Latest / Ridiculous History / Lost Media, Part Two: We Didn't Start The Fire

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Lost Media, Part Two: We Didn't Start The Fire · Ridiculous History

0:00
Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Ye
0:26
Speaker 1: welcome to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
0:29
Speaker 1: so much for tuning in, coming in hot with a
0:32
Speaker 1: lot of coffee, and, of course, as we'd like to
0:34
Speaker 1: do at the top of big thanks to our super producer,
0:37
Speaker 1: the Madman of Michigan, Mr Max Williams. Uh they called
0:45
Speaker 1: me ben uh No, this is a part two. We
0:49
Speaker 1: wanted to make this one partner, but we just we
0:51
Speaker 1: just couldn't help ourselves. Man, No, we just love the
0:54
Speaker 1: pic just too much. We had to. We had to.
0:57
Speaker 1: We had to wax philosophical and poet in nostalgic all
1:01
Speaker 1: those things about them for quite some time. I have
1:04
Speaker 1: a question to guess what happens if something happens to
1:08
Speaker 1: this part. So people are always gonna be sitting around
1:10
Speaker 1: like they they're gonna hear the end of part one.
1:13
Speaker 1: I feel like you're intentionally gonna cut this? What w
1:16
Speaker 1: why wout I cut this? I know this is gonna
1:18
Speaker 1: stay here forever, stay here for People can listen to
1:21
Speaker 1: part one and here like oh yeah, I'm so excited
1:23
Speaker 1: for part two, and then it just never appears. It's
1:25
Speaker 1: just lost forever let's uh, well, we're working with live
1:29
Speaker 1: fire in that case, hopefully not as dangerous as studio fire.
1:32
Speaker 1: What do you say, I want to get into it,
1:34
Speaker 1: Let us do it. Sometimes circumstances were just against people,
1:40
Speaker 1: like the we talked about fires. This is interesting. I
1:44
Speaker 1: have a personal experience with lost media on my father's side.
1:48
Speaker 1: No one knows how old my grandfather was because the
1:51
Speaker 1: courthouse that held his birth certificate burned down. And if
1:56
Speaker 1: I could be candid when you asked him about his age,
1:59
Speaker 1: his answer would change depending on whether or not he thought, uh,
2:02
Speaker 1: a woman in the room was attractive. That's just it's
2:06
Speaker 1: a true story. He wasn't a creep he was. He
2:08
Speaker 1: was just a weird dude. And so big film companies
2:12
Speaker 1: and studios are fighting fires all the time. There was
2:16
Speaker 1: an unexplained explosion in a film vault in nineteen twenty
2:21
Speaker 1: at the Famous Players and Metro Film Exchange building in
2:25
Speaker 1: Kansas City. This explosion caused a fire that went through
2:31
Speaker 1: the entirety of the twelfth floor and then the eleventh
2:34
Speaker 1: floor of the Metro. One million dollars worth of films
2:40
Speaker 1: were destroyed. Luckily, there were no injuries. None of the
2:44
Speaker 1: employees were injured, but one million dollars worth of film
2:49
Speaker 1: was destroyed. And just to drive that impact home, I
2:52
Speaker 1: think it's time for an inflation calculator and inflame you shouldn't.
3:00
Speaker 1: Calculator is the place to be. And our results are
3:05
Speaker 1: in one million dollars in nineteen twenty is equal to backs.
3:11
Speaker 1: You gotta hit it this time. What do you want
3:15
Speaker 1: a drum roll? So I'm giving you one right now,
3:18
Speaker 1: booth booth. Oh yeah, it's a four million, eight hundred
3:22
Speaker 1: forty thousands, four dollars. Is that what you're looking for? Yeah,
3:27
Speaker 1: that's a ton of money. Right, that's the kind of
3:29
Speaker 1: stuff that will sink your ship. Unbelievable. Yeah, and it's
3:33
Speaker 1: not the only fire, No, it's not. Another fire started
3:37
Speaker 1: in Universal City on May nineteen twenty two when an
3:42
Speaker 1: electrical snaff who essentially caused like a live wire kind
3:48
Speaker 1: of like in the movies, flailing around on the film
3:52
Speaker 1: set in the cutting room full of that flammable stuff. Um.
3:58
Speaker 1: It created heat that then caused boxes of film stock
4:02
Speaker 1: to explode, including you know, like shrapnel, like metal shars
4:07
Speaker 1: flying around. I mean, people, really, you know we're in
4:11
Speaker 1: serious danger. Not to mention the the you know the films.
