Dr. Film’s Pocket Rants – Page 4 – Dr. Film’s Blog & Marketplace

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 Fame of Kane

I get a little tired of people telling me that Citizen Kane is the greatest film ever made. Don’t get me wrong; I love the film, but calling it the “greatest ever” seems a little hard to swallow. I’ve seen a lot of Welles films, but certainly not all of them… I have to tell you that I don’t even think Kane is the best Orson Welles film. I tend to like Touch of Evil better. It seems a much more relaxed and confident film to me.

(For the record, I’m frequently interviewed by people who ask me variations on this… “What is your favorite film?” “What’s the greatest film ever made?” I don’t have an answer for this. The greatest film ever made, and my favorite, is moldering in a can somewhere, waiting for me to find it. I have a real weakness for auteurish films by obscure people like Max Davidson, Warren William, or Charley Bowers.)

Citizen Kane could hardly have been a bad movie if it tried. Welles was a first-time director, but he was given a great cinematographer (Gregg Toland), a great composer (Bernard Herrmann), a great editor (Robert Wise), a great co-screenwriter (Herman Mankiewicz) and a great cast. He was protected from studio interference by contract and they adhered to it.

RKO in the early 40s was a really great place to make a movie. I often cite William Dieterle’s The Devil and Daniel Webster (1941) as another film done at the same studio at about the same time, that is also a great film. Both Welles and Dieterle were influenced by German expressionism, with the editor, composer, and studio brass the same for both films. (I would be remiss not to point out the scene at 47:05 when we first see Simone Simon. I will only say that I’d have worked on this film for free.)

Some of these same people went on to do other great pictures at RKO. Kane’s editor, Robert Wise, moved up to the director’s chair, and worked for producer Val Lewton. Lewton headed up a B-unit there that made twelve amazing pictures, largely free of studio interference, between 1942 and 1946. Lewton was allowed to make pretty much anything he wanted so long as he used the studio’s title, which led him to make a film like Curse of the Cat People (1944)–basically a sentimental Christmas story with a ghost in it.

I realize that I’m painting an overly rosy picture of RKO as a studio that left artists alone. I do remember what happened to The Magnificent Ambersons, but that was an unfortunate anomaly that was not typical of RKO’s behavior at the time. In fact, Robert Wise, who was responsible for the studio-backed recutting of Ambersons, was embarrassed and defensive about it even as late 1995 when he was grilled about it at Cinecon.

But as I get back to Kane, I see a film with Welles being extra ambitious to make an artsy film that would get people talking. He succeeded, but as a result, Kane is not exactly subtle. The direction calls attention to itself at nearly every opportunity. Flashy editing, flashy photography, dramatic lighting… it’s all there. This doesn’t make Kane a bad film–far from it–but I find that Welles matured as a director and did more confident, more cinematic work later in his career.

The legend around Citizen Kane is that Welles did his very best work for his first film, and that everything he did afterward was a step down.

I don’t believe that. Welles was highly idiosyncratic, and he had a reputation of being “difficult.” He tended to offend studio people and they tended not to hire him for a second picture. This meant that it became progressively more difficult for him to get work as a director, and he had to resort to using technical people who were less than the stellar crowd he got on Kane.

That’s easy to say, because the crew for Kane is among the best ever assembled for a movie. Almost any other crew would be a step down.

Welles was unable to make great films from lousy budgets, but he managed to do good, solid work with much smaller budgets. The Lady from Shanghai (1947), made for skin-flint Harry Cohn, still has a lush Wellesian feel, especially when we compare it to other films made at Columbia during this period.

When I watch Citizen Kane, I note that Welles seems to be relying heavily on advice from his cinematographer, Gregg Toland. Kane is very much a photographer’s film, and that’s fine by Welles, who loved heavy Expressionist lighting. But there comes a point at which I feel Welles is using Toland almost as a crutch.

Toland was tinkering with special lenses that let distant objects and closer objects stay in simultaneous focus. Normally directors use different lenses, focus on the character speaking, and then rely on the editor to combine disparate shots of actors in the cutting room. This practice is rough on inexperienced actors, because they are frequently not talking to another person, but rather to a bank of lights and a camera lens.

Watch this scene from Citizen Kane.

This is all one continuous shot, with no edits, which is pretty amazing. The actors are all in focus at once, so that they can speak and react to each other. It’s great from an acting standpoint, and we have nothing but respect for Toland at being able to set up shots like this.

Ultimately, though, Welles has used technical bravura to forward his thinking, and it’s stage-bound. The scene plays like a well-lit, well-acted stage scene, which is basically what it is. There isn’t much that is terribly cinematic about it.

Compare this to the opening shot of Welles’ Touch of Evil (1958)

This is also a continuous shot with no edits, but notice that Welles is thinking differently. Characters come in and out of frame, cars move, lighting shifts. It’s not a stage scene; it could never be a stage scene. Welles still doesn’t like the cut-cut-cut editing mentality, but he’s made a quantum leap forward in how to implement it successfully in a movie.

It is fair to say that Welles never made another movie as slick as Citizen Kane is. I think Welles is judged unfairly by film fans. I doubt that anyone in the history of film ever had a deal as sweet as the one he got for Kane. That his later films can’t live up to that isn’t his fault. I think he did grow and mature as a director, but casual viewers get so lost in the flair of “Rosebud” that they miss his other accomplishments.

