Local Congresswoman Confers With “Captain America” Directors About Film Piracy

As “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” hits theatres today with already positive reviews including a 88% rating by Rotten Tomatoes, Congresswoman Judy Chu spoke with the Emmy-Award winning Russo brother directors about a bigger issue that is jeopardizing the film industry.

In a meeting in Washington D.C. today, Captain America Directors Anthony and Joe Russo expressed disappointment of already finding a pirated version of their film playing in Mexico.

Protecting intellectual property of both the music and film industry is becoming increasingly more difficult with 432 million unique Internet users viewing pirated content in January 2013 according to a study by Netnames.

“The American movie and music industry is one of our greatest exports. It’s uniquely American and valued by people all around the world. It’s one of the only exports we actually have a positive trade balance. So to have this industry ruined by piracy is very alarming,” Chu said.

Chu co-hosted with Congressman Howard Coble a round table discussion in conjunction with the Directors Guild of America with the award-winning directors to talk about their latest film, “Captain America: The Winter Soldier.” The Russo brothers shared insights about directing, the role of the director, and the importance of protecting intellectual property.

“Nothing is more important to us and the members of the DGA – not just today, but for future filmmakers – than to know we can earn a living doing the work we love,” Russo said.

Last year Chu initiated a Congressional Creative Rights Caucus to protect those creative rights by educating lawmakers and the public about the importance, highlighting the cost of piracy on the American people.

“Piracy costs American businesses $250 billion every year, and robs American workers of more than 750,000 jobs, which is why we must do all we can to put a stop to it,” Chu said.

“Film is an American art form,” added Congressman Coble. “We need to do all that we can to protect it.”

The study titled “Sizing the Piracy Universe,” shows the amount of Internet bandwidth used to illegally download movies, TV shows, music, books and video games jumped 160% between 2010 to 2013.

“Piracy has robbed the local people who work in the entertainment industry of the funds that are owed to them,” Chu said. “We need to increase people’s awareness about how using these pirated sites affect the worker in Pasadena who is a technician or a make-up artist, or the person who does the lighting. These are people who depend on the movie industry everyday, so we have a special interest to see that piracy is curbed.”

One of those locals who worked on The Winter Soldier is Tim Flattery, the Entertainment Design Department Chair at Art Center College of Design. He re-designed the heliocarrier and quinjets for the movie. Read his story here.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier is only the second blockbuster film with over $100 million budget released in 2014 to be filmed partially in California.

This speaks to the other looming issue over the film industry created by high incentives offered to movie productions in Georgia, Louisiana, and New York as well as out of country locations like London that continue to pull the productions away from Hollywood.

The California State Assembly introduced a bill in February that would increase the dollar amount for the TV and film tax credit.

Under the current program, California allocates $100 million annually to film and TV productions. Industry officials are pressing to increase annual funding significantly to rival the $420 million a year that New York provides.

“When film productions stay here it’s incredible. What the Russo brothers talked about how they wanted to give back to their hometown communities in Cleveland. The brothers say they infused $40 million into the Cleveland economy,” Chu said.

Congresswoman Chu is working to stop piracy by attacking the search engines like Google who lead a majority of the people to pirated sites.

“The situation has gotten totally out of control with regards to the pirated sites. We’re trying to see if Google can redirect searchers to legitimate sites and not the pirated sites, or at least put the pirated sites lower on the search engine results,” Chu said.

The Russo brothers reported they have already been hired to do the third sequel to the Captain America series.