July 3, 2023 • 60 mins
This is the first of our REPLAY podcasts, where we revisit some of our early hidden gems, compilations, and most popular episodes.
Episode specific description:
Prepare yourselves, film buffs and cinema enthusiasts, as we embark on a fascinating journey through the ever-evolving film and home entertainment industries with none other than George Feltonstein of Warner Brothers. We'll be tracing George's illustrious career, from his roots in MGM UA to his current role in preserving classic films at Warner Brothers. He'll also share his insights on the marketing and distribution of these timeless creations, and his role as the producer for over 100 restored soundtrack album CDs.
In our conversation, we venture into the realm of technology's transformative impact on home entertainment. We unpack the revolutionary influence of the laserdisc format, the innovative extras MGM included in the Wizard of Oz anniversary edition, and the game-changing introduction of the DVD format by Warren Lieberfab in 1996.
Brace yourselves as George and I tango with the complex dance of niche audiences, film preservation, and profitability in the cinematic world. We'll delve into his experiences in catalog marketing during the heyday of VHS and DVD, explore the rise of brand marketing, and dissect the success of film franchises like Forbidden Hollywood. On top of that, we'll also touch on the allure of precode and film noir films for younger audiences, the crucial role of technology in film preservation, and Warner Brother's unique relationship with UCLA. Trust me, you don't want to miss the stories behind the preservation of classic films such as The Wizard of Oz, Casablanca, and Singin' in the Rain, and the paramount importance of preserving the tales behind these films' creation.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hi Tim Lard here.
Can you believe?
the extras has now released ahundred episodes and been
available for two years.
That's right.
We launched in June of 2021,just after I finished my tenure
at Warner Brothers.
Now I know that many of youwere not listening back then
because, well, no one was.
I started the podcast with zerolisteners and just hope that
(00:24):
there were other people likemyself who enjoy physical media
and who enjoy film history andwant to know more about the
films and TV shows and animationwe love.
These films and shows are soimportant to me and to you that
I hope you're finding that theextras is a place where we can
all celebrate and enjoy talkingabout them, hearing from experts
and just learning more aboutthem overall.
(00:45):
But my real purpose in thisintroduction is to tell you
about Replay, which is episodesfrom the Extras podcast archives
that I want to highlight, andthat's either because they are
from the very earliest podcastwe released, when it was just me
and a couple of friendslistening, or because they are
important enough that I want tobe sure all of our new listeners
get a chance to hear them.
I don't know how often we'll dothese, but if you see Replay in
(01:09):
the title, you'll know thatit's an episode from our
archives that you may havealready heard or when you missed
for whatever reason.
Then you can decide if you wantto listen to it or not.
So for our very first Replayepisode, i wanted to go back to
the very first podcast with myfriend and colleague George
Feltonstein of Warner Brothers.
Even though we worked togetherfor nearly 14 years, i didn't
(01:31):
know the story of how he gotstarted in the film business and
the journey his career hastaken from MGM UA to Turner and
finally the Warner Brothers.
It really is a story that spansmuch of the home entertainment
business and is a terrificreminder of why he is just so
knowledgeable about classic film.
So here is our first Replay ofepisode five of The Extras.
(01:56):
Hello and welcome to The Extras, where we take you behind the
scenes of your favorite TV shows, movies and animation and their
release on digital DVD, blueRain 4k or your favorite
streaming site.
I'm Tim, a larger host, andtoday we have a slightly
(02:19):
different show, as we'll betaking a bird's eye view on the
home entertainment industrybefore diving into a discussion
on some classic Hollywood filmsand animation and their extras.
Today's guest has long beeninvolved in the marketing and
distribution of classic film andtelevision projects, as well as
having served in variouscreative roles in the production
of documentaries.
He began his career at MGM UAhome video, where he first
(02:42):
brought the studio's classicfilm library to the home video
market, eventually becoming thesenior vice president and
general manager of the division.
He joined Time Warner in 1997to lead various initiatives
involving the studio's classics,including serving as producer
for over 100 restored soundtrackalbum CDs.
He also served as executiveproducer for several
(03:02):
documentaries seen on PBS, tcmand BBC, including Cary Grant A
Class Apart, and starred us theBetty Davis story, for which he
earned Emmy nomination.
The 2004 American Mastersdocumentary, judy Garland by
myself earned him the Emmy awardfor his role as executive
producer.
He also served as executiveproducer for the theatrical
(03:24):
concert film documentary Elvisthat's the way it is, special
edition 2000.
In 2002, he officially joinedthe executive ranks at Warner
Brothers Home Entertainment assenior vice president of
theatrical catalog marketing,overseeing the restoration and
release of the studio's massiveclassic catalog.
Throughout the decade, hedeveloped specialized box sets
(03:44):
collections and the concept ofthe ultimate collectors edition.
In 2009, he was part of theteam that launched the studio's
Warner archive collection, aspecialty sub label dedicated to
film enthusiasts, which hasreleased more than 3,500 films
and television programs from thecompany's library on DVD and
Blu-ray disc.
In 2005, the national board ofreview presented him with the
(04:06):
William K Eberson award for hiscontribution to film
preservation, and he isa hugetricky.
I have had the privilege ofworking with him for the past 13
years that I worked for WarnerBrothers Home Entertainment.
He is a legend in the homeentertainment industry.
George Felton Steen.
Welcome to the extras.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
Well, thank you very much, tim.
That was a very, very nice andhumbling introduction, and I'm
very, very grateful.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
Oh, you're welcome.
I was amazed when I readthrough your bio, just how much
you have done in your career.
One of the things that I alwaysthought set you apart, george,
is your love and knowledge offilm.
How did that love for film comeabout?
Speaker 2 (04:52):
I would say it started as close to infancy as
possible.
I started watching movies ontelevision as early as I can
remember and I was fascinated byfilm history at a very, very
young age and I was able to readby the time I was two, so I was
(05:21):
reading the arts and leisuresection of the New York Times at
that time.
I was kind of a little bit of astrange child because I was a
dichotomy.
There was a part of me that wasan adult, trapped in the
child's body, and then the otherpart of me was socially
(05:42):
immature.
So there was kind of adichotomy.
But I was most comfortablelearning about film.
I got my first film book at agefive for Christmas.
I spent days in the library at791.43, which was a dewy decimal
(06:02):
system location of film books,and I never knew whatI wanted to
do when I grew up, but I knewit had to involve film.
It was something that grew.
I used to cut school.
I grew up in suburban New York.
I would hop on the train and goto the Museum of Modern Art to
(06:25):
see films that you couldn't seeon television, and I would stay
up in the middle of the night,much to my parents' horror at
wake up at two o'clock in themorning to watch an important
film.
So I really had to do this kindof on my own.
I don't know what someone likeme would be like growing up now
(06:47):
when there is such access, butwhen I was a kid access was very
, very difficult.
So you had to plan a day forone screening at the Museum of
Modern Art at 12.30 on aWednesday afternoon to see a
harrow Lloyd movie because hismovies were out of distribution,
(07:09):
those things like that.
And fortunately, when I was inhigh school I met a whole bunch
of wonderful people who were afew grades ahead of me, but they
were all eight millimeter and16 millimeter film collectors
and the idea of collecting film.
(07:30):
Talking about film, i finallyhad friends because I had people
that I could talk to about myinterest.
I went to film school to be afilmmaker, but I didn't really
want to be a filmmaker.
What I wanted to do is what Iended up doing.
But what I ended up doingdidn't exist then and I went to
(07:53):
college at what is now calledPurchase College.
It's part of the StateUniversity of New York system,
so at the time it was calledState University of New York
College.
It purchased and they had afilm program there.
But that really wasn't myeducation for preparing me for
the working world.
And preparing me for theworking world was running the
(08:17):
college's AV Center, basicallysending projectors and films all
around the campus as anon-campus job, and I also ran
the campus film series, whichhad lost money traditionally
every year.
When I took it over it became avery, very profitable venture
and as a result I was solicitedby a film distribution company
(08:41):
recruited, i should say, while Iwas in my senior year of
college.
They said when you graduate, wewant you to come work for us.
And I graduated college when Iwas 20 and I went to work for
this company called FilmsIncorporated, where I was the
National Sales Manager for theirtheatrical repertory business.
By the time I was 21 and Ireally wanted to be in the home
(09:06):
video business, which was juststarting out at that time, and I
sent my resume over to MGM UAhome video with what I had done
with the various libraries thatfilms incorporated distributed
to repertory theaters, and Iwent over for an interview that
(09:27):
night and they said we want tohire you, but our company is
being bought and sold by TedTurner.
It was a real mess.
But after an eight or ninemonth period of waiting
impatiently I finally got hiredas their director of programming
, and this was in New York.
And in the middle of theprocess they said to me how do
(09:50):
you feel about moving to LosAngeles?
We're moving the company to thestudio in Culver City.
And I lied and I said that'llbe fine.
And the reason why I said Ilied because the idea of not
being in Manhattan.
I thought New York was thecenter of everything, and it
(10:11):
really is, except for the filmindustry.
The film industry is very muchhere And the video industry, the
home video industry, kind ofgrew out of one of two places.
It either grew out of people whohad been in the record business
or people who had been in thenon theatrical business, like I
(10:31):
was when I was at FilmsIncorporated.
So the people that ran MGME HomeVideo used to be at Columbia
Record Right.
So in those early days therecord people or the non
theatrical people were kind ofwhere the studios put their
executive power And they weremoving the company out to the
(10:55):
West Coast And all the otherstudios that still had New York
headquarters followed suit.