The “greatest film ever made” is a highly subjective thing. It makes people angry and combative. I find the AFI lists of greatest films consistently annoying, because they omit so many films that I love in a rush to get to the most popular ones. If you want to say Citizen Kane is the greatest film ever made, then that’s OK for you. I’m here to say that it probably isn’t his best work as a director. Many people don’t like the film because it’s so flashy. I understand that too.

I respect individual taste on what constitutes a great film—just so long as “great film” and “Adam Sandler” don’t go together.

Come Back, Mr. Cooper! Come Back!

This has been roiling around in the back of my brain for a long time. Showmanship in movies is dead, and yet the one thing that needs to return to movies is showmanship. Hollywood has decided that the only people who see movies are 15-year-old boys who like to see explosions and special effects. Production values, story, presentation, acting, etc… they don’t matter.

Don’t believe me? Andy Hendrickson, a Disney executive, admitted it last month.

This reminds me of Merian C. Cooper, who went through draft after draft of the screenplay to King Kong until he got it exactly the way he wanted it. When Cinerama came in, it was Cooper who insisted that it be done right. He knew that Cinerama was so cool that he built it up with a deliberately-too-long intro with Lowell Thomas. He knew if he kept it going long enough, the audience would be wondering what Cinerama was and why it was so interesting. It worked. The opening shots of the roller coaster are still breathtaking.

This is Cinerama blew out all records and was the top grossing film of 1952. This was at a time when TV was killing movies, or so they said. Cooper was enough of a showman to make it work.

Sadly, those days are gone. Even as late as the 1970s, we occasionally had “road shows” in which the studios allowed only one theater to run a particular film that was shown carefully and well. There was but one theater running Star Wars when it came out in Indianapolis in the 1970s, and it ran there for a year. It was run properly; it was an event. If you wanted to see it, then you’d see it there.

Lawrence of Arabia, Dr. Zhivago, 2001, and many others were given deluxe road-show treatments. Columbia revived the practice briefly when Lawrence was restored in 1989, making that an event as well. It worked, and people came out to see it.

Movies are never an event anymore. They are a commodity. Where once you could go into a clean theater and see a movie run by a trained projectionist, today we have an untrained teenager starting a projector he doesn’t understand, in the midst of an unclean theater, ripped screen, and people chattering endlessly on cell phones.

Focus? Sometimes. Framing? Usually. Oh, and you tell me that the digital revolution will make things better, eliminating the untrained projectionist? Nope. Whereas the old projectors were workhorses and would run continuously for years, the new digital ones are so persnickety that vapors of popcorn oil cause them to start projecting with a green cast and then shut down.

Hollywood has figured out that there seems to be an endless hunger for movies, and they turn out more and more of them with dumber and dumber plots. The idea is that no one sees films in a theater anymore, and that films need to be made for multiple viewings on handheld devices and small-screen friendly.

So if you watch Pirates of the Caribbean 40 times at home, you might figure out the plot. Oh, rapture. But heaven help you if you see it just once in a theater.

There’s an old saying that applies here. “Some people know more and more about less and less, until they know everything about nothing.” Hollywood is doing the same thing. They are making more and more movies with less and less money, fewer and fewer viewers per film. The day will come when everyone has free films with zero quality.

This shouldn’t be.

Hollywood is digging its own grave. They are killing off theatrical exhibition by killing off the reasons why people go to movies. They’ve been doing it for years. When fewer people started going to movies, their response was to raise ticket prices. The theater owners had to get by on less money. Do you know why you pay more than $5 for a small popcorn? That’s because the theater owner pays 90+ percent of the ticket money back to the studio for a new release.

The studios also got the cute idea of making exclusive contracts for movies. You’d have to sign up for a particular title for six weeks. If it was a dud, then you were stuck with it. Theater owners made multiplexes so they were able to shuffle duds off to small screens in the back and get the good titles in the bigger houses.

Single-screen theaters died. They couldn’t compete.

Once they had multiplexes, they got automation. One projectionist could run 15 screens. There once was a day when the projectionist had to be there during the entire film, so that if something went wrong, he’d see it immediately. Now, we’re lucky if he has time to get there within 15 minutes. With digital projection, there’s no one up there at all, and the guy who can fix it is probably in the next county. Heaven help you if the lamp blows. Come back next week.

All of this cost-cutting is also throat-cutting. Corporations assume people are stupid and will put up with anything. They’re not. People realize they’re getting a sub-standard product and they don’t show up.

This is the long-standing contradiction that is Hollywood. There’s a disconnect between art and commerce. Art is stagnant if you do the same things over and over again. But commerce encourages sameness. When you can make the same thing repeatedly, you can make it cheaper and more efficiently.

So art is suffering these days because commerce is winning. What Hollywood hasn’t figured out is that people respond to the art.

Movies aren’t like McDonald’s, no matter how much we’d like to make them like that. When you’re out driving at midnight, tired and hungry, you can always stop at McDonald’s, and you know what you’re getting. It tastes the same no matter where you go. It’s almost comforting in a way, even though it’s not something you would want to do all the time.

On the flip side, movies are boring if they’re too repetitive. Clint Eastwood says that every year he’s asked to do another Dirty Harry movie, and yet he’s now 80. That doesn’t matter, they say. People will come to see it. And Clint won’t do it because he knows it wouldn’t be any good.