4:14
Speaker 1: An actor by the name of Priscilla Dean actually was
4:18
Speaker 1: wearing wearing her costumes still and desperately was trying to
4:23
Speaker 1: to rescue one of her films called Under Two Flags.
4:28
Speaker 1: But then she fell, you know, in this kind of
4:31
Speaker 1: like ensuing maree and and got pretty badly injured. I
4:35
Speaker 1: think she had a pretty pretty nasty sprain. Irving Thalberg,
4:38
Speaker 1: who you may have heard of. He's a very um
4:41
Speaker 1: successful and uh, I think there's a I think this
4:44
Speaker 1: is the visit. An award of the Oscar is named
4:46
Speaker 1: after him, the Irving J. Thalberg Award for like achievement
4:50
Speaker 1: or something like that. Um. He was then at this
4:52
Speaker 1: point the general manager of the studio and this other
4:54
Speaker 1: guy named Leo McCary or McCarry. They tried to put
4:59
Speaker 1: out the fire single handedly, but they were actually turned
5:03
Speaker 1: away by security. I think, man, what's the deal of
5:05
Speaker 1: that was? I don't understand how they were turned away. Well,
5:10
Speaker 1: at this point, the it becomes a matter of personal
5:13
Speaker 1: safety right there trying to get into the fire and
5:16
Speaker 1: they're being stopped and being told, look, you can't. It's
5:20
Speaker 1: too late. Right that that ship has sailed, that film
5:24
Speaker 1: has burned, and then just a year later, there's how
5:28
Speaker 1: much of a problem this material was? This nitrate and
5:31
Speaker 1: necessitate Just a year later, there's a fire in Culver
5:35
Speaker 1: City at Goldwyn Studio which will later be a MGM LOTT.
5:39
Speaker 1: And this occurs on June twenty. Films that were in
5:44
Speaker 1: the processing lab plus parts of seven other films were
5:49
Speaker 1: destroyed and the fire and everybody jumped into help. No
5:53
Speaker 1: one was a diva here. Actors, directors, crew members, prop guys,
5:59
Speaker 1: and fire her crews all cooperated together to put out
6:02
Speaker 1: the fire. I picked her the old school trope of
6:05
Speaker 1: people handing buckets to each other in a line, and
6:09
Speaker 1: the guy at the end just like, we need bigger
6:11
Speaker 1: buckets also to jump in here real quick. The Irving G.
6:16
Speaker 1: Thalberg Memorial Award is like a special award they give
6:19
Speaker 1: out only periodically at the Oscars the way scritte leasas
6:23
Speaker 1: is from a computer right here. Is for creative producers
6:27
Speaker 1: whose bodies of work reflect a consistently high quality of
6:30
Speaker 1: motion picture production. So it's kind of like a lifetime
6:33
Speaker 1: achievement award. Like some people like uh like who have
6:36
Speaker 1: gotten yeah yeah, like hitcock and stuff like that. So
6:41
Speaker 1: someone like uh, like Dean Zank or Richard Zanc you
6:45
Speaker 1: know someone who's usually given sometimes given posthumously, I believe
6:48
Speaker 1: as well. Yeah yeah, yeah yeah, Spielberg, Lucas, all these
6:53
Speaker 1: funny story at corner Wikipedia right here. Katherine Heathburn The
6:56
Speaker 1: only time she showed up at the Oscars was to
6:58
Speaker 1: give one of these. She had always sent. Some want
7:00
Speaker 1: to get her off, and I think that was the
7:04
Speaker 1: Max with the facts right there. Oh boy, was it
7:20
Speaker 1: factsy as they come. Thank you for that, Max, I
7:23
Speaker 1: love us. Sound cue here are ridiculous history. We also
7:27
Speaker 1: have more fires, just to list these out quickly because
7:30
Speaker 1: this is a depressing part of the show. There's a
7:32
Speaker 1: fire at Consolidated Film Industries on October. This unfortunately does
7:40
Speaker 1: result in the fatality because a technician tries to save
7:45
Speaker 1: the film and he's running out of this exploding, burning
7:49
Speaker 1: building with canisters of film in his arms. Uh. Five
7:53
Speaker 1: other people are injured, they're burned, but they're not some
7:57
Speaker 1: of them grievously but they're not killed. And two million
8:01
Speaker 1: dollars worth of film is lost. I think there were
8:04
Speaker 1: fifty employees and the night shift they were able to escape.
8:07
Speaker 1: Later they would say this machine that polishes developed film
8:12
Speaker 1: caused the fire, and this fire spread to sound stages.
