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Greg Luce | The Christian Reeve Podcast #204 · The Christian Reeve Podcast

• 0:00
  Hello and welcome to another episode of the Christian Reef
• 0:03
  podcast. Today's guest is the founder and
• 0:05
  CEO of sinister Cinema. Hailing all the way from Medford
• 0:09
  in Oregon in the United States. His name is Greg loose, welcome
• 0:13
  to the program. I didn't thank you very much.
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  It's a pleasure to be here. It's a pleasure to finally have
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  you here. For those, what you guys on the
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  watching, listening to, this won't know, but we had about
• 0:23
  half an hour of technical difficulties.
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  It was my fault. So I did I've been doing this
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  show for nearly three years and it was just something painful of
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  like not having the Right microphone setup.
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  I just feel so embarrassed. But anyway, I want to get
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  straight into talking to you because I've been not been able
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  to talk to you for ages. So talk us through the creation
• 0:51
  of sinister Cinema and your passion for movies.
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  Well, first of all, how much time do we have?
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  As long, as long as I've done. I'll give you a not the long
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  long story but the medium long story or the medium story, you
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  know, I was a kid, I grew up in the Pacific Northwest and for
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  some reason I just had this attraction to old black and
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  white movies. Not just horror films, but just
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  old black and white movies in general.
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  I loved him. You know, every day, I'd get
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  home from school, I'm just, you know, I'm 8 9 10, 11 years old,
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  And you catch the 4:30 movie from Spokane, Spokane,
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  Washington Channel, 6, I think it was and it was always old
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  black and white stuff and you know, so when I was a kid, I
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  started watching all these old movies and somewhere along the
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  way. I was downtown one day somewhere
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  in Walla. Walla are penile Vineyard, which
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  of the towns where I grew up, and I saw this magazine on the
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  newsstand called horror monsters, which was a child in
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  public. And then later on I saw on
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  called famous monsters of filmland which is Forrest J.
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  Ackerman is magazine. That was around for decades, may
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  he rest in peace for, he was a great man but I bought copies of
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  those. And I started getting interested
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  in all this old horror stuff. And so when I was a kid, I used
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  to, you know, you'd scan the TV Guide to see when Frankenstein
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  meets The Wolfman was going to show or whatever.
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  Mummy movie or You know, and some channels had more of this
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  kind of stuff than other channels.
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  So as I grew up, I got into radio and television after I
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  went through college, got my communications degree and, and
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  along the way, I was a screaming top, 40 disc jockey at KMEL in
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  San Francisco. You know, and we're interviewing
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  Duran Duran and, and Debbie Gibson.
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  All these people, you know, and a guy calls me one day, out of
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  the blue from this little cable access station down in San Jose.
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  Called The Classic Movie Channel and it could only be seen in the
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  Bay Area and you had to have cable but they wanted me to host
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  a horror movie show a weekend. Horror movie show just like Zach
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  early or some of these other famous Bob Wilkins my hero.
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  These horror hosts here in America had long-established
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  well-known TV shows in their regions, you know?
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  And so So I started a Sinister Cinema TV show and I hosted it.
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  We shot it at the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, which
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  is an incredible place. It's not necessarily spooky but
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  it is a fascinating place when we would shoot from a different
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  room from the Winchester Mystery House for every show and I'd go
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  down, you know, from I lived in the towards San Francisco.
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  I was in Pacifica and I go down once a month and we shoot Or
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  five shows and I'd have guessed in.
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  I have everybody from Greg kihn, the rock and roll star to
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  William. K ever seen the film historian
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  and this went on for several years.
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  But what I got out of this deal, I never got paid a dime for
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  doing this, but what I got was access to their film Library,
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  which was a huge public domain film Library, so they allowed me
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  to take video Masters home and create my own dubbing Masters
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  for my My fledgling little company Sinister Cinema and the
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  way that got started was I was complaining one day to a guy by
• 4:37
  the name of Kit, Parker and kid has a film rental Library.
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  I he still around after all these years and I was
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  complaining to him, one time about the cost of VHS tapes,
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  which were like 25 bucks back then, and communicating and
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  trading, long-distance, with all these collectors from New York
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  at all. This And he goes well why don't
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  you sell some of this stuff, right?
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  So I said well how I can't do that and you know it goes, you
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  know I want that you like so much these old poverty row
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  studios are there are long gone. The film's the copyrights have
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  expired there in the public domain, man.
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  So you, if you can get copies of them, you can sell them legally
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  all you want. So that's what I did.
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  It was basically a side business to pay for the cot of my movie
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  Addiction, but then it got a little bigger and a little
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  bigger, and a little bigger. And finally, one day I realized
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  it was Big enough that I could get out of radio if I wanted,
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  and I did and that was 39 you years ago Sinister, we started
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  very small, like three VHS machines, dubbing connected to
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  each other and One beta machine, you know, and we started buying
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  film. We got out our own equipment.
