December 4, 2025 • 42 mins
Mike talks with author and filmmaker John Gaspard about Held Over (2025). They discuss the book’s focus on theatrical exhibition history, the practice of long-running engagements, and the logistics and economics that kept certain films in theaters for extended periods. Gaspard outlines the interviews and research that shaped the project and explains why Harold and Maude became a central case study, noting how its slow-building audience, regional rollouts, and unexpected longevity helped define the book’s larger story about how movies find their viewers. The conversation also covers broader changes in moviegoing culture and exhibition practices over time.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Oh gee, is Bolt it show died?
Speaker 2 (00:08):
People pay good money to see this movie.
Speaker 3 (00:10):
When they go out to a theater.
Speaker 4 (00:12):
They want clod sodas, hot popcorn, and no monsters in
the protection booth.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Everyone for tend podcasting isn't boring, cut it off.
Speaker 5 (00:41):
Do you remember the movie Harold and Maud While I
was a teenager. It played for over two years straight
at my neighborhood theater. It played and played and played.
I was such a big fan that when the two
star of the film, Ruth Gordon and Bud Court came
(01:02):
to town to celebrate the two year anniversary, I got
to have dinner with Bud Court, and I followed the
two stars around with my trustee Super eight camera.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
You know, it's a great thing to be a place
where something goes right. And for two years at the
Westgate Theater, things have gone right for Harold and more
and tonight it includes Bodily.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
There's nothing anybody concerned.
Speaker 6 (01:39):
So thank you all.
Speaker 4 (01:40):
For living in the film and making this probably one
of the most touching months of my luck.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
And I'm sure she said, and God.
Speaker 5 (01:54):
Bless you are at the Westgate Theater. Harold and Maude
officially became a cult film. I always thought there was
a book in this unique conflux of the perfect movie
at the perfect theater at the perfect time, And now
that book held over Harold and Maud at the Westgate
Theater is a reality. The book looks at the beginnings
(02:14):
of the Westgate Theater, the tragic loss of its visionary founder,
and its struggles to get by for the next forty years.
Then we go behind the scenes at the making of
Harold and Maud, the casting choices that could have been
the accidental moments that made cinema history, and the marketing
(02:36):
mistakes that nearly doomed the movie. Next, we dive into
the movies two plus years at the Westgate, the one
year anniversary, the superfan who saw the movie over one
hundred and sixty times and formed a lasting friendship with
Ruth Gordon, the two year anniversary, where Ruth Gordon returned
and Budcourt joined her and also brought out the protesters.
(03:00):
The book also looks at what happened to Harold and
Maud after it left the Westgate, its success in other cities,
the stage productions as well as the musical version. Finally,
the book examines the last years of the Westgate Theater
and their ongoing attempts to find a worthy successor to
Harold and Maud, which they kept trying to do until
(03:22):
the theater finally closed in nineteen seventy seven. The book
is packed with over one hundred and sixty color and
black and white photos.
Speaker 6 (03:35):
Some of the.
Speaker 5 (03:36):
Photos are rare, while others are being published for the
first time. It's the story of a film that wouldn't
die and the theater that gave it life. Check out
Held Over Harold and Maud at the Westgate Theater.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
Welcome to the Projection Booth. I'm your host Mike White.
On this special episode, I'm talking with author John Gaspard
all about his book Held Over. It is the story
of the two year run of Harold and Maud at
the Westgate Theater in Minneapolis. It's a great story and
really loving portrait of the film as well as the movie,
theater and the community around it. Thanks so much for listening,
(04:22):
and I hope you enjoy the interview. I want to
know a little bit more about how you became an author.
Speaker 7 (04:27):
I became an author because of a filmmaker named William Baher.
William Baher was a kind of experimental, semi Hollywood filmmaker
in the late sixties, and he wrote a book called
Breaking Through, Selling Out, Dropping Dead, and Other Notes on filmmaking,
a really good book, a little dated now, but about
just the ins and outs of making a movie, both
(04:48):
in and outside of the Hollywood system. And then about
a year later he did a update of it in
which he just added the stuff that he'd learned, and
at the back of it he said, I've become so
frustrated filmmaking. I've decided to become a novelist. And that's
what he went on to do until then with life.
He became a kind of a thriller novelist and was
very happy doing it. So this is me at age fifteen,
(05:11):
reading and going, oh, okay, if I get tired of
making movies, I will write novels. And so for the
next forty years I held down a corporate job doing
videos for Fortune five hundred companies, and then in my
spare time I made a bunch of low budget feature films.
I started that in high school making I believe what
(05:31):
is the first super eight sound feature film that was
done with a code AC system. And then I've shot
him on sixteen millimeters and various forms of video, and
the last couple were done in digital video. So I've
done a lot of screenwriting and a lot of writing.
This in my day job, so writing wasn't a big deal.
But as I got older, making a little bunch of
(05:51):
movies get just a little bit harder. The hours are harder,
the gear, although lighter now than it used to be,
is still clunky, and you can't do it alone. You
do need a talented group, which normally I can assemble,
but it's just it's Mike. It's a lot of work.
And I had an idea for a series of novels
about a magician because I had a lot of friends
(06:11):
who are magicians. I'd booked a lot of magicians in
the corporate world, and I also had friends who are magicians,
and so I wrote a book about a magician who
stumbles into some crimes, and that got popular, so I
just kept writing them. There's now ten of those. And
then I wrote another mystery series about a community theater
that keeps stumbling into murders. Three books in that one.
I wrote a couple of filmmaking books, first with Michael Wise,
(06:34):
back in the day when he was still alive and
doing things. I mean, Michael Wisi Publications is still out there,
and then they did a couple of other filmmaking books on
my own. So not afraid to sit down and write
not really an issue. And now that I am in
rehirement age, that's my hobby because I just sit around
and write stuff.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
How did you get the idea for held Over?
Speaker 7 (06:57):
On occasion, I do a film podcast called the Occasional
Film Podcast, and I had interviewed a guy named James
Davidson who had written a book called hal Ashby and
the Making of Harold and Maud. And it was a
pretty complete book on that process. And it wasn't a
book I was interested in writing. I didn't want to
ever do any of that in depth. But Harold and
Maud was a big movie for me. It ran for
(07:19):
two years here in Minneapolis at the Westgate Theater. I
saw it many times when it was at the Westgate Theater.
It had a first year anniversary. I went to that
and met Ruth Gordon. It had a second year anniversary.
I went to that and met Ruth Gordon and Bud
Court and had dinner with Bud Court and shot some
super eight footage of them and just knew a lot
(07:39):
about the movie and realized that it was in that
two year span that it became a cult film. It
probably would have been a cult film eventually, but the
fact that it played continuously seven nights a week, two
shows a night, three shows on Sunday for over two
years at one theater got the attention of a lot
(08:00):
of other theater owners around the country, and they started
booking it and used that fact in their advertising. Hey, Detroit,
what does Minneapolis know that we don't know? Hey, New York,
same thing. And from that it became a cult film.
But it wouldn't have happened the way it happened if
it hadn't sat at the Westgate for that amount of time.
And I thought, that's something it hasn't been explored. I
(08:22):
have unique visuals from that time that nobody else has.
I have the inside track on it. Let's just sit
down and see what this could become. And I did
it at the perfect time in indie book writing. In
that world, you can now easily get really high end
full color, black and white color photographic paper books printed
(08:47):
on a print on demand basis, so I don't have
to order five hundred books and have them sitting in
my garage. I can order ten twenty as I need them,
which is a little bit more expensive, but I didn't
want I didn't want to die with five hundred books
in the garage. So I thought it's perfect time to
do a coffee table book that it looks at that era,
(09:08):
that every page has a nice surprising image on it,
every page has a nice surprising factor to bid something
you didn't know about either the theater, which had, as
it turned out, pretty interesting history, or the movie, or
what happened to both of them after they split up
in nineteen seventy four. So it just seemed it seemed
like a perfect time to do this sort of large
(09:29):
scale project.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
And the layout of the book is just gorgeous. Who
did that? Or did you do that yourself?
Speaker 5 (09:38):
Oh?
Speaker 7 (09:38):
If only I could no. And that was one of
the things that made me decide to do it was
I approached there's a couple in England that do run
a company called Design for Writers, and they have done
virtually every book cover that I've done, and I've done
a lot of books, and they're very creative and really
(09:59):
easy to work with. And I approached them and said
here's what I'm thinking. This isn't going to be covered.
