{"id":2040,"date":"2022-12-29T21:50:05","date_gmt":"2022-12-30T02:50:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/?p=2040"},"modified":"2022-12-30T00:06:08","modified_gmt":"2022-12-30T05:06:08","slug":"the-passion-of-dr-film","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/?p=2040","title":{"rendered":"The Passion of Dr. Film"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I published an update on the status of King of the Kongo <\/em>recently that detailed how we\u2019re out of money on the Kickstarter project.  Many of you wrote and suggested I start a GoFundMe to keep going.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m hesitant to do that because I know that GoFundMe campaigns are often perceived as \u201ccash grabs,\u201d and I don\u2019t want to be seen that way.  But let me tell you how you can help.  I\u2019ll do it by relating some long, boring stories, just the kind of stuff I\u2019m famous for!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like Napoleon, I am fighting battles on more than one front.\u00a0 I hope that\u2019s the only thing I have in common with Napoleon!\u00a0 One of the fronts is a battle for a bit of respect in the marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A couple of times in the last year, I did restoration work on some films.  I didn\u2019t do the entire restorations, only consulted, but they were films I thought were important.  I really am doing Kongo<\/em> full time, but still, occasionally, things come my way that I can\u2019t entirely ignore.  I was hoping to release at least one of those on video on the Dr. Film label to increase its visibility, but I got the same response from both folks, to wit:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou\u2019re not important enough to release this.  We want to go to a more important seller to sell this film.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, that\u2019s pretty insulting, but I get it.  They want to get the maximum exposure from the biggest audience.  However, both films are what I\u2019d call \u201cmarginal\u201d in the marketplace, things that wouldn\u2019t sell a lot no matter who releases them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the reasons I want to start a non-profit organization is to be able to release such \u201cmarginal\u201d films without taking a bath on them.  Places like Kino or ClassicFlix have to be wary of the fact that many of their titles won\u2019t clear a profit.  But that doesn\u2019t make them less important to release.  They need to be seen!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The problem here is that a lot of these films aren\u2019t popular because no one has seen them\u2014and no one has seen them because they\u2019re not popular.  It\u2019s a circular conundrum, but it\u2019s death for many lesser known titles.  They need someone to champion them in order to get the audience that they deserve\u2014or indeed, any <\/em>audience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The popular legend is that I\u2019m obsessed with King of the Kongo <\/em>to the detriment of all else.  I\u2019m not.  I\u2019ve got several cards up my sleeve.  I\u2019ve wanted to start my own independent DVD label for some years. It wasn\u2019t enough to release Little Orphant Annie<\/em>.  Annie <\/em>suffers from a couple of problems: people incorrectly think it\u2019s related to the comic strip and the musical, and there have been so many crappy transfers of it in the public domain that it\u2019s got a bad reputation that it certainly doesn\u2019t deserve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was hoping that Kongo <\/em>would be the key to keep the label going.  When we started it, I had no idea the serial was in such bad shape.  I figured we\u2019d be on it for six or eight months and then release it.  But that was impossible. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

See, I told you that I wanted to start a label that people took seriously.  If I had released Kongo <\/em>on a just-good-enough-to-watch basis, it wouldn\u2019t have helped that goal. When I got reviews in from some of my other work, two reviews really bugged me.  I don\u2019t take a lot of criticism seriously, because I know they are only opinions, but sometimes a serious but wrong opinion will sink a film.  One of the reviews was Fritzi Kramer\u2019s review of Little Orphant Annie<\/em>, which is still the first review you see of Annie <\/em>on IMDb.  Fritzi\u2019s review is flippant and dismissive, and it hurts the film.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have no problem with being flippant and dismissive, because I do that all the time.  But in the case of Fritzi\u2019s review, it has made a lot of people leery of buying the film or giving it a chance.  I hear it all the time when people talk about it.  \u201cMovies Silently said this was an awful movie!\u201d  And she never even bothered to watch my restoration! Rather, she saw only some of the awful out-of-sequence prints that were already out there.  It\u2019s hurt my chances of starting a label.  Suffice to say, I will not be sending her a review copy of King of the Kongo<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The other review that bothered me was David Pearson, who likes to follow me on to various sites and complain that I don\u2019t know what I\u2019m doing about restoration, and that if they\u2019d only hired him<\/em> to restore the color scene from Seven Chances<\/em>, then it would have been perfect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s true the color scene was in rough shape\u2014even after I\u2019d finished it\u2014but he complained that it looked awful.  A couple of other people told me that same thing.  One of them even claimed he almost shut off the disc because the color scene looked so bad.  This was a project I was proud to work on, but it annoyed some people. The problem was (as I have said many times) that there was not enough time to make the color scene look perfect, and I did the best possible in the extremely short time allotted\u2013or it wouldn’t be color at all.  That doesn\u2019t matter.  Perfection is the only goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I learned a couple of things from this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
