Jack Valenti, the former president of the MPAA and architect of the controversial movie ratings system, died today from complications following a stroke. From the AP:

Valenti was a special assistant and confidant to President Lyndon Johnson when he was lured to Hollywood in 1966 by movie moguls Lew Wasserman and Arthur Krim. A lifelong film lover, he once cited the 1966 film ”A Man for All Seasons” as his all-time favorite.

When he took over as president of the Motion Picture Association of America, Valenti was caught between Hollywood’s outdated system of self-censorship and the liberal cultural explosion taking place in America.

Valenti abolished the industry’s restrictive Hays code, which prohibited explicit violence and frank treatment of sex, and in 1968 oversaw creation of today’s letter-based ratings system.

”While I believe that every director, studio has the right to make the movies they want to make, everybody else has a right not to watch it,” Valenti told The Associated Press shortly before his retirement in 2004. ”All we do is give advance cautionary warnings and say this is what we think is in this movie.”

Valenti’s movie ratings system has drawn a fair amount of criticism in the past few years, and was recently examined in the documentary “This Film Has Not Yet Been Rated,” which chronicles the filmmaker’s attempts to expose the methodology behind the secret ratings board (with varying degrees of success).

In the years since Valenti designed the system very little about it has changed. A new rating, PG-13, was added in the mid-80s. “X” was changed to NC-17 in the 90s. An NC-17 rating all but ensures a film will not receive wide distribution, a fact that has been the focus of much of the debate surrounding the system.

Valenti was 85. —MEGHANN MARCO

Film Lobbyist Valenti Dies At 85 [NYT]

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