It seems crucial to recognize that a successful AFI must be dedicated to promoting the film interests of all regions of the country, and must be in close touch with the varying problems of those regions. Thus, regional offices should be opened in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, and perhaps other cities as well. Unlike Greystone, these offices should be located in easily accessible places; they should provide modest screening facilities capable of being opened to the public, with a public coffeeshop adjacent thereto where film people could meet, informal events and presentations could be held, etc. Compact office space should be provided for a small staff, whose primary responsibilities would include coordinating work on distribution problems, aiding and advising educational programs, and reporting events and developments to the national office and AFI Reports. This staff would encourage the development of a network of advisory and ad hoc committees drawn from the local film community (broadly conceived to include educators, film-makers, students, critics, industry members, and persons from the general public who care about films). The staff would also be concerned to develop a general public membership program. In short, they would act as gadflies, inspirations, stimulators, trouble-shooters; they would go out and engage with the film problems of the country, and attempt to bring AFI's prestige, influence, and money to bear in solving them. One important task of the AFI regional offices would be the development of regional theaters, either directly under AFI auspices like the one in Washington, or through assisting local museums or other groups in the manner of the BFI. Unfortunately, the Washington theater has been so expensive that its experience will tend to frighten off those interested in beginning other theaters. After modest and quite successful beginnings, the Washington theater was moved to a high-rent shopping center where its losses have been spectacular (on the order of $100,000 per year). Next year it goes to the Kennedy Art Center, but expensive outfitting is involved there too, and Stevens foresees another $100,000 deficit. Instead of working toward other regional theaters directly, however, AFI policy is now to put on "spectaculars" in collaboration with big department stores, as has been done in Minneapolis and Houston. These operate through high-powered hoopla of stars and big names; they garner a few memberships, but it seems extremely unlikely that the Official Culture types who attend them will constitute the backbone of a repertory theater audience, while it seems all too likely that this kind of show will alienate the young people who in fact constitute such a potential audience. The AFI Theater in Washington should be returned to its former modest level of operation, with expenses kept relatively in line with income. It should be operated as a conscious pilot program to explore how self-sustaining theaters can be maintained in cities lacking large film-mad populations. The essentials should be modesty in "image," active and daring programming (as has been the case in Washington), and active attempts to connect the theater with community interests and needs. Presumably, if AFI must continue to rely on government funds, its headquarters office should be in Washington, despite the cultural disadvantages of that city. RESEARCH AND PUBLICATIONS Returning to the other main areas of AFI activity, what has been happening in the past six months is a cutting back of programs as AFI has run out of money. Stevens claims that production people have been fired too; but the ire of the education and critical community was most directly raised by the firing of the Center research staff; shortly thereafter, not only Education Manager Ron Sutton in Washington, but also Steven's administrative assistant Kay Loveland resigned; and a petition of protest was then signed by a large number of people still remaining on the staff, on both coasts. In such circumstances bitterness is natural. Stevens claims that just as much research and education work is going on now as before. But what he means is the oral history program; and as far as participants at the recent educators conference in St. Louis can tell, AFI is hoping to cast them loose as soon as possible. It seems clear, then, that an important change of emphasis has taken place. But it is not easy to evaluate the past or present contributions of AFI in the research or scholarly area. Skepticism is inevitable, because scholarly work is one thing that institutions are never good at; they serve best by providing libraries or similar facilities and leaving the scholars alone. Judging by the evidence of our American universities, the "community of scholars" Robert Hutchins spoke of cannot be willed into existence simply by hiring scholars and putting them in one building; it springs up sometimes in some places through a happy concatenation of circumstances. What was going on at the Center seems to have been preparatory in nature. Seminars were held; discussions were carried out; books were envisioned. One project bore on the nature of visual style in film, hoping to develop a suitable vocabulary for analysis. A study was afoot on animation, and several on historical aspects of Hollywood film-making and film-makers. The role of the paid staff was to assist the fellows doing these projects through discussion and advice; and there was some overlap with management of the oral histories projects. Some of the work planned may come to publication stage in due course, when it can be evaluated by all. On the other hand, those staff or fellows who have in fact published critical work (Jim Kitses, Paul Schrader, Steven Mamber, Bob Mundy, and others) would doubtless have gone on producing whether the Center existed or not, and whether or not they happened