Background on the blog – Page 2 – Dr. Film’s Blog & Marketplace

Welcome to Brazil, Mr. Bond

If you didn’t read my last blog post, James Bond Meets King of the Kongo, then you won’t understand this post at all, so you’d be well-advised to go back and read that one first.

When we last left the saga, it looked as if our hero, the film preservationist, was in a dire predicament. The film looked as if it would not be saved, the Kickstarter grant was compromised at best.

In desperation, he stares at the ceiling of the cavernous room, hoping against hope that someone, anyone, can rush in and save him. The odds are overwhelming and he’s just one man. Then, against all the odds, through a shower of bullets, a group of gray-clad ninjas breaks through the roof, sliding down on thin ropes to rush in and give the hero the hope he so desperately needs.

It’s the end of You Only Live Twice (1967), and James Bond has been rescued by the ninjas. He goes on to defeat Blofeld, blow up a volcano, save the space program, and avert global thermonuclear war.

But that same description also fits the end of Brazil (1985), at which point our hero, Sam Lowry, has lost all grip on reality and fantasizes about a rescue that will not, and cannot come.

And me, well, I wasn’t sure quite which one I was.

My options had shrunken to one, and my funding was almost zero. I’d been criticized by a serial preservation group, and betrayed by a friend. Frankly, things looked pretty dire. I had fashioned a note apologizing to my grant donors explaining the situation and offering a partial refund.

My last hope seemed to be teetering on the edge… I’d had an intrepid envoy, who I’ll identify as Cinerama Jones, to the last remaining lab that could do the work I needed, and I got a call that he’d been admitted to the emergency room with a raging fever and an out-of-control white cell count.

I’d been pinning a lot of hope on this project, because I find it distressing that archives are only funded to do high-profile restorations. Well, King of the Kongo is about as low-profile as it gets. It’s historically significant, interesting for some of the cast that appears, but, honestly, it’s not a landmark piece of cinema, and we only have about 1/10 of the sound for the whole serial.

But that doesn’t make it any less cool. I was hoping to parlay this into doing more restorations of little niche films like this, but I knew there was no hope if I had to crawl out of this one.

I was really bummed and pretty cranky. Many of my friends will agree that I was cranky! Then, interesting things started to happen. It was very strange.

First, the gentleman I identified as Red Grant read the previous installment and recognized himself. He emailed me, and I ignored him, and then he called (I don’t have caller ID… I still have a LAND LINE!) so I picked up. He carefully explained that his demand for copying rare film in exchange for doing King of the Kongo was only a joke. He apologized profusely. I have to give him that.

He’s known for somewhat “edgy” jokes, but that one was over the edge. The bottom line was that he was serious about not being able to do the work, so the only real difference was that one way I was cheesed off and without a film, and the other way I was just without a film.

It’s actually more severe than that. Red’s failure to do what I’d asked him to do has cost Silent Cinema (see below) a lot of money and me a lot of headaches. Woody Allen has a rule, “90% of success is just showing up.” I’ve got a corollary: “The rest of success is doing what you said you would do.” Of course, Red’s counter to that was that he didn’t realize that I was on a tight deadline and that caused the whole problem. We can go around and around on that… but the deadline is clearly outlined in the Kickstarter proposal for all to see.

Should I forgive Red or not? I’m not sure. I do have another rule, “Never ascribe malice to anything that could be explained by stupidity.” And this, well, this is stupid. Maybe I will forgive him. I’ll have to cool off first, though.

Struggling valiantly against a fluctuating fever and accompanying weakness, Cinerama Jones managed to get a deal struck with the lab, and he also found some funding to get the film transfer done. Now, this all happened simultaneously with the deal in Italy failing because I couldn’t find a good way to get the files to him, a lab in Maryland outpricing me, and Red Grant’s calling. I have to say I wasn’t optimistic that anything could be worked out, but I had some good people on my side.

Cinerama Jones arranged for Silent Cinema Presentations, Inc, a great group that I’ve worked with many times, to donate the completion funds , as well as finding a kindly anonymous donor, who thought the project was cool, to kick in some cash at the last minute.

The whole thing meant I had to do an elaborate re-rendering of all the credits and some other technical bits, which seems always to take tons of time, but on Friday I sent off Kongo to Metropolis Film Labs, where it will be converted back to film. They haven’t received it yet, so I just have to hope what I sent them works well.

There’s still some talk about Kongo appearing on a major TV network, and whether that will happen or not is up in the air.

I’m also hoping to put the restored print in as part of an episode of Dr. Film. That still may happen. I’m working on a grant to make more Dr. Film episodes. Whether that will happen is also an open question; statistically it’s rather doubtful, but we got Kongo going… maybe this will go too.

So what goes from here? Well, Kongo should still premiere at the Syracuse Cinefest, thanks to Silent Cinema. We’re still looking at distribution channels forDr. Film, and Kongo should appear on that. Dr. Film may appear on an independent station, or it may yet make it to a major national network, or it may not appear at all. Right now, we just don’t know.

Stay tuned.

My buddy Carl at Fedex shot this picture of me with messy hair (as usual) as I sent off the files to Metropolis Film Labs.

James Bond Meets The King of the Kongo

I’ve always said that collecting and restoring film is like James Bond without the women. You have international intrigue, shady characters, plots and crossplots and unexpected villains. This is an idea that isn’t unique to me, however, since “Wild Bill” Everson came up with a movie serial parody that was actually produced as Captain Celluloid Vs. The Film Pirates (1965). There’s also a famous anonymously written USENET parody about film collectors that was surreptitiously posted several years ago on alt.movies.silent that is formatted as an actual James Bond film.

But once again, fantasy is outpaced by reality. Let me preface this, as I always do, by stating that I’m not making any of this up. I’ve changed the names to protect the innocent and the guilty, but I didn’t fabricate anything.

kongo2

In August, I put up a Kickstarter campaign to restore one episode of King of the Kongo (1929). Many of you regular readers will remember that this is the first sound serial ever, and that I have a 16mm silent print of the entire serial, but only three reels of the sound are, well, accessible. These are on Vitaphone discs, which were carefully transferred by Ron Hutchinson at The Vitaphone project. I use Ron’s real name because he’s a good guy, and I have nothing bad or controversial to say about him whatsoever.