The other quality vs. showmanship battle that I fight is over DVD, or even worse, downloaded movies. I’ll say it now: if you can avoid it, then you should never show DVDs on a big screen. They’re not designed for that. Blu-ray is better but still not very good. Hollywood is using projectors better than blu-ray on all of the digital setups, so even they understand that they can’t get by with it.

But I work with a lot of small theaters who want to cut costs. They’ll tell me that they have no money, and ask what I can do to help. I bring in good prints of uncopyrighted movies, things I’ve collected over the years, and I introduce the films.

Usually I can bring in a decent crowd for a special event movie. Seeing this, a few places have gotten the idea to cut me out of it. Let’s not pay that guy for good prints. Let’s not pay him to tell people why this film is interesting. I can buy a DVD or download something free from archive.org and then we can run something for free.

No one shows up, and it confuses them.

Anyone can buy a DVD or download from archive.org. It’s no longer an an event, nothing special. People are smart to see through that and don’t show up.

I do see glimmers of hope on the horizon. Kevin Smith, of all people, has seen that doing road shows, with cast members in attendance, is probably a good tactic. His new film, Red State, is doing city-by-city shows. Ticket prices are higher, and he’s taken criticism for it, but he’s sticking with it.

I think that, if theatrical exhibition is going to survive, then it will be with higher quality shows that are special events. Kevin Smith is on to something.

Another failing is the persistent idea that only 15-year-old boys show up to movies. Well, when we tailor all movies to 15-year-olds, then that’s who shows up. Teenagers are an automatic audience for movies, because they want to leave the house. You want to attract an older audience? There’s one out there.

Here’s how you do it…

Enact a “no cell phone” policy in theaters and stick to it.
Hire an usher for every theater who has the ability to force noisemakers to leave.
Movies that have a plot are your friends. Bring them back. That doesn’t mean boring, but it means they have to make sense.
Stars are your friends. Build up stars and hire people who can act. Stars are not people who show up a lot on TMZ. Johnny Depp opens movies because he’s a good actor. Jason Statham is simply a guy who can take a beating during the course of an action film.
Clean the theaters after each showing.
Partner with local restaurants so that folks can get out, have dinner, and see a movie.

People don’t see movies anymore because it’s too much work, and they perceive it as too expensive. Make it easier for them to do it, and make it worth their while, and they’ll show up.

What this world needs is more showmen like Merian C. Cooper. What this world needs less is more cynical businessmen like Andy Hendrickson.

Thinking like Cooper will save the movies. Thinking like Hendrickson will kill them.

If You’ve Got History, Flaunt It!

I visited an amusement park the other day. I won’t name it, because I’m going to rake the management over the coals. They do deserve a good coal-raking, though! This is an older amusement park, with large sections of it that are delightful relics from the 1950s. They had hand-painted signs, miniature golf, sky rides, ferris wheels, and real wooden roller coasters.

But now, in a desperate attempt to compete with the “big” amusement parks, like Six Flags and Kings Island, new owners are ripping out the old stuff and installing new rides to appeal to “modern” tastes.

It’s going to kill them. They don’t have the money or the space to do what they want to do (the place is on a little peninsula), and it can’t really be expanded. And what they’re losing in the bargain is one of the last historic amusement parks around. It’s not just the owners who are losing what they have. We all are.

The problem is that it is very difficult to compete with those bigger corporate parks, and, frankly, I don’t visit those. I have no desire to lose my lunch on a metal coaster that takes me upside down three times. The older wooden coasters are much more fun and much harder to find these days.

I have a huge problem with people throwing out their history in a desperate attempt to seem hip and with the times. Sometimes it’s that very history that makes them hip. There’s nothing particularly historic about Kings Island, despite their “Coney Mall.” I’d love to shake the new owners of this historic park and tell them that what they’re ripping out is what makes them unique. I doubt they’d listen.

Take another example. I’ll name these folks because I have nothing bad to say about them. Zaharako’s is a great ice cream parlor in Columbus, Indiana that knows its niche and exploits it brilliantly. For years, the place was in a state of disrepair. The old man who owned it was enthusiastic enough, but he couldn’t maintain it. I heard that he died, and I feared the worst. I was wrong.

A new owner purchased the building and lovingly restored it. Zaharako’s beautiful orchestrion (a mechanical organ/orchestra, from the early 1900s) was lost. The owner found it, bought it, restored it, and put it back exactly where it had been. The skylight was restored. Pressed tin ceilings were restored and replaced, even to the point that the new air conditioning system uses vents carefully matched to the original ceiling tiles. The original soda fountain completely repaired and restored (beautiful onyx!)

When you walk into Zaharako’s today, it’s as close to walking into a 1900s-era ice cream parlor as can be replicated. You want attention to detail? They even have paper straws. Not this plastic stuff. Paper. The way it used to be.

A lot of people would have counseled the new owners to be as cheap as possible, throw in some soft-serve ice cream machines, and to cut costs to the bone. They could have done that, and if they had, the place would be closed now. After all, Zaharako’s is right around the corner from a Dairy Queen.

Dairy Queen is what it is. Zaharako’s is something different, and they know it. Zaharako’s has a historic ambience that is their greatest strength. It doesn’t hurt that their food and ice cream are outstanding as well.