8:17
Speaker 1: These were big deal films too at the time, and
8:20
Speaker 1: quickly the industry started to say, hang on a tick,
8:25
Speaker 1: are deadly fires becoming a normal like cost of doing business?
8:29
Speaker 1: Now do we need to do the studio need to
8:31
Speaker 1: have its own fire department? What what are we gonna do?
8:35
Speaker 1: And they were already thinking of this when seven hit
8:41
Speaker 1: July nine. There's another fire and this is one of
8:45
Speaker 1: the worst ones yet. That's right. We had a fire, specifically,
8:56
Speaker 1: not in l A this time. It occurred in little
9:00
Speaker 1: very New Jersey at a twentieth century Fox film storage facility.
9:05
Speaker 1: This was on July nine, nine seven, and and once again,
9:09
Speaker 1: I mean, it was kind of one of these set
9:10
Speaker 1: it and forget it things, you know that the things
9:12
Speaker 1: that the cans would just be, you know, put in
9:14
Speaker 1: their cataloged. And then you know, probably the place was
9:17
Speaker 1: operated by a relatively small crew, so there was some
9:20
Speaker 1: neglect and uh, you know, very specific conditions that led
9:25
Speaker 1: to a a fire being united. Nitrate film again, much
9:29
Speaker 1: like it's I guess cousin Nitrokee listening could become unstable
9:34
Speaker 1: and could actually spontaneously combust. Uh. You know, when the
9:39
Speaker 1: heat conditions got just so, it was exposed to direct heat.
9:44
Speaker 1: So since these storage vaults were made of concrete and
9:47
Speaker 1: the ventilation was bad, Uh, it caused these gases for
9:52
Speaker 1: that we're kind of generated coming off of this nitrate
9:54
Speaker 1: film to just catch fire and explode. And then what
9:58
Speaker 1: do you have there. It's like a bunch of matches
10:00
Speaker 1: lined up next to one another. You end up with
10:03
Speaker 1: like a domino effect of mayhem. Uh. There was actually
10:06
Speaker 1: a young a young person that was killed who lived
10:09
Speaker 1: in the neighborhood nearby, and two others were injured from
10:13
Speaker 1: from various results of the fire. Yeah, it's an incredible
10:18
Speaker 1: tragedy and the cost was more than human lives as well,
10:23
Speaker 1: not to diminish those at all, but just due to
10:26
Speaker 1: this incident, this outbreak, most of the majority of silent
10:30
Speaker 1: films from the Fox Film Corporation were lost. Right now,
10:34
Speaker 1: seventy five of Fox films before nine are just gone
10:39
Speaker 1: literally up in smoke. And it's due to this one event.
10:45
Speaker 1: These fires continued nine. There's a fire at the MGM
10:49
Speaker 1: film vault. These vaults were made out a concrete, they
10:53
Speaker 1: were separated from each other, they were far from any buildings.
10:56
Speaker 1: They were built in the nineteen thirties, during the time
10:59
Speaker 1: in which studios all ready We're well aware of the
11:02
Speaker 1: danger of this spontaneous combustion and the threat of fires.
11:06
Speaker 1: But still an electrical spark was all It took. One
11:10
Speaker 1: errant spark caused a fire and film storage vault number seven,
11:14
Speaker 1: and it caused an explosion. It killed someone. Uh, these
11:18
Speaker 1: films that were in this vault, we're all lost. This
11:22
Speaker 1: is stuff like Greta Garbos, The Divine Woman, and the
11:25
Speaker 1: film I just think about in the beginning London After
11:28
Speaker 1: Midnight lawn Cheney. I've looked forever for it. You can
11:32
Speaker 1: see pictures of the guy's costume as the monster and
11:35
Speaker 1: lawn Cheney of course old school special effects genius. But
11:40
Speaker 1: you cannot see this film. And if I am incorrect
11:44
Speaker 1: about that, please find me. Find me on social media,
11:47
Speaker 1: right to us or something. I want to see the film.