This is going to be one hundred and sixty some pages,
and every page is designed. There's a template insofar as
we have a look for the overall thing and what
a caption looks like and that kind of hmplate, but
every page is different and every page is going to
be designed. You guys up for that, and they said, yep,
(10:19):
if you give us enough time, we'd love to do that.
And they did just a beautiful job. Speaking of time,
when did you decide to do this project, and how
long did it take? I decided late summer last year,
twenty twenty four, and immediately began to dive into the
research because although I knew a lot, I thought I
(10:41):
knew a lot about those two years, I knew nothing
about the theater from before seventy four. I worked there
as an usher in nineteen seventy five and seventy six,
so I knew the layout of the building and I
knew what it was now. But I had to dive
in and find out what was it when it opened
in nineteen thirty five, and why did it open in
nineteen thirty five in the middle of the depression put
(11:04):
together by someone who was in the insurance business and
had been a concert violinist, but to become successful in insurance,
and he decided he wanted to build a movie theater
in South Minneapolis when there was another one six blocks away.
Why did he do that? What were his plans for it,
what was it going to be? What did it become?
And it was just fascinating going to architectural libraries. I
(11:27):
got very lucky and was connected to the founder's granddaughter,
and she had lots of photos and memories that her
mother had written down about the theater. So I was
able to reconstruct why the Westgate popped up in nineteen
thirty five, why it almost immediately wasn't a hit because
(11:47):
the guy who founded it died right away, so there
was no visionary behind it after like year two, and
it struggled for forty years until it became what one
critic called a resting home or a nursing home for
comedies that aren't completely understood. And it did become that
in the late sixties and early seventies, which is why
Harold and Maud ended up there. There was a reputation
(12:08):
for that. Yeah, so I had to do that research.
I also had to figure out what had happened to the
theater after I left it in seventy six, and what
happened to Harold Maud after it left that theater in
seventy four, So there was a lot of research. Newspapers.
Dot com is fantastic for that sort of thing. I
was able to track down the assistant manager from the
theater at that time talk to an old usher at
(12:30):
that time. When the second year anniversary came about, there
was a neighborhood protest and people had picket signs walking
up and down the sidewalk as the two stars entered,
the signs saying we want a new movie and we
need variety. And I was able to track down and
talk to the husband of the woman who organized that,
so there were still some people around. And then all
(12:51):
the existing articles and interviews from the time and also
from now, I was able to cobble through those and
put together a pretty good timeline of what happened. And
that took about eleven months, ten months something like that.
The book was being laid out the middle of summer,
so almost a year of research in writing.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
And it pays off so well. I was just so impressive.
It was so deep in so many areas, and I'm
just like, how was he getting this material? This is
amazing to find out about all of these people that
ran the theater and having all of the the bills
as far as what's playing and all that. Even didn't
you have like architectural drawings of the theater.
Speaker 7 (13:36):
I did, which was for me since I had been
there Mike in seventy five seventy six, I was able
to go back and figure out when I started there
and when I stopped there just by based on what
movies were showing, and I remembered it was a worn down,
tired theater with the seats were not the original seats,
(13:56):
but they were not new seats. When they were put in,
they were used for another theater. The screen had been moved,
the stage used to be set to hold almost a
full orchestra. Because he had intended to have lots of
live entertainment. There had been in nineteen thirty five a
huge clubroom right off the lobby where people could rent
and use that for bridge clubs or for parties and
(14:17):
then go in and see a movie. They had a
full catering kitchen in the basin for that. They had
its own candy store that was also attached on the
other side. But in seventy five when I was there,
none of that was there. It was a cramped lobby
and a weird little room next to the lobby, and
the restrooms and the auditorium. So getting those original drawings
and going, oh, that's where the clubroom was, that's the
beauty parlor that was next door. They must have put
(14:39):
up a wall and made it a beauty parlor. And oh,
that's where the candy store was. That's now a little library,
And they put up a wall and made that its
own building. And that's why in fifty five or whatever,
they built a candy display case in the lobby. All
this stuff that I had no idea had happened in
that theater was fascinating to find, and nowadays it's a
(15:00):
little bit easier to find stuff. I was able to
track down those drawings and go to the architectural library
and find the original blueprints of the guy who made it.
It was fun. Of course, at some point you have
to stop and write the book. But one of my
goals was because James Davidson has this great book hal
Ashburyen making Harold Mard that has all this detail. I
(15:22):
wanted to find stuff that wasn't necessarily in that book,
or that I, as a pretty diehard Harold and Maud fan,
wouldn't necessarily know. So I was able to talk to
John Rubinstein. John Rubinstein as an actor and a director,
and it was the original Pippen on Broadway, but he
was good friends with the screenwriter of Harold and Maud,
(15:42):
Colin Higgins, and the part was written for him, And
so I was able to talk to John about that
and his feelings about his audition with Gordon, what he
thought about the finished product. And he's a huge fan
of what Bud Court did. But I also learned from
him that Alice Lanchester was supposed to play Mode, which
I hadn't known, And he said, if you read the
(16:04):
script and hear her voice in your head, now else
the Lanchester. For anybody to listen to this podcast should
know who else Anchester is. But she was a bride
of Frank Kenstein. She was Katie Nana, the original nanny
who quits at the beginning of Mary Poppins. She was
Miss marbles In murdered by death. She had a very
long career and if you read the script with her
(16:26):
inflections in mind, you can absolutely see Colin Higgins meant
for that part to be played by her, and I
think she would have been terrific.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
Having worked at a movie theater in my youth as well,
I'm curious what are some of your favorite memories of
the theater itself. One memory that.
Speaker 7 (16:42):
Happened when I wasn't there, but that one of the
ushers told me, which I thought was fascinating. If Harold
and Maude, you know that very near the end of
the movie, if you haven't seen it, I don't want
to say something is said to Harold and he pauses
for a long time, and then he yells, what really loud?
(17:02):
And that is immediately followed by the sound of a siren.
Because the movie played so long at the theater, and
if you worked in a kind of theater I worked in,
there's a lot of downtime when you're in that sort
of thing. That sound coming out of the auditorium was
the signal to everybody that, oh, we got to get
back to work. The audience is about to come out,
(17:25):
And so I thought that was just delightful when I
was working there. I don't know what the original setup was,
but if you were an usher, you had to add
black pants and white shirt and a bow tie and
a coat. And I don't know where the girls went,
but the boys had to go backstage, and you would
change backstage behind the screen, and if you understand the
(17:47):
laws of the physics, a light is hitting the screen,
it's bouncing off the screen. No one can see you,
but you can see the whole movie. Which is really
fun to be standing back there and seeing Warren Baties
motorcycle riding up Bullhull and drive from Champoo night after night,
because that was about the time I.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
Was getting changed.
Speaker 7 (18:07):
However, one employee famously kept forgetting the laws of physics
and needed to see what he was doing, and he
would turn on the light back there, which would give
everybody in the audience their own special little phil. Hey,
look there's the strip Tee's going on behind the screen.
The other thing I remembered, and it certainly isn't an
(18:27):
issue now was. There was a columnist here in the
Twin Cities named Will Jones, and Will Jones is important
in the success of Harold Mard because he's the one
who championed when it came to the west Gate. He
didn't champion Harold and Maud. He said, that's a great movie,
but there's a short that played before Harold and Matt
every night called Diduva, And he wrote a whole column
on that two days before Harold and Matt opened up
(18:49):
the west Gate, and the theater staff is pretty sure
that's why they almost had to sell out that first night,
because Will Jones had said, you've got to go see
the short. It's sent it's very funny. But anytime he
would come to the theater, we were put on high
alert and we'd have an usher on either side of
the theater. There was a one of those things where
(19:10):
you had a door on either side. There's no middle
aisle there to side aisles, and we had to stand
there and watch and make sure that nobody in the
theater started smoking. There was no smoking in the theater,
but that didn't stop them sometimes because we'd learned from
fast experience. If somebody smoked in the theater, that was
all Will Jones would write about in his column. He
wouldn't write about the movie, he would just write about
(19:33):
the smoking. It was sort of a boring job, except
that I got to see certain parts of certain movies
again and again and again and again, which was interesting.
And I've always felt that although I wasn't working there
during Harold Mott, I did see it, let's just say
a lot. I saw it a lot. And although I
was in a film program at that time in high
(19:54):
schools and I was in a special film program made
movies and did things like that every afternoon for three years.
