Well, dear readers, when I gave an advance peek at the new Twilight Time disc of The Blue Max, raving about the transfer and especially its color, I said let’s see how long it is before people start talking about “a teal push.” This rotten, stinking mantra for people who know nothing about color and how movies of other eras looked, has reached epic proportions – it would be hilarious if it wasn’t so bloody pathetic. Fox has been doing some superb transfers of late, and The Blue Max is up there with the best. The color has never been right on home video. Let’s examine why. In the days of VHS and DVD, with very rare exceptions, camera negatives were not used for transfers. What were used were internegatives, many of which were fading to a muddy, dreary brown. If you look at the DVD of The Blue Max or Desk Set that’s what you’ll see. For those two films on Blu-ray, Fox went back to the camera negatives and the result is beautiful in both cases. Let’s examine why the color is perfect – could it be because Fox has the original timing notes and use them? I think that might just be a good bet. Here’s the simple deal – next to Paul Newman, George Peppard had the bluest eyes ever. In the DVD of The Blue Max they are gray. In the Blu-ray they are blue. End of story. But these Internet armchair experts who think they know everything, cry “teal push” whenever a transfer has blue in it. Note to armchair experts: Movies of that era had BLUE and plenty of it. End of story. But on and on they go about this teal push, automatically assuming that the previous video releases with their faded brown color were somehow correct. No. Sorry. Afraid not.
It’s not like Fox is putting a blue WASH over everything, which is kind of what they’re saying – you can’t have the reds and greens and yellows if you’re washing blue (I don’t even know what the HELL teal has to do with anything – we’re talking about BLUE here) over everything. Doesn’t work that way. Every color is accurate in The Blue Max transfer, from the lush foliage, to the blue sky, to Mr. Peppard’s eyes, to the grays and browns and reds and yellows. Stunning and just as it should be. But on and on they go, and they can never be wrong, you know. But here’s the thing. Their ONLY experience with these films is home video. They haven’t seen these things projected in theaters and they have no clew as to what the color was like originally. Those of us who grew up back then certainly do and those of us who collected 16mm and 35mm prints certainly know even more. Of course, there would be no reference prints on The Blue Max as it was not printed in dye transfer Technicolor – but the timing notes are the timing notes. I had a dye transfer print of Desk Set in 16mm and guess what – it looked exactly like the Blu-ray, color-wise. It’s just utterly nauseating and I dearly hope that Fox knows what a great job they’re doing and that they won’t take these ridiculous, wrongheaded, inane comments seriously. If armchair experts want brown, faded color, they can just watch their DVDs of these older films and enjoy to their heart’s content. The fact that they think those transfers are in any way accurate is both laughable and depressing, but it just shows the usual lack of knowledge about film color. I’ve grown weary of responding to these “experts” – it’s just pointless. They’re on this teal push bandwagon and witch hunt and nothing will deter them short of a horrible, brown, completely wrong transfer. These people should just go away – they are doing such harm on these various Internet boards. Again, they have NO, meaning ZERO, experience or knowledge about film or color but that simply doesn’t stop them – no, they must post, they must be right, they know everything. Not. End of rant. You dear readers know who you can trust about color.
Well, that was long, wasn’t it? And speaking of long, how about that Sunday? What an unexpected day Sunday was. I was up at five for some reason not known to me, then asleep at six and then up at nine-fifteen, when the East Coast Singer called to tell me she was in LA. And then I saw an e-mail from our very own Mr. Nick Redman, in which someone was complaining about – yes – a teal push on The Blue Max. I thought my head was going to explode. I answered that e-mail then did stuff on the computer. Then I went and had a four-layer scramble. Yes, I, BK, tried something I’ve never tried before – the scramble has eggs, chili, a tiny bit of cheese, tomatoes, potatoes, sour cream and guacamole. It wasn’t the best thing I’ve ever had, but I did kind of enjoy it. Whilst I was eating, I saw I had an e-mail from Mr. Grant Geisssman and attached to it was the PDF of the designed book for Red Gold. I finished my lunch, came right home, put it on a flash drive, went to Staples and had it printed out. Then I came right back home and spent the next five hours reading it and proofing it with a fine tooth comb. It’s just shocking to me that with three proofers and me, I still found some pretty wacky mistakes. I noted all of them, a couple of which were whoppers. We’d already decided that I’d come over to Grant’s so he could enter them – that was to happen at six-thirty. By six, I’d was just starting the final three chapters. So, I rushed through those, just looking for bad breaks and hyphen problems and indent problems and found a handful of those.
Then I went to Grant’s and we spent two hours entering everything. There was actually less to do on this book than on any previous book. His design is fantastic – he found a great font for the title. Then I came home and did the fine tooth comb on the last three chapters – and of course found four more things. I e-mailed those to Grant and he’ll fix them today and send me the final version, which I’ll give a quick once-over before it goes in. I also saw the progress of the cover art and it’s looking quite good. And that was my entire day and evening.
Today, I’ll be up at six to announce our new title, which is the world premiere release of a Fox double bill – O. Henry’s Full House, score by Alfred Newman and The Luck of the Irish, score by Cyril Mockridge – two absolutely glorious Golden Age scores. Here’s the cover art for both.
Then I may try to jog, then I’ll hopefully pick up some packages, and then we have our first Kritzerland rehearsal at three. Once that’s done, I’ll hopefully print out a LOT of orders and actually relax.
Tomorrow I have an early visit from a book dealer, then I have to finish liner notes and get them on their merry way, Wednesday I have a meeting with a singer, and then we have our second Kritzerland rehearsal, then I’m getting a haircut, seeing our show on Saturday night, then we have our stumble-through, then sound check and show.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, announce our new title, maybe do a jog, eat, hopefully pick up packages, have a rehearsal, and relax. Today’s topic of discussion: What are your favorite films with an Irish flavor? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, where all my dreams will have a teal push.