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  I still have an old RC ATK 29 camera which weighs a ton
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  sitting in my film room downstairs.
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  And, you know, here I am. In 223 now and and still I'm
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  going to be 70 years old next month and I'm still doing it.
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  Oh congratulations. Yeah, lots to unpack there but I
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  think that the biggest thing that stood out to me straight
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  away and I noticed this when I went on your website and I did a
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  bit of research and such is obviously where you mentioned
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  that the copyright aspect and I was thinking to myself because I
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  know that you spend a lot of time doing restoration and
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  there's various different ways that you do that.
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  That and I will get into that a little bit later, but you've got
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  this library of films. Yes.
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  And as you said, for many of them, the copyright has expired.
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  Walk us through like how that works from a business
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  perspective. Because typically that I like,
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  I'll give a modern example for people who might not be as
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  familiar with what we're kind of going into now.
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  So the copyright on Mickey Mouse is about to come up.
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  That's correct. And and we're talking
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  specifically the original drawings or artwork for Willie.
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  Yeah. So that will then go into the
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  public domain and basically, anyone will be able to use that
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  likeness and famously, She in places like the United States
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  you will not allowed to even have like a mouse type mascot
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  deal. Let's say that you have, you run
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  like a local restaurant and you have like a mouse that character
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  or something? No, I know.
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  Yeah, it was. Disney was one of the ones that
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  Protected Their intellectual properties to the extreme
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  sometimes going into day care centers and things like that.
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  You know? But the fact of the matter is a
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  January, first of this coming year, Steve Vote, Willie will
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  fall into the public domain. Now, the image of Mickey Mouse
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  is, I understand the law and I'm not an attorney, but I like to
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  think I know as much about copyright law as it pertains to
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  films and books. From this era is good as just
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  about any copyright attorney. I really, I feel like I know my
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  stuff fairly well. That's not to say I'm an expert
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  expert, but I I know my stuff and so the image of Mickey Mouse
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  in About Willie, is I understand the law will be free and clear.
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  However, you must remember that in 1940 or 41 or whatever it
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  was, they came out with Fantasia and that had a whole new aspect
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  of Mickey Mouse, instead of button eyes.
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  He had human eyes that image of Mickey Mouse will still be
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  protected for another what 12 years, or whatever it is.
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  Mmm, so yeah, so So, in 12 years, when the stuff from 1940
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  or 41 is falling into the public domain, then we will be free and
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  clear to use that image as well. Yeah.
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  And it kind of just fascinates me about this ability to I
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  suppose buy and sell and use something.
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  I mean I suppose the best example of this is probably
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  classical music and how you know you can be an artist and record
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  their say a bunch of Chopin songs.
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  And do your own interpretations and you can sell that record and
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  make money on that. And you don't have to kind of
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  pay copyright to anyone. But equally you and maybe 50
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  other artists could do the same thing.
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  And I guess that bringing that back to yourself.
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  There's I mean, there's not going to be loads and loads of
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  people doing some of the work, you do have restoration and
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  stuff like that, because that takes a long time, a lot of
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  dedication and it's a whole thing unto itself, you know?
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  I mean, but I guess I just wanted to kind of know break
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  down a little bit like the business side of things as far
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  as Christian, anything that's in the public domain is free and
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  clear to use. Now it gets it's very
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  complicated you and I could sit here for the next two hours
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  about ha Be right law and you know, you're going to bore your
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  your listeners to tears because it's it is truly complicated.
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  You have things like the Uruguay round agreements Act and the
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  Gattaca it which was part of the GATT Accord which restored
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  copyrights and international works, and things like that and
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  how that affected me. And and all the changes in
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  American law, the automatic renewal law at all these other
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  things. It yes.
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  Could go on and on and on. Give me a quick example.
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  I don't know if you're aware of this, but everything prior to
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  1978 and even before 19, I believe it's 88 to a certain
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  degree. If you published your work in
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  this country without a proper notice of copyright somewhere.
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  Like, if it was a book in the opening or closing Pages, or if
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  it was a movie Somewhere, in the opening or closing credits, and
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  you published it without that, notice your work fell into the
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  public. Like domain.
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  That's what happened? Yeah, that's what happened to
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  Night of the Living Dead in George Lucas, the original Night
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  of the Living Dead is in the public domain here in the United
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  States. Now, I can't say that that's
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  true necessarily in every country in the world, because
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  every country is a little different and, and some some
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  countries go by, What's called the rule of the shorter term.
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  And that's I want to get into that.
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  But go ahead was, I'll add to that.
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  Is that basically, like, whoever There's first a company first,
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  because I think the WWF did that originally didn't I so much.
