{"id":45,"date":"2011-07-01T23:30:39","date_gmt":"2011-07-02T03:30:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/?p=45"},"modified":"2020-12-06T21:36:21","modified_gmt":"2020-12-07T02:36:21","slug":"the-reclusive-collector-or-how-films-become-lost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/?p=45","title":{"rendered":"The Reclusive Collector, or How Films Become Lost"},"content":{"rendered":"

Film people are a different breed.\u00a0 It\u2019s a necessity.\u00a0 Some of you have heard the legends about some guy who has discovered the only print of Lon Chaney\u2019s London After Midnight <\/em>(1927).\u00a0 The story goes that he\u2019s just waiting to cash in on the bonanza when the film\u2019s copyright expires.\u00a0 Well, there isn\u2019t a bonanza.\u00a0 The potential market for a video release of London After Midnight <\/em>is so small that the money probably wouldn\u2019t even cover the costs of transferring a nitrate print to video.<\/p>\n

Film collectors don\u2019t collect films because we want something rare and valuable (there are a few, but not many, who do that).\u00a0 We collect films because we love them.\u00a0 We collect films because they look beautiful on the big screen.\u00a0 We collect films because we know that many will be neglected and thrown away unless we keep them.\u00a0 Most of us would like <\/em>to do more public shows, but the way the laws are written makes it difficult.\u00a0 (See my other post on \u201cThe Marx Brothers Explain Copyright Law<\/a>\u201d for a more detailed rant on this).<\/p>\n

The rules for public performance of music are much more civilized than they are for film.\u00a0 I can even bend the artist\u2019s intent and still get by with it.\u00a0 If I decided that I wanted to become Hitler Elvis, and that I wanted to sing Elvis songs in German while doing a \u201cSieg Heil,\u201d I could probably do it.\u00a0 I\u2019d have to pay the BMI\/ASCAP fees and keep a record of which songs I played, but I could do it.\u00a0 I use this example not because I\u2019m advocating it, but because artistically it\u2019s about as far from what Elvis did as I can imagine.<\/p>\n

But for film it\u2019s different.\u00a0 Say I wanted to run a retrospective of Walt Disney movies, and I wanted to do it respectfully using quality prints.\u00a0 Say I wanted to pay the proper royalties and contacted the people at the Disney corporation.\u00a0 They\u2019d file charges against me!\u00a0 Sure, I can be disrespectful to Elvis for a price!\u00a0 But even paying proper respect to Mickey Mouse gets the Feds at your door.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s much easier for a collector to sit on his collection and not let anyone see the films he has.\u00a0 No hassles, no effort.\u00a0 It avoids all kinds of issues.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been called evil and greedy by people who want me to release a copyrighted film on video (I won\u2019t).\u00a0 I\u2019ve been called evil and greedy by movie studios who are upset that I saved something they threw out.\u00a0 Don\u2019t believe me?\u00a0 Here\u2019s a real story…<\/p>\n

A number of years ago I was in an old film exchange in Vincennes, IN.\u00a0 They were going to close it and throw out all the films that no one wanted.\u00a0 Down in the guts of the building was a 35mm print of a film listed as Going All the Way<\/em>.\u00a0 I recognized the title. It was based on a best-selling novel by Dan Wakefield, and much of it was shot near my house.\u00a0 The owner of the building wanted $50 for the print, so I figured I could watch it once and trade it.\u00a0 At least I\u2019d see it on a big screen.\u00a0 Remember, I have 35mm projectors at my house.<\/p>\n

How, you may ask, did a print end up here?\u00a0 It happens all the time.\u00a0 The studio makes a decision: \u201cAre we going to make enough money off a future show to justify paying for return shipping on this print?\u201d\u00a0 If not, they just leave it for the owner of the theater or film exchange.\u00a0 This is a long-held tradition in the film industry.\u00a0 Dawson City, Alaska became the last-stop dumping ground for hundreds of silent films, and they were miraculously preserved due to the low temperatures.\u00a0 The practice of dumping continues to this day, which is how I found this print.<\/p>\n

A few years later I happened to meet the author of the book Going All the Way<\/em>, Dan Wakefield, at a poetry reading.\u00a0 Knowing that there\u2019s 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.\u00a0 He was very nice and told me that he\u2019d be happy to do that.\u00a0 Unfortunately, I had no idea who owned the film, and he apparently didn\u2019t, either, so that made it doubly difficult.<\/p>\n

Like many independent films, Going All the Way <\/em>only barely got made.\u00a0 Even though the book was a best-seller, and Dan Wakefield is a major author, it was a tough sell.\u00a0 Since there\u2019s a fair amount of sex in it, the major studios shied away.\u00a0 Studios like to make films with explosions and not ones from character-based books.<\/p>\n

