PARK CITY — For years, the "reel" violence of movies and real violence among America's youth have been depicted as demonic partners.
A new report by Surgeon General David Satcher, ordered by former President Clinton in the wake of the Columbine High School shootings, both supports that contention and offers some salve for Hollywood's conscience.
Satcher's report says, "Research to date justifies sustained efforts to curb the adverse effects of media violence on youths."
It also says, "Media violence is not a major long-term factor in violent behavior" compared to the influences of family, drugs, gangs, precocious sexual activity and firearms access.
Still, the report offered enough ammunition for crusaders such as Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., and Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., to threaten an increasing federal watchdog role if filmmakers don't clean up their acts.
And it provided a moment for the creative community gathered at the Sundance Film Festival to take a dramatic pause from screenings, deal-making and seeing-and-being-seen to weigh in on the subject.
"I would definitely agree we have a huge responsibility to make responsible movies," said actress Rachel Ward, who's here as director of a short, "The Big House."
The surgeon general has said that by the time children reach seventh grade, they witness 8,000 murders and 100,000 other acts of violence in movies and on TV, and Ward said, "There are sometimes sickening efforts to show as much carnage and mayhem as possible. I can't bear to watch those movies.
"I know as a younger person I was deeply moved and transported by movies, so there seems little question the effect these images have. We ought to be able to make films without sending someone off the deep edge."
Lieberman has issued an ultimatum to Hollywood to especially sanitize its youth-oriented advertising, after a Federal Trade Commission report last September blasted the industry for targeting kids with violent, R-rated trailers. The Connecticut senator has, in effect, told filmdom to fix itself or the government might.
That drives a guy like Kent Dalian crazy.
"I think the whole issue is ridiculous. It goes along with the problem of politics getting involved in morals and vice versa," said Dalian, co-president of Fish in a Barrel Production, here hawking movies at alternative screenings. "I don't think violence in films causes violence in real life. I think it's the opposite.
"Violence has been around a long time before movies. Wars, rapes, killings have existed since the beginning of time. A film is nothing but art. And art has no responsibility except to be true to itself. It's not there to educate, set a good example or change the world. It might do those things, but it has no responsibility to.
"We have a rating system, and that's as far as we should go. Anything beyond that is censorship."
But it is the rating system that mightily bugs Kate Montgomery, writer/director of the Sundance feature "Christmas in the Clouds."
"I'd like to get the people who make these ratings in a room with me for about 10 minutes," Montgomery said. "These ratings sometimes are just ludicrous. They gave 'Billy Elliott,' this sweet movie about a young boy wanting to learn ballet, an R because it had the F-word. But Bruce Willis makes a movie ("Unbreakable") where they line these family members up and shoot them in front of their children, and that gets a PG-13.
"My son was terrified and affected for weeks."
Ilya Chaiken, writer/director of the Sundance feature "Margarita Happy Hour," said, "I certainly don't disagree we have a lot of gratuitous violence, and I try not to include it in my films. It doesn't just affect kids, it affects everybody. And as a society, we seem a lot more squeamish about natural body functions, like sex, than violence. But I don't condone censorship. I believe the more you try to repress something, the more attractive you make it."
Actor Bryan Brown, Rachel Ward's husband (and a film love interest in the made-for-TV movie "Thorn Birds") said, "I don't think there's any question violence in movies does something to kids' sensitivities, and obviously we have films where we're ramming it down their throats.
"It's a complex world, and you see actors and directors doing certain things because it's a paycheck. You make choices. You adjust your moralities.
"Personally, I'm not a big fan of action movies. As a parent, I'll walk into a room where my kids are watching and go, 'All right, let's turn that crap off.' "
The bottom line, Brown says, is — well — the bottom line.
"Producers and directors want to make movies. They want to make movies people watch. If violence sells, these pictures will be made, regardless of all the B.S. otherwise."
E-MAIL: gtwyman@desnews.com