11:49
Speaker 1: If you know a way to see it, I think, yeah,
11:53
Speaker 1: I'm at me woke, mob, We'll see I want to
11:57
Speaker 1: see the film. Oh, and as you should, and just
12:01
Speaker 1: jump in one more time. I'll say, from like you
12:04
Speaker 1: know us working on the show Ephemeral, We've done a
12:06
Speaker 1: number of episodes about like lost movies, and the whole
12:09
Speaker 1: the whole purpose of the show is lost stuff. And uh,
12:13
Speaker 1: we talked to someone about like lost movies. The one
12:15
Speaker 1: they talk about the most is that Fox Fire. Like
12:17
Speaker 1: that's the one they always bring up, like, yeah, that
12:19
Speaker 1: the Fox Fire, which is just like so much was
12:21
Speaker 1: lost on that thing. It's like, that's like the unfortunate
12:25
Speaker 1: pinnacle of these fires. Yeah, and then we see that
12:32
Speaker 1: twelve point six million feet of historical newsreel footage that
12:37
Speaker 1: have been donated by Universal Pictures is destroyed in night
12:42
Speaker 1: on December seven. And this was a fire at a
12:46
Speaker 1: federal complex at the National Archives and Record Service. So
12:49
Speaker 1: even even Uncle Sam is having problems keeping this stuff
12:54
Speaker 1: from sparking. And I know this sounds like a litany
12:58
Speaker 1: of taraf fing fire related catastrophes because spoiler alert it is.
13:04
Speaker 1: And further spoiler alert, these fires keep going. We're actually
13:08
Speaker 1: not going to get two in the weeds. What you
13:10
Speaker 1: need to know is the Fox film fire was the
13:13
Speaker 1: by far the most disastrous in terms of all the
13:17
Speaker 1: footage media that was lost. But of course fires are
13:22
Speaker 1: dangerous to any kind of physical media, not just film. Yeah,
13:26
Speaker 1: and they're also this is not entirely a phenomenon that
13:30
Speaker 1: went away like in the in the nineties, you know,
13:32
Speaker 1: thirties and forties. Back in two thousand eight, there was
13:36
Speaker 1: a massive fire in the studio backlot of Universal Studios building,
13:44
Speaker 1: which was Universal Music Group's main West Coast storehouse of masters.
13:50
Speaker 1: And when we think of music, the masters are essentially
13:53
Speaker 1: like the original you know, multi track tapes of a
13:58
Speaker 1: very iconic records where store wants to own, that's what
14:01
Speaker 1: the studio owns. And and you know a lot of
14:03
Speaker 1: artists will negotiate for themselves that they own their own masters.
14:07
Speaker 1: That is incredibly difficult to do and uh usually you
14:11
Speaker 1: know it's it's a it's a deal breaker, but they
14:13
Speaker 1: gotta go somewhere. So whether it's like you know, the
14:16
Speaker 1: final kind of mixed downs, because if you have the
14:18
Speaker 1: multi track tapes, that's actually just the original recordings and
14:21
Speaker 1: then all of that stuff gets filtered through you know,
14:24
Speaker 1: studio equipment to create you know, reverbs and whatever it
14:27
Speaker 1: might be in effects and all of that. So in
14:30
Speaker 1: order to actually you can actually take those and remix them.
14:33
Speaker 1: That's what when you you get reissued, you'll actually have
14:35
Speaker 1: somebody remixing older records and like remastering them and they'll
14:39
Speaker 1: put them through maybe more modern equipment or whatever it
14:42
Speaker 1: might be. But this building which stored all of this stuff,
14:45
Speaker 1: things dating back as far as the nineteen forties, including
14:48
Speaker 1: digital masters of of more recent stuff, burned and they
14:52
Speaker 1: kept it under wraps for years, like unless you lived there.
14:58
Speaker 1: This happened in two thousand eight, and it didn't really
15:01
Speaker 1: make the news, uh nationally or you know, in a
15:04
Speaker 1: mainstream way until two thousand nineteen. And um, this was
15:09
Speaker 1: literally near what used to be the King Kong encounter
15:13
Speaker 1: because Universal Studios, where the amusement park is is is
15:16
Speaker 1: an active studio and you know, iconic films have been
15:20
Speaker 1: shot there. But this archive contained things from the likes
15:24
Speaker 1: of Buddy Holly, Uh, Duke Ellington, count Basie, Dizzy Gillespie,
15:29
Speaker 1: Max Roach, Art Blakey Sun Raw, Albert ailor Charles Mingus
15:34
Speaker 1: And that's like just the jazz stuff. It had, you know,
15:36
Speaker 1: stuff from Neil Diamond, Study and Share, Quincy Jones, Sister Rosetta, Tharpe, Ray,
15:42
Speaker 1: Charles R. E. M. Steve Earl, George Straight so like
15:46
Speaker 1: just aggy pop all over the place. So you know,
15:49
Speaker 1: I think, thankfully most of that stuff digitally, you know
15:52
Speaker 1: what had been are A lot of the more recent
15:54
Speaker 1: stuff have been digitally backed up elsewhere. But you know,
15:58
Speaker 1: it's a big deal. M m yeah, and it could
16:02
Speaker 1: happen in the you know. Another thing we have to
16:04
Speaker 1: remember is that the cloud as it exists is tremendously clever.
