The alphabet soups that make up the business, labor and organizational side of Hollywood can be awfully confusing. There’s the DGA, SAG, IATSE, MPPA, and so forth. So many, that people can be forgiven for coming up with weird translations of the acronyms. Take the MPAA, for instance. Some think it means Most Phony-baloney A------s Anywhere. Now that’s ridiculous. The MPAA is the Motion Picture Association of America, sort of Hollywood’s own Chamber of Commerce. Just a harmless business organization that, ahem, looks after the interests of its members, the major studios.

     Recently, this innocuous group of respectable businessmen handed down a fiat: No screeners (i.e., videos or DVDs) of 2003’s films were to be distributed to the members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (the Oscar voters), of critics groups, or of any other body that hands out prizes.

     Most studios hand out screeners to make sure that one and all have seen their movies before voting begins. It’s not so important for the big studios; their movies have been in wide release for the most part and the have the financial wherewithal to screen and screen again if they need to. But for independent and foreign films it’s a different matter. Once those films have closed their limited runs, they’re closed, baby. The money is gone. So the small distributors desperately need to send out those screeners if they’re going to reach all the various organizations’ voters out there.

     Obviously, whatever the independents have been doing, it’s been successful. Voters have increasingly been turning up their noses at odiferous studio fare in favor of more sweet-smelling independents.

     Now, the MPAA fiat applies only to "signatories" to the MPAA. I always loved that word, "signatories." What they mean is "members," but MPAA mouthpieces are forever using vocabulary-builder type words when simpler ones are more appropriate. Jack Valenti, who together with his hair is the chief front man for the MPAA, once used the word "diurnal" in a written screed in Daily Variety when he should have used "daily."

     But I digress.

     Through its press releases, the MPAA vehemently denies (press releases always vehemently deny, never just deny) they are targeting independents. They might have a point. Many of the "independent" distributors are owned by major studios: Miramax/Disney, Universal Focus, Paramount Classics, UA Classics/MGM. Interestingly, however, Sony Classics is the distributor most likely to handle foreign films and its owner, Sony Pictures, was reportedly the last major to be persuaded to sign on to the new policy.

     And some of the big independents – Lions Gate comes to mind – are not "signatories" (are you are signatory of your local YMCA?)

      We shall let this wholly persuasive argument rest, since a battalion of angry independent executives are making it. Rather, let us turn our attention to the wholly specious argument made in support of this policy by the MPAA spokes-corps, those very same folks who defend the egregious MPAA ratings system.

     Their argument – and excuse me for a minute while I pause to laugh – is that these screeners are the source of pirated prints.

     Folks, as I pretty much said, it is to laugh.

     Piracy is a problem, insofar as inflated prices for videos and DVDs have created an underground market for unlicensed copies of movies. Some pirated prints, a few, are made by people who sneak hand-held video cameras into movie theaters and tape the movie off the screen. These lousy copies are sold exclusively in poor neighborhoods where people have been priced out of movie-going by studio-imposed $8-$10 theater tickets, though not embargoed from incessant movie marketing.

     On a slightly larger scale, some pirated DVDs are made from other DVDs. But no one knows where the source DVDs come from. It’s just as likely – MORE likely – that they originate somewhere in the manufacturing process than from the ultimate recipient. Also, please keep in mind that these screeners are not necessarily of the same quality as the DVDs you buy or rent in the store. The Academy screeners are often rush jobs, sometimes smeary, and usually plastered with titles reading "ACADEMY SCREENER ONLY" or "IF YOU HAVE BOUGHT OR RENTED THIS DVD PLEASE CALL 1-800"?

     Most pirated copies are very high quality and are either directly downloaded over the web by the user or sent to the underground DVD manufacturer by an internet connection. And from where do they originate?

     FROM INSIDE THE STUDIO WALLS!

     If you’ve ever seen a top-quality pirated print of the sort that could really menace Hollywood’s market, you would know in an instant that it would have to have been copied from a virginal digital print. And the only place to get that is in the studio, not even from a studio vendor. Film prints are digitized for all sorts of reasons, for editing, for music, effects, etc. All kinds of people have access to it.

     Naturally, the studios have imposed controls on low-level employees to ensure that they can’t just sit down at a computer and shoot the print out into the cybernetic ether. Well, they must have, right?

     So this is a real conundrum. Pirated prints made from crystal-clear, beautiful digitized originals that can only be sitting inside studio computers. Studio security systems under the control of executives. Well, if I didn’t know better, I’d have to say that piracy was going on WITH THE CONNIVANCE OF HOLLYWOOD EXECUTIVES!

     No, it would be foolish to suggest that in the absence of proof. It’s just speculation. Still, it does make you wonder if the MPAA is up to the old magician’s trick of distracting you with his left while he flimflams you with his right.

     Hmmm, may those folks were right about what MPAA meant after all.