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For reasons more nepotistic than meritorious, The Endless Summer was withdrawn from the Moscow festival just weeks before it was to get under way. The Soviets told Washington that it needed to whittle down the number of films it intended to present, including just one commercial documentary. The United States had planned to show two: The Endless Summer and The Young Americans (1967), a patriotic account of high school-and college-age American choral singers performing in venues across the United States. Marc Spiegel, the Russian-speaking executive of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) who traveled to Moscow to consult with the Soviets, recommended The Endless Summer.³⁹ But Columbia Pictures, whose founders’ scion made The Young Americans and which served as the film’s distributor, “prefer[red]” its own documentary, MPAA chief and U.S. delegation organizer Jack Valenti notified Spiegel.⁴⁰ The MPAA, of course, represented the big American studios, while The Endless Summer was made by Bruce Brown Films and distributed by the small art-film company Cinema V. It was no contest. The Young Americans received the official nod.