Hollywood's War on Video Pirates

By Alexander L. Taylor III

Real-life swashbucklers are trying to rip off this summer's hits

For weeks Hollywood had been bracing for the attack. In May, Variety reported that video pirates were preparing an all-out assault on the summer's hottest film, Return of the Jedi. Lucasfilm Ltd., the producer, stepped up security by policing film labs, fastening film canisters with special metal seals, and using messengers to deliver prints around the U.S. The distributor, 20th Century-Fox, sent telegrams to 836 theater managers urging them to take "every possible security" measure against piracy.

Despite the extraordinary efforts, a print of Return of the Jedi disappeared last week from Bush River Cinemas in Columbia, S.C. The FBI was called in, and the film was recovered within twelve hours, thus apparently preventing the production of any illegal copies.

Video piracy is a huge and growing problem. With some 31 million videocassette recorders in use worldwide, 5 million of them in the U.S., an immense market has developed for motion-picture tapes. Since a film is normally not sold on cassette until about six months after its release, video pirates are filling the gap. The film industry estimates that it is losing as much as $700 million a year in ticket and cassette sales.

This summer could see an epidemic of illegal taping. Several potential blockbusters are being released in addition to Jedi, which last week rang up the biggest one-day box office in history ($6.2 million). Other surefire sequels: the 13th James Bond film, Superman III and Staying Alive, the follow-up to Saturday Night Fever. Says William Nix, who heads the antipiracy division of the Motion Picture Association of America: "These films have built-in demand for illegal copies. The damage could be the worst ever."

Each industry executive seems to have a favorite horror story. Producer Irwin Winkler tells of the phone call he received in a mixing room at MGM while he was still dubbing the sound track of Rocky III. "A friend in Paris told me he'd already seen the film on videotape and that it was excellent," says Winkler. "At the same time, they were running it in British pubs and charging admission." Producer David Wolper says that after he completed the picture This Is Elvis, he found that "a projectionist in Chicago was copying the second reel of my movie while he was showing the first reel."

To make life tougher for the pirates, film studios are now keeping closer track of finished features. Prints are no longer routinely left overnight in screening rooms. When new films are lent to studio executives for private showings, a guard often goes along. Yet the thefts continue. Says one Hollywood public relations man: "If you know someone at a studio, you can get about any film you want."

Local movie theaters are particularly vulnerable to pirates. Projectionists can often be bribed (going rate: $500) to look the other way while a hit movie is taken away for a few hours to be copied. Two years ago, authorities were tipped off that a projectionist in Benton Harbor, Mich., was colluding with some thieves to copy the about-to-be-released Raiders of the Lost Ark. FBI agents staked out the theater and watched as the print was taken out after closing and driven 120 miles to a warehouse near Chicago. They caught five men in the act of videotaping the movie and bagged copies of about 65 other films.

Video pirates can make chestfuls of money plying their trade. Tapes of hit movies can bring as much as $300 in the first few weeks after release. The price quickly falls off when a flood of copies hits the market, but the cassettes can still be selling for $80 or so, even though they are often of poor quality, until the authorized version is released several months later. Since blank tapes cost only $8 wholesale, the profit margins are impressive. Last month FBI agents arrested Rodney Wollman, 29, who allegedly started selling black market tapes out of the trunk of his car but soon became known as Captain Video in White Plains, N.Y. When they raided his store, they found 100 illegal copies, including titles like E.T. and Tootsie, in a back room.

In 1975, to combat video piracy, the major motion-picture studios established the Film Security Office, which has helped convict 300 pirates. The security office has also opened twelve branches overseas, and expects to add more because of the expanding number of videocassette recorders and the voracious appetite for Hollywood films. Much of the enforcement activity is focused on London, an international bazaar for pirated movies, where officials last month destroyed about $1.5 million worth of illegal cassettes. Last week a London court awarded almost $7 million to Universal Pictures in what is believed to be the largest judgment yet handed down in a video piracy case.

Several studios are experimenting with a method of marking prints with an indelible code so that copies can be easily traced. Says Joseph Moscaret, security vice president of Paramount Pictures: "Using this technique, we caught a guy in 24 hours. We aren't going to eliminate piracy, but we can minimize it."

Some Hollywood executives view piracy as being as inevitable as inflated expense accounts. Asked what he is doing to protect his upcoming film The Right Stuff, a movie about the early days of the U.S. space program, Producer Winkler replied, "We're keeping our prints locked up and our fingers crossed.'' --By Alexander L. Taylor III.

Reported by Stephen Koepp/New York and Russell Leavitt/Los Angeles

With reporting by Stephen Koepp/New York, Russell Leavitt/Los Angeles This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.