to be in Los Angeles, London, or New York. The oral histories program, which is continuing after the firings (management of it is not, after all, a terribly complex job) involves both experienced and published interviewers and beginners. We can confidently rely on the knowledge and interviewing skills of Gavin Lambert on Cukor, Albert Johnson on Wellman and Leroy, Charles Higham on Garmes, Peter Bogdanovich on Dwan, Walsh, and McCarey, or Kevin Brownlow. But only later will we be able to assess the 30 other projects now underway. It must also be remembered that although oral histories serve to preserve the memories and opinions of important industry figures, they are only the beginning of scholarly work, and certainly do not constitute film history in themselves. There is a tendency to think of tape-recording as fulfilling the duties of a scholar; but the tapes only provide a partial basis for the difficult process of sorting out truths, exaggerations, falsehoods; for seeing through the opacities of events and films to what actually happened and what it meant. If the oral history program results only in tapes, and not in the writing of history, it will be a failure. Partial support was given to Filmfacts magazine, and various bulletins were published, plus a guide to college film courses. For the rest, no scholarly or research publications have been issued by the AFI itself. A series of transcribed guest discussions is now planned; but judging from the first, with Fellini, these will be pleasant conversations but hardly significant contributions to film thought. (The Fellini booklet has the attraction of being modestly printed, though apparently its cost was far from modest.) If we assume that AFI policy should be directed toward furthering the highest levels of research and scholarship in film, it is clear that a drastic reordering and rethinking is required. AFI has spent something like $450,000 in the "publications and research" area. Aside from the above-noted items, this has bought some extraordinarily expensive rumination about the problems of putting out a general film magazine that would appeal to everybody, which is now acknowledged to be impossible (as those of us already active in the field have always maintained). As Kay Loveland notes, "It is hard to believe that this much money has been spent with so little result"; and those of us who work in more rigorously administered organizations can hardly help concluding that a great deal of extravagance and carelessness have been involved. While it seems that no actual malfeasance has occurred, the AFI has evidently been run by the loose standards usual in the bigmoney world of foundation grants, where "image." plentiful assistants, and insulation from accountability are the rule, and count for more than mere humdrum work. $450,000 is a modest number in this world, but consider what it might have bought (after deducting 10% for overhead and administration): it is enough to provide royalty advances (part of which could have been regained and recycled to further projects) of $5,000 for 40 books plus $10,000 for 20 more; or enough to subsidize the entire printing costs of about 50 film books; or enough to pay the deficits of all America's film magazines for at least a decade; or enough to commission, edit, print and distribute gratis some 135 modestly printed scholarly monographs of perhaps 100 pages each. Further developments in this area could obviously become very complex, but for a beginning we could recommend that, in an AFI from which the Center has been spun off: A program of grants and royalty-advance funding should be established to aid researchers who cannot secure regular commercial royalty advances for their projects. One special area where heavy commitments of time and energy are involved is history; attention should be given not to committee-style work in history, but to backing mature scholars capable of undertaking large-scale synthetic histories, both of American film and film worldwide. Scholars and critics should be encouraged to utilize the oral history materials for what they are: raw materials toward the writing of analytic and historical works. AFI should itself publish some special-interest works of too limited an audience to interest regular publishers, whether these are by AFI-supported writers or not. (The decision to publish should always be a separate decision from researchgrant decisions.) Some examples of useful materials which cannot at present find a market are: short monographs-longer than articles, shorter than books: certain types of scripts; studies of organizational problems in the film field. AFI should continue and expand the AFI Reports publication so that it becomes a truly national newsletter, not merely about AFI activities, but about all film events of more than purely commercial or routine interest. It should be very rapid in its publication schedule and modest in appearance, rather on the lines of two worthy predecessors, Canyon Cinema News and New Canadian Film. This is particularly important because of its great usefulness in building a national membership organization. Such a publication, if modestly staffed (one person) and aggressively edited, would be virtually self-sustaining. A research and reference service should be maintained in connection with the National Film Catalog; for practical reasons, such as the great concentration of archive and library resources (and writers) there, a reference officer should probably be located in New York, although the Library of Congress makes Washington a possibility. This service should, like its excellent counterpart at the British Film Institute, assist scholars and critics doing research, film-makers and industry people needing information, and AFI staff who need assistance. EDUCATION The research staff at the Center assisted the education staff (based in the