I’d been working with another fellow who shall, however, remain anonymous. I had advised him on setting up a computer-to-film conversion process and even did a considerable amount of help for him in getting some Cinemascope conversions done digitally. He quoted me a very nice price on getting the restoration printed to film. I knew this was important because I’d promised to premiere the restoration at the Syracuse Cinefest, and they need the film on 16mm. For the sake of this posting, we’ll refer to this gentleman as Red Grant, to use a Bond name… and it’s actually fitting.

As I was preparing the Kickstarter project, I posted a notice about it with a group that is dedicated to the preservation of serials. Let’s refer to them as SPECTRE. Now, innocent me, I thought if I was preserving a serial, then I was on the same side as SPECTRE. Not so, my friends. It seems that SPECTRE wants to do its own restoration of King of the Kongo and that they felt what I was doing was a waste of time and effort. Again, innocent me, I thought, gee, we’ll pool our resources and share what we’ve got to do the best job possible. It seems that the SPECTRE chief just wanted me to go away, because he “knew where a 35mm of Kongo was located,” and he “knew of the existence of several more discs.” He didn’t actually have any of this stuff, whereas I had all of my materials, but he knew where it was, you see. And I was competing with him, at least from his standpoint.

This aspect of collecting is one that still infuriates me. I guess SPECTRE didn’t really want to restore King of the Kongo, but they wanted the credit for restoring it. Knowing where something is and having it are two very different things. I know where more Kongo discs are, too, but they are in the hands of a reclusive collector who thinks he has something worth a lot of money. And that’s more money than it’s worth, more money than you could ever raise from selling copies, and basically pointless. The fact that SPECTRE was actually rallying cries against me and hoping for my failure in the face of their own inability to obtain materials is just confusing. I am reminded of Samuel Peeples’ line, which, in summation, says that this kind of reasoning is like “trying to bisect a sneeze.”

So, I got the grant (thank you again, donors), and I had a company do the scanning for me that did a bang-up job. The problem was that the print was banged-up, too. Actually, it was the pre-print that was banged up, the 35mm nitrate that my print was copied from. There were also a few sections that were printed out-of-frame, a Mascot Serials trademark that I hadn’t noticed in my quick-and-dirty transfer done on my home equipment. As archivist DJ Turner has said, “Sometimes [a high-resolution transfer] doesn’t do these old films any favors.”

This is an unretouched title frame from the scan

This is a frame from the restoration (Quicktime oopsie at bottom!)

I had to do a lot of surgery on Kongo to make it look halfway right. I could keep spending time on it, hand-tweaking it even more, but it actually looks fairly good now. I matted out the out-of-frame sections, rebalanced the black-and-white contrast on a shot-by-shot basis. I hadn’t counted on the huge slow-down such a thing would cause my computer, but it was a massive computing task. Red Grant had told me that he’d need the file by early December, so that was my goal.

I worked extensively with David Wood (a good guy, so I’ll use his name.) Dave is the equivalent of Q in this story. In fairness, I was the picture Q and Dave was the audio Q. Dave asked me a question I thought no one would ever ask me: “Was this transferred with an RIAA curve or a Vitaphone curve?” Well, I knew Ron had done the transfer work, but knowing curves was a pretty arcane thing that I wouldn’t expect most people to know. It turns out that the needle and transfer arm of a record player are calibrated to a certain equalization curve, much like you’d use on your stereo. Dave had discovered that there was an official Vitaphone curve (something I never knew). So he applied an inverse RIAA curve and then a Vitaphone curve, and the sound was vastly improved. He also matched the speed with the footage I had.

Now, if you understand what I just said, then you have some recording knowledge, and it will impress you. If you didn’t understand it, then please come away with a vague sense of awe for what Dave was able to accomplish.

I had to do a little minor surgery on the sound, but it basically fit, and I married track to picture and watched the results. Pretty good!

Then I sent a hard drive to Red Grant. Red took his time getting back to me. Before all else, he denied ever knowing about a time deadline, which I had clearly outlined in both the Kickstarter project and in emails to him. Then he said he was having problems with the soundtrack, and then he couldn’t do it. He promised to look into an alternate way of doing the soundtrack. Fine.

This made me panic. As part of the project, I’d promised to produce a film print. I started looking for other places. I posted on international film groups. I found a place in Norway, a place in Germany, a place in Italy, and a place in NY that sounded like they could do it.

I’d specified 16mm output, but most of the places I contacted were limited to 35mm output. Only two places, a guy in Italy (we’ll call him Largo) and a film lab in NY (we’ll call him Felix Leiter) could do the 16mm that I needed.

Meanwhile, back to Red Grant.

Just before Christmas, I heard from him. I’d asked him if he could do anything to expedite the process… anything. Then I got the answer.

Mr. Grant told me that he’d be happy to expedite the process. All I’d have to do would be to send him some rare footage that I’d promised not to let out of my hands. See, I have this problem… when I promise someone something, I keep the promise. If I treat someone shabbily, then I’m not likely to hear back from them in the future. I always figure the right way to treat people is on the straight and narrow. (And that way I get more film, which is what I want anyway!)

So Red Grant, knowing that I had some material I would not let him copy, and sensing that I was over a barrel, figured he could blackmail me into giving him some rare film. He also didn’t count on one thing: I’m a pretty easy guy to get along with, but when you try to screw me over, as Red Grant did, I’ll crawl through the depths of hell with infected knees before I’ll let you win. In short, he’s not getting anything from me… ever.

But the drama isn’t over. You see, Felix Leiter wants four times the money I had allotted to make the print, and Largo only speaks English through fractured Italian, so getting him a file as large as Kongo is a problem. Also, Largo only makes a color positive print, whereas I’d stipulated a black and white negative. Largo’s price is quite reasonable, but it’s not the product I need.