16:10
Speaker 1: But if the right amount of servers go down or
16:14
Speaker 1: encounter some sort of physical danger, then things that are
16:18
Speaker 1: stored digitally can also be lost. So it's a fight
16:22
Speaker 1: that continues, and it's part of the reason why we've
16:24
Speaker 1: decided to make Lost Media a series. Uh. Before we
16:30
Speaker 1: end this two part series, there are a couple of
16:32
Speaker 1: a couple of shoutouts that we wanted to do and
16:36
Speaker 1: a couple I personally need to get off of my chest.
16:40
Speaker 1: This is another call out. If you heard my plea
16:43
Speaker 1: to see London after midnight and you said, Ben, you fool,
16:49
Speaker 1: you're nutty, Professor, you London after midnight really doesn't exist.
16:54
Speaker 1: I wish I could help you. Well, here's another way
16:56
Speaker 1: you might be able to help me. For years, I've
16:58
Speaker 1: been looking for the director's cut of Event Horizon. This
17:02
Speaker 1: is one of the most legendary recent lost films. No
17:08
Speaker 1: one knows, uh well, the official word is that there
17:12
Speaker 1: is no director's cut around today, but I hope that's untrue,
17:18
Speaker 1: because that movie slaps. The original cut was a hundred
17:22
Speaker 1: and thirty minutes, so half an hour's missing from it,
17:25
Speaker 1: and uh, it's very good. I love because I think
17:29
Speaker 1: we've talked about all of the times. It's a movie
17:31
Speaker 1: where the marketing campaign did not line up with what
17:33
Speaker 1: the actual movie was, and it just it wrecked my
17:36
Speaker 1: teenage brain. But I'm kind of glad it did, because
17:38
Speaker 1: you know, got me and honestly pushing me headlong into deeper, weirder,
17:42
Speaker 1: more love crafty and horror. But another example of that band,
17:46
Speaker 1: and it's not even a director's cut, it's, uh, you know,
17:48
Speaker 1: a film. Actually, there's two films by very prominent director
17:53
Speaker 1: Kathryn bigelow Um, who is known for her excellent films
17:57
Speaker 1: including Zero, Dark, thirty, and um, what's the other one?
18:02
Speaker 1: The hurt Locker, which I believe she want an Academy
18:05
Speaker 1: Award for. But some of her early films are kind
18:08
Speaker 1: of more on the schlocky, weirdo sci fi and horror side.
18:12
Speaker 1: Like there's a movie called Near Dark starring Bill Paxton.
18:16
Speaker 1: That up until very recently when it was put out
18:19
Speaker 1: by the Criterion Channel, it was really hard to get
18:21
Speaker 1: a hold of. And I watched it on on the
18:23
Speaker 1: Criterion Channel's recent eighties Horror collection. They do these great
18:27
Speaker 1: little curated collections and highly recommend get the Free Trial.
18:30
Speaker 1: It's such a great if you're into film, that is
18:33
Speaker 1: a fun one. You can just browse and you'll find
18:35
Speaker 1: things you've never thought to even look for, and the
18:37
Speaker 1: way they're curated again, back to the curation there in
18:40
Speaker 1: these clever little kind of you know collections, and so
18:43
Speaker 1: it'll be like around you know, women, the filmmakers working
18:47
Speaker 1: in Iran, like in the nineteen, you know, seventies or
18:50
Speaker 1: whatever it might be. I'm kind of spitballing there. But
18:52
Speaker 1: the other one is is impossible to find. It's called
18:56
Speaker 1: Strange Days. Do you remember Strange Days? Ben? Yeah, It's
19:01
Speaker 1: a Catherine Bigelow movie starring Raye Findes. I believe about
19:04
Speaker 1: like a future dystopian future where you could relive people's
19:09
Speaker 1: you know, sex encounters and stuff in a VR kind
19:11
Speaker 1: of situation. And then there's a serial killer who's using
19:14
Speaker 1: you know, who's murdering people and recording their their experience
19:18
Speaker 1: of it on these weird little mini disc things. But
19:21
Speaker 1: that is not streaming anywhere, and I can't find a
19:24
Speaker 1: physical copy of it to save my life. And you've
19:25
Speaker 1: gotta wonder, is this at the behest of the filmmaker,
19:28
Speaker 1: who's like, I'm not so stoked on that one anymore,
19:31
Speaker 1: Because the filmmaker of her caliber, you'd think would uh
19:34
Speaker 1: have her whole you know, uber kind of digitized in
19:39
Speaker 1: some way, shape or form. Yeah, even Orson Wells is
19:49
Speaker 1: not immune to this. One thing is often called the
19:51
Speaker 1: holy grail of lost films is the magnificent Amberson's director cut.
