January 1, 2003

Hall Monitor

By Savannah Blackwell

Hollywood's censors: Pete Livingston, a Richmond-based small-business tech supporter, found out the hard way that Hollywood doesn't take kindly to criticism – especially when it comes to the film industry's penchant for glorifying violence.

Livingston's Over 9 Billion Dead Served documentary features dozens of movie clips depicting gratuitous violence and death. And that's Livingston's point.

But officials at Fox Entertainment Group, Columbia Pictures, and Universal Studios have told Livingston that if he tries to show his movie to the public, they will take him to court for breaking copyright laws. Livingston, however, argues that he has the right to use the material under the "fair use" doctrine, which allows copyrighted work to be reproduced for the purpose of education or social criticism.

Livingston filed suit Dec. 5 in federal court in Oakland in an effort to release the film. Defending him is noted First Amendment attorney Jim Wheaton, as well as Bill Simpich and Tesfaye Tsadik. They are expected to argue Served is protected under the fair use doctrine.

"What this documentary achieves couldn't happen without the clips," Simpich told us. "There is no other way [to make the statement]."

The feature-length film, the first of Livingston's career and made up almost entirely of footage from the 25 highest-grossing U.S. movies, including Star Wars, The Lion King, and Raiders of the Lost Ark, underscores how Hollywood devalues life.

"Often the way we unconsciously think of violence in our own minds has come from films," Livingston said. "Some filmmakers use mass murder to make their movie more entertaining, the same way politicians sell images to promote war and the dehumanization of people."

Livingston said he hopes the documentary makes the American public think twice about attacking Iraq.

"I hope through the process of seeing it that people better resist getting caught in warfare and that they are aware of processes of violence towards their fellow Americans," he said.

"[Livingston] is going to light the way for other filmmakers – in the sense that he is teaching people how to use Hollywood's weapons against [the industry]," Simpich said. "This form is going to be the wave of the future and lead them to a deeper level of understanding." For more information on Over 9 Billion Served go to Livingston's Web site, www.nottheenemy.com. (Sarah Faulkner)

Big, bad budget crunch: With Gov. Gray Davis announcing Dec. 18 that California faces a $35 billion cash shortfall, city officials are assessing what it means for the local coffer.

And the news isn't good.

Ben Rosenfield, the budgeting whiz from the Mayor's Office, told supervisors at the board's Dec. 18 Finance Committee meeting that San Francisco will lose at least $85 million in funding due to Davis's November proposal to cut $10 billion from the state's spending plan – pushing up the city's anticipated deficit for 2003-04 to $200 million. Rosenfield has yet to determine what the hit will be as a result of Davis's new calculation that the state's deficit is $14 billion larger than anticipated. Whatever it turns out to be, the cuts are sure to mean the San Francisco Board of Supervisors' budgeting process next spring will be more than hellish.

"I have no words to express how devastating this is going to be to the city," Finance Committee chair Aaron Peskin said at the meeting.

Makes you wonder why he – or anyone else for that matter – would want to be board president next year. (Savannah Blackwell)

Walk Newsom's way: When the Board of Supervisors voted Dec. 16 to overturn Mayor Willie Brown's veto of Sup. Chris Daly's legislation banning Segway scooters from city sidewalks, Sups. Gavin Newsom and Tony Hall cast the only votes against ignoring Brown's will on the issue.

Sup. Jake McGoldrick said he found Newsom's vote ironic, considering that the restaurateur was perfectly happy to let a fellow eatery owner continue to keep a garbage canister on the sidewalk – against city regulations – about six weeks ago. And of course, Newsom wanted to pursue increasing the cops' rights to hand over cititations to people who refuse to move for street sweeping. Homeless people, it seems, sometimes aren't willing to get up in the pre-dawn hours to make way for the city's street cleaning machines.

"This guy basically has elevated garbage over people," McGoldrick told us.