It was a seventies film program, which meant it was
the film is a form of expression, and we're not
going to teach you how to do match cuts or
close ups or coverage or anything like that, and don't
you dare try to tell a story. So my film
school was watching what hal Ashby did to make Harold
(20:16):
and Maud, the decisions he made on how to do
a montage, when to bring in music, how to hold
for a laugh, even casting, and then reading the script
and going, oh, but he did. He cut out a
lot of stuff in this movie and made it better.
And sometimes when you take things out, they're better, which
is a hard thing to do when you're a young filmmaker,
(20:37):
if you're going to all the trouble to shoot something.
But it did teach me that, which is if that's
not working. It's got to be cut. And he was
pretty fearless about that. So that was that movie's an
education in itself for a young filmmaker.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
Why do you think we're still talking about this movie
all these years later.
Speaker 7 (20:53):
I think it hits people on kind of a primal
emotional level, and that's why it stays with them. And
that's to do with the way hal Ashby made it
and the way Counigans wrote it, and the use of
Cat Steven's music. The three of those things together create
a feeling at the end that just doesn't happen normally
(21:15):
in your normal life. When we discover Harold at the
top of the cliff and he straps on his banjo
and he starts playing and notes he's playing Segway beautifully
into Cat Stephens singing, and we've just been through this
emotional experience with him. A lot of movies don't give
you that. And what Harold and Maud was able to
(21:37):
do for those two years and then when it was
reissued in the eighties is it was a thing you
brought people to and it was a litmus test. Hey,
I want you to see this movie, and if you
don't like this movie. I have to think about you again,
because it's something people wanted to share, and there's not
a lot of those out there. Rocky Horror was different.
(22:00):
Rocky Horror came about a year later, and Rocky Horror
was conticipatory. But it's different than Harold and Maud. Harold
and Maud with the exception of it's run in New
York for a while where they the theater or complained
that people were talking during the movie by saying the
lines during the movie. That was not something had happened
to Hald Maud. With Harold and Maud, you sat, you smiled,
(22:22):
you laughed. If you're bringing someone for the first time,
you would turn and look at them when you saw
a scene was coming up. You wanted to see the
reaction to It was a very shared thing, but it
wasn't something you interacted with. You just absorbed it.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
With that breath of information that you're going into. Was
there anything that didn't work out? Were there any areas
where you're just like, I can't find enough information about this,
or did you have that planned out before you even started?
Speaker 7 (22:51):
No, it was an exploratory thing. I realized early on.
I wanted it to be as much about the images
as it was about the words, So it is I
think a pretty equal balance between. As I told the designer,
I loved turning a page and seeing a full page picture,
and I also like old movie ads. I put those
in as well. But I did spend the majority of
(23:13):
my budget on licensing photos. I tried not to license
the most common Harold and mog photos because you can
see those anywhere. What I was looking for was stuff
you didn't necessarily see all the time, and I found
a stockhouse that had They claimed that they showed me everything,
(23:33):
although I'm not really sure, but they had about two
hundred behind the scenes photos that I'd never seen before,
and you could see where there'd be a sequence of
photos and you can know that if the next one
is there, that's the one I'm used to seeing, but
I haven't seen the one before this. And it allowed
me to drop in some photos that just as a
(23:54):
Harold and Mog fan, excited me. A really good close
up of Bud in character shot from far below looking
up at him. Stuff with Hal Ashby talking to Vivian
Pickles as they walked down to the pool. Stuff with
Sherry Summers sitting talking to bud Court, just stuff I
hadn't seen before. And that's really what I wanted was
(24:15):
I wanted, here are the visuals that are telling the
story in a new way. Now. If I couldn't find
visuals or something, I had to abandon it or not
bother going there for me the biggest hole, and it
would mean nothing to the people outside of the Twin Cities,
But across the street from the Westgate Theater almost the
(24:36):
entire time the Theater has been there, and it still
stands there today as a little hamburger joint called the
Convention Grill, but was built in the mid thirties. It's
a classic Art Deco hamburger joint with maltzburgers and fries,
and it's just gorgeous. When I was shooting Super Eat
movies in my teens, I shot scenes in there. It
was just gorgeous. And so I tracked down the Grand
(25:00):
and the owner who now runs it, and I said,
I would love to do it. Two page spread in
this on Convention Grill because it was part of the
ritual you go to Harold Maud then either before or
after you'd go over to the Convention Grill. And he said,
I'm sorry, John, we just don't have any historical photos,
and I thought, Okay, then I guess we're not going
to do that. But I was able to track down
(25:21):
Doug Strand. Doug Strand saw the movie one hundred and
sixty times while I was here in the Twin Cities
and was Ruth Gordon's date when she came for the
first year anniversary, because the theater management said, you've seen
this movie a lot, and Budcourt's not coming, do you
mind just being an escort for Ms Gordon when she's here.
And he did that and then they became fast friends
(25:43):
and were friends until she died, so I have a
nice I was able to check Doug down, which is amazing,
and there's a nice too page spread on him. I
was able to track down the guy who owns the
rights to De Duva, which was nominated for an Academy
I think in sixty eight and is a very funny
black and white film. If you guys haven't seen it,
(26:05):
just go on YouTube and look for Di Duva. It's
an Iigmar Bergmann parody. It's Madeline Kahn's first film appearance.
It's very funny. I was able to track down the
guy who owns the rights to it and do a
two page spread on that. If I'd found more Harold
and Maud photos, there'd be more in there. But I
think I pulled the best from that, and I think
(26:27):
I pulled the for the real diehard herold and mod fan.
There's some surprises in there, which is what I wanted
to see, but there's also enough for a newbie to
understand what the production is like, and the problems with
the marketing and the problems with the advertising and all that.
There's enough for the die hard and the newbie.
Speaker 2 (26:45):
How many people do you think you talked to for this.
Speaker 7 (26:49):
Surprisingly little, not a big number, because not a lot
of them are around anymore. I probably only did nine
ten interviews, maybe a little more, but I was able
to find a lot of extant interviews, some stuff I
hadn't found before. I did, of course, reach out to
Bud Court and never heard back, but that was expected
(27:11):
because he doesn't really like to talk about it that much.
Everybody else was. I reached out to Tom Skarrett because
he plays a very small but funny role in the film,
and his agent said, Tom says, thanks, but it's fifty
years ago. He doesn't really remember anything that happened there.
But there's a lot of good stuff that I dug
(27:31):
out from past interviews, things that I didn't know, things
that hal Ashby said after the fact about the way
it was marketed, some great stuff from Peter Bart who
was at Paramount, who in his book was very honest
in his assessment, saying this was when they previewed the movie.
He said, this was the best preview I've ever been
to in my life when it comes to an audience response,
(27:53):
he said. And he also said, we're absolutely the wrong
company to market this movie. And he was right. They
were the wrong company. And the biggest surprise, which maybe
other Harold Matt fans knew I didn't know this found
in an interview with Colin Higgins, was that the Harold
Moutt came out around Christmas nineteen seventy one in Minneapolis,
had played for two weeks at one of the big
(28:13):
theaters downtown and then was pulled. It was supposed to
be Paramount had promised all these theaters around the country.
They'd promised in The Godfather for Christmas, and it wasn't done.
Paramount's only other movie that they had was Harold Nutt,
and they threw it into all these big theaters with
a bad marketing campaign, and audiences had no understanding of
(28:36):
what it was, and so of course it died. Now,
if The Godfather had been done, I'm guessing they would
have released Harold and Wutt in a more traditional arty
house kind of way. It would have opened in New
York and LA, although it didn't get great reviews in LA,
but they wouldn't have thrown into that many theaters at once.
(28:56):
And I think having just been reading a book out
Robert Wise's version of the It's Star Trek movie and
how theater owners had sued the theater companies for not sending
them the movies they said they were going to that
they'd booked, and so Star Trek went out in a
(29:19):
messy shape because it had been promised to the theaters
for that date. And it might have been the way
theater owners were burned not getting The Godfather and being
stuck with Harold and Maud, because it's not like the
theater owners were thrilled they had a movie that nobody
was going to and they had planned to have this
huge Christmas hit, So you can understand when they were
(29:41):
upset about it, and you can understand why Harold Maud
died at that point.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
How was it we're visiting going back to the old
stomping grounds, if not physically, but emotionally, reliving that period
of your life when you're so tied to this movie
theater and these great films that were coming out.