So by the early 90s, the wholehome video industry was in LA
Right.
So I was the director ofprogramming for MGME and then,
(11:16):
right after I started workingthere and my job specifically
was to start releasing classicsfrom their library, because they
really hadn't done that becauseof the way the video business
had developed, where they werecharging huge amounts of money
(11:37):
for video cassettes because theywere being rented and they
weren't being sold.
By the time I was recruited towork at MGME Home Video, they
were starting to push theprospect of movies to own at a
more reasonable price, which atthat time was 29.98.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
Right And was VHS kind of, by this time the
dominant format.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
VHS pulled out in front in the early 80s way,
before I was in the business.
Okay, i made the error at leastin my family's eyes as a child
of recommending that we buy aBetamax because Betamax had
better quality, right, and myparents were saying, but VHS
(12:29):
records longer and it's cheaper,and said no, no, no, beta is
better.
And it took me 10 yearsactually before I actually broke
down and bought the inferiorformat.
But it clearly pulled out infront and that format where Sony
never had a chance, but Betamax.
(12:50):
I have Betamax tapes from 40years ago that still play
perfectly and I still have aworking Betamax.
Wow, but it was beta VHS andlaser disk and laser disk was
something that was very nicheand it was something I really
didn't know that much about.
(13:11):
I had heard about it but when Istarted at MGM in New York I got
a call from a gentleman namedDoug Pratt who ran the laser
disk newsletter, which at thetime was a very popular
publication for nicheenthusiasts that were into laser
disk.
Laser disk was a very nichemarket And he and his wife lived
(13:37):
around the corner from myapartment, so he invited me over
to see the format and I washooked And meanwhile is around
this same time, a few yearsbefore that, the criterion
collection had released theirfirst laser desk, which was this
in Kane that had extras and acommentary.
(13:58):
So that was a pain of what wasto happen in the future in the
business.
They started with that And so Igot to MGM and I started
releasing classics on videocassette and a little bit on
laser disk and then more andmore on laser disk and tape, and
(14:23):
then we started releasingcollections and digging deeper
into the library And the 90swere a very heady time, but it
was the laser disk that wereally put the special features
Concept into play.
However, i will say this Myfirst day at MGM video I was in
(14:48):
a meeting and they said, well,we need to release some musicals
in the fall And I suggested afew, and the people there really
weren't familiar with thecontent at all.
They used to look in a bookcalled the MGM story and pick
titles out of the book, you knowjust randomly, i'm not kidding
(15:11):
about this.
So I suggested some titles andone of the titles I suggested
was a film called Summer Stockwith Judy Garland and Gene Kelly
, which was her last film, judyGarland's last film for MGM And
I suggested hey, why don't weadd the short subject that Judy
Garland made in 1936 everySunday to that last feature film
(15:37):
she made, because people don'thave a chance to own this or see
it Anywhere, and it'll make itreally cool and it costs really
nothing to put it on thecassette.
And people were looking at mecross-eyed like what's a short
subject?
And that was the beginning ofme starting to do things a
(16:00):
little bit differently And thatextended into the laser disk
market as well.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
So to kind of before we jump too far ahead, for that
VHS.
when you first started at MGMUA, you were involved in what
was called VAM is that correct?
The value added material evenat that point.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
Well, it wasn't.
It hadn't gotten that name yet.
And I think the first time thatwe did it at MGM was in 1989,
for the 50th anniversary of theWizard of Oz.
And we did it for both thevideo cassette versions, beta
(16:47):
and VHS, as well as the laserdisc.
And it's kind of interestingbecause when MGM entered into
the video business in 1980,that's when the studios were
finally entering the home videoindustry late 70s, early 80s And
(17:07):
in the first group of, i think,12 to 15 films that were
released by MGM's CBS video.
At the time it was a jointventure.
Wizard of Oz was catalog numberone, released in October of
1980.
And it was $59.98 for acassette, and the laser disc
(17:30):
didn't come till a few yearslater, but it was taken off the
print And for $60, you couldwatch the Wizard of Oz whenever
you wanted, instead of waitingevery year for when it would air
on television, which had becomebasically a national pastime.
(17:53):
So we can talk a little bitmore about that later.
But when I joined the company,wizard of Oz had been on video
for seven years.
There had already been are-release in a different
package And in 1989, i came upwith the idea of doing 50th
(18:19):
anniversary editions for Wizardof Oz and Gone with the Wind.
And, believe it or not,anniversary editions really
hadn't been done before, and Ifeel like I created a monster
because the concept has been sooverused and abused in the
(18:41):
ensuing decades that it issomething I really almost don't
like talking about.
I feel responsible for havingcreated a monster.
That's so funny, but I kind ofjoke because obviously some
films are worthy of celebratingan anniversary, and especially
(19:02):
if it's a major one like a 25thor a 50th or 75th.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
Well, going back to the laser disc format really
allowed you to go into thatvalue added or extras, and you
mentioned that Criterion didthat initially in 1985.
How did MGM and others respondto that idea of putting extras
(19:31):
on?
Is that something that quicklybecame the standard for whenever
you released a laser disc?
Speaker 2 (19:38):
Well, criterion was pretty much on their own in that
department And they were in ajoint venture with a company
called Voyager Prep.
And Criterion was and is ownedby or part of Janna's films, a
(20:00):
legacy, world-respectedinternational and art film
distribution company.
So they had this joint ventureto do these laser discs.
A few years into the future, inthe early 90s, it became fully
owned by Janna slash Criterion.
(20:21):
There was no more Voyager PrepAnd that's really when Criterion
exploded, still in the laserdisc business, and then
eventually DVD, blu-ray and soforth and so on.
And they're wonderful peopleBut they pretty much had that to
themselves.
(20:41):
What I did with Wizard of Oz waswe had an isolated music and
effects track so you could hearthe music of the film without
any dialogue.
We didn't have separate music,dialogue and effects on Wizard
of Oz, so you had to hear thechirps of the chicks at the
(21:03):
beginning and so forth and so on.
But the underscoring of thatmovie is so magnificent that it
won the Oscar over even thescore for Gone with the Wind.
So we thought that was a niceextra.
And we also had whole moviesshot by composer Harold Larlin
(21:24):
on the set of the movie.
We had a musical number calledthe Jitterbug.
That was cut out of the moviebefore release And it didn't
exist except in audio form.
But we used composer HaroldLarlin's whole movie, shot on
the set when they were doingthat movie, and recreated the
(21:48):
number.
So we created a little bit ofspecial features, slash, value
added material in 1989.
And it was on the laser discand the video cassette versions
of the 50th anniversary ofWizard of Oz with a little
booklet.
So that was extremelyrevolutionary for a major studio
(22:12):
to do.
And then after that I got veryinvolved on the laser disc side
because I was director ofprogramming for the whole
company But I also was head ofsales and marketing for laser
discs, which again was a nichebusiness.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
Right.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
So I was working directly with the accounts and I
started doing letterboxing oncatalog titles like Ben Hur and
Dr Shavago, which at the timewas considered insanity by other
people.
Over seas letterboxing waspretty common, especially in
(22:54):
Japan, but in this countrypeople were like what are those
black bars on the top of mytelevision?
And you know the originalaspect ratio?
be damned.
I wanted these anamorphiccinema scope panavision films to
be seen as they were shot andnot pan and scan.
(23:19):
And so in order to put Ben Hurand Dr Shavago out as reissues
on laser discs in letterboxformat we had to get half the
funding from our Japaneselicensee, a company called
Harold Boney, but it was a hugesuccess And because of that 20th
(23:41):
Century Fox decided to releaseDie Hard, which was a brand new
movie at the time, in letterboxformat.
So slowly but surely, all ofthe other studios started
releasing films in letterboxformat on laser discs and doing
(24:01):
special things on laser discs.
But I think it's fair to say,you know, criterion was their
own.
You know they had nocompetition as being the best of
the best in terms of creatingspecial edition.
But on a studio basis, i thinkwhat we did at MGM was very,
(24:26):
very impressive and very proudof what we did, and in fact a
lot of the things that we did atthat time later morphed into
DVD and then Blu-ray and even4-K.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
George, let's jump right into 1996, when the DVD
format was introduced and fairlyquickly, i think, probably
adopted by the studios.
Tell us a bit about thattechnology development and its
impact on the home entertainmentbusiness.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
Well, i'll go back to a pioneer electronics who, by
the way, had that patent on theLaserdisc format.
Pioneer was very, veryaggressive with having that
patent and really pushed thebusiness.
And the thing that stood in theway from Laserdisc getting more
mass adoption was they wereincredibly expensive to make and
(25:27):
therefore they were higherpriced And they never got past
the fact that you had to turn itover, you could only get one
hour on each side, and so forthand so on.
But going back to 1989, therewas a pioneer electronics
demonstration in Marina Del Reyat a hotel where all the home
(25:51):
video companies were getting alook at pioneers, new machines
And I was at MGM at the time.
Still, and across the aisle fromme was a gentleman by the name
of Warren Lieberfab who startedat Warner Home Video in 1982 and
(26:12):
was the head of the divisionfor 20 years and quite a
remarkable and visionaryindividual And I didn't know him
at the time, but he stood upwhen they were looking for
questions and he said when areyou going to be able to make me
(26:32):
a CD that's five inches, thatcan hold a movie with Laserdisc
or better quality that I canmanufacture for a dollar?
That was in 1989.
And he had the vision that heknew that if it was the cost of
(26:55):
making a video, consent was like$2.60 and the cost of making a
Laserdisc was $8.50 raw for justa two hour movie.