In the meantime, I sent a special envoy to talk to Felix Leiter, hoping that he could be talked down from the stratosphere of budget breaking. That’s not gone well, either, since my special envoy just had to go to the hospital emergency room.

(Deleted here is a long Bondian sub-plot involving TV network head George Kaplan and the possibility of showing Kongo and even the Dr. Film show on national TV. Trust me, it’s real… if you want to know about it, post a message in the comments or on the Dr. Film Facebook page.)

So how does this end? Who will make the print? Will it be Largo or Felix Leiter? Will the print be finished in time for the Syracuse Cinefest? Does George Kaplan exist? Will Kongo appear on his network or another one, and what of the fate of the mysterious Dr. Film? Will James Bond be able to rescue the secret formula from the clutches of… oh, wait.

I really have no idea how this will end. A lot of this is out of my hands. I can only tell you that if it follows the pattern we’ve had so far, it will be dramatic, twisty, and unpredictable. Welcome to my world.

Followup: Don’t miss continuing adventures as this plot continues to thicken. Here is the next article in the series: Welcome to Brazil, Mr. Bond!

Sammy and Me

When I saw that the Classic TV Blog Association was having a blogathon about horror movie hosts, I knew I would have to get involved. The whole reason this blog exists is because of a horror movie host.

Let me transport you to a long-ago time in the early 1970s. TV stations stopped broadcasting at 2 or 3 in the morning. Cable TV was almost unheard of. Infomercials did not exist. In a big market, there were maybe 5 or 6 stations that you could watch. In the evening, after the news, you could either watch Johnny Carson or an old movie. That’s about all there was.

In those days, we didn’t have the cultural illiteracy about old films that we have today. Films were literally suffused into the air. We saw them all the time. It was nothing to see a film 30 or 40 years old, even in prime time. Black and white? No problem. We knew the Marx Brothers, WC Fields, Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Boris Karloff.

Since films were so commonplace, there was some need for brand recognition. In the 50s, when Screen Gems released the first package of Shock Theater to television stations, someone hit on the bright idea of having a horror film host. I don’t know who it was. Someone will tell you it was Vampira, others will say it was someone else. It doesn’t really matter.

By the 1960s, almost every market had one. In Indianapolis, my home town, it was Sammy Terry. (You get the joke? It’s a pun on “cemetery.” OK, subtle it isn’t.) By the mid-70s, most of these had died out, but a few survived. Elvira and Svengoolie are two of the more known ones that have made it all these years.

Sammy Terry worked for WTTV, our local independent station. WTTV was something of an anomaly. It was technically a Bloomington station (about an hour south of Indianapolis), but they sneaked the transmitter northward to hit Indy. That could be the subject of a blog entry in itself. WTTV’s transmitter never worked quite right. There was always snow in the picture, in a predictable pattern. As a kid, I always suspected that it was my dad’s makeshift antenna that didn’t work, but when we got cable, I noticed that WTTV still didn’t come in quite right!

In those days, a TV section came every week in the local newspaper. It was important. TV wasn’t endlessly repeated, and there was no way to record it to watch later. If a movie or a show came on that you wanted to see, you’d have to schedule your life around it. WTTV, lacking both ratings and network affiliation, was like a window into the past, using outdated equipment and techniques well after the other stations had moved on.

One day, I was scanning that section and I saw that Sammy Terry was running the 1931 Frankenstein with Colin Clive and Boris Karloff. Now, in those days they marked all the black and white shows with a B/W sign. Just why they did it, I didn’t know, but at least you knew if a movie was black and white or color.

I noticed that Frankenstein was not listed as a black and white program! Could it be? Did they even have color film in 1931? I had no idea. The whole concept fascinated me. Luckily, I had someone to ask.

My grandmother was staying with us at the time. She was profoundly overweight, in ill health, and she had cataracts that needed surgery. In those days, cataract surgery was a big deal. You had the surgery and it took 6 weeks to recover, and there were all sorts of problems with it. Today you’re in and out and stapled in half an hour.

Grandma was not able to live by herself (which she normally did) during the recovery period. I knew if anyone would know about color films of the time, she would. She and I were really the only people in the family interested in the arts and movies. Grandma loved the movies.

She’d seen Frankenstein, but she couldn’t remember if it was in color. I asked her if it could have been in color. She said it was possible, because there were some early color processes at the time, but she didn’t remember.

Well, that was all I needed. I went to ask my mom if I could stay up and watch Frankenstein that weekend.

Well, mom was harried. She was under a lot of stress taking care of grandma, and she did one of her typical stall tactics. “Well see,” she said. “If you behave.”

This is code for NO.

In all honesty, I can understand where she was coming from. It was on late, and she didn’t want to deal with all that hassle, and worse yet, I was a sensitive kid who scared easily. The idea of me staying up late was ridiculous. She knew I’d have a fit if she outright said no, so she tried to stall me.

It didn’t work.

I behaved myself admirably all week. I wasn’t going to give her an out. I was planning to shove it back in her face on Friday night. And that didn’t work either.

“Eric, you have to go to bed. It’s late, and I don’t want you staying up that late. You’ve never done it before.”

“You said I could if I behave, and I did.”

I knew the battle was lost, but intervention was around the corner in the form of my grandmother.

“Sister,” she said (she often called mom “sister” because she is part of a set of twins.) “I heard you tell Eric if he behaved that he’d get to stay up. He’s been talking about this all week. You should let him see it.”

“Mother,” countered my own mother, “I need to get to bed. I can’t stay up with him and watch it.”

“That’s fine,” Grandma said. “I’ll stay up with him.”

Remember, I said that grandma was the only other person in the family who really “got” movies. That was great.

Mom reluctantly agreed, laid a lot of ground rules, but the hour was late and she was tired. She didn’t have the energy to fight. HAHA! It was going to work.

Grandma sat on our green couch and cautioned me that if I got overly upset about this then she’d send me off to bed and that would be it. She folded her hands over her giant belly and waited for the movie to start.

I think I had seen parts of the Sammy Terry intro before, because it looked a little familiar. Sammy wore a cowl and was made up with greasepaint, looking a bit like Conrad Veidt in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Played by local performer Bob Carter, there was always something avuncular and silly about Sammy, and he didn’t scare me at all.