Speaker 7 (30:00):
As I get older, and I think a lot of
people when they get older, they you tend to just
finally look back at these things with rose colored glasses,
and I don't think I need rose colored glasses for
that era. It was a delight every time I saw it.
It was a delight when it came out again, when
(30:20):
they reissued it and they put out brand new prints
because the print that was at the West Gate was
really beat up, and would you knew the points where
it was just going to as they made the real changes,
it was going to be ugly, it was going to
be cut up. And in fact, the system manager said
that they kept asking Paramount for a clean print, and
(30:42):
Paramount didn't want to make a clean print, but they said,
here's what we're going to do. We're going to send
you every print we have and you go through and
pick the best reels and you can use those and
send everything back. So that's they cobbled together the best
they could do to show up because it was one
hundred and fifteen weeks, twice a night. Original I think
the original projectors from nineteen thirty five. I think it
(31:04):
took a total on the film, but it was always
a delight to just settle into those uncomfortable seats. The
lights go down, Deduva starts. The fun of watching Didouva
with an audience who doesn't necessarily know what's going on
with it is that it takes about three to five
minutes them to realize the people are not speaking Swedish,
because it sounds like it's Swedish with English subtitals, but
(31:26):
they're actually just speaking a pigeon Swedish and you don't
need the subtitles. You can hear you understand exactly what
they're saying. If Bergmann, it's funnier. But even if you don't,
the field of Bergmann film has permeated enough that you
get the jokes, and then you slide into the beginning
of Harold mod It's very quiet. The door closes, we
(31:50):
follow the feet down the steps. You can hear of
a clock tolling somewhere in the background when Harold's feet
at the bottom of the stairs, title Harold and Maud
comes up. And if you've seen the Holdovers, same titles,
the same pont they really they took that seventies look.
(32:10):
And then he walks over and starts against ephen song.
It's just it's a warm hug and you couldn't do
that at that time with any other movie. There was
no VHS. When a movie was gone, it was gone.
It might turn up on TV, but it's going to
be truncated and there's going to be commercials and it's
(32:30):
not going to be the same. Nowadays, you can binge
to say movie over and over. You couldn't do it
back then. But this was a case where there was
something that was worth watching more than once, and you
could go see it more than once.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
So obviously I want to leave people wanting more. But
I did really want to ask you first about the
advertising campaign that you discussed and why was that such
a bad ad campaign.
Speaker 7 (32:55):
It's considered one of the worst ever picture yourself as
a Paramount market executive in the nineteen seventies. Paramount's a
pretty staid company. They've been around for a long time.
They know how to do movies, and here comes a
movie with no stars, although one Academy Award winner about
a seventy nine year old woman who appears to have
(33:16):
an affair with a nineteen year old boy. At its
most bare bones synopsis, that isn't really what it's about,
but that's what is being hung on. And you have
to entice people in to see the movie. Oh and
by the way, it starts with the suicide, and he
commits suicide several times throughout it. And it makes fun
(33:37):
of the military, and it makes fun of the church,
ani makes fun of psychiatry. What do you do? What
picture do you put up? What do you say? They
were very lucky. Judith christ the critic, loved it and
she gave them a really nice blurb that they used everywhere.
But other critics didn't like it and said, Variety hated it.
(34:00):
So you don't have that you used to have a
nice review. You don't have any stars. Really, you don't
have rom com thing you can tie and do. There's
nothing to hang onto really except the weirdness. And they
weren't used to doing weird movies. They didn't know how
to do that, and so they came up with a poster,
(34:20):
white poster, pink and blue letters Harold and Maud, and
that was it, and the told audience is nothing.
Speaker 5 (34:28):
One of the.
Speaker 7 (34:28):
Critics who reviewed the movie when it played for its
two weeks here in the Downtown theater wrote in his
review and he loved the movie. He said, I had
trouble describing what it was about to the couple behind
me in line, and he said, if I can't describe it,
how is anyone else going to describe it? Because if
(34:49):
you just hang on the weird stuff, hey, it's an
older woman and younger guy. Do you want to see that?
So the stuff that really attracted people, which was the
love and the relationship and the soundtrack and all that,
audience has had to discover that and they had to
tell Paramount, here's how you advertise it. Here's Harold and
(35:10):
Maud on a motorcycle and the wheels have daisies. And
it's the sort of movie that is going to be
successful because someone told someone else to see it. That's
what's going to make it successful. And that's what it did.
When it opened in Paris. It didn't have that problem
because French audience is like whatever. Sure folk can see that,
(35:30):
but it was a very hard sell for the Paramount
Marketing department, and the fact that it opened in theaters
that it should have opened in pretty much doomed it.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
So what is next for you?
Speaker 7 (35:43):
I actually don't know. Getting the book out has been
interesting because it was designed in the United Kingdom and
it's printed over there because they can do this weird
sized book on photo quality paper better than anyone here
could have, at least.
Speaker 2 (35:59):
At the time.
Speaker 7 (35:59):
Maybe that'll change in the future, and so there are
I'm not dealing with tariffs or anything because books currently
are following into that, but it is still getting things
from there to hear. Being that it's self published, a
little harder to get into bookstore. It is on Amazon,
but you can also get it directly from me if
(36:20):
you hate Amazon. Doing it independently is a harder way
to do it. But I realized early on if I
could find a publisher who wanted to do it, they're
not going to let me do it the way I
did it. They're not going to pay all that money
for those photos. They're not going to put it at
that size, They're not going to put it in that
quality paper, and that's assuming I can even find someone
(36:42):
who wanted to do it. It's a very niche book for
a very niche audience. I quote Dana Gould when I
talk about it, the audience is guys my age who
are me. I don't think there's a huge audience for
the book, but the audience that is therefore it is
going to love it, and that's important thing.
Speaker 2 (37:01):
And if those people do hate Amazon and want to
buy it from you directly, where's the best place to go.
Speaker 7 (37:06):
Just go to my website, which is Albertsbridge Books dot com.
That's Albertsbridge Books dot com. It's the first thing that
pops up, and it's in currently in three different formats,
the nice paperback and nice hardcover, and then a special
hardcover that has end papers with a lot of fun
Herold and Maud photos in the front of the back
(37:28):
of the book. And that was one of the reasons
it was so hard to get this book done, is
getting it with those endpapers. But it's worth it because
it's really fun. Circus Bard, thank you so much for
your time. This is wonderful talking with you. It's a
delight to be on a podcast. I've listened to so
much and not geek out too much. I got we
got our geeking out done before we started.
Speaker 3 (38:11):
Left my happy home to see what I could find out.
Speaker 6 (38:22):
I left my fault and friends with the aim to
clear my mind. Got hit the roby roll.
Speaker 3 (38:36):
Then it comes out like that many stories told me.
Speaker 6 (38:41):
How they got there.
Speaker 5 (38:48):
So long a long.
Speaker 6 (38:49):
Ago, second stick, the time up.
Speaker 3 (38:54):
So much left know when I'm long ago to find out?
(39:14):
End the hand down.
Speaker 6 (39:17):
On the way I want you do.
Speaker 3 (39:26):
Through descendants now through the fasting thunder and.
Speaker 4 (39:37):
Listen to the wind come down telling me about to hurry.
Speaker 8 (39:42):
I listen to the roded.
Speaker 6 (39:44):
Song, say no to go there?
Speaker 4 (39:51):
So on and on the door sick and stick the
time out, so much.
Speaker 3 (39:58):
Left to know?
Speaker 4 (39:59):
What a mom the gold to find out?
Speaker 6 (40:03):
Who?
Speaker 3 (40:28):
Then I found myself alone, hoping someone goodness me, thinking
about my home and the last horn to kiss me,
kiss me?
Speaker 8 (40:50):
There's sometimes you have to move, but nothing seems to.
Speaker 4 (40:54):
Suit your Nevertheless, you know me your last to walk
if you.
Speaker 6 (41:04):
So long long ago.
Speaker 3 (41:07):
The second stick with the time out, so much left
to know.
Speaker 6 (41:12):
When I'm on the fool to find out?
Speaker 8 (41:19):
And I found my head one day when I wasn't
able to try and and here.
Speaker 3 (41:31):
I have to say, because there is no use in lying.
Speaker 2 (41:36):
God, I guess the anser life with end.
Speaker 6 (41:44):
So why not take good up?
Speaker 4 (41:46):
Now, God there with him forgot pick out the food book.
Now it's the answer, life with end.