So if you did go to a thirddisc it was even more expensive.
So to get manufacturing costsdown, quality up, warren
envisioned that a CD movie let'scall it that because the word
(27:21):
DVD hadn't been invented yetcould be a game changer because
studios could sell movies at lowprices and people could build
collections.
And that's where he was focused.
And Warner worked with Toshibain developing a format, sony was
(27:43):
developing a format and Sonyhad recently bought Columbia
Pictures.
And Panasonic was developing aformat because their parent
company, metzuchia, had boughtUniversal Pictures.
So there were three basicallycompeting DVD formats being
(28:04):
developed around 1995, 1996.
And Warren being the astutevisionary, again I'll say it
that he was broker to deal where, instead of a format, or like
Beta versus VHS, that each ofthe three companies could have a
(28:26):
satisfactory piece of thepatent pie.
And so when the DVD wasintroduced in 1997, it was test
marketed, i believe in Seattleand Atlanta for a few months
before it went nationwide, ithink 2498 list price and quite
(28:51):
a wide assortment of recenttheatrical titles from all the
major studios.
And it hit like a bang and gotadopted by the consumers with a
rapid amount the quickestadopted, biggest consumer
(29:17):
electronic industry product inhistory.
I believe that still holds true.
It was revolutionary becauseyou didn't have to rewind it.
There were special featuresadded to some of them There's
that special features thing Andthe price was reasonable so you
(29:39):
could collect and build alibrary of discs the way you
would build a library of booksor records or CDs or so forth
and so on.
So the industry was in UnitedFront.
There was a robust retailenvironment because you had
(30:00):
places like Power Video andSuncoast and Virgin, all these
different stores.
Everybody got behind the format.
The industry was in love withit.
Now, at the same time, you hadDVDs going to Walmart where
(30:22):
nobody wanted Letterbox, nobodywanted original aspect ratio.
So there had to be almost twoversions of new movies when they
came out, or later on theydeveloped the technology to have
the flipper discs which you'reprobably familiar with, and then
(30:46):
eventually, once widescreentelevisions hit in the middle of
the op, that was the end of Panand Scan.
Thank God, the adoption of DVDwas rabid and it also expanded
the audience into a mass marketproduct for owning movies.
(31:12):
And it was a phenomenal timebecause everybody was only
seeing upside And it really wasa time when what a film could do
on DVD could sometimes be moremoney for its owner than
(31:33):
theatrical performance or anyother media at that initial
release period.
So it was very, very exciting.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
Yeah, that was an extremely revolutionary time for
those of us who were kind ofgrowing up in that era.
just the ability to I mean thequality level of what you were
used to seeing on yourtraditional television just shot
up, and then the satisfactionthat, no matter where you lived,
you could own that movie.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
Yep, absolutely, and the price was low enough that it
was affordable and you couldmove chapters.
It had a lot of thefunctionality.
It was like a little laser disc.
It had all the functionalitythat laser disc had.
It did not have, initially,uncompressed digital audio.
(32:25):
It was lossy audio like you geton an iPod compressed audio.
But that didn't last very longand went from Dolby Digital to
Dolby True HD and DTS And so youhad lossless audio eventually
at a later date And that reallyI think I think that really hit
(32:48):
with the Blu-ray disc, which wasanother format where Blu-ray
versus HD DVD in 2005 and 2006.
That was where you had thelossless audio.
But that's all part of whatmade this product so attractive.
I look back to 1997, the moviesthat were really making a
(33:14):
difference.
Sony's release of the fifthelement was a brand new movie
And it was 5.1 surround audioand beautiful picture and
director commentary and allthose different things.
A lot of those things had onlybeen available on these very
(33:37):
expensive laser discs And nowthey could have even far better
quality on a little DVD discthat was relatively inexpensive.
So it was a game changer Andthe first title to sell a
million units on DVD happenedwithin the first two years, and
(33:59):
it was The Matrix, which, as aDVD itself, was a remarkable
disc in terms of extra features.
Speaker 1 (34:08):
That is the first disc I ever purchased.
Obviously, i was a huge fan ofthe movie itself, and when that
DVD came out, i just recall theexcitement that I had and fans
had.
It's always the movie itselffirst, but then, when you bought
(34:30):
the movie and when I watched itand I saw all of these extras
because the movie was so mindblowing you did want to know how
did they do this, both from thewriting all the way to the
visual effects, and that was agame changer for me.
Speaker 2 (34:44):
Absolutely.
And the thing is is that thistiny little market of laser
discs.
Laser discs never got past, Ithink, two million households,
whereas DVD very quickly becamepretty common in almost every
household.
So it went from a niche product, where you had those kind of
(35:09):
special features, to the thingyou could buy in the local store
at a very reasonable price,having those extra features.
Speaker 1 (35:18):
I was working at Microsoft Studios back in that
era and so I worked with a lotof people in technology And
there was of course a desire tobe kind of on the cutting edge.
But a lot of us were watchingour movies on our computers
because they had DVD players.
So that was another part of theexpansion of the DVD, not just
(35:43):
the standalone players but alsothe whole PC market at that time
, because the matrix kind of aturning point in the industry
and did extras then become justmore prominent in terms of their
importance for the sale andpromotion of the films.
Speaker 2 (36:03):
I would say that it was the most ambitious DVD
produced up to that time interms of extra features and it
set the bar higher.
There had been previous to that, both on laser and sometimes
(36:23):
even a little bit on tape, wherethere'd be a director
commentary or there'd be alittle feature at documentary,
but never anything quite socreative as what was done with
the matrix.
It was a game changer And itraised the bar and it challenged
disc producers to have to beable to think out of the box and
(36:49):
do more creative things.
And I had no involvement withthe creation of the Matrix DVD
Someone that you and I both know, paul Hemstreet.
He was the genius in charge ofthe Matrix DVD.
It was all his vision.
(37:09):
He certainly didn't do it alonebut practically and he worked
with the filmmakers, and that'sthe other thing.
Great about DVD Is filmmakersembraced laser disc but it was
not a mass market product.
Dvd was embraced by filmmakersAnd it was a mass market product
(37:34):
, so filmmakers felt that theycould get a lot more of their
message and they could takepride in the DVD that was
created on a new movie.
And I say all this where myfocus had primarily been almost
entirely focused on older films,classic films and the
(37:58):
restoration of them.
There were a few new theatricalfilms that I was involved in
during my tenure at MGM becauseI was the head of the division,
so things like Felma and Louise.
I was very involved with thatand that was the number one
title of its year And I tookgreat pride in that.
(38:19):
But for all intents andpurposes I'm the classic movie
guy.
Speaker 1 (38:25):
Let me go back to transition kind of into that.
I want to quote an article fromAV Club back in 2005 where you
were featured.
Quote it says by and large, theDVD business is driven by
recent theatrical releases, justas the VHS business always has
been.
Dvds usually contain morespecial features with a
(38:47):
substantially lower initialretail price.
But aside from calculating thefirst run to home video window,
it doesn't take a lot of thoughtto make an.
Insert your movie title Themovie into again.
Insert the movie title into theDVD.
The visionaries of the DVDbusiness and the heroes to movie
lovers everywhere are the oneswho find a way to present older
(39:11):
movies in such a way that theylook vital and relevant.
So let's talk about that.
You were that or have been thatclassic movie guy.
There's these two products,that kind of that general
audience, and then the nicheaudience.
With your role in catalogmarketing, you were focused on
(39:31):
that niche audience.
When did that niche audiencestart to become more important
to home entertainment revenue?
Speaker 2 (39:39):
This really goes back before the days of laser desk,
even to video cassette.
What I did at MGM when I gotthere was I started doing
something that is now verycommon And it's called brand
marketing.
We started releasing six filmswith a certain actor or
(40:03):
performer or director orcharacter.
We didn't if my memory is isnot failing me, we didn't really
do the box sets in the VHS era.
That was more of a DVD thing.
Ok, but for example, when I wasat MGM away, the rights to the
(40:28):
James Bond movies had been soldby United Artists to CBS Fox
video And they reverted back toMGM away on video in 1988.
So I released the six SeanConnery movies as the Connery
(40:51):
collection and the six RogerMoore movies as more Bond, and
these were new masters and I wasplaying up the quality.
Now this is this is a long time, it is like 30 plus years ago
But at the time that wasconsidered Oh wow, this is
(41:12):
different, you know, like takinggroups of movies together and
marketing them in a way that wasinteresting and affordable.
We developed a franchise, ifyou will, in the late 80s, of
movies made before theproduction code that we called
Forbidden Hollywood Right, andmy good friend Leonard Moulton
(41:37):
was critically involved in thedevelopment of that concept And
he hosted the first releaseswith opens and closes.
And this is way before therewas TPM.
Tnt was just getting launchedAnd TNT in its early days was a
(41:58):
little bit like TPM withcommercials, but there wasn't
any curation to it, it just wasa place for Ted Turner to show
his library.
But my point was that we took alittle extra effort to market
these things in such a way onboth cassette and laser disc
(42:21):
that took on a life of its ownAnd eventually they were
Forbidden Hollywood DVD box set.
There were been 10 volumes ofthat.
There were three laser discboxes And then TPM put out their
own Forbidden Hollywood book.
So I'm very happy to say thatwe were at the beginning of that
(42:44):
.
And I would say precode moviesand film noir films are the best
kind of old, old movies toentice and interest younger
audiences.
Why is that?
Because they surprise theaudience member of a good film
(43:07):
When they start watching it.
