You can find old film reels from random places. I used to work at a film post house where people would bring us film they purchased without really knowing what it was. One person scored several features from an old broadcaster from when they would actually broadcast straight from the telecine. Some of these might be in the public domain now, but most were not. A lot of them reeked of vinegar and beyond saving.
What is the minimum number of people you would expect any arbitrary person to screen a film for?? If he started with a handful and met a new one every couple years, that's "odd" to you? Why do you even have an internal concept of what that number should be?
If the movie was really good (as implied by saying they people need to see it), I’d expect the initial batch to tell some friends, and then those people to tell some friends. Some organic growth at least in his local area where people are pushing him for more showing to show friends.
I don’t know what I was expected, but it was higher than 25 over 45 years.
he wouldn't. but eventually, it'll become part of the public domain. at that point, he could release his "work output" and own the copyright on that. that new work could be sold. i worked with someone that did this very thing of restoring copies of old films and released them on DVD
The film is interesting due to its rarity, but most likely it's not a very good film. So the only people that you might screen into are people who are interested in film history or especially interested in Jerry Lewis
Maybe he's talking about the physical medium, and not the movie - a copy of the movie should be distributed, for sure, but the film (and the vhs tape) should be kept locked away, it's a piece of history.
All original copies of all films should be properly archived. I agree with that. The fact that so many have been "lost" is why I don't think we should put our faith in these companies to be the archivists for these works.
he stole a complete workprint of the film from the archives of its production studio in 1980 – and has been screening it for guests in his apartment ever since.
Former 35mm projectionist here. I suspect there are a lot of old stashes like this. In our booth we had a gigantic reel of old 1960s and 1970s horror film trailers that previous projectionists had spliced together until there was no more space on the reel. We were not supposed to save trailers, but no one checked what we did with them after removing them from the film reels at the end of the run and returning those prints to the distributor.
On a quiet summer night, after the last showing had ended and the customers had left, we employees would sometimes lock the doors, get some snacks, and watch these old treasures from previous decades spool by.
The trailer reel included several versions of The Shining trailer, including one that had a slow-motion scene of blood pouring from the elevator that was waaaay longer than the clip in the movie (possibly from one of the alternate cameras, see https://geektyrant.com/news/the-story-behind-the-infamous-bl...). The reel also had some long-forgotten stinkers, including for the 1966 British horror film Psychopath which I only remember because the trailer featured an unusual song structured like a nursery rhyme that I can still partially recall.
A corporate chain took over (Lowes) and sometime in the early 1990s the theater was closed. The space is now a Staples. This illicit reel, if it wasn't thrown out during the closure, is probably in someone's basement. The only way to know the contents is to play it, which is hard to do as not many traditional 35mm projectors are still around or available for screening a 50-year-old reel that might be brittle, gunky, or otherwise damage the machine.
I've heard of similar stashes. For instance, around the same time, I had friends who worked in a photo shop. They had several binders of, um, special photos that they had copied from customers' negatives during the on-site development process.
I visited this basement lair once, which was dominated by a modern color processing machine. I remember flipping through one of the binders. It was very, very strange stuff, like something out of Blue Velvet.
> In 1929, Clifford Thomson, then employed by the Canadian Bank of Commerce and also treasurer of the hockey association, solved the problem of the library's stock of film and the inadequate ice rink. Thomson took 500,000 feet of film and stacked the reels in the pool, covered the reels with boards and leveled the rink with a layer of earth. The DAAA continued to receive new nitrate films which would later fuel the destruction of the entire complex in a fire in 1951. The films stored under the ice rink were preserved by permafrost and were later uncovered in 1978 when a new recreation center was being built.
Yeah, worked at a one-hour photo store when I was a teen. "Put the screen down" was the signal that some "amateur stuff" was about to come down the print out-feed (a kind of curtain/cover would hide the prints coming out from the general public). (Kind of wild that people's photos coming out of the machine was something of a feature the store made readily visible to the passersby in the mall where the One House Photo was located. Privacy, what?)
And though I wasn't one of the techs that made the prints, I do seem to recall they would spin off dupes for their own private collection(s).
Yes I think I remember a time when you could see the Walmart photo center one hour prints just spool off the line and collect in a holder. Times were so different back then.
Were these old prints with an optical track, or was there a corresponding mag reel? Listening to optical audio is a bit of retro nostalgia in and of itself.
I only read about this recently. Such a dark premise, which I could imagine being an incredibly powerful movie if shot well, but missing the mark by even an inch would likely just end up to be an offensive mess. I presumed this movie was a case of the latter.
> Other films that have not yet screened because of filmmaker stipulations include 100 Years starring John Malkovich. The short film is from 2015 but has been placed in time-locked safes that won’t open until 2115, 100 years after the film was made.
I wonder how one goes about engineering a "time-locked safe" such that it opens, reliably, only after 100 years...
It's just an ad. I'd be willing to bet that there is nothing in the safe and the film is just a file in some corporate cloud that will be deleted in 10 years when everyone involved in the marketing stunt has moved on to other jobs.
You could power a clock with a radioactive isotope and it could get you 100 years worth of power. With a big enough spring you could also theoretically get a small mechanical watch-like clockwork to last that long, however calibrating it to be accurate and not wear too much over such a long time span would be difficult.