19:56
Speaker 1: This is what he made right after Citizen Kane. The
19:59
Speaker 1: studio didn't like it. They took forty minutes of footage
20:02
Speaker 1: out and they made up a new ending, because that's
20:05
Speaker 1: back when studios would just do that, So they put
20:08
Speaker 1: in a new, happier, more family friendly ending. Orson himself
20:12
Speaker 1: had nothing to do with it. He wasn't around. He
20:16
Speaker 1: actually high tailed it off to Brazil to work on
20:18
Speaker 1: another film, and then the original version of his film
20:22
Speaker 1: was destroyed by the studio. As we record now, this
20:27
Speaker 1: is the one that may have some prince still in existence.
20:31
Speaker 1: So without too much of a pun here, if you
20:34
Speaker 1: hand this to us, if you can be the person
20:36
Speaker 1: who brings us any of these films, then you are
20:38
Speaker 1: ridiculous history Royalty, and we eagerly await your correspondence saying
20:44
Speaker 1: one day our prince will come get it. I walked
20:47
Speaker 1: up to that punt, Prince, and then also print you
20:51
Speaker 1: walked up to that pun and you you tapped it
20:54
Speaker 1: right into that hole for a birdie. My man, that's
20:57
Speaker 1: what you did there, Thanks bro uh And luckily you
21:01
Speaker 1: know to your excellent point about the Criterion collection, when
21:03
Speaker 1: you try that free trial, even if you don't consider
21:06
Speaker 1: yourself a film buff, Criteria may may well transform you
21:12
Speaker 1: into one. And it's all for the better. We always
21:15
Speaker 1: have room for one more without sounding to sinister, I
21:18
Speaker 1: guess maybe we can end it here, or we can
21:21
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about just how whacky do and
21:24
Speaker 1: dangerous nitrate prints are in the modern day, because you know,
21:29
Speaker 1: this is something we talked about off air a little bit.
21:31
Speaker 1: Uh So we established this stuff is so flammable. If
21:35
Speaker 1: the temperature is wrong, then it will spontaneously can bust.
21:39
Speaker 1: But what do you need to watch film you need
21:43
Speaker 1: a film projector was a film projector due? Yeah. And
21:49
Speaker 1: you know if you if you, if you spend any
21:51
Speaker 1: time in l A. Uh, you know theaters like the
21:54
Speaker 1: Egyptian of you know, from the American Cinematografique Society. I
21:58
Speaker 1: think I was saying that right, Um, there's one of
22:01
Speaker 1: these revival houses that are like play you know, original prints,
22:05
Speaker 1: or like Quentin Tarantino's New Beverly Theater. You know they're
22:07
Speaker 1: they're in l A. Also, we'll do that. Tarantino has
22:11
Speaker 1: one of the largest collections of original nitrate prints I
22:15
Speaker 1: think of any personal private collector in the world. Uh.
22:19
Speaker 1: And he donates or you know, allows his his prints,
22:22
Speaker 1: his personal prints to be shown in that theater to
22:24
Speaker 1: the public. So if you're in l A, man, good
22:28
Speaker 1: on you. You've got access to a lot of amazing,
22:30
Speaker 1: you know, film opportunities to see these original prints. The
22:34
Speaker 1: same in New York, you know, you've got places like
22:37
Speaker 1: the Nighthawk. You know, it's just a theater where they'll
22:39
Speaker 1: show you know, old Prince like I saw a bad
22:42
Speaker 1: Lieutenant there the the able for for our movie with
22:45
Speaker 1: Harvey Kitel And you could tell, man, it looked like
22:48
Speaker 1: I was watching something from the seventies, like in an
22:50
Speaker 1: old weird porn theater or something, because like it had
22:53
Speaker 1: you know, the cigarette burns, which are literally the little
22:56
Speaker 1: dots that are used to show the projectionist to switch
22:58
Speaker 1: reels because the film, you know, comes in multiple reels
23:00
Speaker 1: and the projections has to thread each one of them
23:03
Speaker 1: in and then that's the queue to like switch a
23:05
Speaker 1: switch and flip it over to the next reel. So, um,
23:08
Speaker 1: you know, if you have access to that stuff, definitely
23:10
Speaker 1: check it out. But also know to your point Ben that, yeah,
23:14
Speaker 1: if they're using nitrate prints, which I imagine there are
23:17
Speaker 1: some very bespoke you know houses that that that definitely
23:21
Speaker 1: do that, maybe play original ones, I don't know, we
23:23