Was it a crazy dream? Nope. I’m happy to report that the place is filled to overflowing on most weekends, to the point that I couldn’t get a table on a recent visit. That’s unfortunate, but it’s a nice problem I’d prefer to have. I’ll get down there again on an off-time, and I’ll have them crank up the orchestrion. I don’t care how many times I’ve seen it… it’s still cool.

Another historic place that does things right is the Capitol Theatre in Rome, New York. While Zaharako’s is in a fairly healthy metropolitan area, Rome is, well, an economic disaster. I could go on and on about things that have been done poorly in Rome. Worse, many of their key industries have packed up and gone away. The place is full of lovely, but often empty, buildings.

The Capitol, I’m happy to say, is not among them. I’m always amazed to see giant old theaters that are still running the way they were designed. I once spoke to an architect who told me his main job was rehabbing old theaters: “Nobody sees movies anymore, especially in single-screen theaters, so you gut these buildings like a fish and turn them into music venues.” It was one of the saddest things I have ever heard, and the obnoxious echo of it still stays with me.

The Capitol is already a music venue, because it always was. It is also a stage venue, because it always was. It was designed for these multiple uses. Movies? Yes, they do them as well, on a large screen. Low-power cheap xenons bulbs or wimpy DVD projection? NEVER. The Capitol uses old-fashioned carbon-arc projectors, everything in 35mm. Absolutely stunning pictures. Someday they’ll get a 16mm working.

Art Pierce, owner of the Capitol, is smart enough to know what he has. You won’t be seeing Transformers 3 there. That’s not a tragedy, since all the multiplexes are running that. On the other hand, the multiplexes are not running classics in beautiful 35mm. And you’ll never see a stage production of Arsenic and Old Lace at a multiplex.

The Capitol has managed to become a regional theater with varied programs, and it’s working for them. They have embraced their history and it’s paying off. It’s one of the best-run historic theaters I’ve ever seen.

I have a soft spot in my heart for people who are determined to do things properly. I took a lot of guff for some of my decisions on the Dr. Film pilot (many people wanted it to be 30 minutes with only film clips, but I wouldn’t allow it.) I think the public is a lot smarter some of the cynical marketers think.

I have to feel that way. It would drive me crazy to live in a world with only Dairy Queen and Transformers 3. I don’t mind the easy choices so long as we have something else once in a while…

Maureen O’Hara Vs. the Egg People

I get really upset about people showing movies or running video with the wrong screen shape. I’ve been warned that this forum should stay a “math-free” zone, so I won’t mention ASPECT RATIOS and use numbers, but we shouldn’t need them. While I rant about this–and expect me to go on about it–let me interrupt with an aside that’s particularly telling.

I went to a screening of The Quiet Man (1952) a few years ago. Maureen O’Hara was in attendance before and after the film, but she went out to dinner during the showing itself. She said she’d seen the movie enough and didn’t need to see it one more time. I was dismayed to see the picture start with the grand Republic Pictures logo, an eagle over a globe… this time only to say A Republic… (without the Picture.)

You see, the projectionist had decided not to do his homework on this film, and he ran it in widescreen format. If he’d bothered to check, he would have known that in 1954 the industry switched from conventional “Academy-sized” format (almost square, like most tube-TVs), to widescreen (much like your newer flat-screen TVs). The problem is that if you run an older film in widescreen format, you cut off the top and bottom of the image, which is what was done with The Quiet Man…

ALL THE WAY THROUGH…

I found this highly annoying, since it ruined much of the movie’s great photographic composition. I plotted my revenge against this idiot projectionist until it dawned on me that I might have a much more powerful ally. Ms. O’Hara did a nice Q&A session with the audience, and I saw that this is a woman who takes no guff. From anyone. Ever. She’s very nice about it, but whenever someone said something stupid or wrong, she corrected the error.

I wanted the projectionist to be in big trouble for screwing this up (after all, they’d taken my money for the show), so I figured the best thing I could do was to tell Maureen O’Hara about it. I waited until the Q&A was over and went to the reception. Gingerly, I approached her and introduced myself. (Forgive the numbers here… but I am reproducing what I told her…)

“Are you aware that they ran that entire picture at 1.85?” I asked.

Her eyes flashed. “What? That’s not a widescreen picture!”

I was happy that she knew exactly what I meant without explanation. She went on…

“What about the scene when Duke is dragging me across the glen?” she asked.

“You were off the bottom of the screen during the entire shot,” I answered.

“I ruptured a disc on that scene! I’m going to speak to them about this!”

I reported this story to a friend of mine who’s in “the industry,” and he was amazed. This fellow had met O’Hara as well. He had only one question: “What did she do with the bodies?”

The projectionist had decided that they had a wide screen, and he had to fill it. I’ve heard the quote from people before: “I paid for a wide screen, and I’m going to fill it up.”

And you can do that, but you’ll have to stretch, crop, and malign the image so much that any artistic intent of the original filmmakers is completely lost. In this case, the projectionist cropped the image. This annoys me in the extreme.

The problem is that there are several different screen sizes, and they literally do not fit with each other. The rectangles are different shapes. That’s why they call the newer formats “widescreen.”