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  Sure, I understand the question. Okay, so in the UK that there's
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  a company called The World Wildlife Fund, charity
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  organization for wildlife, and they've been around.
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  I wouldn't put a guess on it. But I would say, probably at
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  least the last 40, 50 years, maybe, something like that.
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  Anyway, and then there's the World Wrestling Federation.
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  And now WWE in the United States, which I believe, formed
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  somewhere around the early 80s because it used to be the wwwf
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  and then they changed it. Shortened it to WWF.
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  Anyway the thing that fascinates me about that was that roughly
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  speaking. They set up their companies
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  within a few years of each other like give or take, right?
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  But they're completely different Industries completely different
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  fields Etc. But then the UK Company, WWF
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  suit, the American company, and they won.
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  And so you're talking about, we're talking about this is a
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  little different than copyright. Okay.
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  We're talking, we're talking about trademarks or business
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  business name laws. Oh, tell ya, sorry, I just, I
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  meant like when you talked about the rule of shorter-term, I
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  thought you meant, like, whoever holds it for the short amount of
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  time loses or something like that.
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  Now some company subscribe to, it's a in copyright laws, in
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  many countries. They look at even if something
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  would be normally protected it for instance, here in the United
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  States. We have we have a set of laws
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  and in Great Britain they have a set of log, right?
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  Yeah, are different, okay? So some countries that follow
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  the rule of the shorter term. Even though, let's take some
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  work that has fallen into the public domain in the United
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  States because of the natural course of copyright law.
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  Correct? Okay, in Great Britain, though,
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  if you applied British law to that work, that's in the public.
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  And in the United States, it might still be protecting and
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  Great Britain. However, possibly Great Britain
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  and I can't remember off the top of my head goes by the rule of
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  the shorter term which says if it's if it's public domain and
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  its country of origin, then we recognize it as public domain as
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  well. Okay.
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  And that's what the rule of the shorter term is and I believe
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  most of the European Union follows, the rule of the shorter
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  term. So even though something
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  something Film here might be still copyrighted.
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  If you look at it under strictly under British law because it's
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  public domain over here, that copyright is not recognized in
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  Great Britain, and I'm pretty sure that you guys are under the
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  rule, the shorter term because I CPD American stuff on Amazon UK
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  all the time. So that's how that works.
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  I want to move it to talk about streaming for a little bit
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  because one thing I noticed on your website is that you're
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  selling physical media which I think there's always going to be
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  a market for that and it's an interesting kind of Base that
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  we're in when it comes to film now.
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  Because obviously for modern film everything is available and
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  streaming services eventually. You can obviously go to the
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  cinema and see new movies and classic movies but generally
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  speaking, the main way. People consuming film and TV is
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  on streaming services. Now you can still get dividend.
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  Well, I don't know if you can still get DVDs but you can
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  definitely get Blu-ray. Anyway.
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  One thing that I wanted to say right off the bat is that what
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  you're doing and other people similar to you are doing is kind
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  of like a valuable service, really?
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  Because it's not only restoration but it's making this
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  content available that wouldn't otherwise be available.
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  In order to consume but obviously the next logical step
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  is then to make it available via streaming.
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  Is that something you're looking to do?
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  And also kind of what your thoughts on streaming as well.
• 16:02
  We actually have we don't stream off of our website but we have
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  right now about eight hundred titles, proximately give or take
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  50 or 100 they're available for Instant Video on amazon.com.
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  Um, okay, and I have found that okay.
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  The process of us setting up streaming off the Sinister
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  Cinema website is a little complicated and I'll be the
• 16:29
  first one to admit Christian. I'm a little behind the times on
• 16:32
  the whole streaming thing. Okay, however we are working
• 16:35
  with a new company right now called Allied Vaughn and we have
• 16:41
  just launched or are launching about ten of our more recent
• 16:46
  titles into their screaming service, Are Instant Video
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  service and we intend over the next couple of years to put on
• 16:54
  as many titles, we can do, there goes one of them right now.
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  We're going to make them available for Instant Video in
• 17:07
  addition to being available as you have disc on demand or
• 17:11
  medium and and instant video and so we're going to try to get
• 17:16
  that going with our new company. A Live on.
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  But in the meantime, there are like about eight hundred titles.
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  And if you go on Amazon and you just search Sinister Cinema,
• 17:27
  under movies and TV, all these titles will pop on those pages
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  of them, you know, some of our older stuff but we are, we are
• 17:34
  trying to really upgrade a lot of older stuff and I'm doing all
• 17:40
  of our upgraded stuff comes obviously through us on our own
• 17:44
  website at www.stanleyandkatrina.com.