Speaker 1: know that there were a lot of reproductions. You gotta
23:26
Speaker 1: be really careful. You gotta keep your eye on on
23:28
Speaker 1: the conditions, right. Oh yeah, So this stuff is fragile,
23:34
Speaker 1: and you know film, if it's not spliced correctly, if
23:37
Speaker 1: it's not smooth when it runs, it can derail things
23:42
Speaker 1: can things can go wrong very quickly. These bulbs are
23:47
Speaker 1: six thousand watch bulbs. According to Jared Case, the curator
23:52
Speaker 1: of Film exhibitions over at the Eastman Museum. You have
23:56
Speaker 1: to treat this stuff not like a regular film, but
23:58
Speaker 1: like a museum artifact. The projectors have to be obsessively
24:02
Speaker 1: maintained and cleaned after, after, and before write every single exhibition,
24:08
Speaker 1: because at this point it's a matter of safety, not
24:11
Speaker 1: just preserving the material. He mentions how their chief projectionists
24:15
Speaker 1: is so rightly paranoid about this that he makes sure
24:21
Speaker 1: there are no physical rough edges on the film. He
24:24
Speaker 1: double checks every splice, uh, and everything as a result
24:28
Speaker 1: takes more time, uh and they but they still they
24:32
Speaker 1: want to see them because there's no mistaking it. The
24:36
Speaker 1: nature of this material means that those originals will degrade.
24:40
Speaker 1: It's kind of their destiny to be seen while they
24:43
Speaker 1: can still be seen. I think it's a really great,
24:46
Speaker 1: great sentiment, great way to wrap it up, and would
24:50
Speaker 1: definitely recommend if you're in the Rochester, New York area,
24:53
Speaker 1: to check out the George Eastman Museum to see some
24:56
Speaker 1: of their collections. There lots of incredible examples of the
25:00
Speaker 1: kinds of things we're talking about, and history of the
25:03
Speaker 1: photographic arts also mentioned. The Egyptian i'm I pronounced totally
25:07
Speaker 1: wrongways the American cinema tech. Uh not cinema tofique. I
25:12
Speaker 1: did not need to go quite as sponge with that,
25:14
Speaker 1: but uh yeah. They actually did a collaboration with Martin
25:17
Speaker 1: Scorcedes Film Foundation in the Hollywood Form Press Association and
25:21
Speaker 1: Turner Classic Movies which allows them to project these nitrate
25:28
Speaker 1: prints that we're talking about, and that required them to
25:30
Speaker 1: retrofit the theater with extra fireproofing material, including like a
25:35
Speaker 1: giant steel fire door to to prevent you know, these
25:39
Speaker 1: things from from being you know, from fire spreading. And also, um,
25:43
Speaker 1: the projectionists. They're one of the chief projectionists, a guy
25:47
Speaker 1: named Ben Tucker is interviewed pretty extensively in a book
25:51
Speaker 1: that we recommend called The Art of Film Projection, A
25:53
Speaker 1: Beginner's Guide, So check that one out too. And if
25:57
Speaker 1: you can't make it travel wise Rochester, why not go
26:02
Speaker 1: to your podcast app of choice and tune into Aphemeral,
26:06
Speaker 1: a show that is all about lots of types of
26:09
Speaker 1: lost media. Max What What? What's an episode or two
26:12
Speaker 1: that you think would be particularly appealing to folks who
26:16
Speaker 1: enjoyed this series this week? Well, actually I got four
26:19
Speaker 1: right off top of my head. There is many episodes
26:21
Speaker 1: we talked about but four recently, one of them should
26:23
Speaker 1: be movie Theaters came out in August because remember how
26:26
Speaker 1: nol was talking about the new Beeft theater Quin Tarantino,
26:29
Speaker 1: we have an interview with Joe's McClain, who is the
26:32
Speaker 1: director of operations for the theater. Wonderful producer Trevor Young
26:36
Speaker 1: walks through there the two of the plays. That's great
26:39
Speaker 1: loss of information, but there's also a recurring series we've
26:43
Speaker 1: done called video Stores, and this kind of brings into
26:45
Speaker 1: context that's whole You know, we've talked about this episode
26:48
Speaker 1: like the movies being lost, and that's unfortunately not something
26:53
Speaker 1: we've gotten past even now. So with stuff moving to streaming,
26:59
Speaker 1: we're kind of up to popularity being what decides whether
27:03
Speaker 1: or not films survives. So like stuff like I was
27:05
Speaker 1: looking to stuff like Netflix has not that many titles.