They're shocked at kind of thereality.
You know, the precode movieswere far more realistic and
dealing with themes that weren'tallowed on the screen for the
next 30 some odd years.
So there is a shock value to it.
And also the films are verywell made, especially the films
(43:31):
that were made at WarnerBrothers.
And the film noir movies reallyare timeless in their ability
to attract an audience,especially the good ones.
And we really hit the jackpotwith film noir when we started
film noir collections on DVD in2004.
(43:56):
And we did five volumes of themin every other studio.
Basically a the strategy, andfilm noir is now far more of a
magnet and far more well knownnow than it was in 2004 when we
(44:16):
put out our first DVD box set.
So those are just examples,right.
Speaker 1 (44:22):
Right One thing you can't kind of go and talk about
what you did with the olderfilms and bringing them to the
DVD format without also talkinga little about about the role of
film preservation.
as many of these films are, youknow, we're decades old.
Maybe you could talk a littlebit about the unique
relationship Warner Brothers haswith UCLA and how working with
(44:48):
them maybe impacted some of yourrelease schedule for these
classic films.
Speaker 2 (44:52):
Well, ucla film and television archive has been
around for more than 50 yearsand they were really, along with
several other organizationsaround the world, various
archives.
(45:12):
They were dedicated to tryingto rescue films and this was
long before there was home videoAnd they would search out the
best materials and try to getnitrate film elements before
they would deteriorate andprotect and preserve them.
(45:34):
Warner Brothers started todeposit all of it nitrate
holdings with UCLA in 1979.
So the studio's relationshipwith UCLA goes back a very, very
(45:54):
long time And their archivistsare remarkable people And most
recently this shows you howtechnology improves and what
changes.
In the 80s there were two veryrare Warner Brothers prints that
(46:17):
belonged to Jack Warner.
One of them was a film calledDoctor X, which was shot in the
two-color technical process, andthe film made the year after
called Mystery the Wax Museum,which was also shot in the
two-color technical process, andit was a red-green process that
(46:38):
didn't look realistic.
The Technicolor companythereafter developed a
three-color technical processthat perfected the way color
looked on film And that began tobe used slowly but surely in
(47:02):
the latter part of the 30s bythe studios, climaxing in 1939
with films like Gone with theWind and Wizard of Oz.
But going back to this earlytwo-color Technicolor period,
the two-color process was sodifferent that the ability to
(47:25):
manufacture prints anddistribute them for the future
was basically considered.
Nobody really was thinkingabout the future in the 30s and
they certainly didn't thinkabout being able to make prints
of these things.
So only black and whitenegatives were kept on both of
(47:49):
those films And the only waythat you could see the original
color presentation was with JackWarner's personal beat-up
prints.
Now I believe it was the late60s, early 70s the AFI, along
with other organizations, madeduplicate negative materials on
(48:16):
Mystery the Wax Museum So youcould actually see it on
television.
It looked awful, it was beat up, it was scratched, the colors
were not right, but you weregetting to see a facsimile of
what it really was supposed tolook like.
And then in the 80s UCLA didphotochemical preservation of
(48:41):
those elements And that wasreleased eventually on Laserdisc
and Videocassette in the late80s And I was involved in that.
But in the last two or threeyears UCLA and Warner Brothers
(49:01):
have been working together onvarious projects along with the
Film Foundation, and bothMystery the Wax Museum and Dr X
were completely restored so thatthey now look immaculate and
they're available on Blu-raythrough the Warner Archive
(49:21):
collection, which we'll talkabout in a little while.
But that's just indicative ofthe way that UCLA and Warner
Brothers work hand in hand,especially since they retain all
of our deposited studio nitrateprints And we constantly are in
(49:47):
conversations with them andthey'll say, hey, this film is
starting to go, do you haveprotection?
and so forth and so on.
But they put a lot of focus atUCLA on films that we call
orphan films, films that wereproduced by companies that are
no longer in business, and theyprotect them.
(50:10):
So they really really dowonderful work And it's a
wonderful partnership.
And we share the same kind ofpartnership with the George
Eastman Museum in Rochester, newYork, which is where most of
the MGM nitrate is stored.
And we can't not mentionanother incredible important
(50:35):
home for a lot of our earlynegatives on the Warner Brothers
and RKO side, which is theLibrary of Congress.
And we also work very closelywith the film department at the
Museum of Modern Art.
So those are really the primarypartners in preservation that
(50:56):
we work with now, and we workedwith them 30 years ago
photochemically to make newnegatives and new prints.
Now what we're doing is we'rescanning these elements where
nothing touches the film, so thefilm can't be damaged.
We're scanning at 4K or 8K andwe're scanning for the future.
(51:21):
So you have that raw scanbacked up on several servers And
right now we've made these newmasters that are available on
Blu-ray and can be shown as DCPsdigitally in theaters.
But if somebody needs to goback to the film element they
(51:41):
don't want to touch it becauseit's going to get more brittle
and it's being stored verycarefully We can go to the scan
that's in our archives and workfrom there.
So if something is going tohappen in, let's say, 2028 or 29
and we're working in 12K orsomething In a format we can't
(52:06):
even think of today, there'll bethat to go back to.
So it's trying to future-proof.
Film preservation is incrediblyimportant and we have come the
industry has come a tremendousway in recognizing the value of
its films, because initiallythere were only two studios that
(52:30):
started doing film preservationwith nitrate film, which is
extremely flammable and subjectto decomposition and
deterioration In the 1960s, andthose companies were MGM, whose
library through 1986 is owned byWarner Brothers now and has
(52:50):
been for decades, and Disney.
The Warner Brothers filmownership was kind of split
between United Artists andWarner Brothers, and it wasn't
until the older Warner Brothersfilms made it on the journey
from United Artists to Turner,back to Warner Brothers, that
(53:13):
the Warner Pre-49 librarystarted to get preserved
properly.
And all that has a very, veryhappy ending because film
preservation is extraordinarilyimportant to the company And I'm
very grateful to be part of thegroup of people that works on
that And then brings it out onhome video Right.
Speaker 1 (53:35):
Yeah, kind of in terms of the timing, how did you
look at the preservationprocess?
Did you, when you went to lookat a release of a film and I'm
not talking about one of thefilms that maybe has been
released multiple times, but asyou started to go a little bit
deeper into the catalog wouldkind of, how did that process
(53:55):
work?
Would you talk to somebody atUCLA about a title and then they
would look at it and you'd say,okay, this is going to take six
months, a year, two years toget to the place where we could
release this.
How did that impact yourrelease schedule and thinking
and planning?
Speaker 2 (54:10):
Thank, you Well, for I would say, the first many
years of my career I was relyingon the work and judgment of
other people who had thoseresponsibilities within the
organizations, whether it be MGMor Turner or then Warner
(54:34):
Brothers.
My job was to.
I told them what I wanted.
You know, let's release thispre-code movie, babyface.
We need a new master so itlooks really, really great,
because the old master is from1988, so we would get a cost and
run a P&L and make sure it wasprofitable and then it would be
(54:58):
put into play.
And that's a very importantthing to also mention is I
always have to put profit beforepassion or preference.
Work for public companies andwe have shareholders and we have
to deliver a profit.
(55:18):
So it's art versus commerce.
And if you could find the rightbalance where you can do
something that is going tofurther, something rare being
preserved, and also make itprofitable for the company, that
(55:39):
is the ultimate goal and Ithink that has been something
I've been blessed to be able todo.
But what happened was in thelast 10 years I started to
become much more personallyinvolved with the actual film
(56:00):
element process andunderstanding more about
original negatives andinter-positives and
inter-negatives and versions andaudio tracks and magnetic
tracks and dealing with vinegarsyndrome, which can basically
(56:22):
destroy a safety film movie.
I started to work very closelywith our colleagues at Warner
Brothers Motion Picture Imagingon finding ways to make
beautiful new masters of ourfilms where the quality was
(56:43):
absolutely pristine and we coulddo so in a way that could be
profitable, and that has been agreat gift.
I learned more new things, ideveloped additional skills and
abilities and the benefit alsowas the company got to release a
(57:04):
lot more classic product andmake a lot more money from it.
So that's a really, really goodthing.
And then it's used in othermedia, like it's used on
television and it's used onairlines and streaming and in
schools and in theaters.
So when you have the world'slargest film library, that's a
(57:25):
very, very significantresponsibility.
And we have on staff one personwho just retired and I'll
mention his name, stephenAnastasi, who goes back to the
days at Turner, who's justphenomenal in terms of taking
care of all of our assets, andhe just retired and his second
(57:49):
man is now leading with charge.
So what's going on at WarnerBrothers right now is what we
jokingly refer to aspreservation on steroids,
because basically these films, alot of them have to be
prioritized in terms of triageWhat's in the worst shape, that
(58:10):
is at risk, that has to be putbefore other films, unless
there's also somethingcommercially driving the need
for another film.
And when they come togetherthen that's the beauty of it,
because you're preserving,saving an asset, improving it
(58:31):
and also getting to monetize it.
But it isn't strictly themonetization that is behind the
preservation, it's both.
And it has been particularlyrewarding for me to work with
the colorists at MPI, the peoplethat are scanning the film, so
(58:51):
forth and so on, to make surethat we get just the right
results.
And the consumers have beenvery happy with the end product
and that's very gratifying.
Speaker 1 (59:02):
Right.
I've always thought, as aperson working on the extras,
that the extras in and ofthemselves oftentimes are
another part of the preservation, not of the film but of the
story of the making of the film,and part of that is talking to
the producers and the writersand some of the crew people
(59:25):
things that in the older days,of course, you know they didn't
think about necessarily doing,but we do think about that now.
