So long, Jack, we’re not sad to see you go

Word just came down that Jack Valenti is bowing out as head of the Motion Picture Association of America. I can’t be the only one who thinks this is a good thing.

Valenti, 82, made his announcement a short time ago in Las Vegas at the 2004 ShoWest convention, an annual convention that attracts the nation’s movie theater owners. And he received a reported “standing ovation” from a crowd of some 1,200 conventioneers. And he deserves it. No one’s denying that Valenti has done some good things. In the years since he became the MPAA’s head in 1966, the former speechwriter for Lyndon Baines Johnson , Valenti has been a tireless advocate for the movie industry.

Only thing is, his definition of “industry” has been limited mostly to the big studios. Nothing proved this more than the controversy that he was at the heart of last year when he supported a ban on the release of screeners to those who vote for Academy Awards. The studio argument was that such screeners, mostly videotape copies of big-screen releases, ended up being illegally copied and sold or downloaded in the Internet.

Smaller studios and independent filmmakers countered that the ban was aimed at them, since their films didn’t have the wide distribution to be seen by all voters, which put them at a disadvantage every March when Oscar time came around. A federal judge, acting on a lawsuit brought by opponents of the ban, ultimately forced Valenti and the big studios to cease and desist.

And need I mention Valenti’s biggest legacy, the MPAA ratings board? Sure, it’s nice to know whether a film has crude humor, raw language, sexual situations, nudity, drug use and/or violence, especially it you’re a parent concerned about what your kids watch. But over the years the MPAA has made some outrageously curious decisions, most of which favor violence over sex and language over content.

Example: Italian filmmaker’s Nanni Moretti ’s film “The Son’s Room,” a moving, poignant study of a family struggling to deal with the pain of sudden and unexplainable loss. Here’s what I wrote in October, 2002, when “The Son’s Room” came out on video:

“An R rating? This film has no exploding cars, no blazing firearms, no shredded bodies. There is no drug use.

The only sex scene involves a man kissing his wife, a view of a breast and a bit of moaning.

“This is not Angelina Jolie-type eroticism. This is simple, tender intimacy.

“To be fair, the therapy scenes do feature patients talking openly about their obsessions with sex (in Italian with English subtitles).

“In all, according to the Kids-in-Mind Web site , an online guide to ‘potentially objectionable’ movie references, there are ‘six F-words, four sexual references, two anatomical terms, three scatological terms, three mild obscenities, one religious profanity, one religious exclamation.’

“So, yes, there are things about ‘The Son’s Room’ that some parents will find objectionable. But this also is a moving tale of family loss in which Moretti finds a way to explore all the nuances of grief. And, just like in real life, he leaves the way open for his characters to achieve growth and maybe, but only maybe, find enough support to hold the family together.”

Valenti’s MPAA, in all it wisdom, lumped this beautiful film together with the likes of “The Hitcher” (Jennifer Jason Leigh’s body pulled apart by a truck), the American remake of “The Vanishing” (Jeff Bridges gets stabbed in the face with a shovel) and the two Quentin Tarantino exercises in bloodletting, “Pulp Fiction” and “Reservoir Dogs” (multiple shootings, explicit drug use, profanity every fifth word and, in the latter, Tim Roth lying a pool of his own blood for most of the film’s 99-minute running time).

So, yes, Jack Valenti has done much for the American film industry. But his day has passed. American film needs a new proponent, one grounded in the 21st century and who understands the difference between quality and crass commercialism.

I nominate Bill Murray.