When the Motion Picture Association of America hired Dan Glickman, an 18-year Democratic congressman from Kansas and a former member of the Clinton cabinet, as president and chief executive, it was viewed by many lawmakers here as the movie industry thumbing its nose at Republican leaders.
But in his first year, Mr. Glickman has staged an impressive role reversal: He has hired Republicans close to the congressional leadership. He has made campaign donations, from his own pocket and Hollywood coffers, to the conservatives who ousted him from Congress a decade ago. And he volunteered to help President Bush twist arms on a White House priority, the free-trade pact with Central America, that passed the House last month by just two votes.

The 60-year-old Mr. Glickman, who plays down his political affiliation and says that he was never much into partisan warfare, is an example of how to survive as a Democrat in a Republican-run town these days. "His Democratic credentials obviously caused some heartburn in the beginning, but I think he has been able to overcome that," says Rep. Mark Foley, a Florida Republican.

But Mr. Glickman's bigger challenge may be preserving a fragile association of media companies whose interests have diverged over the years, and who count making movies as just one piece of their empires. This gives movie studios less in common than before -- and Mr. Glickman has already had to keep one member, Universal Studios, from bolting.

"It is an issue: How do you keep companies together who have complicated business plans?" Mr. Glickman says.

Mr. Glickman, who was chosen by the MPAA's member companies, is trying to fill the shoes of Jack Valenti, a onetime official in the Johnson White House who built the trade group into a force in Washington during his 38-year tenure. Soon after taking the job last July, Mr. Glickman helped christen the MPAA's headquarters, just blocks from the White House, the "Jack Valenti Building."

His biggest albatross has been his Democratic past. Republican activist Grover G. Norquist was quoted in news reports at the time of Mr. Glickman's hiring as saying the choice was a "studied insult" against the Republicans' decadelong effort to install like-minded people in top lobbying positions. Sen. Rick Santorum, a conservative Pennsylvania Republican, said he wasn't sure hiring Glickman was "effective" to the movie industry's approach "if they are going to reach across the aisle."

A few months after Mr. Glickman's appointment, Republicans cost the industry more than $1 billion by leaving movie studios out of a major tax bill. Ways and Means Chairman Bill Thomas of California and Tom DeLay, the House Republican leader, said that including the Hollywood provision in the bill would have cost too much money.

Earlier this year, Mr. Glickman personally wrote a $500 check to Mr. Santorum's re-election campaign. The MPAA sent another $2,000 to Mr. Santorum, who faces a strong re-election challenge next year. Since being named MPAA chief, Mr. Glickman has given 85% of his $10,000 in personal political donations to Republicans. In the previous 18 months, Mr. Glickman steered 95% of his $18,500 in contributions to Democrats, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. The MPAA's political action committee, meanwhile, has steered 77% of its contributions to Republicans this year.

"I use good judgment in terms of supporting our friends on both sides of the aisle," Mr. Glickman says. "I haven't changed parties. That wouldn't make me very happy."

Mr. Glickman says that even as a politician, he was no partisan warrior. "Being from Kansas, I represented the reddest of red states," he says.

He also has been on a Republican recruiting spree. Among his hires is John Feehery, the former spokesman for House Speaker Dennis Hastert who is now the MPAA's executive vice president for external affairs. Mr. Glickman also signed lobbying contracts with Barbara Comstock, a former Justice Department official who has helped defend Mr. DeLay against Democrats' allegations about ethics breaches, and Carl Thorsen, Mr. DeLay's former counsel. A few weeks ago, the MPAA hired the lobbying firm founded by former Sen. Don Nickles, the Oklahoma Republican.

Mr. Glickman faces tension from a powerful Republican lawmaker on an unrelated matter. Alaska Republican Sen. Ted Stevens has declined to meet with the new MPAA chief because he is upset that as Agriculture Secretary in the Clinton administration, Mr. Glickman barred new road-building in Alaska's Tongass National Forest five years ago. Mr. Stevens is chairman of the Commerce Committee, which handles many movie-industry issues.

In part because Mr. Glickman has spent so much time trying to persuade Republicans that he isn't the enemy, he can't point to many legislative accomplishments in his first year. The biggest issue facing the movie industry is piracy, and some studios quietly have grumbled about whether the trade group is effectively using the estimated $30 million per year it has set aside for antipiracy efforts.

In the late 1990s, movie studios watched as publicly available Internet technology decimated the music business, and executives remain fearful that the same problems could befall their industry. Yet the MPAA over the years has been hampered at times by disagreement among its member studios on how to proceed.

"When you have an antipiracy program that involves seven studios, you always are moving at the pace of the most cautious studio," says Laura Tunberg, former vice president of intellectual-property enforcement at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. Especially in matters of litigation, she added, "it's always very difficult to come to agreement."

One significant victory for the MPAA came in June when the Supreme Court ruled unanimously for content providers in the landmark case of MGM v. Grokster Ltd. The court found that Internet file-sharing companies could be in violation of copyright law if they encourage users to illegally obtain and swap movies.

The lead lobbying role in that case was played by the Recording Industry Association of America and its newly minted Republican lobbyist Mitch Bainwol, not the MPAA. But the MPAA financed part of the effort and let the legal team use their facilities to host mock arguments. And Mr. Glickman helped fund and organize a public relations effort in Washington on the issue, bringing Ted Olson, the former solicitor general for President Bush, to assist in the effort.

Mr. Glickman's biggest victory, though, may have been preventing one of his members -- Universal Studios -- from leaving the association. After Universal Studios was sold to General Electric Co. a few months before Mr. Glickman came on board, executives at the newly named NBC Universal began criticizing the MPAA for not doing enough to prevent DVD piracy. With as much as $5 million or more a year in dues going to the MPAA to fight piracy, Universal sent an ultimatum to its trade association: If the MPAA didn't crack down quickly, the studio just might withdraw its membership, according to three people familiar with the matter.

Mr. Glickman urged patience, and Universal ultimately decided not to rock the boat so early in the new president's tenure.

Brody Mullins and Kate Kelly, Wall Street Journal, Aug 24, 2005

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