Or just power or wind the clock externally. If it's [electro]mechanical, losing power or forgetting to wind it will only extend the period of time for which it remains closed. Otherwise it would need an internal backup battery, which, if it's only powering an extremely low power clock and nothing mechanical, could last that long with the right chemistry. Solar cells could also last a hundred years, suitably encased, with some reduction in effectiveness due to ionization.
I'm reminded of those long gear reductions where the last gear is calculated to turn once every century or so. You'd need a lot of power to make that work here, at least the naive version of it.
> "I want to sell it to a serious producer who either restores it or keeps it locked away"
It was arguments over money that caused the film to be "lost" in the first place. It's a shame that it's still all about money and greed could cause it to be lost again. The best thing to do would be to release
it online for free so that everyone could see and learn from it. That way, if others want to restore it using modern methods they still can. I'd rather see it as it is anyway. Before the inevitable re-edited (perhaps even censored) AI "enhanced" version a "serious producer" would shit out and overcharge for.
Yeah, I agree. He should release a high-quality capture of the VHS, without edits whatsoever. VHS quality also decays with time, so he better hurry up.
I thought the main point of this version is that it's edited to be an actual movie based on the script. The Library of Congress already has a bunch of original material with no edits.
Exchanging money for something implies you believe it has a monetary value. That is the opposite of thinking something is too important to have a monetary value.
The Europafilm staff dubbing The Day the Clown Cried was covered in From Darkness To Light, a documentary from last year about Jerry Lewis' The Day the Clown Cried which premiered on American TV back in August 2024. It's honestly surprising to me that this continues to make the news this year.
Readit News
How is someone who "keeps it locked away" even an option if he believes it "must be seen"?
This seems like the perfect candidate for going on archive.org, if the goal is for it to be preserved and for people to see it.
I also find it odd that he's been screening it for friends since the 80s, yet has only shown it to 24 people.
I don’t know what I was expected, but it was higher than 25 over 45 years.
He was terrified of the consequences of too many people finding out about the theft; a lot of those views were quite recent.
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Former 35mm projectionist here. I suspect there are a lot of old stashes like this. In our booth we had a gigantic reel of old 1960s and 1970s horror film trailers that previous projectionists had spliced together until there was no more space on the reel. We were not supposed to save trailers, but no one checked what we did with them after removing them from the film reels at the end of the run and returning those prints to the distributor.
On a quiet summer night, after the last showing had ended and the customers had left, we employees would sometimes lock the doors, get some snacks, and watch these old treasures from previous decades spool by.
The trailer reel included several versions of The Shining trailer, including one that had a slow-motion scene of blood pouring from the elevator that was waaaay longer than the clip in the movie (possibly from one of the alternate cameras, see https://geektyrant.com/news/the-story-behind-the-infamous-bl...). The reel also had some long-forgotten stinkers, including for the 1966 British horror film Psychopath which I only remember because the trailer featured an unusual song structured like a nursery rhyme that I can still partially recall.
A corporate chain took over (Lowes) and sometime in the early 1990s the theater was closed. The space is now a Staples. This illicit reel, if it wasn't thrown out during the closure, is probably in someone's basement. The only way to know the contents is to play it, which is hard to do as not many traditional 35mm projectors are still around or available for screening a 50-year-old reel that might be brittle, gunky, or otherwise damage the machine.
I've heard of similar stashes. For instance, around the same time, I had friends who worked in a photo shop. They had several binders of, um, special photos that they had copied from customers' negatives during the on-site development process.
I visited this basement lair once, which was dominated by a modern color processing machine. I remember flipping through one of the binders. It was very, very strange stuff, like something out of Blue Velvet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawson_Film_Find
> In 1929, Clifford Thomson, then employed by the Canadian Bank of Commerce and also treasurer of the hockey association, solved the problem of the library's stock of film and the inadequate ice rink. Thomson took 500,000 feet of film and stacked the reels in the pool, covered the reels with boards and leveled the rink with a layer of earth. The DAAA continued to receive new nitrate films which would later fuel the destruction of the entire complex in a fire in 1951. The films stored under the ice rink were preserved by permafrost and were later uncovered in 1978 when a new recreation center was being built.
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And though I wasn't one of the techs that made the prints, I do seem to recall they would spin off dupes for their own private collection(s).
I've used 16mm film with audio on separate magnetic tape, but my god was that a pain to deal with.
I wonder how one goes about engineering a "time-locked safe" such that it opens, reliably, only after 100 years...
It's just an ad. I'd be willing to bet that there is nothing in the safe and the film is just a file in some corporate cloud that will be deleted in 10 years when everyone involved in the marketing stunt has moved on to other jobs.
It was arguments over money that caused the film to be "lost" in the first place. It's a shame that it's still all about money and greed could cause it to be lost again. The best thing to do would be to release it online for free so that everyone could see and learn from it. That way, if others want to restore it using modern methods they still can. I'd rather see it as it is anyway. Before the inevitable re-edited (perhaps even censored) AI "enhanced" version a "serious producer" would shit out and overcharge for.
Deleted Comment
https://youtu.be/FWc68sHWzrA?t=17m41s