Motion Picture Association of America Chairman
and CEO Dan Glickman, JD ’69, at ShoWest,
an annual Las Vegas convention of theater
owners, March 15, 2005. Glickman took over
in 2004 from one of Hollywood’s best-known
figures, Jack Valenti, who had led the MPAA
since 1966.
Isaac Brekken/APWWPBy Mark R. Smith
When he reminisces
about the six-block trek from his boyhood
home in Wichita, Kan., to the Crest Theater,
Motion Picture Association of America Chairman
and CEO Dan Glickman,
JD ’69, must think he’s dreaming
when he contemplates how he’s spending
his time these days.
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Dan Glickman watches President Clinton sign a farm bill in 1996 in the
Oval Office. Glickman served as agriculture secretary from March
1995 to January 2001.
AP/WWP |
And while work is still “work,” a
dream it might be.
Back then, little could Glickman have thought,
after graduating from GW Law School, winning
nine consecutive congressional elections,
running the Department of Agriculture,
and a stint at Harvard University, that
such an intriguing challenge was still
looming. Then came the call that he had
been named to replace legendary head man
Jack Valenti at the MPAA, the industry’s
most powerful lobbying organization.
The
62-year-old Glickman has come a long way
from his roots in America’s heartland.
After graduating from the University of
Michigan, he moved to Washington to work
on Capitol Hill and attend GW Law. From
there the rest is history. Indeed, his
varied experiences give him a great story
to tell—one that he laced into his
commencement speech to the Law School’s
Class of 2006 in May.
To Glickman, that move east was what might
be termed today as a no-brainer. “I
was always interested in politics, so it
was a natural” to come to Washington,
he says, noting internships he served with
Sen. James Pearson (R.-Kan.) and Sen. Peter
Dominick (R.-Colo.).
While not passing himself off as a gifted
student, Glickman, in fact, graduated with
honors. Every so often, “my shortcomings
as a student would become extremely obvious,” he
says, such as during a course in criminal
law he took with Professor James Starrs. “I
also learned a lot from Professor Jerome
Barron,” who later became dean, he
says. He has kept in touch with Starrs
and Barron, as well as Professor Jonathan
Molot.
After
graduation, Glickman went home and served
as president of the Wichita school board
and a partner in the law firm of Sargent,
Klenda and Glickman; then he returned to
Washington to work as a trial attorney
at the Securities and Exchange Commission.
By that point, he had already acquired
skills that aid him in his present position. “It
is helpful to understand business partnerships,
contract arrangement, property rights,
and antitrust related issues,” Glickman
says, adding that his legal background
makes him able to “pick up [on new
business] a little faster that way.”
Glickman’s next major turning point
was around the corner. At age 31, he returned
to Kansas to run for Congress in 1977 and
won. Then Glickman won the next race, and
the next race, and the race after that.
And many more. In fact, he held his position
until 1995, winning nine consecutive elections
before losing his 10th campaign. It was
then he realized that he was simply “a
Democrat in a state that was becoming Republican.”
He
enjoyed several finer moments in the House
representing Kansas’ 4th Congressional
District. They included serving on the
House Agriculture Committee
and the House Judiciary Committee, where
he was a
leader on technology issues. He also was
a leading congressional expert on general
aviation policy and served as
chairman of the House Permanent Select
Committee
on Intelligence.
Glickman’s agriculture experience
paid great dividends when he was tapped
by President Clinton to be secretary of
the Department of Agriculture in 1995.
Highlights of his almost six-year tenure
included the administration of numerous
farm and conservation programs, the modernization
of food and safety regulations, and the
creation of new international trade agreements
to expand U.S. markets, which proved invaluable
when he accepted his $1.5 million-per-year
position at the MPAA.
At the end of Clinton’s term, Glickman
left the Department of Agriculture in January
2001 and returned to private practice with
Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld in Washington.
In August 2002, he added Ivy League panache
to his resume when he became director of
the Institute of Politics at Harvard University’s
John F. Kennedy School of Government. For
two years, he directed the institute while
remaining a senior adviser with Akin Gump.