  1. People will sink your work for reasons that are ridiculous and unfair.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. People expect visual perfection from restored films even if perfection is difficult or impossible.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    So imagine me sitting with a disk full of Kongo <\/em>material late in 2019.  I\u2019d paid nearly half my grant money just to access it.  And it looked AWFUL.  We didn\u2019t know that when we inspected it\u2013it was impossible to discern on a rewind stand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    If I had released it with the same level of restoration that we gave Annie<\/em>, which is what I\u2019d budgeted for, it would have been terrible, and the David Pearsons of the world would have been all over me like Sydney Greenstreet on Elisha Cook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    I can\u2019t give the grant money back.  I spent it.  I\u2019ve got to trudge forward or else I have nothing to release.  And I know that I need it to keep my label going.  That\u2019s why I have continued with this seemingly endless project.  That\u2019s why I\u2019ve had to invent new ways of fixing damage in order to accomplish anything.  It\u2019s why I\u2019ve needed to buy computers for massive processing power. Now, you know some of this if you\u2019ve been following my work (and listening to me \u201cwhine\u201d as some people call it).  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    But Kongo <\/em>isn\u2019t coming out for a while yet and I\u2019m out of cash again.  Yes, I got screwed over big time by the professional lip readers and a few other things, too, but we were in there trying.  I\u2019ve been busting my butt on this for years now.  Frankly, I\u2019m wearing out helpers and annoying consultants, but believe me, I really want to get this done!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    So how can you help?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Let\u2019s not do a GoFundMe.  Instead, buy some copies of Little Orphant Annie<\/em>.  Buy some copies of the Milan films.  Buy some copies of Cinema Gems<\/em>.  Heck, if you\u2019re adventurous, buy a copy or two of my novel, A Fearful Thing to Love. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    That\u2019s not me just being greedy for cash.  It does help me keep going, but it also sends a signal to people that I\u2019m serious about this work and we\u2019re a force to be reckoned with, not just some crank to be ignored.  It honestly helps me more than a GoFundMe would. (And frankly, I don’t say no to donations, but they are not, as yet, tax deductible.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Also, if you\u2019re in that delightful group that already has copies of all this stuff, then do me another favor that also helps me: tell a friend or two about this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    And that goes to the second battle I\u2019m fighting.  Remember I said I\u2019m fighting a battle on two fronts?  The first is for respect.  The second is for an audience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    I went to hire an artist to help illustrate some of my work a few weeks ago.  I already had a short DVD opening movie that I created.  If you haven\u2019t seen it, it\u2019s here: https:\/\/youtu.be\/EWYLD4slues<\/a>  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    I showed it to the artist, a film fan.  He watched it blankly.  I told him that it was a spoof of 2001<\/em>.  He told me that he never watched movies that old.  They were boring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    (I\u2019ve since been told that my DVD intro is too long and boring anyway.  Everyone\u2019s a critic.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The point here is that the audience for old films is dropping off at a frightening rate.  Author James Neibaur subscribes to the theory that these films are just so old that they are no longer of interest to most people, and that when we started loving them, they were much newer than they are now, hence more relevant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    On a related note, people have told me that it\u2019s a miracle that grown-ups will even watch movies 100 years old and something of an indulgence that others even let us do it at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The other theory, which is the one that I subscribe to, is that we covet what we see, to paraphrase Hannibal Lecter.  For example, Laurel and Hardy are irrelevant today not because they are old, not because they are black and white, not because they aren\u2019t funny, but because we don\u2019t see them anymore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The same goes for all of these other films I want to share.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    My goal has always be to save AND SHARE films.  I want to win both battles: I\u2019d like to get Kongo <\/em>done so we can move on to other projects, and I\u2019d like to start the non-profit with part of our goal to educate audiences and share more films.  I want to educate that artist that old does not equate to boring!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Frankly, I look at the local offerings in RedBox and note that they are hawking DVDs that no one has heard of.  Sure, we know a half dozen new releases, but I keep wondering why there aren\u2019t classics in there instead of 35 movies that feature Bruce Willis for 5 minutes.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    That\u2019s my passion: to save and share.  Kongo <\/em>is only part of it.  If you want to help, go to www.drfilm.net<\/a> and click on SHOP!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I published an update on the status of King of the Kongo recently that detailed how we\u2019re out of money on the Kickstarter project.  Many of you wrote and suggested I start a GoFundMe to keep going. I\u2019m hesitant to do that because I know that GoFundMe campaigns are often perceived as \u201ccash grabs,\u201d and … Continue reading “The Passion of Dr. Film”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"powered_cache_disable_cache":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,207],"tags":[241,240],"class_list":["post-2040","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dr-films-pocket-rants","category-film","tag-kickstarter","tag-kongo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2040","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2040"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2040\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2290,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2040\/revisions\/2290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}