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  But we're trying to make as much of it available as quickly as we
• 17:52
  can, through Allied Vaughn and Allied Vaughn reaches
• 17:56
  everywhere. They put our stuff on Amazon as
• 18:00
  well. Movies saying, old he's.com,
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  Walmart Barnes & Noble, all these various websites are
• 18:08
  carrying our product. Now through a lied Von, they're
• 18:11
  great people, I just love my affiliation with them.
• 18:16
  You're like a big thing here is that like it's not just about
• 18:20
  making the movies available? It's also about preserving
• 18:27
  history. I feel like is a big part of
• 18:29
  this and something about watching old movies, just feels
• 18:33
  different like a good example that comes to mind for me or a
• 18:37
  few would be, for instance, Nosferatu or The Wizard of Oz
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  and especially with the Wizard of Oz.
• 18:44
  Because as I and that was the first.
• 18:47
  I might be rolling this for the first like feature film to
• 18:50
  feature like Technicolor some of it was one of the early wasn't
• 18:56
  the Fret. I believe I believe it was Becky
• 18:58
  sharp. Okay, but it was one of the
• 19:01
  first and you're so right, you see?
• 19:07
  And I probably said this in just about every interview I've ever
• 19:10
  done, I'll tell it to you too. Sinister Cinema is like a hobby
• 19:16
  run? Amok.
• 19:18
  Because I have a real. I'm a real Aficionado of these
• 19:22
  old films. Yeah, not just horror films.
• 19:24
  You know, things that we don't sell, I'm sitting, I'm sitting
• 19:27
  you know watch it. Betty Davis or Errol Flynn just
• 19:30
  about every night you know there there is and what we do here at
• 19:35
  Sinister is we help and they said, I'll be honest, it's
• 19:39
  largely Baby Boomers that this point and we'd like to Branch
• 19:43
  out but we help people Find their memories, you know, find
• 19:50
  those special things that they grew up with when they were a
• 19:53
  kid and rekindle the interest in that type of film and then
• 19:57
  suddenly all these films they watched when they were a kid.
• 20:01
  Well, yeah, they're seeing those again and not just from us, but
• 20:04
  from other companies as well. However, there are also
• 20:07
  rediscovering or discovering for the first time films that they
• 20:13
  never saw when they were a kid, but are in that same time,
• 20:17
  period. From some of the same genre is
• 20:19
  that they cherish so much. So it opens up a whole new broad
• 20:23
  Vista of films. Like hey I never got to see this
• 20:27
  when I was a kid but boy I can sure see it now you know I and I
• 20:31
  know what you mean. And I'll tell you one other
• 20:33
  thing, Christian sometimes and a lot of them bless their hearts
• 20:37
  are gone now. But we used to get these old
• 20:40
  movie stars calling us saying, hey, you got a movie?
• 20:44
  I was in and I haven't seen it since I made it.
• 20:47
  It, you know, Mark Forest, who's in a lot of these soaring sandal
• 20:51
  films. He used to call us all the time,
• 20:53
  you know, and he was in all these Hercules and Goliath film,
• 20:56
  say he was a Brooklyn boy and they, you know, was a
• 20:58
  weightlifter and they brought him over to Italy to make all
• 21:01
  these movies. While he, he would call us and
• 21:03
  say, hey, you've got, you know, this one or that one your
• 21:06
  Goliath or Hercules, your versus whoever, you know, and, you
• 21:11
  know, and we'd sent him copies and they would, you know, they
• 21:15
  talk to us and, you know, No, we help them find some of the
• 21:20
  missing pieces of their past, so to speak, you know, so it's
• 21:24
  been, it's been a lot of fun and, you know, I'm not a poor
• 21:29
  man. I'm not a rich man.
• 21:30
  I'm somewhere in the middle but Sinister Cinema has really been
• 21:35
  a guilty pleasure. I so you know, but I've made a
• 21:39
  living but I like to think that I really reached out to a lot of
• 21:43
  people and it's made a difference in people's lives.
• 21:46
  100% again, so much the impact out.
• 21:50
  I quickly want to say, like, there's something to be said for
• 21:53
  watching a movie from its time because a lot of the time you do
• 21:57
  see, you know, serious come out that based in your set in a
• 22:02
  certain period but it's not the same as like it actually being
• 22:05
  filmed in that time. Like recent example is, I
• 22:09
  watched some of the which was the Fast and Furious movies for
• 22:12
  the first time, I'd never seen them and of Course, the very the
• 22:17
  first few are set in the early 2000s.
• 22:20
  They were film then. So all of the fashion, the
• 22:23
  music, the just everything is of that time and I'm looking at
• 22:27
  them. Like I remember when people
• 22:29
  dress that way, I remember that. This is weird and it hits you
• 22:32
  with that. Nostalgia that yeah, modern film
• 22:38
  can't necessarily do. When it's trying to kind of give
• 22:40
  you, you know, a sneak peek of what it used to be like, you
• 22:44
  know, like it. You can get For representations,
• 22:47
  don't get me wrong. I think stranger things.