You've been listening to partone of a three-part series with
the legendary home entertainmentexecutive, george Feltonstein.
In upcoming episodes, i will bespeaking with George about his
work on classic Hollywood filmreleases The Wizard of Oz,
(59:47):
casablanca, singing in the Rainand many more.
For those of you interested inlearning more about the extras
discussed in the show today,there will be more information
on the website, atwwwtheextrastv, and if you're
enjoying the guests we have inthe show, please subscribe and
leave us a review at iTunes,spotify or your favorite podcast
(01:00:07):
provider.
Until next time you've beenlistening to The Extras with Tim
Malart, stay slightly obsessed.
Hi Tim Lard here.
Can you believe?
the extras has now released ahundred episodes and been
available for two years.
That's right.
We launched in June of 2021,just after I finished my tenure
at Warner Brothers.
Now I know that many of youwere not listening back then
because, well, no one was.
I started the podcast with zerolisteners and just hope that
(00:24):
there were other people likemyself who enjoy physical media
and who enjoy film history andwant to know more about the
films and TV shows and animationwe love.
These films and shows are soimportant to me and to you that
I hope you're finding that theextras is a place where we can
all celebrate and enjoy talkingabout them, hearing from experts
and just learning more aboutthem overall.
(00:45):
But my real purpose in thisintroduction is to tell you
about Replay, which is episodesfrom the Extras podcast archives
that I want to highlight, andthat's either because they are
from the very earliest podcastwe released, when it was just me
and a couple of friendslistening, or because they are
important enough that I want tobe sure all of our new listeners
get a chance to hear them.
I don't know how often we'll dothese, but if you see Replay in
(01:09):
the title, you'll know thatit's an episode from our
archives that you may havealready heard or when you missed
for whatever reason.
Then you can decide if you wantto listen to it or not.
So for our very first Replayepisode, i wanted to go back to
the very first podcast with myfriend and colleague George
Feltonstein of Warner Brothers.
Even though we worked togetherfor nearly 14 years, i didn't
(01:31):
know the story of how he gotstarted in the film business and
the journey his career hastaken from MGM UA to Turner and
finally the Warner Brothers.
It really is a story that spansmuch of the home entertainment
business and is a terrificreminder of why he is just so
knowledgeable about classic film.
So here is our first Replay ofepisode five of The Extras.
(01:56):
Hello and welcome to The Extras, where we take you behind the
scenes of your favorite TV shows, movies and animation and their
release on digital DVD, blueRain 4k or your favorite
streaming site.
I'm Tim, a larger host, andtoday we have a slightly
(02:19):
different show, as we'll betaking a bird's eye view on the
home entertainment industrybefore diving into a discussion
on some classic Hollywood filmsand animation and their extras.
Today's guest has long beeninvolved in the marketing and
distribution of classic film andtelevision projects, as well as
having served in variouscreative roles in the production
of documentaries.
He began his career at MGM UAhome video, where he first
(02:42):
brought the studio's classicfilm library to the home video
market, eventually becoming thesenior vice president and
general manager of the division.
He joined Time Warner in 1997to lead various initiatives
involving the studio's classics,including serving as producer
for over 100 restored soundtrackalbum CDs.
He also served as executiveproducer for several
(03:02):
documentaries seen on PBS, tcmand BBC, including Cary Grant A
Class Apart, and starred us theBetty Davis story, for which he
earned Emmy nomination.
The 2004 American Mastersdocumentary, judy Garland by
myself earned him the Emmy awardfor his role as executive
producer.
He also served as executiveproducer for the theatrical
(03:24):
concert film documentary Elvisthat's the way it is, special
edition 2000.
In 2002, he officially joinedthe executive ranks at Warner
Brothers Home Entertainment assenior vice president of
theatrical catalog marketing,overseeing the restoration and
release of the studio's massiveclassic catalog.
Throughout the decade, hedeveloped specialized box sets
(03:44):
collections and the concept ofthe ultimate collectors edition.
In 2009, he was part of theteam that launched the studio's
Warner archive collection, aspecialty sub label dedicated to
film enthusiasts, which hasreleased more than 3,500 films
and television programs from thecompany's library on DVD and
Blu-ray disc.
In 2005, the national board ofreview presented him with the
(04:06):
William K Eberson award for hiscontribution to film
preservation, and he isa hugetricky.
I have had the privilege ofworking with him for the past 13
years that I worked for WarnerBrothers Home Entertainment.
He is a legend in the homeentertainment industry.
George Felton Steen.
Welcome to the extras.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
Well, thank you very much, tim.
That was a very, very nice andhumbling introduction, and I'm
very, very grateful.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
Oh, you're welcome.
I was amazed when I readthrough your bio, just how much
you have done in your career.
One of the things that I alwaysthought set you apart, george,
is your love and knowledge offilm.
How did that love for film comeabout?
Speaker 2 (04:52):
I would say it started as close to infancy as
possible.
I started watching movies ontelevision as early as I can
remember and I was fascinated byfilm history at a very, very
young age and I was able to readby the time I was two, so I was
(05:21):
reading the arts and leisuresection of the New York Times at
that time.
I was kind of a little bit of astrange child because I was a
dichotomy.
There was a part of me that wasan adult, trapped in the
child's body, and then the otherpart of me was socially
(05:42):
immature.
So there was kind of adichotomy.
But I was most comfortablelearning about film.
I got my first film book at agefive for Christmas.
I spent days in the library at791.43, which was a dewy decimal
(06:02):
system location of film books,and I never knew whatI wanted to
do when I grew up, but I knewit had to involve film.
It was something that grew.
I used to cut school.
I grew up in suburban New York.
I would hop on the train and goto the Museum of Modern Art to
(06:25):
see films that you couldn't seeon television, and I would stay
up in the middle of the night,much to my parents' horror at
wake up at two o'clock in themorning to watch an important
film.
So I really had to do this kindof on my own.
I don't know what someone likeme would be like growing up now
(06:47):
when there is such access, butwhen I was a kid access was very
, very difficult.
So you had to plan a day forone screening at the Museum of
Modern Art at 12.30 on aWednesday afternoon to see a
harrow Lloyd movie because hismovies were out of distribution,
(07:09):
those things like that.
And fortunately, when I was inhigh school I met a whole bunch
of wonderful people who were afew grades ahead of me, but they
were all eight millimeter and16 millimeter film collectors
and the idea of collecting film.
(07:30):
Talking about film, i finallyhad friends because I had people
that I could talk to about myinterest.
I went to film school to be afilmmaker, but I didn't really
want to be a filmmaker.
What I wanted to do is what Iended up doing.
But what I ended up doingdidn't exist then and I went to
(07:53):
college at what is now calledPurchase College.
It's part of the StateUniversity of New York system,
so at the time it was calledState University of New York
College.
It purchased and they had afilm program there.
But that really wasn't myeducation for preparing me for
the working world.
And preparing me for theworking world was running the
(08:17):
college's AV Center, basicallysending projectors and films all
around the campus as anon-campus job, and I also ran
the campus film series, whichhad lost money traditionally
every year.
When I took it over it became avery, very profitable venture
and as a result I was solicitedby a film distribution company
(08:41):
recruited, i should say, while Iwas in my senior year of
college.
They said when you graduate, wewant you to come work for us.
And I graduated college when Iwas 20 and I went to work for
this company called FilmsIncorporated, where I was the
National Sales Manager for theirtheatrical repertory business.
By the time I was 21 and Ireally wanted to be in the home
(09:06):
video business, which was juststarting out at that time, and I
sent my resume over to MGM UAhome video with what I had done
with the various libraries thatfilms incorporated distributed
to repertory theaters, and Iwent over for an interview that
(09:27):
night and they said we want tohire you, but our company is
being bought and sold by TedTurner.
It was a real mess.
But after an eight or ninemonth period of waiting
impatiently I finally got hiredas their director of programming
, and this was in New York.
And in the middle of theprocess they said to me how do
(09:50):
you feel about moving to LosAngeles?
We're moving the company to thestudio in Culver City.
And I lied and I said that'llbe fine.
And the reason why I said Ilied because the idea of not
being in Manhattan.
I thought New York was thecenter of everything, and it
(10:11):
really is, except for the filmindustry.
The film industry is very muchhere And the video industry, the
home video industry, kind ofgrew out of one of two places.
It either grew out of people whohad been in the record business
or people who had been in thenon theatrical business, like I
(10:31):
was when I was at FilmsIncorporated.
So the people that ran MGME HomeVideo used to be at Columbia
Record Right.
So in those early days therecord people or the non
theatrical people were kind ofwhere the studios put their
executive power And they weremoving the company out to the
(10:55):
West Coast And all the otherstudios that still had New York
headquarters followed suit.
So by the early 90s, the wholehome video industry was in LA
Right.
So I was the director ofprogramming for MGME and then,
(11:16):
right after I started workingthere and my job specifically
was to start releasing classicsfrom their library, because they
really hadn't done that becauseof the way the video business
had developed, where they werecharging huge amounts of money
(11:37):
for video cassettes because theywere being rented and they
weren't being sold.
By the time I was recruited towork at MGME Home Video, they
were starting to push theprospect of movies to own at a
more reasonable price, which atthat time was 29.98.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
Right And was VHS kind of, by this time the
dominant format.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
VHS pulled out in front in the early 80s way,
before I was in the business.