Speaker 3 (41:58):
So why not.
Speaker 4 (41:59):
Take a look now the god dell Usen they got
the ot the look book now, yes, as salize with
So why not saying look now the god dell Uson
they got to got the loo.
Speaker 6 (42:19):
Look now, oh
Oh gee, is Bolt it show died?
Speaker 2 (00:08):
People pay good money to see this movie.
Speaker 3 (00:10):
When they go out to a theater.
Speaker 4 (00:12):
They want clod sodas, hot popcorn, and no monsters in
the protection booth.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Everyone for tend podcasting isn't boring, cut it off.
Speaker 5 (00:41):
Do you remember the movie Harold and Maud While I
was a teenager. It played for over two years straight
at my neighborhood theater. It played and played and played.
I was such a big fan that when the two
star of the film, Ruth Gordon and Bud Court came
(01:02):
to town to celebrate the two year anniversary, I got
to have dinner with Bud Court, and I followed the
two stars around with my trustee Super eight camera.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
You know, it's a great thing to be a place
where something goes right. And for two years at the
Westgate Theater, things have gone right for Harold and more
and tonight it includes Bodily.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
There's nothing anybody concerned.
Speaker 6 (01:39):
So thank you all.
Speaker 4 (01:40):
For living in the film and making this probably one
of the most touching months of my luck.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
And I'm sure she said, and God.
Speaker 5 (01:54):
Bless you are at the Westgate Theater. Harold and Maude
officially became a cult film. I always thought there was
a book in this unique conflux of the perfect movie
at the perfect theater at the perfect time, And now
that book held over Harold and Maud at the Westgate
Theater is a reality. The book looks at the beginnings
(02:14):
of the Westgate Theater, the tragic loss of its visionary founder,
and its struggles to get by for the next forty years.
Then we go behind the scenes at the making of
Harold and Maud, the casting choices that could have been
the accidental moments that made cinema history, and the marketing
(02:36):
mistakes that nearly doomed the movie. Next, we dive into
the movies two plus years at the Westgate, the one
year anniversary, the superfan who saw the movie over one
hundred and sixty times and formed a lasting friendship with
Ruth Gordon, the two year anniversary, where Ruth Gordon returned
and Budcourt joined her and also brought out the protesters.
(03:00):
The book also looks at what happened to Harold and
Maud after it left the Westgate, its success in other cities,
the stage productions as well as the musical version. Finally,
the book examines the last years of the Westgate Theater
and their ongoing attempts to find a worthy successor to
Harold and Maud, which they kept trying to do until
(03:22):
the theater finally closed in nineteen seventy seven. The book
is packed with over one hundred and sixty color and
black and white photos.
Speaker 6 (03:35):
Some of the.
Speaker 5 (03:36):
Photos are rare, while others are being published for the
first time. It's the story of a film that wouldn't
die and the theater that gave it life. Check out
Held Over Harold and Maud at the Westgate Theater.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
Welcome to the Projection Booth. I'm your host Mike White.
On this special episode, I'm talking with author John Gaspard
all about his book Held Over. It is the story
of the two year run of Harold and Maud at
the Westgate Theater in Minneapolis. It's a great story and
really loving portrait of the film as well as the movie,
theater and the community around it. Thanks so much for listening,
(04:22):
and I hope you enjoy the interview. I want to
know a little bit more about how you became an author.
Speaker 7 (04:27):
I became an author because of a filmmaker named William Baher.
William Baher was a kind of experimental, semi Hollywood filmmaker
in the late sixties, and he wrote a book called
Breaking Through, Selling Out, Dropping Dead, and Other Notes on filmmaking,
a really good book, a little dated now, but about
just the ins and outs of making a movie, both
(04:48):
in and outside of the Hollywood system. And then about
a year later he did a update of it in
which he just added the stuff that he'd learned, and
at the back of it he said, I've become so
frustrated filmmaking. I've decided to become a novelist. And that's
what he went on to do until then with life.
He became a kind of a thriller novelist and was
very happy doing it. So this is me at age fifteen,
(05:11):
reading and going, oh, okay, if I get tired of
making movies, I will write novels. And so for the
next forty years I held down a corporate job doing
videos for Fortune five hundred companies, and then in my
spare time I made a bunch of low budget feature films.
I started that in high school making I believe what
(05:31):
is the first super eight sound feature film that was
done with a code AC system. And then I've shot
him on sixteen millimeters and various forms of video, and
the last couple were done in digital video. So I've
done a lot of screenwriting and a lot of writing.
This in my day job, so writing wasn't a big deal.
But as I got older, making a little bunch of
(05:51):
movies get just a little bit harder. The hours are harder,
the gear, although lighter now than it used to be,
is still clunky, and you can't do it alone. You
do need a talented group, which normally I can assemble,
but it's just it's Mike. It's a lot of work.
And I had an idea for a series of novels
about a magician because I had a lot of friends
(06:11):
who are magicians. I'd booked a lot of magicians in
the corporate world, and I also had friends who are magicians,
and so I wrote a book about a magician who
stumbles into some crimes, and that got popular, so I
just kept writing them. There's now ten of those. And
then I wrote another mystery series about a community theater
that keeps stumbling into murders. Three books in that one.
I wrote a couple of filmmaking books, first with Michael Wise,
(06:34):
back in the day when he was still alive and
doing things. I mean, Michael Wisi Publications is still out there,
and then they did a couple of other filmmaking books on
my own. So not afraid to sit down and write
not really an issue. And now that I am in
rehirement age, that's my hobby because I just sit around
and write stuff.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
How did you get the idea for held Over?
Speaker 7 (06:57):
On occasion, I do a film podcast called the Occasional
Film Podcast, and I had interviewed a guy named James
Davidson who had written a book called hal Ashby and
the Making of Harold and Maud. And it was a
pretty complete book on that process. And it wasn't a
book I was interested in writing. I didn't want to
ever do any of that in depth. But Harold and
Maud was a big movie for me. It ran for
(07:19):
two years here in Minneapolis at the Westgate Theater. I
saw it many times when it was at the Westgate Theater.
It had a first year anniversary. I went to that
and met Ruth Gordon. It had a second year anniversary.
I went to that and met Ruth Gordon and Bud
Court and had dinner with Bud Court and shot some
super eight footage of them and just knew a lot
(07:39):
about the movie and realized that it was in that
two year span that it became a cult film. It
probably would have been a cult film eventually, but the
fact that it played continuously seven nights a week, two
shows a night, three shows on Sunday for over two
years at one theater got the attention of a lot
(08:00):
of other theater owners around the country, and they started
booking it and used that fact in their advertising. Hey, Detroit,
what does Minneapolis know that we don't know? Hey, New York,
same thing. And from that it became a cult film.
But it wouldn't have happened the way it happened if
it hadn't sat at the Westgate for that amount of time.
And I thought, that's something it hasn't been explored. I
(08:22):
have unique visuals from that time that nobody else has.
I have the inside track on it. Let's just sit
down and see what this could become. And I did
it at the perfect time in indie book writing. In
that world, you can now easily get really high end
full color, black and white color photographic paper books printed
(08:47):
on a print on demand basis, so I don't have
to order five hundred books and have them sitting in
my garage. I can order ten twenty as I need them,
which is a little bit more expensive, but I didn't
want I didn't want to die with five hundred books
in the garage. So I thought it's perfect time to
do a coffee table book that it looks at that era,
(09:08):
that every page has a nice surprising image on it,
every page has a nice surprising factor to bid something
you didn't know about either the theater, which had, as
it turned out, pretty interesting history, or the movie, or
what happened to both of them after they split up
in nineteen seventy four. So it just seemed it seemed
like a perfect time to do this sort of large
(09:29):
scale project.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
And the layout of the book is just gorgeous. Who
did that? Or did you do that yourself?
Speaker 5 (09:38):
Oh?
Speaker 7 (09:38):
If only I could no. And that was one of
the things that made me decide to do it was
I approached there's a couple in England that do run
a company called Design for Writers, and they have done
virtually every book cover that I've done, and I've done
a lot of books, and they're very creative and really
(09:59):
easy to work with. And I approached them and said
here's what I'm thinking. This isn't going to be covered.
This is going to be one hundred and sixty some pages,
and every page is designed. There's a template insofar as
we have a look for the overall thing and what
a caption looks like and that kind of hmplate, but
every page is different and every page is going to
be designed. You guys up for that, and they said, yep,
(10:19):
if you give us enough time, we'd love to do that.