I still remember this after all these years. I’d worked myself into a tizzy about seeing this, wondering if it could actually be color. I knew the time was nigh. Sammy (or someone) had fashioned a poster for Frankenstein, done very cheesily in a hand-drawn way. At the bottom someone had penciled in this tag line: “In Horro-Color!”

WOW! Could it be?

It was my first Sammy Terry intro and I just wished he’d shut up and run the movie. I don’t think my grandmother even lasted through the first 10 minutes of the show. By the time the film started, she was gently snoring, with her hands still folded in front of her.

Well, as you probably know, the film was in black and white after all. (Of course, this sparked a lasting level of curiosity in me, because I have a long demonstration about the history of color in the movies that’s one of my most popular shows.) I eagerly sat through the movie, color or not. I was delighted. The film had a weird rustic feel that I found to be really cool. I sat quietly through the end of the picture, woke grandma up, and we both went to bed.

She created a monster.

I was hooked. I wanted to keep watching Sammy Terry and see more of those films. I had to. Grandma gamely stayed with me on most of them, still usually falling asleep. She had one eye done, 6 weeks recovery, and another eye, 6 more weeks recovery. By that time, I was a hopeless addict. She went home, but I kept watching Sammy.

I discovered that my parents didn’t care too much as long as I didn’t make a lot of noise to wake them up.

I discovered that the local bookstore had a new book by film historian Denis Gifford that gave a great history of these movies. Mom had picked it out, and she had it wrapped “From Grandma” for Christmas that year. I recently found the 8mm home movie of that Christmas, showing me unwrapping the present. I still have the book.

That’s me (on the left) with my grandmother and sister, Christmas 1973

I seldom missed Sammy Terry, and I went on to catch the Saturday night offering on WTTV, which was called Science Fiction Theater. In the summertime, WTTV had another film host showing Summer Film Festival which consisted of more mainstream films. I loved it too. WISH Channel 8 had host Dave Smith with another show called When Movies Were Movies. I loved it too.

It got so that in the summer I was up until 3am most every night.

Sammy was still a special favorite. I loved his silly jokes and weird introductions, his hairy spider (named George) who interrupted the proceedings periodically. I even loved the stupid gaffes that we’d never see today. The Sunday paper listed one film as Sammy’s show for the week, but the Friday paper listed another film. That night, Sammy’s intros were for the film in the Sunday paper, but they ran the film listed in the Friday paper! OOPS.

My grandmother died in 1975. She was a special woman and I miss her to this very day.

WTTV canceled Sammy Terry in about 1976. I was outraged. I started a petition to put him back on the air. But the times had changed and they didn’t want to go back.

They finally relented and brought him back in the early 80s. The film package wasn’t as good as it had been, but it was still fun to see Sammy back again. There were fewer Karloff and Lugosi pictures and more gut-laden Hammer films.

Then, in the mid-80s the world changed again. When cable became widespread, the studios discovered that they could make more money from a cable film showing than from the local stations, so they pulled all the old films. As historian Jim Neibaur has said, it was like they decided to make one station the repository for all the old films and they filled the rest with infomercials.

Sammy Terry was gone. Bob Carter continued to play the character at live shows and in the occasional special. I met him a few times. He ran a music store close to where I lived. Seemed like a nice guy, but it was never more than a passing encounter.

Mr. Carter has been in ill health for the past few years, so he has not been so active. His son is carrying on the Sammy Terry tradition. I haven’t seen him yet, but I wish him well.

Of course, I started to miss that late-night experience I had so loved. I collected videotapes of my favorite movies. Then 16mm film. Then 35mm film.

I’m not on TV (not yet, at least), but I carry film projectors to run film shows wherever I’m wanted. I got to run a movie with WTTV’s cartoon show host, Cowboy Bob, and WFBM’s Three Stooges host, Harlow Hickenlooper. It was freezing cold, and with the two of them there, including me and an assistant, I think we had 6 people in the audience. Oh, well. I had fun anyway.

And that still doesn’t bring the story to a close.

One of the things that dogs me about new technology is how we throw out the whole of the old to embrace the new. We often don’t fully appreciate the magic of what we had until it’s gone.

The old horror hosts and the movie hosts in general helped us appreciate films made before we were born. It was just part of who we were. Now, all you have to do is channel hop over Turner Classic Movies and you’ll never see them at all.

It’s no disrespect to Robert Osborne or Leonard Maltin to say that they’re not the same as the guys from the old days. They are preaching to the converted. You don’t watch them unless you specifically want to see an old film. There’s nothing wrong with that, but sometimes we look at old films as either obsolete relics or unapproachable HIGH ART.

There is little appreciation for film as an art form today. That’s why I created Dr. Film. It’s a deliberate throwback to the old hosted-film format. Dr. Film isn’t specifically for horror films, although we will show them. It’s got the poverty-induced sets and goofy jokes that all the hosted-film shows had.

What’s different about Dr. Film is that its purpose is to subtly educate (and I hope it is very subtle). I hope it’s just strange enough to catch an errant viewer asking, “What the heck is THIS?” before he flips the remote one more time.

No, this doesn’t mean I regard the new Sammy Terry as competition, because he’s not doing the same thing. Nor do I regard Svengoolie or Elvira as competition. I embrace them all (I’d particularly like to embrace Elvira in that tight dress, but I digress.)

I always think that a rising tide floats all boats. And I think that the movie host is something we’ve lost and that needs to return. I think we all miss them, even if we don’t know it.

Dr. Film isn’t really competition for anyone, because the show hasn’t made it to the airwaves. In all honesty, it probably never will. But I’m still in there trying, because I’m trying to save a part of our past that I miss.

Instead of tilting at windmills, I’m saving film. I might just as well be trying to save Fizzies, Burger Chef, and handmade chocolate sodas. Hey, maybe it’s a lost cause, but someone has to do it.

Taking the Picture No One Likes

I’m bad at marketing. I’ll be the first person to tell you that. I can fix your computer, but I couldn’t convince you to buy one. Some people are just built that way.