Okay, i made the error at leastin my family's eyes as a child
of recommending that we buy aBetamax because Betamax had
better quality, right, and myparents were saying, but VHS
(12:29):
records longer and it's cheaper,and said no, no, no, beta is
better.
And it took me 10 yearsactually before I actually broke
down and bought the inferiorformat.
But it clearly pulled out infront and that format where Sony
never had a chance, but Betamax.
(12:50):
I have Betamax tapes from 40years ago that still play
perfectly and I still have aworking Betamax.
Wow, but it was beta VHS andlaser disk and laser disk was
something that was very nicheand it was something I really
didn't know that much about.
(13:11):
I had heard about it but when Istarted at MGM in New York I got
a call from a gentleman namedDoug Pratt who ran the laser
disk newsletter, which at thetime was a very popular
publication for nicheenthusiasts that were into laser
disk.
Laser disk was a very nichemarket And he and his wife lived
(13:37):
around the corner from myapartment, so he invited me over
to see the format and I washooked And meanwhile is around
this same time, a few yearsbefore that, the criterion
collection had released theirfirst laser desk, which was this
in Kane that had extras and acommentary.
(13:58):
So that was a pain of what wasto happen in the future in the
business.
They started with that And so Igot to MGM and I started
releasing classics on videocassette and a little bit on
laser disk and then more andmore on laser disk and tape, and
(14:23):
then we started releasingcollections and digging deeper
into the library And the 90swere a very heady time, but it
was the laser disk that wereally put the special features
Concept into play.
However, i will say this Myfirst day at MGM video I was in
(14:48):
a meeting and they said, well,we need to release some musicals
in the fall And I suggested afew, and the people there really
weren't familiar with thecontent at all.
They used to look in a bookcalled the MGM story and pick
titles out of the book, you knowjust randomly, i'm not kidding
(15:11):
about this.
So I suggested some titles andone of the titles I suggested
was a film called Summer Stockwith Judy Garland and Gene Kelly
, which was her last film, judyGarland's last film for MGM And
I suggested hey, why don't weadd the short subject that Judy
Garland made in 1936 everySunday to that last feature film
(15:37):
she made, because people don'thave a chance to own this or see
it Anywhere, and it'll make itreally cool and it costs really
nothing to put it on thecassette.
And people were looking at mecross-eyed like what's a short
subject?
And that was the beginning ofme starting to do things a
(16:00):
little bit differently And thatextended into the laser disk
market as well.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
So to kind of before we jump too far ahead, for that
VHS.
when you first started at MGMUA, you were involved in what
was called VAM is that correct?
The value added material evenat that point.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
Well, it wasn't.
It hadn't gotten that name yet.
And I think the first time thatwe did it at MGM was in 1989,
for the 50th anniversary of theWizard of Oz.
And we did it for both thevideo cassette versions, beta
(16:47):
and VHS, as well as the laserdisc.
And it's kind of interestingbecause when MGM entered into
the video business in 1980,that's when the studios were
finally entering the home videoindustry late 70s, early 80s And
(17:07):
in the first group of, i think,12 to 15 films that were
released by MGM's CBS video.
At the time it was a jointventure.
Wizard of Oz was catalog numberone, released in October of
1980.
And it was $59.98 for acassette, and the laser disc
(17:30):
didn't come till a few yearslater, but it was taken off the
print And for $60, you couldwatch the Wizard of Oz whenever
you wanted, instead of waitingevery year for when it would air
on television, which had becomebasically a national pastime.
(17:53):
So we can talk a little bitmore about that later.
But when I joined the company,wizard of Oz had been on video
for seven years.
There had already been are-release in a different
package And in 1989, i came upwith the idea of doing 50th
(18:19):
anniversary editions for Wizardof Oz and Gone with the Wind.
And, believe it or not,anniversary editions really
hadn't been done before, and Ifeel like I created a monster
because the concept has been sooverused and abused in the
(18:41):
ensuing decades that it issomething I really almost don't
like talking about.
I feel responsible for havingcreated a monster.
That's so funny, but I kind ofjoke because obviously some
films are worthy of celebratingan anniversary, and especially
(19:02):
if it's a major one like a 25thor a 50th or 75th.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
Well, going back to the laser disc format really
allowed you to go into thatvalue added or extras, and you
mentioned that Criterion didthat initially in 1985.
How did MGM and others respondto that idea of putting extras
(19:31):
on?
Is that something that quicklybecame the standard for whenever
you released a laser disc?
Speaker 2 (19:38):
Well, criterion was pretty much on their own in that
department And they were in ajoint venture with a company
called Voyager Prep.
And Criterion was and is ownedby or part of Janna's films, a
(20:00):
legacy, world-respectedinternational and art film
distribution company.
So they had this joint ventureto do these laser discs.
A few years into the future, inthe early 90s, it became fully
owned by Janna slash Criterion.
(20:21):
There was no more Voyager PrepAnd that's really when Criterion
exploded, still in the laserdisc business, and then
eventually DVD, blu-ray and soforth and so on.
And they're wonderful peopleBut they pretty much had that to
themselves.
(20:41):
What I did with Wizard of Oz waswe had an isolated music and
effects track so you could hearthe music of the film without
any dialogue.
We didn't have separate music,dialogue and effects on Wizard
of Oz, so you had to hear thechirps of the chicks at the
(21:03):
beginning and so forth and so on.
But the underscoring of thatmovie is so magnificent that it
won the Oscar over even thescore for Gone with the Wind.
So we thought that was a niceextra.
And we also had whole moviesshot by composer Harold Larlin
(21:24):
on the set of the movie.
We had a musical number calledthe Jitterbug.
That was cut out of the moviebefore release And it didn't
exist except in audio form.
But we used composer HaroldLarlin's whole movie, shot on
the set when they were doingthat movie, and recreated the
(21:48):
number.
So we created a little bit ofspecial features, slash, value
added material in 1989.
And it was on the laser discand the video cassette versions
of the 50th anniversary ofWizard of Oz with a little
booklet.
So that was extremelyrevolutionary for a major studio
(22:12):
to do.
And then after that I got veryinvolved on the laser disc side
because I was director ofprogramming for the whole
company But I also was head ofsales and marketing for laser
discs, which again was a nichebusiness.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
Right.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
So I was working directly with the accounts and I
started doing letterboxing oncatalog titles like Ben Hur and
Dr Shavago, which at the timewas considered insanity by other
people.
Over seas letterboxing waspretty common, especially in
(22:54):
Japan, but in this countrypeople were like what are those
black bars on the top of mytelevision?
And you know the originalaspect ratio?
be damned.
I wanted these anamorphiccinema scope panavision films to
be seen as they were shot andnot pan and scan.
(23:19):
And so in order to put Ben Hurand Dr Shavago out as reissues
on laser discs in letterboxformat we had to get half the
funding from our Japaneselicensee, a company called
Harold Boney, but it was a hugesuccess And because of that 20th
(23:41):
Century Fox decided to releaseDie Hard, which was a brand new
movie at the time, in letterboxformat.
So slowly but surely, all ofthe other studios started
releasing films in letterboxformat on laser discs and doing
(24:01):
special things on laser discs.
But I think it's fair to say,you know, criterion was their
own.
You know they had nocompetition as being the best of
the best in terms of creatingspecial edition.
But on a studio basis, i thinkwhat we did at MGM was very,
(24:26):
very impressive and very proudof what we did, and in fact a
lot of the things that we did atthat time later morphed into
DVD and then Blu-ray and even4-K.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
George, let's jump right into 1996, when the DVD
format was introduced and fairlyquickly, i think, probably
adopted by the studios.
Tell us a bit about thattechnology development and its
impact on the home entertainmentbusiness.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
Well, i'll go back to a pioneer electronics who, by
the way, had that patent on theLaserdisc format.
Pioneer was very, veryaggressive with having that
patent and really pushed thebusiness.
And the thing that stood in theway from Laserdisc getting more
mass adoption was they wereincredibly expensive to make and
(25:27):
therefore they were higherpriced And they never got past
the fact that you had to turn itover, you could only get one
hour on each side, and so forthand so on.
But going back to 1989, therewas a pioneer electronics
demonstration in Marina Del Reyat a hotel where all the home
(25:51):
video companies were getting alook at pioneers, new machines
And I was at MGM at the time.
Still, and across the aisle fromme was a gentleman by the name
of Warren Lieberfab who startedat Warner Home Video in 1982 and
(26:12):
was the head of the divisionfor 20 years and quite a
remarkable and visionaryindividual And I didn't know him
at the time, but he stood upwhen they were looking for
questions and he said when areyou going to be able to make me
(26:32):
a CD that's five inches, thatcan hold a movie with Laserdisc
or better quality that I canmanufacture for a dollar?
That was in 1989.
And he had the vision that heknew that if it was the cost of
(26:55):
making a video, consent was like$2.60 and the cost of making a
Laserdisc was $8.50 raw for justa two hour movie.
So if you did go to a thirddisc it was even more expensive.
So to get manufacturing costsdown, quality up, warren
envisioned that a CD movie let'scall it that because the word
(27:21):
DVD hadn't been invented yetcould be a game changer because
studios could sell movies at lowprices and people could build
collections.
And that's where he was focused.
And Warner worked with Toshibain developing a format, sony was
(27:43):
developing a format and Sonyhad recently bought Columbia
Pictures.
And Panasonic was developing aformat because their parent
company, metzuchia, had boughtUniversal Pictures.
So there were three basicallycompeting DVD formats being
(28:04):
developed around 1995, 1996.
