Oct 30, 2017
Movie Meltdown - Episode 416
This week we welcome our special guest James
Katz. James is the former President and founder of the
Universal Pictures Classics Division. He has worked in
many different areas over the years including - film distribution,
publicity, marketing and working as a producer and as executive
producer on several films. But more then anything, James has made a
monumental impact on film history through his preservation and
re-release of five Alfred Hitchcock’s films in the early 1980s. The
success of those films led to other restorations classic films like
Spartacus, My Fair Lady, and Lawrence of
Arabia. So listen as we hear stories from his humble
beginnings working as a photographer and creating press kits, all
the way through his journey to eventually change the way studios
view and care for their film libraries.
And while we bend birches to and fro, we also bring up... Paul
Bartel, color timing, he's really a chemist engineer film nerd,
Herbert Coleman, 70mm, the last print that David Selznick approved,
Loews in White Plains, Under the Volcano, that was something that
played at the 1964 World's Fair, Jimmy Stewart, Technicolor,
Singin' in the Rain, Kevin Brownlow, the studio system was a
totally different atmosphere, Tab Hunter, no one really wants to
know how the sausages are made, David Lean, To Be Alive, put
something on the wire, Robert Frost, we found the soundtracks in a
trash heap in Glen Glenn Sound in Hollywood, Douglas Sirk, east
side or west side, put two or three photographs together... to tell
a little story, film festivals, Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence,
now... here we are today, you know, in the digital age - and I'm
still talking about photochemical, Divine, some of the
interpretations, David Merrick, money's falling out and money's
coming in, Preston Sturges, Eating Raoul, sitting on the set of
Vertigo, I Am Curious (Yellow), back then they didn't even have
vaults, Lust in the Dust, newspapers, Zeffirelli's Traviata,
there's trama and drama every day, Parade Magazine and pulling up
in front of Scotty's apartment.
"We... made people aware that in 100 years of the moving
image... that a lot of it was deteriorating."
For more on the Speed Art Museum, go to: http://www.speedmuseum.org/