{"id":770,"date":"2017-03-27T13:07:58","date_gmt":"2017-03-27T17:07:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/?p=770"},"modified":"2020-12-06T21:22:01","modified_gmt":"2020-12-07T02:22:01","slug":"travels-round-cozart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/?p=770","title":{"rendered":"Travels ‘Round Cozart"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
James Cozart (1940-2017) Photo stolen from Larry Smith<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Many of you know that James Cozart passed away on March 25.\u00a0 I can\u2019t say that I knew him well.\u00a0 I can say that I knew him, and that he was one of the most fascinating people I have ever come across.\u00a0 James knew more about film than anyone I ever met.\u00a0 He knew more in his little finger about film than I know in my whole body.\u00a0 And he was wonderful in putting it together into a whole picture.\u00a0 He knew different film stocks, different color processes, different sound recording techniques, even the way different studios sounded internally.<\/p>\n

But James wasn\u2019t wired the same way most of us are.\u00a0 If you want the classic absent-minded professor, it was James.\u00a0 Not that he was senile or anything, far from that.\u00a0 But he was focused so much on his work that he sometimes would miss the big picture.\u00a0 He would tell me things that I found hilarious, and I would laugh, and he would look at me, not understanding what was funny.\u00a0 If you had a problem with a film that he could help with, then he was so dedicated, so giving, that he would sometimes work on things to the detriment of his personal life.\u00a0 I know this because I caused some of these to happen, so I became careful when I asked him questions.<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t really spin a good narrative about James.\u00a0 I miss him a lot, and was saving some questions for him for Columbus Cinevent.\u00a0 What I can do is give you some of my favorite Cozart stories in a non-linear fashion.\u00a0 It\u2019s not the best way to do this, but it\u2019s the only way I can.<\/p>\n

For those of you who don\u2019t know, James was a fixture at the Library of Congress since at least the mid-70s.\u00a0 I don\u2019t really know when he started.\u00a0 (Update: Cynthia tells me that he started in 1984.\u00a0 Shows what I know.)\u00a0 He was always in charge of quality control at the labs, making sure that what came out looked good, and he was picky about it.\u00a0 We all have him to thank for that.\u00a0 He worked on literally hundreds of films, but because he worked at an archive, he didn\u2019t take credit for his work.\u00a0 It\u2019s very possible that no other person ever worked on restoring as many films as James has.\u00a0 Let that sink in for a moment.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

I was at the Cinecon in 1995 sitting next to Ted Larson (now also sadly deceased), and we were listening to Sylvia Sidney have an attitude attack about her career.\u00a0 She\u2019d written off the whole group, because someone who made up the program book listed her as Silvia Sydney, prompting her response \u201cI\u2019m not even here!\u201d\u00a0 She was further upset that they wouldn\u2019t let her smoke in the theater at UCLA, because it was a nitrate screening.\u00a0 \u201cNitrate, schmitrate,\u201d she yelled, as they started her film, Trail of the Lonesome Pine<\/em> (1936).<\/p>\n

Years later, I was discussing with James the change in carbon arc projection that occurred in 1940 or so, and how Technicolor changed the balance of the colors to accommodate the change in the color of the carbon arc.\u00a0 James said that the early prints would look yellowish today to balance the older bluer arcs.\u00a0 I mentioned the screening of Lonesome Pine<\/em> (I hadn\u2019t even been aware that Cozart was there, but he was.)\u00a0 I said that this print didn\u2019t look yellow to me, at which point James politely interrupted me.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat wasn\u2019t a 1936 print.\u00a0 That had a Realart logo on the front of it, which would have made it a 1948 reissue print.\u00a0 Still nitrate, but balanced for the newer arcs.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cJames, you remember a screening from 15 years ago with a logo that couldn\u2019t have been on screen for more than 5 seconds.\u201d<\/p>\n

He looked at me, surprised, and said, \u201cWell, yeah!\u201d<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

I was discussing with him the ways he\u2019d spliced zillions of films over the years.\u00a0 Jokingly, I told him, \u201cJames Cozart is the kind of guy who doesn\u2019t know where his own shoes are, but if you asked him where he spliced a film 20 years ago, he could tell you within 10 feet.\u201d \u2028\u2028He looked at me seriously, and said, \u201cNo, I think within 5 feet.\u201d<\/p>\n