When I shot the pilot episode for Dr. Film, I thought that people would be jazzed about it, that they’d put it in the DVD player, watch it, read the material I sent, and we’d have a deal.

I sent it everywhere I could find an address. I had some printed material that I’d prepared explaining what the show was. I thought it was fine.

Of course, no one responded. Not one. They didn’t even say that they didn’t like the show. I then discovered a fundamental truth of life (although I knew it before, it was really hammered home):

People will flock around to tell you what’s wrong with a failed project, but while you’re working on it, they say nothing.

My friends agreed that I’d screwed up by not having a slick cover color folder for the show. Then the consensus was that no one would read all the material I sent, so it needed to be cut down.

But then the last part was that I needed to spiff it up with ART! I was told that I needed to push the idea that we’re dealing with classic film! Emphasize the characters! Emphasize the interaction! In the show, they’re never in the same shot! Have them together!

Wow. All great ideas. I’d never thought of them. Of course, no one thought to tell me this before I sent all the material to all the TV stations.

I couldn’t hire an artist. Artists need to eat three times a day, so they can’t work for free. And since I didn’t have any money to give them, hiring an artist was out, out, out.

OK, that’s fine, say I. I have some experience in this. I may not be the greatest artist in the world, but I think I can get the job done. Hmm, the show’s characters interacting. In the same shot. Emphasizing film.

There’s another problem. In the show, Dr. Film and Anamorphia never are in the same shot for very practical reasons: a) I only had one camera and b) Anamorphia is an elaborate (not digital) special effect. Dr. Film isn’t a special effect at all, and so they can’t be in the same shot together.

I got an inspired idea. Anamorphia is so named because she’s anamorphic: she’s squeezed horizontally, like someone who survived an Edgar Allan Poe torture, unlike Glory, who plays her. Just for one shot, I knew I could get them together, but only if I lined them up just right.

I’d give Glory an extra large reel of 35mm film, with a diameter twice as large as a regular reel. Then, I’d shoot her dead on straight ahead, and I’d be standing next to her. The math would work out so I could squeeze her in a photo program and it would make the wide reel look like a regular one!

How would they interact? Well, in the show, the characters are always bickering about how long-winded and boring he is about film. She’s gotten frustrated with his verbose habits and wraps him in the film he’s been talking about too much. He’s angry, she’s angry, that’s consistent, PERFECT.

By this time, it had been over a year since we’d shot the show. But that’s OK, we thought, no one saw it in the first place, so we can still send it out with the new slick paper brochure! I needed help, because I couldn’t shoot it myself: I’m actually in the shot. I talked to my sister about it.

ACK. Glory is shorter than I am, and my sister is shorter than I am. My sister had the idea of shooting outside to make sure we could get lots of light. That made harsh unflattering shadows, but there was a worse problem. Due to the widely varying heights, nothing lined up, and I looked like a giant slug being wound up by a tiny silkworm. It was ridiculous.

Glory complained that the reel I’d found for her was actually full of real film! This was a problem because a 3000’ reel with film on it is heavy, and she had to hold it very still, and straight horizontally, to get the shots. Not a good idea. She was pretty sore by the end of the shoot, and I don’t blame her. Especially since the pictures were utterly unusable.

Upon reflection, I remembered that Glory (a historian) had just written a National Register nomination for a building with a large stage. If we could use it, then we could stand on the stage, and have a photographer stand on the main floor, thereby solving the height issues.

I also decided I’d be seated, which helped equalize the height differential. I found an empty reel, and that made it a little easier for her. The building owners allowed us to use the stage for a few hours. I brought in lights, tripods, everything.

It was HOT! The lights were in my face all the time, and I was wrapped in disintegrating film. I used a vinegary print of From Russia With Love so I wouldn’t ruin good film! It smelled terrible, and as I was sweating, it dripped dye on me. Wonderful.

We spent about 2 hours shooting. My friend Greg shot the pictures this time. (My sister couldn’t get off work!) Greg tried really hard, but 99% of the pictures were junk. There was one picture in the whole bunch that looked OK. It was very dark, even with all the light we had pouring on us. It was just a hard picture to shoot.

I’m not going to show all the raw pictures, because I’d had Glory stand closer to the camera (to keep me from overwhelming the shot). This caused some focus issues and makes her look unusually large in the raw image.

I worked on equalizing the exposure and applied the anamorphic factor, and got this:

Suddenly, voila, we have art! Dr. Film and Anamorphia in the same shot! I used the picture for the new brochure and spruced it up. I thought it looked pretty good. We ran it by some design people. They liked it. I cut the text down to 8 pages, with lots of color pictures.

Guess what? This will surprise you. No response. Apparently no one even bothered to look at it.

Discouraged? You bet. I was about ready to give up on the project. We’d thrown time and money at it, and no one cared at all. We weren’t even interesting enough to warrant a polite, “HEY! Buzz off, willya?”

But Dr. Film also seems to be The Project That Never Dies. There are always a few people who have been unfailingly encouraging, to the point that some people are in my face saying, “It’s a great idea! Don’t give up on this show!” (I’ve never actually been sure why this is, but it seems to be. Most of the rest of the world looks at Dr. Film with a cold indifference.)

I installed a blog on the web page, the one you’re reading now, updated the site, and went from there. The blog, as you can see, has been a rip-roaring success, attracting email from Viagra shippers the world over. With no real web traffic and only a tepid response to the blog, I was ready to shut the project down again.

Several others suggested that Dr. Film was too long. The feeling was that we needed cut it down and make it in 30 minutes, based on the attention span of modern audiences. This is where I draw the line. I have a two-fold argument with this: a) there are so many interesting movies out there that don’t get shown that I hate to CUT them to something shorter. b) A 30-minute show is actually more work than a two-hour show! Why? Well, I have to go through more material, cherry-pick, and edit. More narration to explain what’s missing. More shooting. More work.

The whole idea of Dr. Film has always been to make an economical show that appeals to an admittedly small demographic. Since a 30-minute show means more time, it also means I’d have to charge more money, which I think is more of an impediment than the difficulty in clearing a two-hour slot.