East) by various kinds of consultation and advice. In an AFI from which the Center has been spun off, the education department should be responsible for its own research work. There are two levels on which "education" is a proper function of AFI. The most crucial is assisting the development of the widespread ferment of screenings, discussions, publications, and beginning film-making which must exist as the compost from which major artists and films will hopefully grow. Work on this level, as carried out by the regional offices, should be democratic in the best sense, taking no account of official qualifications or social distinctions: it would be excessive to expect that a juvenile delinquent, deserter, and general no-good like the young François Truffaut would be appointed a Fellow but we must demand that he would be admitted to screenings and discussions like anybody else-just as he was, in fact, at the Cinémathèque and at the cinéclubs around the Latin Quarter in Paris. The other level is assistance to formalized education, which practically speaking means chiefly high schools, since colleges tend to be jealous of their prerogatives. British film teachers on both secondary and college levels (aided by their own association and now the BFI) have been exploring this area for many years; our problem is to recapitulate their experience as quickly as possible, and to push ahead with our own. AFI has worked hard to bring us up to date: holding seminars for teachers, providing guidance, teaching suggestions, reassurance, and information. In general, this program went forward well, and laid the foundation for regional groups of teachers who are now, with the cutback in AFI funds, contemplating formation of their own national organization-surely a useful development, for which AFI should provide seed money. (The educators also propose to elect an AFI Trustee from their membership, and this would provide a bit of leavening to the co-optation process by which the Board members are now selected.) As in the research area, we can here only suggest a few basic aims for the education department, which should be funded as a major AFI effort: Experimentation with teaching methods, as was done in the "model curricula sites" program, should be resumed, and their results published. A quarterly journal written by and published for film teachers should be established, along the lines of the British screen. Regional and national seminars should be held periodically for the exchange of ideas, until such time as these can be replaced by conventions of the national teachers association. Education officers in the regional AFI offices should hold meetings, seminars, showings, and other events useful in developing film education in their areas. CONTROL AND ADMINISTRATION The Board of Trustees which controls AFI evolved through a series of committees appointed by the federal Arts Council; key people in the early stages were Gregory Peck, William Pereira (a former art director and now architect), George Stevens, Sr., and an actress named Elizabeth Ashley. In due course George Stevens, Jr. became involved; the Stanford Research Institute was hired to produce a report on what a film institute ought to do; and by the time the actual first Board was constituted, basic policy was set. Thereafter the Board has been a self-perpetuating body (its members pick their own successors, on a staggered schedule). It is a heavily Establishment board, with a token independent filmmaker or two. But since this is an Establishment-run society, there is perhaps nothing to object to about this if the board delivers the goods. Two kinds of "goods" are required, before we can conclude that the board is doing its job: money and aggressive policy-making. The money question will be resolved, one way or the other, shortly after this issue of FQ appears. Funds for the next fiscal year are being sought from the National Endowment for the Arts and from private sources (mostly in the industry); some Ford Foundation funding will carry over. In future, Board members should be expected to actively support fund-raising work. As far as policy goes, the Board's central mistake has been to ignore the distribution area-and the potential for nationwide involvement and support which lay in regional offices and regional theaters. A "commission" to study distribution problems is now being proposed by Stevens; but this seems too little, and it is unquestionably too late. Parallel to this fundamental distortion of policy are the developments associated with the Center: if the education, research, information, and publications programs should look outward, involving themselves with film people everywhere, the Center looks inward, spending very large sums that touch only a handful of people. Since the Board controls the balance of AFI outlays, it is the Board's responsibility to lay down firm program outlines for Stevens and the staff. The Board however, is a large and unwieldly body; it meets rarely. Real responsibility rests with its executive committee: Gregory Peck, Arnold Picker of United Artists, Arthur Penn, Jack Valenti of the MPAA, John Culkin, David Mallery, and John Schneider of CBS. It is to these men, along with Stevens himself, that responsibility for AFI's performance falls. Part of the problem in the administration of AFI, and therefore in evaluating its performance in different areas, lies in the amorphousness of the organization. As far as I can tell, everything of any importance (plus a great deal which is not) is decided by Stevens personally; there are not even really any official "departments," though people have been sometimes appointed "managers"; outlays of money have remained tightly in Steven's hands. During the financial crisis of the past year or so, a great deal of budgetary reshuffling seems to have taken place, with the over-all result being a relative