Going All the Way <\/em>got sweet revenge on the studios by being one of those rare independent films with a long shelf life.\u00a0 Ben Affleck appeared in it (before he became famous), which suddenly makes an obscure indie into a marketable feature.\u00a0 The copyright records indicated a complex web of finances and loans. Unfortunately, I couldn\u2019t track down who owned it for a theatrical screening.\u00a0 The rights history is online, but there are video rights and theatrical rights, and all sorts of other ancillary things. \u00a0 After a while it looks like buckshot on a rural stop sign.<\/p>\n

A buddy of mine tipped me off that the theatrical rights might be owned by a particular studio.\u00a0 I won\u2019t implicate them, partly because they\u2019re generally pretty nice, but they\u2019re known the world around.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

The lady yelled at me and screamed that I was an evil film pirate, and that they would sue me.\u00a0 I thanked her and told her that I\u2019d suddenly lost the film and I wouldn\u2019t be showing it.\u00a0 Normally, I\u2019d offer to let the studio borrow the print or use it for remastering, but not with an attitude like that!\u00a0 She confirmed that they didn\u2019t have a negative or print material on it.\u00a0 (It\u2019s not surprising… I think I counted twelve ownership changes since the film was released.\u00a0 Studios just bought rights in bulk and didn\u2019t check to see if film shipped on every title.)<\/p>\n

I point out that this explains why there isn\u2019t a legitimate DVD or Blu-Ray of Going All the Way<\/em>.\u00a0 With the film masters missing, no one has material good enough to reissue the film.\u00a0 It\u2019s not exactly lost, but it\u2019s the next thing to it.\u00a0 We\u2019ve got the low-definition master tape made for cable release and VHS.\u00a0 That\u2019s it.\u00a0 Amazon has some bootleg DVDs made from the VHS tapes.\u00a0 I\u2019m sure they look terrible.<\/p>\n

Let me interject here that projecting 35mm is a lot of work.\u00a0\u00a0You have to change reels every 20 minutes.\u00a0\u00a0It\u2019s heavy, and everything needs to be rewound afterward.\u00a0\u00a0I don\u2019t do it unless I really need to.\u00a0\u00a0So this film had been sitting in my basement, unseen, for all this time.\u00a0\u00a0I 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.<\/p>\n

Fast forward another year or two.\u00a0 A film festival wants to run Going All the Way<\/em>.\u00a0 They want to get Mr. Wakefield to attend the screening.\u00a0 They\u2019ve heard I have a print.\u00a0 They contact me and ask what I know about it.\u00a0 I tell them that the owner studio is hostile, but if they can get a legal clearance, I\u2019d be happy to let them use the print.<\/p>\n

But first, I\u2019d need to watch it to make sure the print is in good shape.\u00a0 In all these years I hadn\u2019t seen it.\u00a0 I figured it was time.<\/p>\n

I put in the first reel.\u00a0 It was ratty and brittle, but runnable. A couple of splices made with masking tape.\u00a0 Ick.\u00a0 The credits came up with the title, and a 1950s car.\u00a0 Looked OK.\u00a0 As\u00a0 I let it run, I realized that Ben Affleck wasn\u2019t in the movie, nor was anyone else I knew from the cast.\u00a0 This wasn\u2019t the right film!<\/p>\n

What I had gotten was a soft-core drive-in film called Goin\u2019 All the Way <\/em>(no g\u2014that\u2019s the key).\u00a0 I hadn\u2019t known it because it was on undated film stock.\u00a0I never had the film that I thought I’d had.\u00a0 The festival ran the correct movie from VHS (gag).\u00a0All that work to track down the owners and the rights, threats of lawsuits, and nothing!<\/p>\n

And still, it\u2019s possible that Going All the Way <\/em>will never be recovered on film. \u00a0It was made in 1997!\u00a0 If this film were a person, he wouldn\u2019t be old enough to drink yet!<\/p>\n

This is how films become lost.\u00a0 It\u2019s also how collectors, people who want to play the rules, will say, \u201cI don\u2019t have that.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know anything about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

No wonder that 50% of all films made before 1950 are said to be lost today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Film people are a different breed.\u00a0 It\u2019s a necessity.\u00a0 Some of you have heard the legends about some guy who has discovered the only print of Lon Chaney\u2019s London After Midnight (1927).\u00a0 The story goes that he\u2019s just waiting to cash in on the bonanza when the film\u2019s copyright expires.\u00a0 Well, there isn\u2019t a bonanza.\u00a0 … Continue reading “The Reclusive Collector, or How Films Become Lost”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"powered_cache_disable_cache":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,207],"tags":[32,33,17],"class_list":["post-45","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dr-films-pocket-rants","category-film","tag-copyright","tag-lost-films","tag-preservation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45","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=45"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":113,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45\/revisions\/113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}