[Charles Ferris] and [Jack Valenti] became a familiar "dog and pony" show as they traveled around the country presenting arguments on the battle over home videotaping. Valenti pushed for royalty fees on videocassette recorders and blank tapes while Ferris opposed them. Not one to miss the moment, Valenti once said, "The videocassette recorder is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston Strangler is to the American woman at home alone."

Occasionally, Valenti has had to back down, as he did after the movie industry adopted its fifth rating category, PG-13, in July, 1984. Valenti questioned the need to add another rating to the voluntary classification system that he had helped establish in 1968, and which had been dubbed then as the "Valenti Plan." But anger at increasing violence in movies seen by children, such as "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom," had stirred momentum for the change.

Valenti happened to be riding in the fateful Dallas motorcade when President John F. Kennedy was shot, and at [Lyndon B. Johnson]'s request returned to Washington on Air Force One, where Johnson told him "as of now you're working for me." As Valenti has said many times "that act of inscrutable fate changed my life."