Glory and I talked to publicity people and they told us that there was probably no hope for Dr. Film since no one responded. Once again, I was ready to shut the project down and move on to other things.

Remember I said Dr. Film just never seems to die? Well, I had an idea. You see, I don’t believe anyone who matters has ever watched the show and given it any sort of chance. I have a feeling that it’s off the beaten path, consequently under the radar. I don’t think it mattered what sort of picture we had.

I realize that Dr. Film is an unconventional project. I know that there is a niche market, but we have to reach it. My idea was to draw upon on word-of-mouth support and an internet community. If we have a vibrant Facebook group, a bunch of advocates for the show, a successful blog, then people have to notice it. Someone floated the idea that “Support Dr. Film!” t-shirts would be a great idea. A way to build the community feeling.

That’s fine, I thought! I’ve got art for shirts! We’re set! I’d designed a shirt for a convention showing, and I still had the files!

Then, just as I was ready to submit the design, a couple of people, all generally supporters of the show, told me how much they hated the shirt.

WHAT?

They hated that same picture I’d literally sweat over for hours. And hate was the word. It was repulsive. One guy told me he’d never wear the shirt because it looked like a bondage scene to him.

I have to tell you that I never thought of this. Knowing the characters, and knowing that there is not a spark of anything between them, it never occurred to me. Not once.

OK, so what should we have instead? This is where I get frustrated. Once again, people can’t seem to tell you what they like. It’s the old joke, “I don’t know much about art, but I know what I like!”

Some ideas were in direct contradiction to other ones. I wanted to scream. Actually, I did scream. I thought we were about done, and suddenly, I was back at square one. I often marvel about how I’ve come this far on Dr. Film with nothing to show for it!

Ernie Kovacs once called Edie Adams and told her that the show opening wasn’t working, and he didn’t know why. He was joking about being tired and working overtime. Edie told him that the audience didn’t care how tired they were or how hard they worked. They only cared whether the show was funny or not.

Edie was right. It makes no difference how we got to the t-shirt design and how we took The Picture That No One Likes! It only matters that we came up with a design that people seem to like. On the other hand, it’s a great story and it makes a great blog entry!

You note I’ve not spoken about what I thought personally? Well, I don’t like the new design (even though I did it.) I like the other one better. I don’t think there’s enough art in this one.

But, clearly, I have no idea what I’m talking about!

PS: I haven’t had a chance to take redo the art for the brochure, so you can still see it here.

Why I’m Just Mean

Many years ago, a friend of mine disciplined his 5-year-old girl. She reacted with disgust at not being able to do whatever she had put her mind to doing. As one might expect with a 5-year-old, tears were immediately forthcoming and she burst out with a loud pronouncement: “You’re just mean!”

I thought of that again the other day when I got involved in an argument on archive.org. It was only a third-hand argument, and, frankly, I can’t do anything about it, but it points up a problem that I keep encountering, and it’s one that makes me “just mean.”

I’ve long hated the kind of collector who collects things just so other people can’t have them. I particularly believe that film is an art form that depends on being served up socially, and someone who squirrels away prints just so no one else can see them is, I think, somewhat messed up. This is why I do every thing I can to ensure that films I have are accessible to people.

That’s another problem. I have a lot of films that are in “copyright hell” that no one can legally watch, and some of them are languishing with no one to show them or even (in a few cases) preserve them. I keep these prints. Others may be public domain but of a nature that no one will ever want to see them. These include bad pictures, shorts of an odd length with no stars in them, and sometimes even films that are of only historic/academic interest.

I keep these prints, too. I hope someone wants to see them someday. But I’m crazy. You knew that. I keep these prints and I mend them, resprocket them, throw camphor in with them, patch them, put them on new reels, etc. It takes money. And, as you all know, I am a film professional, which means that I make a “living” (not much of one, hence the quotes) from doing film shows, presentations, and lectures.

Film exhibition is a strange thing. Rare films doubly so. There may be an area that really wants to see a particular film and has wanted to for years, but they just can’t seem to find it. I got a job recently in Vevay, IN playing a print of The Hoosier Schoolmaster (1935) just because the author of the book came from that same town. It didn’t matter that the film had virtually nothing to do with the book. They wanted to see it.

That film is available freely on archive.org, which is fine, since it’s in the public domain, and it had an impact on how many people showed up. Despite the fact that I had a nice print, showed a cartoon, and showed it on a big screen, it was “contaminated” by being free on archive.org. Only 15 or so people showed up. It’s sad. (I could do a whole separate posting on how theatrical exhibition is being killed by inferior material shown at home, but that’s for another time.)

I have to face the fact that I can put on a better, nicer, sharper show than archive.org can put on, but the fact that I have to charge in order to keep solvent is a hindrance to me. That’s why I rely on a few profitable films that keep me floating above water.

These are films that are generally not very available, in the public domain, and have some niche market for them. These are films that I run over and over again. I refer to them as “the pantheon.” They pay the bills for the other, less marketable, films in my collection.

Alas, I have to guard these films jealously. No one seems to care that I lavished time, care, and hours of work into preserving some of these films. All they care about is seeing it free on archive.org. Many years ago, I was also involved with a video company that specialized in getting good copies of public domain titles into the marketplace.

I learned my lesson on that one, too. Ever buy material from Alpha Video? Well, probably 1/3 of their catalog is material that got copied from my collection. Sure, it’s public domain, but my copies were and are nicer. I was charging $10-$15 for copies, and they’d make DVDs blasted (poorly) off VHS copies of copies and throw them at Wal-Mart for $1. At the time, I couldn’t even buy blanks for that price. The power of cheap blew away the power of better quality. Ack.

So, in response, I started doing live film shows. These are infinitely more satisfying, because they’re with an audience, you can see the quality difference, etc. Amazingly, if you factor in costs of media, I make more money from 2-3 successful film shows than I did in a year of selling video copies of the same film. Extra points: as I accrue more rare titles, Alpha doesn’t get them. I can still show them. I get eating money. Yay.

