Jack Valenti, we hardly knew you

I once bumped into Jack Valenti in a corridor in Bally's hotel in Las Vegas during a ShoWest. What intrigued me was that he was merrily munching from a bag of popcorn. Forty years of working for Hollywood and he still hadn't tired of the white stuff! Though he was more of a friend of the studios than cinemas - not surprising as the former paid his wages - it is appropriate that his memorial service was held at the ArcLight Cinema Dome in Los Angeles. Both the LA Times and New York Times were there to record the event.

For someone so much in the industry's eye it turns out we knew very little about the man himself, at least based on what his daughter had to say about him. From the NYT:

Ms. Valenti said her father had called her “my tumultuous daughter,” and there was much history, and much love, between them. “I was a moody and emotional kid,” she said. “But thanks to my lovely team of therapists, that he shelled out for, I’m able to embrace our past.”

Her father was also the kind of man, she said, “who shows up at his daughter’s birthday party at 1 a.m. so he can give her a hug.”

Saying her father had “more energy than me and all of you,” Ms. Valenti lamented what her father would miss: movies, elections and “the conversations about how incompetent the president is.”

“I hope I’m not betraying his confidence,” she quickly added.

While in the La Times Hollywood's Who's Who line up to pay tribute without getting too sentimental or reverential:

"He was the human equivalent of the iPhone," Steven Bochco, the creator of "NYPD Blue," said during the service. "He was a small, sleek package with irresistible features."

While he will never live down his 'VCR-Boston Strangler' comment even in death it is good to hear him getting recognition for the work he did for the likes of Friends of the Global Fight. A little bit of Hollywood history dies with him.