These are the notable ones:

1) Movies 1894-1954 are generally in what’s called “Academy format,” which is a narrow rectangle slightly wider than it is high. (Yes, film geeks, I’m aware that silent aperture is different, and I project them properly, but that gets a little technical, so don’t bug me.)

2) Movies 1954- adopted a widescreen format that is wider. In America, this is a bit wider than in Europe, so there a European widescreen and an American one.

3) Cinemascope/Panavision (1953-) uses a special photographic process to squeeze a widescreen image into the older Academy format and that yields an even wider screen. (Yes, I know that’s not quite accurate, film geeks… lay off!).

4) Finally in the 2000s, TV got into the act, adopting another screen size that is between the size of American widescreen and European widescreen.

The upshot of this is that we have to mix and match screen sizes all the time. If you run a widescreen movie on a narrow Academy screen (like old TVs), then it doesn’t fit, so you either have to crop off the sides (ick) or “letterbox” it, where we see black bars at the top and bottom of the screen.

These black bars aren’t there because we’re masking off part of your narrow screen, but rather because the narrow screen isn’t wide enough to accommodate the picture. See what I mean here:

The opposite problem is now occurring because we have widescreen TVs that are showing older Academy programs. That, properly shown, would leave black bars at the sides of the image, like this:
Instead, the vast majority of TV owners opt to stretch out the narrow image to fill the black bars, like this:

I HATE THIS! When the picture is stretched out this way, thin people look fat and fat people look enormous. I call it “the egg people,” because everyone has an oblong, egg-shaped head.

Here is a brief animation showing how the image is stretched in your TV to create egg people:

I’ve had people tell me that “you get used to it,” and that they like the screen filled up. Well, I don’t get used to it, it’s wrong, and don’t expect me to get used to something that is wrong. I hate watching movies and sports this way.

I’m telling you all that if you don’t reset your TVs to eliminate the egg people, I’m going to send Maureen O’Hara out to your house. She’ll do it for you.

And she’s not as forgiving as I am.

The Reclusive Collector, or How Films Become Lost

Film people are a different breed. It’s a necessity. Some of you have heard the legends about some guy who has discovered the only print of Lon Chaney’s London After Midnight (1927). The story goes that he’s just waiting to cash in on the bonanza when the film’s copyright expires. Well, there isn’t a bonanza. The potential market for a video release of London After Midnight is so small that the money probably wouldn’t even cover the costs of transferring a nitrate print to video.

Film collectors don’t collect films because we want something rare and valuable (there are a few, but not many, who do that). We collect films because we love them. We collect films because they look beautiful on the big screen. We collect films because we know that many will be neglected and thrown away unless we keep them. Most of us would like to do more public shows, but the way the laws are written makes it difficult. (See my other post on “The Marx Brothers Explain Copyright Law” for a more detailed rant on this).

The rules for public performance of music are much more civilized than they are for film. I can even bend the artist’s intent and still get by with it. If I decided that I wanted to become Hitler Elvis, and that I wanted to sing Elvis songs in German while doing a “Sieg Heil,” I could probably do it. I’d have to pay the BMI/ASCAP fees and keep a record of which songs I played, but I could do it. I use this example not because I’m advocating it, but because artistically it’s about as far from what Elvis did as I can imagine.

But for film it’s different. Say I wanted to run a retrospective of Walt Disney movies, and I wanted to do it respectfully using quality prints. Say I wanted to pay the proper royalties and contacted the people at the Disney corporation. They’d file charges against me! Sure, I can be disrespectful to Elvis for a price! But even paying proper respect to Mickey Mouse gets the Feds at your door.

It’s much easier for a collector to sit on his collection and not let anyone see the films he has. No hassles, no effort. It avoids all kinds of issues. I’ve been called evil and greedy by people who want me to release a copyrighted film on video (I won’t). I’ve been called evil and greedy by movie studios who are upset that I saved something they threw out. Don’t believe me? Here’s a real story…

A number of years ago I was in an old film exchange in Vincennes, IN. They were going to close it and throw out all the films that no one wanted. Down in the guts of the building was a 35mm print of a film listed as Going All the Way. I recognized the title. It was based on a best-selling novel by Dan Wakefield, and much of it was shot near my house. The owner of the building wanted $50 for the print, so I figured I could watch it once and trade it. At least I’d see it on a big screen. Remember, I have 35mm projectors at my house.

How, you may ask, did a print end up here? It happens all the time. The studio makes a decision: “Are we going to make enough money off a future show to justify paying for return shipping on this print?” If not, they just leave it for the owner of the theater or film exchange. This is a long-held tradition in the film industry. Dawson City, Alaska became the last-stop dumping ground for hundreds of silent films, and they were miraculously preserved due to the low temperatures. The practice of dumping continues to this day, which is how I found this print.

A few years later I happened to meet the author of the book Going All the Way, Dan Wakefield, at a poetry reading. Knowing that there’s an audience for personal appearances, I asked him if he might be willing to appear at a screening of the film if I could arrange it. He was very nice and told me that he’d be happy to do that. Unfortunately, I had no idea who owned the film, and he apparently didn’t, either, so that made it doubly difficult.

Like many independent films, Going All the Way only barely got made. Even though the book was a best-seller, and Dan Wakefield is a major author, it was a tough sell. Since there’s a fair amount of sex in it, the major studios shied away. Studios like to make films with explosions and not ones from character-based books.