And they did just a beautiful job. Speaking of time,
when did you decide to do this project, and how
long did it take? I decided late summer last year,
twenty twenty four, and immediately began to dive into the
research because although I knew a lot, I thought I
(10:41):
knew a lot about those two years, I knew nothing
about the theater from before seventy four. I worked there
as an usher in nineteen seventy five and seventy six,
so I knew the layout of the building and I
knew what it was now. But I had to dive
in and find out what was it when it opened
in nineteen thirty five, and why did it open in
nineteen thirty five in the middle of the depression put
(11:04):
together by someone who was in the insurance business and
had been a concert violinist, but to become successful in insurance,
and he decided he wanted to build a movie theater
in South Minneapolis when there was another one six blocks away.
Why did he do that? What were his plans for it,
what was it going to be? What did it become?
And it was just fascinating going to architectural libraries. I
(11:27):
got very lucky and was connected to the founder's granddaughter,
and she had lots of photos and memories that her
mother had written down about the theater. So I was
able to reconstruct why the Westgate popped up in nineteen
thirty five, why it almost immediately wasn't a hit because
(11:47):
the guy who founded it died right away, so there
was no visionary behind it after like year two, and
it struggled for forty years until it became what one
critic called a resting home or a nursing home for
comedies that aren't completely understood. And it did become that
in the late sixties and early seventies, which is why
Harold and Maud ended up there. There was a reputation
(12:08):
for that. Yeah, so I had to do that research.
I also had to figure out what had happened to the
theater after I left it in seventy six, and what
happened to Harold Maud after it left that theater in
seventy four, So there was a lot of research. Newspapers.
Dot com is fantastic for that sort of thing. I
was able to track down the assistant manager from the
theater at that time talk to an old usher at
(12:30):
that time. When the second year anniversary came about, there
was a neighborhood protest and people had picket signs walking
up and down the sidewalk as the two stars entered,
the signs saying we want a new movie and we
need variety. And I was able to track down and
talk to the husband of the woman who organized that,
so there were still some people around. And then all
(12:51):
the existing articles and interviews from the time and also
from now, I was able to cobble through those and
put together a pretty good timeline of what happened. And
that took about eleven months, ten months something like that.
The book was being laid out the middle of summer,
so almost a year of research in writing.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
And it pays off so well. I was just so impressive.
It was so deep in so many areas, and I'm
just like, how was he getting this material? This is
amazing to find out about all of these people that
ran the theater and having all of the the bills
as far as what's playing and all that. Even didn't
you have like architectural drawings of the theater.
Speaker 7 (13:36):
I did, which was for me since I had been
there Mike in seventy five seventy six, I was able
to go back and figure out when I started there
and when I stopped there just by based on what
movies were showing, and I remembered it was a worn down,
tired theater with the seats were not the original seats,
(13:56):
but they were not new seats. When they were put in,
they were used for another theater. The screen had been moved,
the stage used to be set to hold almost a
full orchestra. Because he had intended to have lots of
live entertainment. There had been in nineteen thirty five a
huge clubroom right off the lobby where people could rent
and use that for bridge clubs or for parties and
(14:17):
then go in and see a movie. They had a
full catering kitchen in the basin for that. They had
its own candy store that was also attached on the
other side. But in seventy five when I was there,
none of that was there. It was a cramped lobby
and a weird little room next to the lobby, and
the restrooms and the auditorium. So getting those original drawings
and going, oh, that's where the clubroom was, that's the
beauty parlor that was next door. They must have put
(14:39):
up a wall and made it a beauty parlor. And oh,
that's where the candy store was. That's now a little library,
And they put up a wall and made that its
own building. And that's why in fifty five or whatever,
they built a candy display case in the lobby. All
this stuff that I had no idea had happened in
that theater was fascinating to find, and nowadays it's a
(15:00):
little bit easier to find stuff. I was able to
track down those drawings and go to the architectural library
and find the original blueprints of the guy who made it.
It was fun. Of course, at some point you have
to stop and write the book. But one of my
goals was because James Davidson has this great book hal
Ashburyen making Harold Mard that has all this detail. I
(15:22):
wanted to find stuff that wasn't necessarily in that book,
or that I, as a pretty diehard Harold and Maud fan,
wouldn't necessarily know. So I was able to talk to
John Rubinstein. John Rubinstein as an actor and a director,
and it was the original Pippen on Broadway, but he
was good friends with the screenwriter of Harold and Maud,
(15:42):
Colin Higgins, and the part was written for him, And
so I was able to talk to John about that
and his feelings about his audition with Gordon, what he
thought about the finished product. And he's a huge fan
of what Bud Court did. But I also learned from
him that Alice Lanchester was supposed to play Mode, which
I hadn't known, And he said, if you read the
(16:04):
script and hear her voice in your head, now else
the Lanchester. For anybody to listen to this podcast should
know who else Anchester is. But she was a bride
of Frank Kenstein. She was Katie Nana, the original nanny
who quits at the beginning of Mary Poppins. She was
Miss marbles In murdered by death. She had a very
long career and if you read the script with her
(16:26):
inflections in mind, you can absolutely see Colin Higgins meant
for that part to be played by her, and I
think she would have been terrific.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
Having worked at a movie theater in my youth as well,
I'm curious what are some of your favorite memories of
the theater itself. One memory that.
Speaker 7 (16:42):
Happened when I wasn't there, but that one of the
ushers told me, which I thought was fascinating. If Harold
and Maude, you know that very near the end of
the movie, if you haven't seen it, I don't want
to say something is said to Harold and he pauses
for a long time, and then he yells, what really loud?
(17:02):
And that is immediately followed by the sound of a siren.
Because the movie played so long at the theater, and
if you worked in a kind of theater I worked in,
there's a lot of downtime when you're in that sort
of thing. That sound coming out of the auditorium was
the signal to everybody that, oh, we got to get
back to work. The audience is about to come out,
(17:25):
And so I thought that was just delightful when I
was working there. I don't know what the original setup was,
but if you were an usher, you had to add
black pants and white shirt and a bow tie and
a coat. And I don't know where the girls went,
but the boys had to go backstage, and you would
change backstage behind the screen, and if you understand the
(17:47):
laws of the physics, a light is hitting the screen,
it's bouncing off the screen. No one can see you,
but you can see the whole movie. Which is really
fun to be standing back there and seeing Warren Baties
motorcycle riding up Bullhull and drive from Champoo night after night,
because that was about the time I.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
Was getting changed.
Speaker 7 (18:07):
However, one employee famously kept forgetting the laws of physics
and needed to see what he was doing, and he
would turn on the light back there, which would give
everybody in the audience their own special little phil. Hey,
look there's the strip Tee's going on behind the screen.
The other thing I remembered, and it certainly isn't an
(18:27):
issue now was. There was a columnist here in the
Twin Cities named Will Jones, and Will Jones is important
in the success of Harold Mard because he's the one
who championed when it came to the west Gate. He
didn't champion Harold and Maud. He said, that's a great movie,
but there's a short that played before Harold and Matt
every night called Diduva, And he wrote a whole column
on that two days before Harold and Matt opened up
(18:49):
the west Gate, and the theater staff is pretty sure
that's why they almost had to sell out that first night,
because Will Jones had said, you've got to go see
the short. It's sent it's very funny. But anytime he
would come to the theater, we were put on high
alert and we'd have an usher on either side of
the theater. There was a one of those things where
(19:10):
you had a door on either side. There's no middle
aisle there to side aisles, and we had to stand
there and watch and make sure that nobody in the
theater started smoking. There was no smoking in the theater,
but that didn't stop them sometimes because we'd learned from
fast experience. If somebody smoked in the theater, that was
all Will Jones would write about in his column. He
wouldn't write about the movie, he would just write about
(19:33):
the smoking. It was sort of a boring job, except
that I got to see certain parts of certain movies
again and again and again and again, which was interesting.
And I've always felt that although I wasn't working there
during Harold Mott, I did see it, let's just say
a lot. I saw it a lot. And although I
was in a film program at that time in high
(19:54):
schools and I was in a special film program made
movies and did things like that every afternoon for three years.
It was a seventies film program, which meant it was
the film is a form of expression, and we're not
going to teach you how to do match cuts or
close ups or coverage or anything like that, and don't
you dare try to tell a story. So my film
school was watching what hal Ashby did to make Harold
(20:16):
and Maud, the decisions he made on how to do
a montage, when to bring in music, how to hold
for a laugh, even casting, and then reading the script
and going, oh, but he did. He cut out a
lot of stuff in this movie and made it better.
