Well, dear readers, you won’t believe it. I can barely believe it myself and yet I must because it is true. As you know, we have a screening of The First Nudie Musical coming up at the American Cinematheque at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood on May 28th. I was beginning to be really concerned about it because of the quality of the print they’d be showing. For those of you who’ve watched the documentary on the DVD, you know that we spent a lot of time getting the color right and replacing splicy sections of the print we were using (the one which had retained about sixty-percent of its color) with sections from my mint but totally faded print (and how the amazing telecine artist had somehow matched the color for those short sections). So, we’d already decided there was no way we were going to show a mint but totally faded (and I mean totally – not one color left) print – we were going to show the sixty-percent of its color print. But, as I said, that print, while overall very good, has a few really splicy sections at the ends of reels and, in fact, one end of reel is missing about forty seconds of footage totally. Also, we were going to have to repair multiple torn sprockets which would even add more splices.
Flashback: A year ago, when I was doing the Ray Courts’ Hollywood Collector’s Showcase show at the Beverly Garland, a nice fellow had approached me, bought the DVD, and asked if I’d be interested in screening the film at the Nuart Theater in West LA. I told him the problems with the print situation. Anyway, we corresponded and he told me he had put the word out that he was looking for a print. I told him that most of them would be Eastman color and totally faded, but that there had been a handful of Fuji color prints which, like the one we used, would have retained some of the color.
Flash forward: Last week he e-mailed me to say he’d found a collector who was selling a print and that the collector said it was in very good condition and, best of all, in Fuji color. So, I gave the okay to buy it, and it came in on Wednesday, and again he e-mailed me to say he’d run the first and last reel and that he thought I’d be happy. And so, yesterday at noon I drove to the Nuart and watched the film. First of all, let me say that it’s great to see a movie on the big screen the way it was meant to be seen. The film started, and while there were numerous light lines on the print, there were virtually no splices in the first reel at all, and, although I could not believe my eyes, the color hadn’t faded one bit – it was perfect. At first I was concerned because the first scene did look a bit washed out, but then I remembered how much I adjusted and pumped the color, especially in that scene, to make it look better than the print had ever looked. Once we got past that scene, the colors were vivid and totally there. The lines got better as the print went along and there were only two splices in the entire print – one, a one-frame splice in The Lights and The Smiles (barely noticible) and one when Harry says, “This is the dildo number, every dildo works”, where the first half of the line is gone. Otherwise, it’s a great print and obviously the one we’re going to screen at the Egyptian. Isn’t that exciting? Isn’t that just too too?
If you’re around you simply must come to the screening. You can get all the ticket and time information online at www.americancinematheque.com.
Well, why don’t we all click on the Unseemly Button below, because, well, just because we can.
Yes, we can and we did, damn them, damn them all to hell. We had a new dear reader join us yesterday, one of our One from Column A readers who has happily found us. She said she had a lot of notes to catch up on – over 550 of them to be exact. In any case, because our new dear reader might not know, please check yesterday’s late posts (simply use the handy-dandy Unseemly Archive Button and then scroll down until you find yesterday’s date), because there are lots of lovely welcoming posts there for your mental delectation.
Also, if you haven’t listened to Donald’s current radio show, it’s quite lovely, so give it a listen. Tomorrow we will have a guest Unseemly Trivia Contest question, so don’t be errant and truant you trivia people. In fact, let’s make that our weekend goal – no errant and truant Hainsies/Kimlets this weekend. It’s been so light on the last few weekends that I’ve seriously considered dropping the notes – so let’s get back to where we were, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must roam the byways and the highways, I must roam the windmills of my mind, I must, in short, get crackin’. Today’s topic of discussion: It’s Friday – what is currently in your DVD/video and CD players? I’ll start – DVD, Perfect Blue, a rather startling Japanese anime which is a like a strange Brian de Palma thriller which I found quite good. Also, Shenandoah, with James Stewart, and another Japanese anime called Ghost in the Shell. CD player – the new Studio Ghibli anime called The Cat Returns, with music by someone other than Joe Hisaishi, but equally as excellent – fully symphonic and very catchy indeed. Your turn. And, in tomorrow’s notes I shall talk about the first thing I’ve heard about The Sherman Brothers Album – my assistant in New York gave me a full report, and I’m afraid that it wasn’t all peaches and cream.