Going All the Way got sweet revenge on the studios by being one of those rare independent films with a long shelf life. Ben Affleck appeared in it (before he became famous), which suddenly makes an obscure indie into a marketable feature. The copyright records indicated a complex web of finances and loans. Unfortunately, I couldn’t track down who owned it for a theatrical screening. The rights history is online, but there are video rights and theatrical rights, and all sorts of other ancillary things. After a while it looks like buckshot on a rural stop sign.

A buddy of mine tipped me off that the theatrical rights might be owned by a particular studio. I won’t implicate them, partly because they’re generally pretty nice, but they’re known the world around. I called my contact there, and he told me that it was owned by a studio sub-division, and he gave me the contact information.

The lady yelled at me and screamed that I was an evil film pirate, and that they would sue me. I thanked her and told her that I’d suddenly lost the film and I wouldn’t be showing it. Normally, I’d offer to let the studio borrow the print or use it for remastering, but not with an attitude like that! She confirmed that they didn’t have a negative or print material on it. (It’s not surprising… I think I counted twelve ownership changes since the film was released. Studios just bought rights in bulk and didn’t check to see if film shipped on every title.)

I point out that this explains why there isn’t a legitimate DVD or Blu-Ray of Going All the Way. With the film masters missing, no one has material good enough to reissue the film. It’s not exactly lost, but it’s the next thing to it. We’ve got the low-definition master tape made for cable release and VHS. That’s it. Amazon has some bootleg DVDs made from the VHS tapes. I’m sure they look terrible.

Let me interject here that projecting 35mm is a lot of work. You have to change reels every 20 minutes. It’s heavy, and everything needs to be rewound afterward. I don’t do it unless I really need to. So this film had been sitting in my basement, unseen, for all this time. I will also interject that it was on Agfa stock, important because Agfa is an undated stock that a lot of independent films used, because it was pretty cheap.

Fast forward another year or two. A film festival wants to run Going All the Way. They want to get Mr. Wakefield to attend the screening. They’ve heard I have a print. They contact me and ask what I know about it. I tell them that the owner studio is hostile, but if they can get a legal clearance, I’d be happy to let them use the print.

But first, I’d need to watch it to make sure the print is in good shape. In all these years I hadn’t seen it. I figured it was time.

I put in the first reel. It was ratty and brittle, but runnable. A couple of splices made with masking tape. Ick. The credits came up with the title, and a 1950s car. Looked OK. As I let it run, I realized that Ben Affleck wasn’t in the movie, nor was anyone else I knew from the cast. This wasn’t the right film!

What I had gotten was a soft-core drive-in film called Goin’ All the Way (no g—that’s the key). I hadn’t known it because it was on undated film stock. I never had the film that I thought I’d had. The festival ran the correct movie from VHS (gag). All that work to track down the owners and the rights, threats of lawsuits, and nothing!

And still, it’s possible that Going All the Way will never be recovered on film. It was made in 1997! If this film were a person, he wouldn’t be old enough to drink yet!

This is how films become lost. It’s also how collectors, people who want to play the rules, will say, “I don’t have that. I don’t know anything about it.”

No wonder that 50% of all films made before 1950 are said to be lost today.

The Marx Brothers Explain Copyright Law

I get very upset about US copyright law. It is so labyrinthine that a person can do all he can to be honest and forthright, but still step on legal toes. It’s even worse that people claim to own rights they don’t own, and other people deny rights to films that they actually do own.

The whole thing reminds me of the Tootsie Frootsie routine from A Day at the Races (1937), in which Chico cons Groucho out of a wad of cash. In case you haven’t seen it, you can see it here. Inspiration struck me, and this skit was born.

I’m in favor of copyrights, and paying fees when necessary. I do want to remind you that the constitutional founders wanted limited terms, and Congress has extended the term of copyrights at least three times.

As silly as this seems, all of the law in here, to the best of my knowledge, is exactly correct. There are a lot of lawyers out there who are every bit as unethical as Chico.

Films are dying because of this foolishness.

Groucho: Hey, Ravelli, I found a couple of old movies. I think one of them is yours. How much do you want me to pay you to show it?

Chico: Oh, no. That’sa mine. I sue you.

Groucho: I found it in the trash!

Chico: Hey, thatsa right. I throw it away.

Groucho: So you want to sue me for showing something you threw away?

Chico: You guess it. I sue you.

Groucho: Well, I could buy it from you. How much?

Chico: I no sell it.

Groucho: How about if I give it back to you, and then we show it?

Chico: OH, NO! I no want it.

Groucho: Maybe I could just pay you to show it once.

Chico: I no want you to show it. I sue you.

Groucho: You realize it would cost more to sue me than it would just to take my money.

Chico: OH, NO! I sue. Trusta me, I sue.

(Harpo comes out, dressed in judicial robes, and passes out pieces of paper saying CEASE AND DESIST.)

Groucho: You know, just retaining that shyster lawyer there costs more than this film is worth.

Chico: You’re right, but I sue justa the same.

Groucho: Why?

Chico: Thatsa whadda we call precedents. If-a I sue you, then I’ve make a precedent, and then it make-a it easier to sue the next guy and-a win.

Groucho: So you’re suing me for wanting to show something that you threw out, you don’t want, and it’s not worth the money that you’re spending to sue me. I can’t buy it from you and you don’t want it back.