At this point, a lot of people will already chime in and claim that I’m “just mean” for not putting these on video. A couple of years ago, a woman who called me worse than that for not releasing a film with questionable copyright on video. Yes, I have the only copy, and no, no one wants to preserve it because of rights issues. That doesn’t mean I’m going to break the law to make the film available.

I also point out that I am more than happy to rent out films from my collection, to do backyard parties or film shows, etc. I have never told anyone to buzz off if their request was legal. That doesn’t mean I’m going to shoot myself in the foot by putting it on video.

A while back, there were 3 people who asked me for a copy of a particularly rare film. I won’t go into specifics, because that will draw attention to that title, and not to my overall point. These people had some good reasons that they could use a copy. I made some, and asked them not to make copies of that title. I nicely explained that doing shows of this film helps keep me preserving others. They all politely agreed.

So, then, it was a great surprise to me to find that someone had uploaded it for free use on archive.org. It was from my own transfer and my print. I recognized my handiwork. It was also 2-3 generations removed from what I’d done, so yet again a degraded copy is competing in the marketplace with something I have in a better copy.

I carped about it, and said that, once again, I’m too nice. I should tell people to buzz off when they want video copies. It’s already had an impact: I used to get 4-5 shows on this title per year, and I’ve only had one (non-paying) in the last year. I just can’t compete with free.

A friend of mine leaped to my defense and posted a shame-on-you response on archive.org. The vitriol that this caused amazed me:

“There is no copyright on this movie. No one owns it. No one has the right to keep others from watching it.

“Anyone who has a digital copy can—and should—share it with others.

“XXXXXXX is the one who should be ashamed for viciously and mindlessly attacking the uploader.

“Another who should be ashamed is XXXXXXX’s friend, who attempted to keep this film out of the hands of the public, and who, by so doing, increased the likelihood that the film would be lost forever.”

WHAT?????????? ARE YOU KIDDING ME???????? Well, that caused me to have Popeye syndrome: “I’ve had all I can stands, and I can’t stands no more.”

I wrote this in response:

“Uploading low-resolution copies of material at archive.org is not a way of preserving films. Neither is the practice of uploading books a replacement for the books themselves. It may be useful, but it’s not a preservation. I intend no slam at the wonderful service archive.org is. Google isn’t a replacement for librarians, either.

“(the film in question) is preserved at The Library of Congress and a pristine 35mm print exists that anyone can rent out. The original camera negative survives. It is not in danger of going away. There are two senses of the word ‘own’ here: in one sense I do not own the intellectual rights to these films, because they have expired rights. In another sense, I may in fact own the best surviving prints of them.

“I need prove to no one that I stand for preservation and availability of films. I have donated films to every major archive, and I’m an archive source for TV and DVD. Many films from my collection have already been bootlegged and appear here for free, often in embarrassingly poor copies. I was not provided any remuneration for the hundreds of hours I put in preserving these films, transferring them, and making them projectable. Many of these are films that I preserved myself and would not have been available had I not rescued them.

“The vast majority of films in my collection are not marketable and few people care enough to see them… When a film is free on the internet, it drastically cuts down the audience that will pay to see it projected theatrically..

“I’d be happy to make more films available on archive.org, and even make good direct-from-film transfers of them. When someone comes up with a way for me to do so without compromising both my means of income and my ability to preserve films, I’ll do it. The gas man needs to be paid, even if he may agree that what I do is cool and worthwhile.

“Perhaps you still feel that I should be ashamed, but I am not, because I’ve done more for film preservation and availability than most people you will ever meet.”

You’ll note that I did not resort to profanity even once. I’ll admit I sure thought about it.

I’ll close with some more thoughts here. I love old films, and I love showing them. I preserve material that no archive and few collectors care about. I also know that I will lose all control and all income from them once they’re on the internet. I further understand that I can only be in so many places at once doing shows.

The whole idea of the Dr. Film show is to let me do the same sorts of things that I do in live shows, but to share them with a wider audience. I fully realize that they’ll be bootlegged nine ways from Sunday all over the internet once they air, but at least I can be paid once for my work before it gets shared all over the net.

You want to strike a blow for film preservation and availability? Help me get Dr. Film on TV somewhere…anywhere. (Contact your favorite TV provider and send them our web page address!) I guarantee you’ll see oddball films that you haven’t seen before, and usually from the best prints that survive. Strike a blow against the third-rate free films and help me do it a little closer to “the right way.”

Still, if I come to your town, please show up anyway. OK?

The Big Push

I’m going to let you in on a secret. This blog is only a ploy to get you to look at the rest of my web site. Well, it’s not really a secret.

You see, I created Dr. Film as a TV show a couple of years ago, and the web site has been up for ages. I couldn’t get anyone to look at the site. No one wanted to look at my demos, either.

There will be another screening of the complete show on August 4, 2011, at Garfield Park in Indianapolis. Here’s the link if you’d like to attend. It’s free. If you don’t know about the complete show, then read on, Macduff.

The reason this is “the big push” is that I’ve only now figured out a decent marketing campaign, and the show is now going to a number of venues. I spent more time figuring out a marketing campaign than I did making the show. There is new art, an upgraded web page, and I’ve got a publicist on board. I hope this will put us over the top. It’s a lot of work for a show about old movies.

You see, I love old films, and it bothers me that so few people watch them anymore. It’s my feeling that most people are uninitiated and just don’t understand what they’re seeing. I think that some people are a little put off by the hosts on the major channels. They treat film as high art (which it is), but we sometimes miss the raggedy fun of a strange old film we’ve never seen.

After all, Citizen Kane is great art, but how many times can you watch it? And in my experience, there is so much stuff that is sitting out there unseen and unpreserved that it saddens me to see the same old warhorses trotted out for the “old movie show.” Theater owners and TV stations think that if it isn’t a title you know, then you won’t watch.

I’ve got some experience in this. I’ve taught film history and appreciation, and people seem to like my classes. I also remember the old days of TV, with the rough-edged local host doing a movie. I thought that if I could combine the come-what-may atmosphere of the old days, no suits, no slickness, and weave in a little real history, we might have a good show.