And sometimes when you take things out, they're better, which
is a hard thing to do when you're a young filmmaker,
(20:37):
if you're going to all the trouble to shoot something.
But it did teach me that, which is if that's
not working. It's got to be cut. And he was
pretty fearless about that. So that was that movie's an
education in itself for a young filmmaker.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
Why do you think we're still talking about this movie
all these years later.
Speaker 7 (20:53):
I think it hits people on kind of a primal
emotional level, and that's why it stays with them. And
that's to do with the way hal Ashby made it
and the way Counigans wrote it, and the use of
Cat Steven's music. The three of those things together create
a feeling at the end that just doesn't happen normally
(21:15):
in your normal life. When we discover Harold at the
top of the cliff and he straps on his banjo
and he starts playing and notes he's playing Segway beautifully
into Cat Stephens singing, and we've just been through this
emotional experience with him. A lot of movies don't give
you that. And what Harold and Maud was able to
(21:37):
do for those two years and then when it was
reissued in the eighties is it was a thing you
brought people to and it was a litmus test. Hey,
I want you to see this movie, and if you
don't like this movie. I have to think about you again,
because it's something people wanted to share, and there's not
a lot of those out there. Rocky Horror was different.
(22:00):
Rocky Horror came about a year later, and Rocky Horror
was conticipatory. But it's different than Harold and Maud. Harold
and Maud with the exception of it's run in New
York for a while where they the theater or complained
that people were talking during the movie by saying the
lines during the movie. That was not something had happened
to Hald Maud. With Harold and Maud, you sat, you smiled,
(22:22):
you laughed. If you're bringing someone for the first time,
you would turn and look at them when you saw
a scene was coming up. You wanted to see the
reaction to It was a very shared thing, but it
wasn't something you interacted with. You just absorbed it.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
With that breath of information that you're going into. Was
there anything that didn't work out? Were there any areas
where you're just like, I can't find enough information about this,
or did you have that planned out before you even started?
Speaker 7 (22:51):
No, it was an exploratory thing. I realized early on.
I wanted it to be as much about the images
as it was about the words, So it is I
think a pretty equal balance between. As I told the designer,
I loved turning a page and seeing a full page picture,
and I also like old movie ads. I put those
in as well. But I did spend the majority of
(23:13):
my budget on licensing photos. I tried not to license
the most common Harold and mog photos because you can
see those anywhere. What I was looking for was stuff
you didn't necessarily see all the time, and I found
a stockhouse that had They claimed that they showed me everything,
(23:33):
although I'm not really sure, but they had about two
hundred behind the scenes photos that I'd never seen before,
and you could see where there'd be a sequence of
photos and you can know that if the next one
is there, that's the one I'm used to seeing, but
I haven't seen the one before this. And it allowed
me to drop in some photos that just as a
(23:54):
Harold and Mog fan, excited me. A really good close
up of Bud in character shot from far below looking
up at him. Stuff with Hal Ashby talking to Vivian
Pickles as they walked down to the pool. Stuff with
Sherry Summers sitting talking to bud Court, just stuff I
hadn't seen before. And that's really what I wanted was
(24:15):
I wanted, here are the visuals that are telling the
story in a new way. Now. If I couldn't find
visuals or something, I had to abandon it or not
bother going there for me the biggest hole, and it
would mean nothing to the people outside of the Twin Cities,
But across the street from the Westgate Theater almost the
(24:36):
entire time the Theater has been there, and it still
stands there today as a little hamburger joint called the
Convention Grill, but was built in the mid thirties. It's
a classic Art Deco hamburger joint with maltzburgers and fries,
and it's just gorgeous. When I was shooting Super Eat
movies in my teens, I shot scenes in there. It
was just gorgeous. And so I tracked down the Grand
(25:00):
and the owner who now runs it, and I said,
I would love to do it. Two page spread in
this on Convention Grill because it was part of the
ritual you go to Harold Maud then either before or
after you'd go over to the Convention Grill. And he said,
I'm sorry, John, we just don't have any historical photos,
and I thought, Okay, then I guess we're not going
to do that. But I was able to track down
(25:21):
Doug Strand. Doug Strand saw the movie one hundred and
sixty times while I was here in the Twin Cities
and was Ruth Gordon's date when she came for the
first year anniversary, because the theater management said, you've seen
this movie a lot, and Budcourt's not coming, do you
mind just being an escort for Ms Gordon when she's here.
And he did that and then they became fast friends
(25:43):
and were friends until she died, so I have a
nice I was able to check Doug down, which is amazing,
and there's a nice too page spread on him. I
was able to track down the guy who owns the
rights to De Duva, which was nominated for an Academy
I think in sixty eight and is a very funny
black and white film. If you guys haven't seen it,
(26:05):
just go on YouTube and look for Di Duva. It's
an Iigmar Bergmann parody. It's Madeline Kahn's first film appearance.
It's very funny. I was able to track down the
guy who owns the rights to it and do a
two page spread on that. If I'd found more Harold
and Maud photos, there'd be more in there. But I
think I pulled the best from that, and I think
(26:27):
I pulled the for the real diehard herold and mod fan.
There's some surprises in there, which is what I wanted
to see, but there's also enough for a newbie to
understand what the production is like, and the problems with
the marketing and the problems with the advertising and all that.
There's enough for the die hard and the newbie.
Speaker 2 (26:45):
How many people do you think you talked to for this.
Speaker 7 (26:49):
Surprisingly little, not a big number, because not a lot
of them are around anymore. I probably only did nine
ten interviews, maybe a little more, but I was able
to find a lot of extant interviews, some stuff I
hadn't found before. I did, of course, reach out to
Bud Court and never heard back, but that was expected
(27:11):
because he doesn't really like to talk about it that much.
Everybody else was. I reached out to Tom Skarrett because
he plays a very small but funny role in the film,
and his agent said, Tom says, thanks, but it's fifty
years ago. He doesn't really remember anything that happened there.
But there's a lot of good stuff that I dug
(27:31):
out from past interviews, things that I didn't know, things
that hal Ashby said after the fact about the way
it was marketed, some great stuff from Peter Bart who
was at Paramount, who in his book was very honest
in his assessment, saying this was when they previewed the movie.
He said, this was the best preview I've ever been
to in my life when it comes to an audience response,
(27:53):
he said. And he also said, we're absolutely the wrong
company to market this movie. And he was right. They
were the wrong company. And the biggest surprise, which maybe
other Harold Matt fans knew I didn't know this found
in an interview with Colin Higgins, was that the Harold
Moutt came out around Christmas nineteen seventy one in Minneapolis,
had played for two weeks at one of the big
(28:13):
theaters downtown and then was pulled. It was supposed to
be Paramount had promised all these theaters around the country.
They'd promised in The Godfather for Christmas, and it wasn't done.
Paramount's only other movie that they had was Harold Nutt,
and they threw it into all these big theaters with
a bad marketing campaign, and audiences had no understanding of
(28:36):
what it was, and so of course it died. Now,
if The Godfather had been done, I'm guessing they would
have released Harold and Wutt in a more traditional arty
house kind of way. It would have opened in New
York and LA, although it didn't get great reviews in LA,
but they wouldn't have thrown into that many theaters at once.
(28:56):
And I think having just been reading a book out
Robert Wise's version of the It's Star Trek movie and
how theater owners had sued the theater companies for not sending
them the movies they said they were going to that
they'd booked, and so Star Trek went out in a
(29:19):
messy shape because it had been promised to the theaters
for that date. And it might have been the way
theater owners were burned not getting The Godfather and being
stuck with Harold and Maud, because it's not like the
theater owners were thrilled they had a movie that nobody
was going to and they had planned to have this
huge Christmas hit, So you can understand when they were
(29:41):
upset about it, and you can understand why Harold Maud
died at that point.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
How was it we're visiting going back to the old
stomping grounds, if not physically, but emotionally, reliving that period
of your life when you're so tied to this movie
theater and these great films that were coming out.
Speaker 7 (30:00):
As I get older, and I think a lot of
people when they get older, they you tend to just
finally look back at these things with rose colored glasses,
and I don't think I need rose colored glasses for
that era. It was a delight every time I saw it.