And Warren being the astutevisionary, again I'll say it
that he was broker to deal where, instead of a format, or like
Beta versus VHS, that each ofthe three companies could have a
(28:26):
satisfactory piece of thepatent pie.
And so when the DVD wasintroduced in 1997, it was test
marketed, i believe in Seattleand Atlanta for a few months
before it went nationwide, ithink 2498 list price and quite
(28:51):
a wide assortment of recenttheatrical titles from all the
major studios.
And it hit like a bang and gotadopted by the consumers with a
rapid amount the quickestadopted, biggest consumer
(29:17):
electronic industry product inhistory.
I believe that still holds true.
It was revolutionary becauseyou didn't have to rewind it.
There were special featuresadded to some of them There's
that special features thing Andthe price was reasonable so you
(29:39):
could collect and build alibrary of discs the way you
would build a library of booksor records or CDs or so forth
and so on.
So the industry was in UnitedFront.
There was a robust retailenvironment because you had
(30:00):
places like Power Video andSuncoast and Virgin, all these
different stores.
Everybody got behind the format.
The industry was in love withit.
Now, at the same time, you hadDVDs going to Walmart where
(30:22):
nobody wanted Letterbox, nobodywanted original aspect ratio.
So there had to be almost twoversions of new movies when they
came out, or later on theydeveloped the technology to have
the flipper discs which you'reprobably familiar with, and then
(30:46):
eventually, once widescreentelevisions hit in the middle of
the op, that was the end of Panand Scan.
Thank God, the adoption of DVDwas rabid and it also expanded
the audience into a mass marketproduct for owning movies.
(31:12):
And it was a phenomenal timebecause everybody was only
seeing upside And it really wasa time when what a film could do
on DVD could sometimes be moremoney for its owner than
(31:33):
theatrical performance or anyother media at that initial
release period.
So it was very, very exciting.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
Yeah, that was an extremely revolutionary time for
those of us who were kind ofgrowing up in that era.
just the ability to I mean thequality level of what you were
used to seeing on yourtraditional television just shot
up, and then the satisfactionthat, no matter where you lived,
you could own that movie.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
Yep, absolutely, and the price was low enough that it
was affordable and you couldmove chapters.
It had a lot of thefunctionality.
It was like a little laser disc.
It had all the functionalitythat laser disc had.
It did not have, initially,uncompressed digital audio.
(32:25):
It was lossy audio like you geton an iPod compressed audio.
But that didn't last very longand went from Dolby Digital to
Dolby True HD and DTS And so youhad lossless audio eventually
at a later date And that reallyI think I think that really hit
(32:48):
with the Blu-ray disc, which wasanother format where Blu-ray
versus HD DVD in 2005 and 2006.
That was where you had thelossless audio.
But that's all part of whatmade this product so attractive.
I look back to 1997, the moviesthat were really making a
(33:14):
difference.
Sony's release of the fifthelement was a brand new movie
And it was 5.1 surround audioand beautiful picture and
director commentary and allthose different things.
A lot of those things had onlybeen available on these very
(33:37):
expensive laser discs And nowthey could have even far better
quality on a little DVD discthat was relatively inexpensive.
So it was a game changer Andthe first title to sell a
million units on DVD happenedwithin the first two years, and
(33:59):
it was The Matrix, which, as aDVD itself, was a remarkable
disc in terms of extra features.
Speaker 1 (34:08):
That is the first disc I ever purchased.
Obviously, i was a huge fan ofthe movie itself, and when that
DVD came out, i just recall theexcitement that I had and fans
had.
It's always the movie itselffirst, but then, when you bought
(34:30):
the movie and when I watched itand I saw all of these extras
because the movie was so mindblowing you did want to know how
did they do this, both from thewriting all the way to the
visual effects, and that was agame changer for me.
Speaker 2 (34:44):
Absolutely.
And the thing is is that thistiny little market of laser
discs.
Laser discs never got past, Ithink, two million households,
whereas DVD very quickly becamepretty common in almost every
household.
So it went from a niche product, where you had those kind of
(35:09):
special features, to the thingyou could buy in the local store
at a very reasonable price,having those extra features.
Speaker 1 (35:18):
I was working at Microsoft Studios back in that
era and so I worked with a lotof people in technology And
there was of course a desire tobe kind of on the cutting edge.
But a lot of us were watchingour movies on our computers
because they had DVD players.
So that was another part of theexpansion of the DVD, not just
(35:43):
the standalone players but alsothe whole PC market at that time
, because the matrix kind of aturning point in the industry
and did extras then become justmore prominent in terms of their
importance for the sale andpromotion of the films.
Speaker 2 (36:03):
I would say that it was the most ambitious DVD
produced up to that time interms of extra features and it
set the bar higher.
There had been previous to that, both on laser and sometimes
(36:23):
even a little bit on tape, wherethere'd be a director
commentary or there'd be alittle feature at documentary,
but never anything quite socreative as what was done with
the matrix.
It was a game changer And itraised the bar and it challenged
disc producers to have to beable to think out of the box and
(36:49):
do more creative things.
And I had no involvement withthe creation of the Matrix DVD
Someone that you and I both know, paul Hemstreet.
He was the genius in charge ofthe Matrix DVD.
It was all his vision.
(37:09):
He certainly didn't do it alonebut practically and he worked
with the filmmakers, and that'sthe other thing.
Great about DVD Is filmmakersembraced laser disc but it was
not a mass market product.
Dvd was embraced by filmmakersAnd it was a mass market product
(37:34):
, so filmmakers felt that theycould get a lot more of their
message and they could takepride in the DVD that was
created on a new movie.
And I say all this where myfocus had primarily been almost
entirely focused on older films,classic films and the
(37:58):
restoration of them.
There were a few new theatricalfilms that I was involved in
during my tenure at MGM becauseI was the head of the division,
so things like Felma and Louise.
I was very involved with thatand that was the number one
title of its year And I tookgreat pride in that.
(38:19):
But for all intents andpurposes I'm the classic movie
guy.
Speaker 1 (38:25):
Let me go back to transition kind of into that.
I want to quote an article fromAV Club back in 2005 where you
were featured.
Quote it says by and large, theDVD business is driven by
recent theatrical releases, justas the VHS business always has
been.
Dvds usually contain morespecial features with a
(38:47):
substantially lower initialretail price.
But aside from calculating thefirst run to home video window,
it doesn't take a lot of thoughtto make an.
Insert your movie title Themovie into again.
Insert the movie title into theDVD.
The visionaries of the DVDbusiness and the heroes to movie
lovers everywhere are the oneswho find a way to present older
(39:11):
movies in such a way that theylook vital and relevant.
So let's talk about that.
You were that or have been thatclassic movie guy.
There's these two products,that kind of that general
audience, and then the nicheaudience.
With your role in catalogmarketing, you were focused on
(39:31):
that niche audience.
When did that niche audiencestart to become more important
to home entertainment revenue?
Speaker 2 (39:39):
This really goes back before the days of laser desk,
even to video cassette.
What I did at MGM when I gotthere was I started doing
something that is now verycommon And it's called brand
marketing.
We started releasing six filmswith a certain actor or
(40:03):
performer or director orcharacter.
We didn't if my memory is isnot failing me, we didn't really
do the box sets in the VHS era.
That was more of a DVD thing.
Ok, but for example, when I wasat MGM away, the rights to the
(40:28):
James Bond movies had been soldby United Artists to CBS Fox
video And they reverted back toMGM away on video in 1988.
So I released the six SeanConnery movies as the Connery
(40:51):
collection and the six RogerMoore movies as more Bond, and
these were new masters and I wasplaying up the quality.
Now this is this is a long time, it is like 30 plus years ago
But at the time that wasconsidered Oh wow, this is
(41:12):
different, you know, like takinggroups of movies together and
marketing them in a way that wasinteresting and affordable.
We developed a franchise, ifyou will, in the late 80s, of
movies made before theproduction code that we called
Forbidden Hollywood Right, andmy good friend Leonard Moulton
(41:37):
was critically involved in thedevelopment of that concept And
he hosted the first releaseswith opens and closes.
And this is way before therewas TPM.
Tnt was just getting launchedAnd TNT in its early days was a
(41:58):
little bit like TPM withcommercials, but there wasn't
any curation to it, it just wasa place for Ted Turner to show
his library.
But my point was that we took alittle extra effort to market
these things in such a way onboth cassette and laser disc
(42:21):
that took on a life of its ownAnd eventually they were
Forbidden Hollywood DVD box set.
There were been 10 volumes ofthat.
There were three laser discboxes And then TPM put out their
own Forbidden Hollywood book.
So I'm very happy to say thatwe were at the beginning of that
(42:44):
.
And I would say precode moviesand film noir films are the best
kind of old, old movies toentice and interest younger
audiences.
Why is that?
Because they surprise theaudience member of a good film
(43:07):
When they start watching it.
They're shocked at kind of thereality.
You know, the precode movieswere far more realistic and
dealing with themes that weren'tallowed on the screen for the
next 30 some odd years.
So there is a shock value to it.
And also the films are verywell made, especially the films
(43:31):
that were made at WarnerBrothers.
And the film noir movies reallyare timeless in their ability
to attract an audience,especially the good ones.
And we really hit the jackpotwith film noir when we started
film noir collections on DVD in2004.
(43:56):
And we did five volumes of themin every other studio.
Basically a the strategy, andfilm noir is now far more of a
magnet and far more well knownnow than it was in 2004 when we
(44:16):
put out our first DVD box set.
So those are just examples,right.