• 22:49
  For instance, the series does a good job of trying to capture
• 22:52
  the essence of the 80s but it's never quite be the same as
• 22:55
  watching, like The Breakfast Club or something.
• 22:57
  And then just, I was going to say, you know, my wife and I
• 23:00
  just in the last year or so, we popped in Sixteen Candles.
• 23:07
  Oh my gosh, it was like, stepping back into the 1980s
• 23:11
  again, you know, and, you know, we don't realize it at the time.
• 23:16
  We're Going through life and going through time, but we're
• 23:19
  dating ourselves all the time. We things change suddenly over
• 23:24
  periods of time so that you know, what seemed to be.
• 23:26
  Totally normal 30 years ago, we go back and take a snapshot of
• 23:31
  it, and look at it through a movie, through old pictures, and
• 23:34
  you go. Oh, wow.
• 23:36
  Things are seven different packets of a day.
• 23:39
  A day that I was looking through some old University pictures
• 23:42
  from seven or eight years ago and I looked in the picture of
• 23:47
  one of my dorm rooms and sitting on the on the desk is like an
• 23:52
  iPod. Yeah.
• 23:53
  And the speaker and I'm like I don't eat like I think I've got
• 23:56
  it somewhere but I haven't used it in well over 10 years because
• 23:59
  you don't need to now but yeah you're right.
• 24:01
  It's just mad how that like passes by and it just changes
• 24:05
  and you're like whoa. Time time flies.
• 24:08
  I'll tell you really does. You know, I've been doing this
• 24:11
  now for 39 years, okay? I mean I did like I said I'm
• 24:14
  going to be 70 next month and come and I've been doing it over
• 24:20
  half my life, you know, I'm not, you know, where what happened to
• 24:23
  Sonny Joe, Fox the top 40 disc jockey from KMEL from 35 years
• 24:27
  ago, you know, oh my gosh, you know.
• 24:30
  So, yeah, you know, time sweeps by, I've had my kids are all
• 24:35
  grown and And but I'm out here, still double those DVDs.
• 24:42
  So we've been anything kind of surprising throughout the
• 24:45
  process of doing that. Something that may be caught you
• 24:48
  off guard or maybe something Just just, I don't know, like a
• 24:53
  memorable moment while you were restoring movies or going back
• 24:56
  that you just sort of encountered.
• 24:59
  Well, You know, I don't, I haven't mentioned armchair
• 25:05
  fiction yet because we did two things here, not only do we sell
• 25:09
  old movies, but we sell. Here, I'll show you.
• 25:13
  We saw old books. Yeah, yeah, okay.
• 25:16
  These are print-on-demand, editions of books are up.
• 25:20
  You can see him that well in the Kedah contact.
• 25:24
  And we put these together ourselves and, you know, I put
• 25:28
  the covers together. We do we scan, and we proof read
• 25:31
  them. And again, We're always
• 25:32
  searching for public domain stuff, although we do sell some
• 25:35
  copyrighted things from famous authors, like Robert silverberg,
• 25:38
  bring George dabrowski. And so about 13 years ago, I had
• 25:48
  always wanted to do with books. What I had been doing since 1984
• 25:56
  with video and movies. You know Greg learn to turn off
• 26:01
  your phone during a rookie 101 mistake that now we're even you
• 26:12
  know I'd be fired if I was a DJ and allow that to happen anyway
• 26:18
  but anyway and and then I learned it at hit actually been
• 26:22
  around for a few years when I learned about it but there was
• 26:25
  this program through Amazon.com called create space and it was a
• 26:29
  print on demand service mean, and I discovered that you see in
• 26:35
  the past, I knew that there was tons and tons of old fiction
• 26:38
  that again, had fallen out of copyright, but the cost of
• 26:43
  printing them and doing all that stuff was just enormous and
• 26:47
  you'd have to get your print cost and you'd have to print You
• 26:52
  know, a huge volume of each book and have a warehouse and all the
• 26:56
  stuff and, you know, I'm a little guy.
• 26:57
  I'm a mom Pop. I did a, I'm the king of the mom
• 27:00
  and poppers, I like to think, but create space this program
• 27:07
  through Amazon, I found out. You can order at reasonable
• 27:12
  prices, you can upload your books, you you, you sign up, you
• 27:16
  become a member and you can upload books and you can order
• 27:19
  ones and twos. He's at the same price to you
• 27:24
  for printing that it would normally have cost you to print,
• 27:28
  you know, a thousand books, you know, to get to get the kind of
• 27:32
  price that you want, you would have to order a thousand or two
• 27:35
  thousand books or whatever. Now, you only have to order one
• 27:39
  and so on. And not only that but Amazon
• 27:42
  list your product on Amazon amazon.com.