Chico: I do this just-a because I can.

Groucho: It doesn’t matter. I found another movie too, and you don’t own that. I’ll just show that one instead.

Chico: You can’t do that! It’s a copyright!

Groucho: How do I find out who owns it, then?

Chico: Well… justa by accident, Pinky and I, we own a law firm.

Groucho: Why I am not surprised?

(Harpo comes out again with cards saying “Ravelli and Pinky, Attorneys at Law.”)

Groucho: OK, I’ll bite. How much does it take to look up the copyright for this film?

Chico: I can’t tell you.

(Harpo whistles and shakes head.)

Groucho: I thought you were a lawyer.

Chico: Thats’a why I can’t tell you.

Groucho: What would it take so that you could tell me?

Chico: Well, I need a retainer. Money.

Groucho: I knew it. How much?

(Harpo holds up five fingers and whistles.)

Groucho: Five dollars? Well, that’s reasonable….

Chico: No, he’sa not got enof fingers. Fifty dollars.

Groucho: All right. You know, Custer wasn’t even scalped like this. (He hands him money.)

Chico: Atsa fine. Now, if the film was-a registered with the Library of Congress, then it’s a copyright. But that’s OK, the copyright, she expire after 28 years.

Groucho: Great! This movie is more than 28 years old, so I’m in the clear!

Chico: Not-a so fast. Congress, she pass-em a law that lets the owner renew it for another 28 years. But sometimes they renew, and sometimes-a, they no renew.

Groucho: Dandy. I suppose there’s some sort of published master list of renewals somewhere?

Chico: Ooooooh, no. You gotta find em!

Groucho: And where might I do that?

Chico: Well, just-a by accident…

(Harpo holds up a card saying, “Pinky’s Copyright Research.”)

Groucho: Then I don’t need your law firm anymore!

Chico: Sure ya do! I tell-a him what to look up, he goes to the Library of Congress to look it up, and then I certify it. That’s a called “due diligence.”

Groucho: How much will that be?

Chico: At’s a thousand dollars!

Groucho: A thousand dollars? Why?

Chico: Well, ya gotta fly him out to Washington, put him up in a hotel for a day, and then fly him back. Atsa thousand dollars.

Groucho: Why can’t I just send him out by car or train?

Chico: Then ya gotta feed him. You’d lose on the deal.

(Harpo opens mouth ravenously. Groucho cowers.)

Groucho: I can hire a local attorney to do it, and then save all that money.

Chico: You think you can find an attorney more honest than me?

Groucho: I’d hasten to think so.

Chico: In Washington?

(Groucho rubs neck and thinks.)

Groucho: I never thought it would happen, but you made a persuasive argument. Are you proud of yourself?

Chico: I’m proud of this wad of cash I got from you.

Groucho: Hypothetically speaking… you do know what hypothetical means, don’t you?

Chico: Sure. That’s the long part of a triangle.

Groucho: No, you’re thinking of a needle the doctor uses to immunize you.

Chico: Hey, the judge gave me immunize to testify against Pinky!

Groucho: Well, I can see I’m not going to get anywhere this way. Let’s say this: imagine that I paid you the money, and imagine that Pinky went to do the research. Imagine that there’s a renewal. Then can I run the film?

Chico: Well, you gotta pay the guy who owns the film.

Groucho: Won’t that be stated in the renewal?

Chico: Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Sometimes a guy renew-a film that he no own, and that’s a void renewal. Sometimes-a he sell it to someone-else, and that might not be recorded in the papers at the Library of Congress.

Groucho: Then how do I find out who owns it?

(Harpo holds up a card, “Pinky’s Copyright Detective and Genealogy Service.”)

Groucho: And how do I find out if the renewal is void?

Chico: You need a lawyer for that.

(Chico smiles and offers card again.)

Groucho: All right then, I can just wait until the second term of copyright expires.

Chico: Oh, no, you can’t do that.

Groucho: I’m certain of that. But tell me why anyway.

Chico: Well, Congress, she’sa pass another extension. You see, if you register once…

Groucho: For 28 years…

Chico: Yes, and if they renew…

Groucho: For another 28 years…

Chico: Yes, well, Congress, she’s a make the renewal period 47 years. Then shesa change her mind again. Now it’s 67 years.

Groucho: That makes the total copyright period 95 years.

Chico: That’s it! You guess it!

Groucho: There’s no possible way I could make enough money from showing this film to offset the costs of finding out who owns it.

Chico: That’s what I discovered.

Groucho: I wanted to show it for preservation purposes. For an old time movie.

Chico: Oh, that’s a no good.

Groucho: It’s a lot less work just to throw it away.,

Chico: Now you understand why I threw mine away.

(Groucho tosses print away.)

Chico: That’s what you call film preservation.

The Quick, Quick, Slow Cut

One of the criticisms I hear of older films is that they are slow-moving and boring. The editing of newer films is supposed to be faster. This is simply not true. The editing of modern films is different. In some ways, it’s even slower today.

Hollywood today is frightened to death of dialogue and plot. They fear it might get in the way of a good chase scene or fart joke. The problem is that a great number of films jettison so much dialogue and plot that they become basically two-hour chase sequences, and that’s boring. When you have no idea who is doing what to whom, and there is no characterization left to let you know it, then all you can do is sit back in your chair and wait until something interesting happens. Sadly, it seldom does.