That’s what Dr. Film is. Or what it will be.

The show is designed to highlight unusual films that you don’t see on television much. It’s definitely got a “what the heck is that” factor built into it. I’m hoping to catch some errant channel flipper on his way past the classic film channel. I hope he stays long enough to see what we’re showing.

Yes, I did make a complete pilot that’s broadcast-ready at 96 minutes. I’ve taken some heat for not posting it. It’s not on iTunes or YouTube either. Why not? Because it took so much time and effort to make the episode that I can’t afford another one. If I give this one away, then the networks look at the show as “contaminated” by having been out there in the “free” world.

Trust me, in an ideal world I’d love to do this for free. The stats are painful, though. Three full days of shooting, many, hours of rewriting, days of film transfer work and re-transfer work. Then the ultimate: I had to add titles, artwork and composite the show. It took me a solid month to do it. I admit that Episode 2 would take less time, but it’s still a lot of work. I can’t spend this kind of time on a show unless I can get money back out of it.

The good news is that I’ve got the whole thing down to a staff of 3 people, and I’m the one who does most of the work. That means that I can crank out episodes for a pretty inexpensive price compared to what other places have to charge. Sometimes being a film geek and an engineer has its benefits.

I hope you’ve seen enough of the site to be excited about the show. I hope you’re excited about the blog. I’m the worst person in the world on marketing, but I know one thing. I call it the marketing triangle. I need three people to do effective marketing. If I tell you that my restaurant is great, you won’t believe me. I’ve got a stake in it, and you’ll raise your eyebrow and walk away. It’s human nature. But if a buddy of yours tells you that my restaurant is great, you’ll give it a chance.

I can’t just tell people that Dr. Film would be a cool show, and that this is an interesting site. You have to tell a friend. Hopefully, your friends will tell friends too.

What else can you do? Well, if you have a friend with money who might like to sponsor the show, then let him know about it. If you know any potential network or cable outlet that might like to pick up the show, then let me know. Please don’t pester people, but a polite, “Hey, this is good,” is always welcome.

Would you like to have a free commando screening of the pilot episode? That’s great, and I can help arrange it. I realize that people want to see the show, and that’s fine. I just can’t go making copies of it for public consumption. Terry Gilliam got Brazil released on word of mouth. I’m hoping that Dr. Film might get the same reception.

I know it’s crazy. I’m told that often. But one of my blog posts recently went viral in Europe. I got about 20 pingbacks in an hour. I never thought that would happen. Maybe this can happen too.

A Certain Madness…

No one cares about old movies. I was horrified recently to read the introduction to Leonard Maltin’s book 151 Best Movies You’ve Never Seen. He focuses on movies from the last 15 years! Leonard Maltin! The mind reels. That kind of limitation is like hiring Bill Clinton to write a book called 100 Sexiest People and then telling him he’s only allowed to write about men.

I understand why Leonard did it, though. I don’t want to trash him: he’s a great guy, and he’s a great friend of old films and preservation. Leonard is really one of the top film people in the world. Importantly, though, Leonard is not crazy, and he knows that people won’t buy a book about films made in the 1920s.

But, you see, I am crazy.

I am not crazy because I love old movies.

I am not crazy because I collect and preserve film prints of movies that no one cares about, just so I can see them.

I am not even crazy because I share my collection with audiences.

I am crazy because I think you should at least give old films a chance.

It seems to me that no one cares about old movies anymore because no one ever sees them. A friend of mine said that when cable TV came, they took all the old movies and put them on one channel. Then they filled the rest with junk.

Let me tell you, folks, about the days BC (before cable). Infomercials were illegal by rule of the FCC. At 11:30pm, after the news, only one station had a talk show. That was Johnny Carson on the Tonight Show. He murdered the competition, so the local stations left him alone. If Carson had bad guests on a particular night, the you could just flip channels and see a great movie on any of the 5 or 6 other channels you might get.

In the summer, when my parents used to annoy me (which was most of the time), I would stay up until 3am most nights watching movies on TV. One station had a show called Summer Film Festival with a host who introduced a different film five nights a week! Another station had a festival called When Movies Were Movies with another host. There was even a great monster movie host every Friday night, and a Science Fiction movie every Saturday night.

The era of hosted movies died with cable. It used to be that nearly every station had one, then one or two stations held out, and finally, all movies were hosted on Turner Classic Movies by Robert Osborne. And again, I’m not here to trash Mr. Osborne, because he does a great job. Osborne is unlike the movie hosts of old.. he’s all classy and slick. Most local hosts were shot on a shoestring, and some of them were deliberately silly and over the top.

The single holdout movie host, who does it like it was done in the old days, is Elvira, also known as Cassandra Peterson. God bless her for sticking in there. But Elvira is one of the hosts who always runs bad movies and snickers at them. That’s fine, and an outgrowth of her stuff is the guys of Mystery Science Theater 3000.

This is where I come in.

Or rather, where I don’t come in.

Not only do I miss the old days of movie hosts, but I also think that we don’t do them anymore because no one watches old movies. And I think that no one watches old movies because they don’t see them on every station anymore. And, because no one sees old movies, no one understands them.

I’m just crazy enough to invent my own show, patterned after the shows of the old days. It’s called Dr. Film, which is the subject of this web site. It’s intended to be just the same as the hosted shows used to be: a little educational, but silly enough to appeal to a broad audience.

The trailer for Dr. Film (see the home page of the site) says that the title character is an eccentric genius with a plan to change the world–by showing old movies. I do hope to change the world by showing old movies.

I hope to get a few more people interested in films that were made in black and white. I hope to show people that editing styles have changed, not that older movies are slow. I hope to show people that the majority of a film doesn’t have to come from a computer in order for it to be worth seeing.

I encourage you to check out the Dr. Film site. We’re still hoping to sell the show to some network. But first, we have to get enough people to care about the project so that a network is convinced it’s worthwhile.

I know the project is worthwhile, but then I’m crazy. Come be crazy with me. Let’s change the world by showing old movies.