

I have authored the photography of many films and I am proud of my work. My name appears on the screen and in print. The public assumes what they see is what I have done.

If some unknown or unnamed person substantially alters what is presumed to be mine, I do not think it too strong to call it deception.

I am not unmindful nor

unappreciative of commercial requirements. Certainly video in its various forms has democratized the audience and secured profits for providers. That is good for all of us. We want people to see our work.

But when the faceless ones substantially alter what is under my name, they are giving false information. The label says one thing and the altered film is something else. This is not honest. This is not moral.

There have been well qualified people to appear before you

to argue legalities and feasibilities. I share the concern of George Lucas who came before Congress and said: "I see a future of indifferent copyright-owning corporations with unlimited power to tamper continually with filmed dramatic works as if they were revising an acceptance speech not by Orwell's Big Brother but by

a legion of little brothers, all with no regard for the original contributors and changing what they like to refer to as "product".

Materially altering films without publicly noting those changes is mislabeling, is untruth in advertising.

I hope the law has some obligation to be fair, to be moral, and to require those with economic power to be sensitive to issues beyond narrow expediency.

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I agree with John Houston that "we are all of us custodians of our culture. Our culture defines not just who we are but who and what we were".

When my grandchildren or their children see my photography, I would like it to be my vision, my work, my art that they appreciate. And if the commercialization of art in the future becomes too severe, at least it would be noted as materially changed by others.

Mr. HUGHES. Mr. Blasi, welcome.

STATEMENT OF VINCENT BLASI, CORLISS LAMONT PROFESSOR OF CIVIL LIBERTIES, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LAW, NEW YORK, NY

Mr. BLASI. Thank you. My role is to answer any questions you may have about the first amendment objections that has been raised to the proposed bill.

Each year I teach the first amendment to over 140 law students at the Columbia Law School and, in addition, teach-teach a course on the first amendment with the columnist, Anthony Lewis, to over 170 journalism students.

I won't recite my background except to say that anyone who knows my writing or my teachings cannot doubt my devotion to the first amendment. It is a joke amongst students at Columbia that my love of the first amendment borders on the unseemly.

Let me just try to outline quickly the structure of first amendment doctrine as it pertains to this issue. I will be brief.

A requirement of factual disclosure pertaining to an artist's role in the alternation of a film threatens none of the values at the core of the first amendment. Such a requirement does not impose or endorse an official orthodoxy because its function is to protect the private rights of artists, not to pass judgment on the artistic quality of films.

The disclosure requirement is not a prior restraint because no government official sits in judgment of the film or controls its reTease to the public. The disclosure requirement is not a prohibition keyed to the content of speech because the film producer and exhibitor can show their film in its altered state exactly as they altered it, with no fear of subsequent sanctions. The disclosure requirement does not infringe editorial autonomy because it does not mandate the intrusion of anyone-neither government official nor original director, screenwriter, or cinematographer-into the editorial process that determines what the altered version of the film will look like. The disclosure requirement is not unconstitutionally paternalistic because it does not seek to "balance" public debate or prevent some speech from "drowning out" other speech.

The objective and the consequence of the disclosure requirement is to protect the professional reputation of an artist who might otherwise be associated in the public eye with an alteration of which he disapproves.

In short, the factual disclosure required by the act embodies no governmental judgment of value, efficacy, or balance; does not restrict in any way what works the public is able to view; and creates no discretionary authority or intrusive interface that might lead to future censorial abuse. In terms of the traditional principles and warning signs of first amendment analysis, this type of requirement is simply not problematic.

What the first amendment prohibits is any attempt by the state to require persons to affirm what they do not believe or to convey the ideas of their political opponents and critics. Fully consistent with the Supreme Court's interpretation of the first amendment would be a properly drafted disclosure requirement designed to protect an artists from being identified with alterations of which he

disapproves. Indeed, the objective of such a disclosure requirement to recognize a person's right to disassociate himself from a "message" that is no longer his own-actually gains support from the modern understanding of the first amendment.

I have discussed the case law in detail in the statement which is before you.

Mr. HUGHES. Thank you, Mr. Blasi.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Blasi follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF VINCENT BLASI, CORLISS LAMONT PROFESSOR OF CIVIL LIBERTIES, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LAW, NEW YORK, NY

I appreciate your invitation to speak before this Committee. As a

person whose career as a teacher and scholar has been devoted almost exclusively to the effort to understand and defend the principle of freedom of speech, I welcome the opportunity to speak to you regarding the

constitutionality of the proposed Film Disclosure Act of 1991.

I have represented unpopular speakers and news organizations over a twenty-five year period. I have written numerous articles in defense of a variety of First Amendment claims. Each year I teach the First Amendment to over 140 law students and, with the columnist Anthony Lewis, to over 170 journalism students. I hold the chair in civil liberties at the Columbia Law School. My First Amendment heroes are Justice Brandeis and Justice Black, and I have written articles explaining why I admire their First Amendment views. I have no higher professional or civic concern than the continued strength, vitality, and reinvigoration of the First Amendment.

I fail to see how the legislation before you poses a serious threat to that concern. If anything, such a disclosure enhances First Amendment values by increasing the information available to the viewers of the film without in any way preventing the film from being exhibited in its altered form.

Permit me to explain why I reach the judgment that the proposed Film Disclosure Act does not violate the First Amendment. I shall discuss, first, how the basic structure of First Amendment analysis reveals the weakness of