It was a delight when it came out again, when
(30:20):
they reissued it and they put out brand new prints
because the print that was at the West Gate was
really beat up, and would you knew the points where
it was just going to as they made the real changes,
it was going to be ugly, it was going to
be cut up. And in fact, the system manager said
that they kept asking Paramount for a clean print, and
(30:42):
Paramount didn't want to make a clean print, but they said,
here's what we're going to do. We're going to send
you every print we have and you go through and
pick the best reels and you can use those and
send everything back. So that's they cobbled together the best
they could do to show up because it was one
hundred and fifteen weeks, twice a night. Original I think
the original projectors from nineteen thirty five. I think it
(31:04):
took a total on the film, but it was always
a delight to just settle into those uncomfortable seats. The
lights go down, Deduva starts. The fun of watching Didouva
with an audience who doesn't necessarily know what's going on
with it is that it takes about three to five
minutes them to realize the people are not speaking Swedish,
because it sounds like it's Swedish with English subtitals, but
(31:26):
they're actually just speaking a pigeon Swedish and you don't
need the subtitles. You can hear you understand exactly what
they're saying. If Bergmann, it's funnier. But even if you don't,
the field of Bergmann film has permeated enough that you
get the jokes, and then you slide into the beginning
of Harold mod It's very quiet. The door closes, we
(31:50):
follow the feet down the steps. You can hear of
a clock tolling somewhere in the background when Harold's feet
at the bottom of the stairs, title Harold and Maud
comes up. And if you've seen the Holdovers, same titles,
the same pont they really they took that seventies look.
(32:10):
And then he walks over and starts against ephen song.
It's just it's a warm hug and you couldn't do
that at that time with any other movie. There was
no VHS. When a movie was gone, it was gone.
It might turn up on TV, but it's going to
be truncated and there's going to be commercials and it's
(32:30):
not going to be the same. Nowadays, you can binge
to say movie over and over. You couldn't do it
back then. But this was a case where there was
something that was worth watching more than once, and you
could go see it more than once.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
So obviously I want to leave people wanting more. But
I did really want to ask you first about the
advertising campaign that you discussed and why was that such
a bad ad campaign.
Speaker 7 (32:55):
It's considered one of the worst ever picture yourself as
a Paramount market executive in the nineteen seventies. Paramount's a
pretty staid company. They've been around for a long time.
They know how to do movies, and here comes a
movie with no stars, although one Academy Award winner about
a seventy nine year old woman who appears to have
(33:16):
an affair with a nineteen year old boy. At its
most bare bones synopsis, that isn't really what it's about,
but that's what is being hung on. And you have
to entice people in to see the movie. Oh and
by the way, it starts with the suicide, and he
commits suicide several times throughout it. And it makes fun
(33:37):
of the military, and it makes fun of the church,
ani makes fun of psychiatry. What do you do? What
picture do you put up? What do you say? They
were very lucky. Judith christ the critic, loved it and
she gave them a really nice blurb that they used everywhere.
But other critics didn't like it and said, Variety hated it.
(34:00):
So you don't have that you used to have a
nice review. You don't have any stars. Really, you don't
have rom com thing you can tie and do. There's
nothing to hang onto really except the weirdness. And they
weren't used to doing weird movies. They didn't know how
to do that, and so they came up with a poster,
(34:20):
white poster, pink and blue letters Harold and Maud, and
that was it, and the told audience is nothing.
Speaker 5 (34:28):
One of the.
Speaker 7 (34:28):
Critics who reviewed the movie when it played for its
two weeks here in the Downtown theater wrote in his
review and he loved the movie. He said, I had
trouble describing what it was about to the couple behind
me in line, and he said, if I can't describe it,
how is anyone else going to describe it? Because if
(34:49):
you just hang on the weird stuff, hey, it's an
older woman and younger guy. Do you want to see that?
So the stuff that really attracted people, which was the
love and the relationship and the soundtrack and all that,
audience has had to discover that and they had to
tell Paramount, here's how you advertise it. Here's Harold and
(35:10):
Maud on a motorcycle and the wheels have daisies. And
it's the sort of movie that is going to be
successful because someone told someone else to see it. That's
what's going to make it successful. And that's what it did.
When it opened in Paris. It didn't have that problem
because French audience is like whatever. Sure folk can see that,
(35:30):
but it was a very hard sell for the Paramount
Marketing department, and the fact that it opened in theaters
that it should have opened in pretty much doomed it.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
So what is next for you?
Speaker 7 (35:43):
I actually don't know. Getting the book out has been
interesting because it was designed in the United Kingdom and
it's printed over there because they can do this weird
sized book on photo quality paper better than anyone here
could have, at least.
Speaker 2 (35:59):
At the time.
Speaker 7 (35:59):
Maybe that'll change in the future, and so there are
I'm not dealing with tariffs or anything because books currently
are following into that, but it is still getting things
from there to hear. Being that it's self published, a
little harder to get into bookstore. It is on Amazon,
but you can also get it directly from me if
(36:20):
you hate Amazon. Doing it independently is a harder way
to do it. But I realized early on if I
could find a publisher who wanted to do it, they're
not going to let me do it the way I
did it. They're not going to pay all that money
for those photos. They're not going to put it at
that size, They're not going to put it in that
quality paper, and that's assuming I can even find someone
(36:42):
who wanted to do it. It's a very niche book for
a very niche audience. I quote Dana Gould when I
talk about it, the audience is guys my age who
are me. I don't think there's a huge audience for
the book, but the audience that is therefore it is
going to love it, and that's important thing.
Speaker 2 (37:01):
And if those people do hate Amazon and want to
buy it from you directly, where's the best place to go.
Speaker 7 (37:06):
Just go to my website, which is Albertsbridge Books dot com.
That's Albertsbridge Books dot com. It's the first thing that
pops up, and it's in currently in three different formats,
the nice paperback and nice hardcover, and then a special
hardcover that has end papers with a lot of fun
Herold and Maud photos in the front of the back
(37:28):
of the book. And that was one of the reasons
it was so hard to get this book done, is
getting it with those endpapers. But it's worth it because
it's really fun. Circus Bard, thank you so much for
your time. This is wonderful talking with you. It's a
delight to be on a podcast. I've listened to so
much and not geek out too much. I got we
got our geeking out done before we started.
Speaker 3 (38:11):
Left my happy home to see what I could find out.
Speaker 6 (38:22):
I left my fault and friends with the aim to
clear my mind. Got hit the roby roll.
Speaker 3 (38:36):
Then it comes out like that many stories told me.
Speaker 6 (38:41):
How they got there.
Speaker 5 (38:48):
So long a long.
Speaker 6 (38:49):
Ago, second stick, the time up.
Speaker 3 (38:54):
So much left know when I'm long ago to find out?
(39:14):
End the hand down.
Speaker 6 (39:17):
On the way I want you do.
Speaker 3 (39:26):
Through descendants now through the fasting thunder and.
Speaker 4 (39:37):
Listen to the wind come down telling me about to hurry.
Speaker 8 (39:42):
I listen to the roded.
Speaker 6 (39:44):
Song, say no to go there?
Speaker 4 (39:51):
So on and on the door sick and stick the
time out, so much.
Speaker 3 (39:58):
Left to know?
Speaker 4 (39:59):
What a mom the gold to find out?
Speaker 6 (40:03):
Who?
Speaker 3 (40:28):
Then I found myself alone, hoping someone goodness me, thinking
about my home and the last horn to kiss me,
kiss me?
Speaker 8 (40:50):
There's sometimes you have to move, but nothing seems to.
Speaker 4 (40:54):
Suit your Nevertheless, you know me your last to walk
if you.
Speaker 6 (41:04):
So long long ago.
Speaker 3 (41:07):
The second stick with the time out, so much left
to know.
Speaker 6 (41:12):
When I'm on the fool to find out?
Speaker 8 (41:19):
And I found my head one day when I wasn't
able to try and and here.
Speaker 3 (41:31):
I have to say, because there is no use in lying.
Speaker 2 (41:36):
God, I guess the anser life with end.
Speaker 6 (41:44):
So why not take good up?
Speaker 4 (41:46):
Now, God there with him forgot pick out the food book.
Now it's the answer, life with end.
Speaker 3 (41:58):
So why not.
Speaker 4 (41:59):
Take a look now the god dell Usen they got
the ot the look book now, yes, as salize with
So why not saying look now the god dell Uson
they got to got the loo.
Speaker 6 (42:19):
Look now, oh
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