Later on, when one of his co-workers found me alone, she laughed and told me confidentially that James occasionally came in with mismatched shoes.\u00a0 I\u2019d had no idea that was true.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Back in the early 90s, one of my first encounters with James was when he put out an APB for flickery old silent films.\u00a0 He described the special kind of flicker, saying it was Kinemacolor.\u00a0 I remembered that I had some of it in an old Castle newsreel.\u00a0 I sent it to him so that the Library could copy it.<\/p>\n

He wrote me back, saying that this was Kinemacolor, but he remembered seeing the footage before.\u00a0 He thought it was in an old Warners newsreel.<\/p>\n

After months, he found the newsreel and printed that instead.\u00a0 He restored the color to it and showed it at the next Cinesation.<\/p>\n

I asked him if I could get a print of the material.\u00a0 He told me it was impossible.\u00a0 I reminded him that I\u2019d helped, and that I\u2019d be happy to pay for the print.\u00a0 He then went on to explain archive procedure, and I learned a lesson then: too much red tape for me.\u00a0 That\u2019s why I don\u2019t work at an archive.<\/p>\n

But remember this. It will come back again…<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

A few years ago in Rome, NY, I was discussing with James some of the films he\u2019d brought.\u00a0 He then started to describe this rare nitrate that the library had been given, which he was inspecting.<\/p>\n

He had, just a couple of nights before, been locked into the building in Culpeper, VA.\u00a0 The Library of Congress has a strict security procedure and they close the doors, shut out the lights, and turn off the elevators at a certain time.<\/p>\n

James had been in his office inspecting this print, which he\u2019d gotten at 2pm, and then at 8pm (which was at least 2 hours after closing), they\u2019d shut off all the lights.<\/p>\n

He had to call security and tell them that he was still there, so he could get out.<\/p>\n

I laughed, and he looked at me again, with one of those looks that meant he didn\u2019t understand why this was funny.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou didn\u2019t eat, drink, go to the bathroom, call anyone, or even look out into the hall for six hours, because you were looking at that film,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, no.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd you don\u2019t understand why that\u2019s funny?\u201d<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

We were in Osgood Indiana seeing a theater called the Damm Theater, which was really its name.\u00a0 This was a treasure trove of wonderful stuff, and it was when the Library archives were still in Dayton Ohio.\u00a0 The family that owned the theater, the Damms, had never thrown anything away, and so the place was full of antiques.<\/p>\n

I contacted James and said that he needed to see this place.\u00a0 Osgood isn\u2019t that far from Dayton, so he agreed to come and spend the day.<\/p>\n

James identified pieces of projectors, Vitaphone disc players, and glass slides, all stuff that even I didn\u2019t recognize.\u00a0 We had dinner with the Damms and we all seemed to enjoy ourselves.<\/p>\n

The owner, Bob Damm, had some health issues, and he died a few years later.\u00a0 It was after the Library had moved to Culpeper.\u00a0 I spoke with his widow, and by happenstance, the next day, we met James in New York.<\/p>\n

We\u2019d just attended a screening of a print of Starevitch\u2019s The Mascot and I\u2019d noticed that the Library of Congress print had some footage in it that my print didn\u2019t have… but my print had some footage in it that theirs didn\u2019t have, too!<\/p>\n

I mentioned this to James, and he started to ask me some questions about the film.<\/p>\n

Before I got started, I told him about Bob Damm.\u00a0 Yes, he remembered, and there was a cursory, oh, sorry.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut tell me about the soundtrack of your print… is it English or French?\u201d<\/p>\n

That would have offended a lot of people.\u00a0 They would consider it mean and inconsiderate.\u00a0 But I smiled.\u00a0 It was just James.\u00a0 That\u2019s just how he was.\u00a0 He was seeking out material for a restoration!\u00a0 James couldn\u2019t be mean if he tried.\u00a0 It just wasn\u2019t in him.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

We were in the parking lot with James\u2019 wife Cynthia a couple of years ago and she told us that it was their 40th anniversary.\u00a0 James was a few feet ahead enthusiastically carrying a DVD player he\u2019d found.<\/p>\n

