The proportion of works cut for the cinema in Britain dropped from 40 percent when I joined the BBFC in 1975 to less than 4 percent when I left. But I don’t think that 20 years from now it will be possible to regulate any medium as closely as I regulated film.
The Internet is, of course, the greatest problem for this century. The world will have to find a means, through some sort of international treaty of United Nations initiative, to control the material that’s now going totally unregulated into people’s homes. That said, it will only take one little country like Paraguay to refuse to sign a treaty for transmission to be unstoppable. Parental control is never going to be sufficient.
I’m still very worried about the impact of violent video games, even though researchers say their impact is moderated by the fact that players don’t so much experience the game as enjoy the technical manoeuvres (策略) that enable you to win. But in respect of violence in mainstream films, I’m more optimistic. Quite suddenly, tastes have changed, and it’s no longer Stallone or Schwarzenegger who are the top stars, but Leonardo DiCaprio—that has taken everybody by surprise.
Go through the most successful films in Europe and America now and you will find virtually none that we are violent. Quentin Tarantino didn’t usher in a new, violent generation, and films are becoming much more prosocial than one would have expected.
Cinemagoing will undoubtedly survive. The new multiplexes are a glorious experience, offering perfect sound and picture and very comfortable seats, thins which had died out in the 1980s. I can’t believe we’ve achieved that only to throw it away in favor of huddling around a 14-inch computer monitor to watch digitally-delivered movies at home.
It will become increasingly cheap to make films, with cameras becoming smaller and lighter but remaining very precise. That means greater chances for new talent to emerge, as it will be much easier for people to learn how to be better film-makers. People’s working lives will be shorter in the future, and once retired they will spend a lot of time learning to do things that amuse them—like making videos. Fifty years on we could well be media saturated as producers as well as audience; instead of writing letters, one will send little home movies entitled My Week.