Editor Peter Hunt (a pause now in silence for one of the greatest editors of all time) used to say that an action sequence in a film should never be more than five minutes long, or else the audience gets bored. He pointed to Thunderball (1965) as a movie that annoyed him a bit, because he’d cut the scenes the way they seemed to flow most efficiently, and the three producers on the shoot kept overruling him. “Oh, that shot is too good to throw out. Put it back in.” And as a result, he thought Thunderball was draggy in places. He was right. Still, Thunderball’‘s opening fight sequence is one of the slickest and most efficient in film history. It still works today. Don’t believe me? Check this out.

OK, the rocket pack at the end is too silly. But let’s contrast this with a newer Bond film, Casino Royale (2006). Due to legal snags, the original Fleming book couldn’t be adapted as an official Bond film until this was released. The book is a little sparse for a two-hour film. So what to do? They grafted on three chase sequences with just a hair’s breadth of plot to combine them. And each chase sequence was about 15 minutes long. The first one was a foot chase, which was at least pretty compelling, but it was followed by a truck chase inspired by (or stolen from) Raiders of the Lost Ark and then a chase through an airport taken from Die Hard 2 (if they’re going to steal from Die Hard films, can’t they at least steal from a good one?)

As a result, Casino Royale has been running for about 45 minutes before the story really starts, at which point I’ve pretty much ceased to care. It gets worse, because the plotline that Fleming used, which was intense and psychological, is cut to the bare minimum. We can’t have too much of a plot, because we might bore 15-year-old boys who come to see things blow up. It was only due to the fact that I know the book, and I know other versions of the story, that I could follow it.

In case you just missed it, I cited an example in which an older film actually moves faster than a newer one, and it was a film that the editor thought was too slow! The idea now, and increasingly, is that the story doesn’t matter at all, so we need to pad out the action scenes. This means that the video game based on the movie is probably going to be very cool. I guess no one has realized that video games and movies are different media. I’m not terribly excited about watching a two-hour video game in which I can’t participate.

So I’ve ranted enough about the slowness of today’s cutting, and how scenes go on too long. That’s not what most people go on about when they talk about old films being slower. What they’re talking about is that each shot is often longer in older films.

I’m not against fast cutting. You’ll note that the cutting in Thunderball is actually pretty fast. I am against cutting a movie so that you lose a sense of geography in the film. For over a hundred years, we’ve cut movies according to rules. These rules help us understand what is happening in a film. A fight should start with a long shot, which gives us an idea of where everything is located. We might then cut to a closeup of a punch, and then to a medium shot back to a reaction by someone. Establishing shot, insert, reaction…

There are a lot of people who don’t do that anymore. We shoot everything in extreme closeup. I’m not sure why we’ve gone to this, but we have. Some people think it’s because TV is lower resolution and closeups register better with the audience. This means that the filmmakers really are shooting for television even though we may see a theatrical release. Other people say it gives us a sense of immediacy with the action. In my humble, ranty opinion, it does none of that. It’s the cinematic equivalent of an epileptic seizure. We have no idea what is happening, and it’s nothing but disorganized movement. If we combine this with the trend for longer action sequences, then basically it just gives me the urge to sit back in my chair and yawn until something coherent shows up.

I know I’m opening myself up for a criticism that I don’t like anything that’s new. Not true. I want to see good, strong storytelling. Editing is part of that. For example, I was delighted to see Inglourious Basterds (2009). The opening sequence of that film is a thing of beauty. I won’t give it away, but it centers on a German officer (Christoph Waltz) trying to discover the location of some Jewish refugees. The editor stretches out some takes to make us uncomfortable sitting in our chairs. What is he thinking? Why is this scene going on so long? The tension builds masterfully. It’s as good as any scene you’re likely to see.

On the other end of the scale, watch the chase between Sean Connery and Nicolas Cage in The Rock (1995). It’s cut too fast, with too few establishing shots and too many closeups. You can see it here, although I apologize for the squished aspect ratio (and the language is not appropriate for kids). I’ll be blunt here: I love Sean Connery, I love Nic Cage, I’ve visited San Francisco and driven down these very streets. I hate this sequence. I can’t tell what’s going on. It makes no sense; the camera is too shaky, the cutting is too fast. Director Michael Bay made it on to my “banned for life” list because of this film.

You wanna see a good chase scene shot in this same area? Here’s one:” It’s from What’s Up, Doc (1972) made by Peter Bogdanovich. Notice that he uses long shots so that we know what’s happening. It’s not slow (it may be a bit long), but it works. The guy knows how to make a movie! Yeah, I know that the point of the two scenes is different. The Rock is a serious chase with a little comedy and What’s Up Doc is a comedic chase with some thrills.

My point is that the cutting is completely different, and that’s due to what the editor used and what the director gave him. I think it’s insane to make a generalization that older films are slower. Some are, and some aren’t. And you have to figure whether long scenes are slower than quick cuts. It’s hard to measure. Editing is an important and little-understood art. It’s something I’m going to come back to on this blog page. One of my pet projects is a re-edit of a scene from Plan 9 From Outer Space. I’ve contended for years that the worst problem with that film is editing. Stay tuned.