I scooted up and congratulated James.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, yeah,\u201d he said, \u201cBut did I tell you about this DVD player?\u00a0 It plays all the regions, and breaks out the copy guard, and you can directly access the MPEG layers on it.\u201d<\/p>\n

If I\u2019d been Cynthia, I\u2019d have smacked him.\u00a0 But she understood better than I did.\u00a0 I looked at her and smiled.\u00a0 She shrugged knowingly.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

James was a supporter of a television museum in Ohio.\u00a0 I\u2019ve never been to it, and I\u2019m not even sure which one it is, but he would restore TVs and donate them to the museum.\u00a0 One year at the Columbus Cinevent (it was the last year they had it in this hotel, so it would have been 2014), someone broke into James\u2018 car.\u00a0 By this time, the hotel was getting to be in a rather poor neighborhood and several people had cars that were vandalized.<\/p>\n

James told me that they\u2019d broken the front window and stolen his cell phone.\u00a0 But he was confused, because there was a fully restored 1949 television in the back seat worth $3000 that they just left.<\/p>\n

I mentioned that this TV was probably 80 pounds and more than they wanted to carry.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, but the cell phone didn\u2019t even have the charger with it. I can\u2019t find the charger.\u00a0 How much good can they get out of that?\u201d<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t think much of it until the next day.\u00a0 He came up to me and said, \u201cI found the charger.\u00a0 It was in my suitcase, inside my shoe!\u201d<\/p>\n

Glory burst out laughing.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t understand why.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Remember that story about the Kinemacolor?\u00a0 Well in the ensuing years, I have become a rambling film historian, and I do a show on old color processes in films.<\/p>\n

I decided that I was going to FINALLY get a print of that Kinemacolor footage even if I had to do it myself.\u00a0 So I did it myself.\u00a0 There\u2019s an amazing amount of documentation online, so I ordered a scan of my old Castle newsreel and went into Photoshop to recreate this effect manually, in preparation for putting this back onto film.<\/p>\n

But it didn\u2019t work.\u00a0 It looked funny and yellow.\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t understand it.<\/p>\n

I emailed James and told him what I was doing.\u00a0 Probably three lines in an email, just asking what was wrong.<\/p>\n

The next day, I got a seven-page letter back.\u00a0 He explained that Kinemacolor was shot with different filter than they used to play it back, so if I simply changed the filter color then it would all work out, which it did.<\/p>\n

But it took seven pages of detailed documentation to tell me this.\u00a0 By the way, it was terribly interesting and very pertinent, but seven pages?\u00a0 That was James.\u00a0 He had to be complete.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

I did a restoration on King of the Kongo<\/em>, and I\u2019d consulted with James a little on it.\u00a0 This was before the days when we had all the tools like DropBox that we have now.<\/p>\n

I uploaded the huge file to one of my servers, but Earthlink kept slowing it down due to traffic.\u00a0 Eventually, it would time out and you couldn\u2019t get to it at all.<\/p>\n

He emailed me and said that he\u2019d figured out their throttling algorithm, and that if he\u2019d get up at 3am, it wouldn\u2019t slow down until 6 and he could get it.<\/p>\n

I told him to wait on it.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cJames, it\u2019s Christmas Eve,\u201d I said.\u00a0 \u201cSpend some time doing something else.\u201d<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

We did a screening of Kongo<\/em> at Syracuse Cinefest, and I knew James would have something to say. Nothing about the film, nothing about the sound I\u2019d worked on, only this:<\/p>\n

\u201cI saw that before on the computer, but when I saw it on the big screen, I noticed that the white areas had halos around them.\u00a0 Who did that scan for you?\u00a0 They didn\u2019t use enough bit depth.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was the last time I used that company for scanning.\u00a0 He was right.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

I mentioned Leni Riefenstahl to James one time, and he told me that he\u2019d spoken with her.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, I threw out some film she made.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI was working at a lab and she\u2019d had the film developed, but she never paid for it and never printed it, so we sent her a letter, and she didn\u2019t respond, so we threw it out.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWow!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cShe called and started yelling at me in broken English, and I told her it was lab policy.\u00a0 I just handed the phone to my boss.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t want to listen to that.\u201d<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