Then, suddenly, it was time for the guy
who sees about 50 movies a year anyway
to head “back to the cinema”—but
along a much different path. While his
move in 2004 to lead the MPAA was an unforeseen
occurrence in Glickman’s crystal
ball, it was an even bigger surprise in
the film and television industries, which
are populated by executives who couldn’t
fathom how a former agriculture secretary
could run the powerful film lobby.
Despite those doubts, Glickman felt that
he was, indeed, the right man for the job.
He points to his experience of managing
a federal agency with a $70 billion budget
and 100,000 employees, as well as his ability
to “work both sides of the aisle” to
gain nonpartisan support needed to push
legislation through the appropriate channels.
Another bonus is his knowledge of copyright
law and the process required to get antipiracy
laws through Congress.
It also happens that Glickman knew the
charismatic Valenti, an ex-Lyndon Johnson
aide who led the MPAA for nearly four decades,
from his days in Congress. Valenti also
knows Glickman’s wife, Rhoda. She
was director of the Congressional Arts
Caucus for about 15 years and coordinated
Capitol Hill movie screenings that Valenti
hosted. Glickman also had one more connection
to the film industry. His son, Jonathan,
is a film producer with Spyglass Entertainment
and was mentored by Valenti on his way
up. Among his credits are the Jackie Chan
movies Rush Hour and Shanghai
Knights.
Since he came to the MPAA, Glickman says
his biggest surprise has been realizing “the
enormous impact of the film industry” in
the United States. Yet he is quick to point
out that the film industry was all about “globalization” long
before the word became part of the public
lexicon.
“It’s an enormous export enhancer,” he
says, “and it has the positive balance
of payment surplus with every country that
we do business with. Also, it is a big part
of our country’s international image.”
Glickman says the industry employs between
800,000 and 900,000 workers who range
from actors to directors to crew to employees
of theater companies to the various concessionaires.
Worldwide, the financial impact of box
office business is estimated to be about
$25 billion—and that’s not
counting DVD sales or Video On-Demand purchases.
Of urgent concern, however, is the issue
of content protection, as piracy costs
the industry $3 billion annually. The
MPAA has taken a four-pronged approach
to combat the problem: initiating litigation,
creating educational programs, encouraging
the development of new technologies,
and developing cost alternatives to lower
the price of acquiring content.
Glickman also notes the competition in
the market. First, many U.S. states are
offering “very generous tax incentives” to
keep production within their confines. “Hollywood
still dominates,” he says, “but
the bottom line is still dictated by the
market.”
And then there’s the work that’s
going outside of the United States. But
what is going to other countries, such
as Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia,
can’t easily be quantified, due in
part to fluctuations in the value of currency.
Given this situation, Glickman is also
mindful of where revenues come from. “We
have to be careful not to take an anti-foreign
view because [people in other countries]
watch our movies,” he says. “This
is why we stress to Congress that the film
industry is important.”
Glickman’s current challenges must
make his days at the Law School seem like
another lifetime. Experiences like moot
court, which gave him practical skills,
are a big part of why he found GW so satisfying.
In addition, “The big joy of going
to law school here was the D.C. experience,” which
included Vietnam protests and the like,
he says. “It all certainly gave [learning
about] law a sense of realism.”
Glickman also reflected back to his childhood
and those quick walks he took to the Crest
Theater, where he “escaped from the
everyday world” for the whopping
price of 25 cents per ticket.
He remembers the landscape from his boyhood
that consisted of the fledgling television
industry and the pleasures of the Silver
Screen, noting that “there’s
so much competition today” for an
individual’s attention.
“In the past year or two, the industry
has flattened,” he says. “I want
to keep people focused on the value of film
and TV as part of their lives. My job is
to make people feel good about movies.”
Mark R. Smith has written extensively
about film and video production while also
focusing on business topics in Maryland
with The Daily Record in Baltimore
and The Business Monthly in Columbia,
Md., which he also edits.
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