• 27:46
  They they fill the order for you.
• 27:52
  And you get a royalty check, okay?
• 27:54
  And not only that, but then you can order what are called
• 27:57
  authors copies for yourself. You can order 15, 20, whatever
• 28:01
  you want of your own book, advertise them on your own
• 28:04
  website and fill them that way. So that was you talking about
• 28:08
  certain moments when I got into armchair fiction which is right
• 28:13
  there on the Sinister Cinema website.
• 28:16
  That was kind of a big moment because suddenly, I had a whole
• 28:19
  new thing to do. And that was what books, you
• 28:23
  know, and now, we have over 500 books, you know, where's this,
• 28:29
  the time go, how did I manage to get all this put together?
• 28:32
  But in the last two or three years, I have kind of
• 28:38
  rediscovered. My I kind of let Sinister slide
• 28:41
  a little bit. I'll be honest with you, I was
• 28:42
  so into the books, but the last two or three years, upgrading
• 28:46
  our equipment and and just different video programs,
• 28:50
  different editing programs. That we hadn't had before.
• 28:53
  I'm finding that I have rediscovered.
• 28:55
  My love for you know the video side of sinister Cinema.
• 29:00
  Again we're upgrading we've upgraded.
• 29:03
  Close to 300 of our titles and they just look so much better
• 29:07
  than they used to. And I sometimes I get people who
• 29:12
  order something and I lied. I gotta go on upgrade that thing
• 29:16
  before I send it out to him, you know, we have great customer
• 29:19
  service by the way. You know, if you buy a disc from
• 29:23
  us and 10 years goes by and you put that thing in your machine
• 29:27
  and it doesn't work. He calls on the phone.
• 29:29
  We'll send you a new one I believe in treating our
• 29:31
  customers. Well, you know, So, but that's
• 29:35
  that's one of my bigger moments. And then, of course, Christian
• 29:38
  there have been times over the years where I've met people
• 29:41
  someone called I was just telling somebody the other day
• 29:44
  you know, we sell a lot of Bela Lugosi movies you know he's my
• 29:46
  favorite actor of all time. I know it should be should be,
• 29:50
  you know, Laurence Olivier but it's Bela Lugosi you know so one
• 29:55
  time this is Back in the 90s back when we were still on VHS
• 30:01
  my house. It's not my business phone, but
• 30:03
  my house phone rings, right? And I pick it up like a Halo,
• 30:08
  and voice on the other end goes. Hi!
• 30:10
  Is this Greg loose from Sinister Cinema?
• 30:12
  I go. Yeah.
• 30:14
  How did you get my home line? He goes.
• 30:16
  Well this is Bela Lugosi calling and I go.
• 30:20
  Yeah right I who is this is this is this Mark is this ad you know
• 30:25
  just Sam. Dick.
• 30:27
  You know, disguising your voice a little bit?
• 30:29
  No no. This is Bela Lugosi.
• 30:31
  Okay, come on now and then I thought it hit me, I go junior,
• 30:35
  he goes yeah Junior and it was Bela Lugosi Junior calling me
• 30:40
  and you know I was just thrilled.
• 30:42
  It was talk to the son of the man who I just admired so much
• 30:49
  and so he called me they were, they were thinking about someone
• 30:52
  who I think it approached him and my memory may be a little
• 30:54
  rusty here, but Someone had called him and he called me
• 30:59
  because they want her to come out with a line of his dad's
• 31:02
  films and there's like, 30 of Baal has all movies that are in
• 31:05
  the public domain. And he knew he found out that I
• 31:08
  had physical 16. Mm, and 35 mm prints of and they
• 31:13
  wanted to transfer them and bring out a line of Bela
• 31:17
  lugosi's movie newly transferred.
• 31:20
  And I think he was going to like host these or something to that
• 31:24
  effect, you know, I as my memory serves.
• 31:27
  Serves me and we must have talked for an hour and you know
• 31:30
  what, I never heard back from it and as far as the project never
• 31:35
  came to realization, not just with me but I never saw him
• 31:39
  doing it with any other company. So Something I'm assuming
• 31:43
  something must have fallen through on his end.
• 31:46
  So but that was, that was a thrill and another Thrill is
• 31:49
  when I get to spend the better parts of a couple of days with
• 31:51
  Barbara Steele who is and, you know, you would think it would
• 31:55
  be someone like Christopher Or Peter Cushing or Vince to price
• 31:59
  or Lugosi Ur, Karloff, or Lon Chaney jr.
• 32:02
  But the biggest selling horror star in the history of sinister.
• 32:06
  Cinema is Barbara Steele and what a classy lady she is.