transfer of resources so that the Center has prospered and the other aspects of AFI work have shrunk. It seems to me that the Board's responsibility could be fulfilled thus: The Board should establish plain and explicit policies in the various areas of AFI operation (after spinning off the Center as a separate organization). Each major area should have a fixed and public yearly budget, and it should be administered as a Department, with a manager who meets occasionally with trustees to discuss the Department's problems and needs. The Board should also employ a comptroller to supervise budgets and expenditures, and the general outlines of AFI expenses should be routinely publicized to maintain public confidence. Many charges have been made by fired staff members and their supporters concerning financial waste and general mismanagement by Stevens and his associates. Kay Loveland, Stevens' former administrative assistance, has written that "Not all these administrative expenditures taken individually are unnecessary, but as a whole they add up to a life style more appropriate to a successful profitmaking movie studio than to a struggling young non-profit organization. So often needless expenditures were made because the lack of a guiding vision resulted in too much money being spent in too few areas." She also charges that "Throughout AFI's existence, staff morale has been very low and employees have remained almost continually frustrated and dismayed at management policies and practices, both toward individuals and departmental programs. Confronted with gross salary inequities (the AFI Director made $75,000 [cut to $60,000 in the crisis], the education manager $13,000), negligible fringe benefits (in California employees were not protected by unemployment and disability insurance for almost two years), and management's failure to develop clear and fair employment and severance policies, staff have felt used and dispensable." Devotion to a good cause does not excuse an organization from its obligation to provide rational personnel policies, and both the recent uproar and earlier staff grumbling indicate that the Board should require management to develop explicit procedures and standards in the personnel area. The staff should also realize that, despite their professional status in many instances, they also play the role of employees, and need some kind of organization through which they can represent their interests to management. It was characteristic of the process by which such organizations as AFI are formed that Colin Young, who had led the discussions that first mobilized sentiment on behalf of a film institute, and who had more ideas about what such an institute should do than anybody else around, was not invited to sit on the Board of Trustees. When I asked Stevens why, among all the people who had done scholarly, critical, or university-level film teaching in this country, only Arthur Knight (who has excellent high-level industry connections) was on the Board, Stevens allowed that he just couldn't understand how such an oversight had occurred. Knight has of course been an extremely valuable member of the Board; but the persistent exclusion of all others who have done serious intellectual work in the American film world is perhaps the major "symbolic" reason why AFI so lacks friends among those people who loved film before it came to the attention of the big foundations; and it goes far to explain certain biases of AFI operations. The Board should include several additional members who have done original and important thinking about film as an art (historians, teachers, critics) and can help redress the balance that has tipped so far in the direction of production. This indeed seems to me the most critical recommendation that can be made; without such a move, support for AFI will continue to erode almost everywhere outside the walls of Greystone. As far as I can tell, very few people in the film world want the American Film Institute to die. Too many high hopes have been attached to it for anyone to write it off easily; and it has accomplished its tasks of archive and film-maker support with distinction. Its potential for helping to develop a national film culture is large. However, many people are troubled by what seems to them an imbalance in AFI priorities, and by the signs of internal personnel difficulties. What is needed, therefore, if AFI is to successfully regroup after its present financial crisis and go forward into a second phase of existence, is a wholesale reexamination and reordering of AFI priorities. If a new consensus can be achieved on what AFI ought to be doing, this could serve as the basis for a genuine constituency that could help AFI survive in the long run-both through direct membership support and through political pressure aimed at fuller government support, which is the source of money for all other film institutes in the world. (The BFI gets some $1,800,000 yearly, and BFI income from publications, admissions, etc. is almost as great; the BFI, however, also operates the national archive, which here is a responsibility of the Library of Congress.) If the Center can be spun off and AFI policies turned around, AFI will only have begun to fight on behalf of the art. If that cannot be accomplished, the struggle is already over, and we can begin preparing inscriptions to be engraved somewhere at Greystone. Mr. GEORGE STEVENS, Jr., The American Film Institute, THE AMERICAN FILM INSTITUTE, DEAR SIRS: We the undersigned present Fellows of The American Film Institute are extremely distressed to learn of the impending resignation of Dean Frank Daniel. It is our deep feeling that Frank is the most important and valuable asset that the Center has in its acknowledged purpose-the education of future filmmakers. Frank is largely responsible for the fine and substantive programs that exist today. |