27:08
Speaker 1: Amazon Prime I think is considered like the largest like
27:11
Speaker 1: selection of titles, and it's like twenty thousand, yeah, which
27:15
Speaker 1: which is a pretty small percentage. Right when I was
27:18
Speaker 1: up at Movie Madness in Portland, I think they said
27:20
Speaker 1: ninety thousand, which is massive. Videots, which we have an
27:24
Speaker 1: episode about solely which is reopening I think pretty soon.
27:27
Speaker 1: In the l A area, they I think have seventy
27:30
Speaker 1: five thousand. Here in Atlanta, Video Drome has about fifty thousand.
27:34
Speaker 1: But also when I was up at movie Maddis was
27:36
Speaker 1: talking to the guy and he had the book. He
27:38
Speaker 1: had the book of like all the remaining video stores.
27:41
Speaker 1: It's not a very big book, and there's some pages
27:44
Speaker 1: xed out because they're not out there anymore. Like I
27:47
Speaker 1: forget this. There's there was one in Athens that went
27:49
Speaker 1: out of business not that long ago. I mean, it's
27:51
Speaker 1: hard to keep these things alive. So if you have
27:53
Speaker 1: a video store in your area, support them because there's
27:57
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff. I remember when we were doing
27:58
Speaker 1: a tour of Video Droma number years ago, we were
28:00
Speaker 1: talking to a guy and he was like, oh, Paul Straighter.
28:03
Speaker 1: I think I'm getting his name right. And that's the
28:05
Speaker 1: first time I've ever heard of Mishiva, who we literally
28:08
Speaker 1: just talked about. And like all these things that you have,
28:10
Speaker 1: all these directors again, it comes it comes back to curation.
28:13
Speaker 1: I mean, Videodrome is a wonderful place. I rent from
28:16
Speaker 1: there as much as I possibly can, end up keeping
28:19
Speaker 1: the movies way too long, and so I you know, oh,
28:22
Speaker 1: tons of late fees, which I'm hoping is keeping them
28:24
Speaker 1: alive single handedly. I'm I'm joking, but not about the
28:28
Speaker 1: late things there are. You know, it was a nice
28:30
Speaker 1: community in Atlanta that really does support that place. But
28:33
Speaker 1: I do worry that the places like that are you know,
28:36
Speaker 1: I know they're struggling, and I just would really be
28:38
Speaker 1: sad if if that place that vanished, Because in the
28:41
Speaker 1: city is Metro e and big as Atlanta, it's really
28:44
Speaker 1: only that one, and I think in l A there's
28:46
Speaker 1: really only like two maybe you know, just a handful. Yeah.
28:50
Speaker 1: Like look, I think of a place like Vidiots, which
28:52
Speaker 1: is reopening. They were on Santa Monica for a very
28:54
Speaker 1: long time and they closed down. They never thought they
28:58
Speaker 1: never got closed down permanently. They closed down to kind
29:01
Speaker 1: of figure things out and probably stuff in an archive,
29:03
Speaker 1: and they're reopening as a museum, theater hybrid. I can't
29:08
Speaker 1: tell you exactly what they're doing off top of my head,
29:10
Speaker 1: but it's it's really hard for these places, and I
29:13
Speaker 1: mean support them and also, you know, push for more
29:17
Speaker 1: arts funding. It's not easy for these places get nonprofit standards.
29:20
Speaker 1: So if you can help push for stuff like that,
29:22
Speaker 1: I would suggest that because keeping this stuff keep this
29:25
Speaker 1: is art, and I think it's important for as a culture,
29:28
Speaker 1: for art to stay alive. So support your local video
29:32
Speaker 1: store and uh support your local podcasters. Uh not for
29:36
Speaker 1: nothing do we shout out ephemeral. As we know, we
29:39
Speaker 1: listened to a lot of shows, and we don't say
29:41
Speaker 1: this kind of stuff about all of them. So thank
29:44
Speaker 1: you to super producer Mr Max Williams for both this
29:47
Speaker 1: show and for uh ephemeral. Thanks to Alex Williams who
29:51
Speaker 1: composed this track, Thanks to our research associate Dr Zach,
29:56
Speaker 1: and thanks to that Cadillac in the background since I'm
29:58
Speaker 1: accidentally freestyle Doctor Zach in that Cadillac in the back.
30:03
Speaker 1: We'll see you next time, folks. For more podcasts from
30:12
Speaker 1: my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast,
30:15
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.