• 32:12
  I got to host a Barbara Steele retrospective at the Roxy
• 32:17
  Theater in San Francisco. Back in the 90s and she was our
• 32:19
  special guest, got to spend the whole evening with her, and then
• 32:23
  I got to go down and spend an afternoon with her and And her
• 32:27
  boyfriend, we went over to Richard Harrison's house who was
• 32:29
  another Old Time movie star. And so those are some of my big
• 32:33
  Thrills, you know, from the times that I've been doing
• 32:36
  Sinister serum. I mean there's many others but
• 32:39
  we could talk all day and I like to talk.
• 32:46
  So you mentioned that you've actually sort of struggled a
• 32:49
  little bit lately, and this is something that I noticed in the
• 32:53
  show notes that were sent over to me as well.
• 32:55
  So we'll go screw the business strategy that you use to
• 32:59
  overcome something declining sales, period, and turn things
• 33:02
  around. I know that you said that you'd
• 33:04
  updated a lot of equipment and stuff, but obviously business
• 33:07
  strategies something, totally different.
• 33:09
  It's one thing to invest in things and make them better, but
• 33:12
  what was it that you'd changed? Well, I'll tell you that. one of
• 33:20
  the things that I face, Is the fact that I hate to sound
• 33:26
  morbid. My customers are dying.
• 33:29
  Right? Don't know.
• 33:30
  You know, and it's sad, you know, I don't have hardly, we
• 33:33
  have very few be Western fans left because they were the older
• 33:39
  fans and they've since passed on bless their souls, you know.
• 33:43
  So, I'm faced with declining. Declining patronage from the age
• 33:49
  groups at normally were very vast for many years, you know.
• 33:54
  And so we've got involved and again with things that I should
• 33:57
  have been keeping up on that. My daughter's working with me
• 34:01
  now and she's helping me where we're getting more involved with
• 34:04
  with social media. We have a beginning, a much
• 34:07
  bigger presence on Facebook, Facebook, Instagram, and
• 34:13
  Twitter. And we eventually hope to get
• 34:17
  launched our own channel on YouTube.
• 34:20
  That's another animal down the road because there's only so
• 34:23
  many hours in the week and I have a marketing lady that's
• 34:25
  been helping us trying new approaches and frankly
• 34:28
  Christian, you are an example of what we're doing.
• 34:33
  We're trying to reach out and make you aware and so hopefully
• 34:38
  you know, a lot of younger people especially people under
• 34:41
  the age of 30 They will look at some of our older films and go,
• 34:45
  huh? You know what is this?
• 34:48
  You know because you know let's face it that we live in a world
• 34:51
  of CGI and totally modern technology and these old films
• 34:56
  from 30s. 40s and 50s are like just ancient relics to them but
• 35:04
  sometimes I've noticed that some of them they find them funny or
• 35:09
  schlock in. Sometimes I make fun of them you
• 35:12
  know and that's that's okay. I used to I used to be a regular
• 35:16
  contributor. ER of films to Mystery Science,
• 35:18
  Theater 3000, which made fun of these movies for years, you
• 35:21
  know. But I've noticed that every once
• 35:23
  in a while you find a younger person who.
• 35:26
  Yeah. Maybe they think some of this
• 35:27
  old stuff is schlocky, but yet they're touched by something.
• 35:32
  Maybe it's Christopher Lee. Maybe it's Peter Cushing and
• 35:36
  because there are no big horror Stars anymore.
• 35:39
  I don't, you know that now that the stars now are the effects,
• 35:42
  but we used to when we didn't have his good effects, you had
• 35:44
  personalities Carl I would go see Chaney jr.
• 35:48
  Line a lot will people like that, but especially when I was
• 35:51
  growing up in the theaters at least it was price.
• 35:54
  Vincent Price, Peter Cushing and the great Christopher Lee who we
• 35:59
  lost just a few years ago, you know.
• 36:01
  And so they find something. And So eventually, some younger
• 36:06
  people are finding an interest and some of the things that we
• 36:10
  do and that that's, that's our hope, definitely me.
• 36:14
  I've been a massive fan of Cinema Uh my entire life.
• 36:17
  Everything from horror movies, B horror classic movie.
• 36:21
  Some of my favorite movies of all time have been older movies,
• 36:27
  like it's a wonderful life. I think that is just one of the
• 36:29
  best movies ever made. I don't know where it is for me
• 36:32
  and I just told this to a guy the other day I think the
• 36:35
  greatest movie ever made and I'll tell you why is To Kill a
• 36:39
  Mockingbird. I know it's it's not a horror
• 36:41
  film To Kill a Mockingbird. I think is the greatest movie
• 36:46
  ever made a bad kids? It's I don't know if you've ever
• 36:49
  seen it, I've seen it many times.