The topic of Astoria (NY) studios came up once (I\u2019m not sure why), and he perked up and said, \u201cYou can always tell a movie that\u2019s shot there, because the sound is bad.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause the ceiling is some sort of glass vaulted dome and it reflects the sound back downward, so there\u2019s a bad echo in it.\u00a0 You can always hear it when you\u2019re watching a movie.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve noticed the films there don\u2019t sound that great, but I thought it was because of the early sound process.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo.\u00a0 When I was with the military in the late 50s, I helped design a sound baffle in there so we could shoot in that studio and make the sound come out right.\u00a0 I think they took it down later.\u201d<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

James famously never knew if a film was any good.\u00a0 He only knew if it was rare and he knew if the print quality was good.\u00a0 He couldn\u2019t identify the actors in the films by seeing them.\u00a0 He told me that he didn\u2019t register faces well.\u00a0 If it was really a terrible movie, then he\u2019d know how bad it was, because the actors weren\u2019t good, but sometimes a great movie went past him.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, I realized that he wasn\u2019t seeing the same film the rest of us saw.\u00a0 He saw a collection of actors, frames, effects, gamma changes, and little flaws that may or may not have been fixed.\u00a0 And that was OK, because he enjoyed that.\u00a0 He could tell you what sort of film stock was used in the original, what lab was used, etc, etc.\u00a0 He knew all of it.<\/p>\n

He told me once about Victory<\/em> (1918) that had a scene in it with Lon Chaney falling off a ledge.\u00a0 He said that in the nitrate, if you looked really closely, there was a thin wire on Chaney\u2019s ankle that stopped his fall before he broke his neck (there\u2019s a similar scene in Chaney\u2019s West of Zanzibar<\/em>.)\u00a0 James then told me that this was un-seeable on the DVD issue because they had duplicated the nitrate poorly.<\/p>\n

The catch?\u00a0 He couldn\u2019t even remember that it was Chaney in this scene, so he referred to him as \u201cthe actor.\u201d<\/p>\n

While we\u2019re on the topic of Chaney pictures, he was watching The Scarlet Car<\/em> (1917) and there\u2019s a scene in it that has the headlights of a car in a key scene.<\/p>\n

James was really interested in this since he knew that the color of headlights in those days wouldn\u2019t register on the sort of film they had in 1917.\u00a0 So he watched the nitrate over and over to figure it out.\u00a0 Finally he noticed the lights flickered a bit.\u00a0 AHA, he thought!\u00a0 AC wiring.\u00a0 He looked, and you could just barely see the long extension cords being run to power the headlights so that they showed up in the film.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

James usually rented a van to drive up to Capitolfest in Rome NY, so he could save shipping expenses on the films.\u00a0 They are in big, sturdy cans, and not a lot is going to hurt them. Anyone else would just have thrown the films in the back of the van and moved on.<\/p>\n

Not James.\u00a0 I helped him pack the films in the van a few times, and he always put the films in the seats and fastened seat belts around each can.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

I\u2019d visited Bruce Lawton\u2019s grandfather in 2004, and he had a print of Baron Munchausen<\/em> that we watched.\u00a0 It broke in one section, and Bruce\u2019s grandfather just took out the frames and handed them to me.<\/p>\n

A few days later I visited Rome NY for the first time at the Capitolfest, and James was there.\u00a0 I handed him the frames without saying anything.<\/p>\n

\u201cAgfacolor from the 1940s!\u201d he exclaimed.\u00a0 \u201cBut wait, this base isn\u2019t triacetate, and it\u2019s not nitrate either.\u00a0 I need to take this to the lab and examine it.\u201d<\/p>\n

I never did find out if he figured out what it was.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

You\u2019d think that James only understood film, but he was a technology master.\u00a0 He worked on lawn mowers, television sets, cobbled together computers from pieces, and understood and used digital restoration technology.<\/p>\n

I hate to imagine all the parts he\u2019s left behind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many of you know that James Cozart passed away on March 25.\u00a0 I can\u2019t say that I knew him well.\u00a0 I can say that I knew him, and that he was one of the most fascinating people I have ever come across.\u00a0 James knew more about film than anyone I ever met.\u00a0 He knew more … Continue reading “Travels ‘Round Cozart”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"powered_cache_disable_cache":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[207,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film","category-views-and-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/770","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=770"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/770\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":776,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/770\/revisions\/776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}