Speaker 1 (44:22):
Right One thing you can't kind of go and talk about
what you did with the olderfilms and bringing them to the
DVD format without also talkinga little about about the role of
film preservation.
as many of these films are, youknow, we're decades old.
Maybe you could talk a littlebit about the unique
relationship Warner Brothers haswith UCLA and how working with
(44:48):
them maybe impacted some of yourrelease schedule for these
classic films.
Speaker 2 (44:52):
Well, ucla film and television archive has been
around for more than 50 yearsand they were really, along with
several other organizationsaround the world, various
archives.
(45:12):
They were dedicated to tryingto rescue films and this was
long before there was home videoAnd they would search out the
best materials and try to getnitrate film elements before
they would deteriorate andprotect and preserve them.
(45:34):
Warner Brothers started todeposit all of it nitrate
holdings with UCLA in 1979.
So the studio's relationshipwith UCLA goes back a very, very
(45:54):
long time And their archivistsare remarkable people And most
recently this shows you howtechnology improves and what
changes.
In the 80s there were two veryrare Warner Brothers prints that
(46:17):
belonged to Jack Warner.
One of them was a film calledDoctor X, which was shot in the
two-color technical process, andthe film made the year after
called Mystery the Wax Museum,which was also shot in the
two-color technical process, andit was a red-green process that
(46:38):
didn't look realistic.
The Technicolor companythereafter developed a
three-color technical processthat perfected the way color
looked on film And that began tobe used slowly but surely in
(47:02):
the latter part of the 30s bythe studios, climaxing in 1939
with films like Gone with theWind and Wizard of Oz.
But going back to this earlytwo-color Technicolor period,
the two-color process was sodifferent that the ability to
(47:25):
manufacture prints anddistribute them for the future
was basically considered.
Nobody really was thinkingabout the future in the 30s and
they certainly didn't thinkabout being able to make prints
of these things.
So only black and whitenegatives were kept on both of
(47:49):
those films And the only waythat you could see the original
color presentation was with JackWarner's personal beat-up
prints.
Now I believe it was the late60s, early 70s the AFI, along
with other organizations, madeduplicate negative materials on
(48:16):
Mystery the Wax Museum So youcould actually see it on
television.
It looked awful, it was beat up, it was scratched, the colors
were not right, but you weregetting to see a facsimile of
what it really was supposed tolook like.
And then in the 80s UCLA didphotochemical preservation of
(48:41):
those elements And that wasreleased eventually on Laserdisc
and Videocassette in the late80s And I was involved in that.
But in the last two or threeyears UCLA and Warner Brothers
(49:01):
have been working together onvarious projects along with the
Film Foundation, and bothMystery the Wax Museum and Dr X
were completely restored so thatthey now look immaculate and
they're available on Blu-raythrough the Warner Archive
(49:21):
collection, which we'll talkabout in a little while.
But that's just indicative ofthe way that UCLA and Warner
Brothers work hand in hand,especially since they retain all
of our deposited studio nitrateprints And we constantly are in
(49:47):
conversations with them andthey'll say, hey, this film is
starting to go, do you haveprotection?
and so forth and so on.
But they put a lot of focus atUCLA on films that we call
orphan films, films that wereproduced by companies that are
no longer in business, and theyprotect them.
(50:10):
So they really really dowonderful work And it's a
wonderful partnership.
And we share the same kind ofpartnership with the George
Eastman Museum in Rochester, newYork, which is where most of
the MGM nitrate is stored.
And we can't not mentionanother incredible important
(50:35):
home for a lot of our earlynegatives on the Warner Brothers
and RKO side, which is theLibrary of Congress.
And we also work very closelywith the film department at the
Museum of Modern Art.
So those are really the primarypartners in preservation that
(50:56):
we work with now, and we workedwith them 30 years ago
photochemically to make newnegatives and new prints.
Now what we're doing is we'rescanning these elements where
nothing touches the film, so thefilm can't be damaged.
We're scanning at 4K or 8K andwe're scanning for the future.
(51:21):
So you have that raw scanbacked up on several servers And
right now we've made these newmasters that are available on
Blu-ray and can be shown as DCPsdigitally in theaters.
But if somebody needs to goback to the film element they
(51:41):
don't want to touch it becauseit's going to get more brittle
and it's being stored verycarefully We can go to the scan
that's in our archives and workfrom there.
So if something is going tohappen in, let's say, 2028 or 29
and we're working in 12K orsomething In a format we can't
(52:06):
even think of today, there'll bethat to go back to.
So it's trying to future-proof.
Film preservation is incrediblyimportant and we have come the
industry has come a tremendousway in recognizing the value of
its films, because initiallythere were only two studios that
(52:30):
started doing film preservationwith nitrate film, which is
extremely flammable and subjectto decomposition and
deterioration In the 1960s, andthose companies were MGM, whose
library through 1986 is owned byWarner Brothers now and has
(52:50):
been for decades, and Disney.
The Warner Brothers filmownership was kind of split
between United Artists andWarner Brothers, and it wasn't
until the older Warner Brothersfilms made it on the journey
from United Artists to Turner,back to Warner Brothers, that
(53:13):
the Warner Pre-49 librarystarted to get preserved
properly.
And all that has a very, veryhappy ending because film
preservation is extraordinarilyimportant to the company And I'm
very grateful to be part of thegroup of people that works on
that And then brings it out onhome video Right.
Speaker 1 (53:35):
Yeah, kind of in terms of the timing, how did you
look at the preservationprocess?
Did you, when you went to lookat a release of a film and I'm
not talking about one of thefilms that maybe has been
released multiple times, but asyou started to go a little bit
deeper into the catalog wouldkind of, how did that process
(53:55):
work?
Would you talk to somebody atUCLA about a title and then they
would look at it and you'd say,okay, this is going to take six
months, a year, two years toget to the place where we could
release this.
How did that impact yourrelease schedule and thinking
and planning?
Speaker 2 (54:10):
Thank, you Well, for I would say, the first many
years of my career I was relyingon the work and judgment of
other people who had thoseresponsibilities within the
organizations, whether it be MGMor Turner or then Warner
(54:34):
Brothers.
My job was to.
I told them what I wanted.
You know, let's release thispre-code movie, babyface.
We need a new master so itlooks really, really great,
because the old master is from1988, so we would get a cost and
run a P&L and make sure it wasprofitable and then it would be
(54:58):
put into play.
And that's a very importantthing to also mention is I
always have to put profit beforepassion or preference.
Work for public companies andwe have shareholders and we have
to deliver a profit.
(55:18):
So it's art versus commerce.
And if you could find the rightbalance where you can do
something that is going tofurther, something rare being
preserved, and also make itprofitable for the company, that
(55:39):
is the ultimate goal and Ithink that has been something
I've been blessed to be able todo.
But what happened was in thelast 10 years I started to
become much more personallyinvolved with the actual film
(56:00):
element process andunderstanding more about
original negatives andinter-positives and
inter-negatives and versions andaudio tracks and magnetic
tracks and dealing with vinegarsyndrome, which can basically
(56:22):
destroy a safety film movie.
I started to work very closelywith our colleagues at Warner
Brothers Motion Picture Imagingon finding ways to make
beautiful new masters of ourfilms where the quality was
(56:43):
absolutely pristine and we coulddo so in a way that could be
profitable, and that has been agreat gift.
I learned more new things, ideveloped additional skills and
abilities and the benefit alsowas the company got to release a
(57:04):
lot more classic product andmake a lot more money from it.
So that's a really, really goodthing.
And then it's used in othermedia, like it's used on
television and it's used onairlines and streaming and in
schools and in theaters.
So when you have the world'slargest film library, that's a
(57:25):
very, very significantresponsibility.
And we have on staff one personwho just retired and I'll
mention his name, stephenAnastasi, who goes back to the
days at Turner, who's justphenomenal in terms of taking
care of all of our assets, andhe just retired and his second
(57:49):
man is now leading with charge.
So what's going on at WarnerBrothers right now is what we
jokingly refer to aspreservation on steroids,
because basically these films, alot of them have to be
prioritized in terms of triageWhat's in the worst shape, that
(58:10):
is at risk, that has to be putbefore other films, unless
there's also somethingcommercially driving the need
for another film.
And when they come togetherthen that's the beauty of it,
because you're preserving,saving an asset, improving it
(58:31):
and also getting to monetize it.
But it isn't strictly themonetization that is behind the
preservation, it's both.
And it has been particularlyrewarding for me to work with
the colorists at MPI, the peoplethat are scanning the film, so
(58:51):
forth and so on, to make surethat we get just the right
results.
And the consumers have beenvery happy with the end product
and that's very gratifying.
Speaker 1 (59:02):
Right.
I've always thought, as aperson working on the extras,
that the extras in and ofthemselves oftentimes are
another part of the preservation, not of the film but of the
story of the making of the film,and part of that is talking to
the producers and the writersand some of the crew people
(59:25):
things that in the older days,of course, you know they didn't
think about necessarily doing,but we do think about that now.
You've been listening to partone of a three-part series with
the legendary home entertainmentexecutive, george Feltonstein.
In upcoming episodes, i will bespeaking with George about his
work on classic Hollywood filmreleases The Wizard of Oz,
(59:47):
casablanca, singing in the Rainand many more.
For those of you interested inlearning more about the extras
discussed in the show today,there will be more information
on the website, atwwwtheextrastv, and if you're
enjoying the guests we have inthe show, please subscribe and
leave us a review at iTunes,spotify or your favorite podcast
(01:00:07):
provider.
Until next time you've beenlistening to The Extras with Tim
Malart, stay slightly obsessed.
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