• 36:51
  I don't try to watch it too often because I like to keep it
• 36:54
  fresh. Maybe once every couple of years
• 36:56
  it's the greatest movie ever made about kids as a horror
• 37:00
  movie fan. There are sequences in this bill
• 37:04
  that are as scary as any horror film from that time period, all
• 37:08
  the scenes around, boo radleys house in the night with the kids
• 37:10
  and you know, it's some terrific stuff in the black and white.
• 37:14
  Harvey photography is wonderful. It is also possibly the greatest
• 37:19
  movie ever made about racial Injustice, right and Atticus.
• 37:23
  Finch is the father. We all would love to be.
• 37:27
  It's just the greatest movie of all time.
• 37:29
  In my opinion, I almost get tears in my eyes thinking about
• 37:31
  it. You know, it's truly a classic
• 37:34
  film, I think. I think it largely.
• 37:37
  When it comes to Classic Cinema is all about the stories.
• 37:41
  You know what I mean? Like, and that's the thing I
• 37:43
  look out for like, when I I go back and watch like old
• 37:45
  Hitchcock movies, you know, I think.
• 37:47
  I mean, yeah. Like if you want that the birds,
• 37:50
  yeah, it's kind of funny like they hit some of the effects
• 37:52
  with the birds and stuff, right? But eats is genuinely terrifying
• 37:56
  as well, if you Travis put, because I've always looked at,
• 38:00
  you know, I'm a big fan of professional wrestling, right?
• 38:02
  And there's like about right? Yeah.
• 38:04
  And there's a lot about wrestling but it is a bit you
• 38:07
  know, it makes it difficult sometimes to suspend your
• 38:10
  disbelief but that's the key being able to suspend your
• 38:13
  disbelief You can let certain things go and just focus on a
• 38:17
  story, that's when you lose yourself in it.
• 38:20
  And I felt that way. When I when I saw the birds hit
• 38:26
  us them in the movie, isn't it? The Birds.
• 38:28
  Yeah. And and sit and similar movies,
• 38:32
  you know, in the 40s 50s 30s, there was a movie.
• 38:36
  I can't I can't remember her name but it was a movie and make
• 38:41
  the ball is I think begins with a G.
• 38:45
  And the basic storyline is, is like a couple that are like
• 38:51
  doing some sort of shady dealings, I think in like Tina
• 38:54
  know, it's like Argentina there in Argentina and like some sort
• 38:57
  of Casino or something ask is driving me nuts.
• 39:02
  I don't remember this because of the G.
• 39:04
  It's a really, really famous actress.
• 39:06
  That one of the most famous of all time we have to remember is
• 39:10
  that as you as a younger guy and I can tell you, We much younger
• 39:15
  than I am. Sometimes these old movies and
• 39:19
  this is where I encourage younger people.
• 39:22
  These older movies are it's like an acquired taste.
• 39:27
  You may be initially Repulsed by them for whatever reason, you
• 39:32
  just think, they're dumb or stupid.
• 39:34
  But if you take the time to watch some of them, especially
• 39:38
  some of the really good ones. If you, if you take the time to
• 39:41
  explore, some of the classic Betty Davis movies, or on the
• 39:45
  swashbuckling side Errol Flynn or if you like film Noir, go for
• 39:50
  Bogart or John Payne or Dan Duryea, are people like that
• 39:54
  Robert Mitchum, you know, you'll find that eventually.
• 39:59
  And you may start to acquire a taste for it that you didn't
• 40:02
  have before. And the other thing to keep in
• 40:05
  mind is, is that part of the problem that a lot of younger
• 40:08
  people have, with films of yesteryear is that because they
• 40:12
  didn't have all the technical capabilities back then, they
• 40:16
  were more dependent on script and on dialogue and on
• 40:20
  storytelling. So there's just, you know, a
• 40:23
  plethora of dialogue. And a lot of these old movies
• 40:27
  that a lot of young kids you know, first Yeah.
• 40:31
  Well, you know, what did you do? You know?
• 40:34
  And, and but if you stick with it, you'll find some of the
• 40:38
  greatest movies that, you know, you thought you would never ever
• 40:41
  say we're great truly are. And so, yeah, it is.
• 40:47
  It's a huge difference. And but, you know, I encourage
• 40:51
  all young people, you know, start watching classic films and
• 40:54
  once you start watching some of the classic ones, some of the
• 40:56
  really good ones and you you acquire The Taste.
• 41:00
  That's When you can come to me because we have some of the
• 41:05
  knots on classic movies and we have a lot of good films to.
• 41:08
  But we do specialize in a lot of schlocky movies, which is part
• 41:12
  of the reason why they fell into the public domain to begin with,
• 41:15
  to be perfectly honest, you know, cheap films by Cheap
• 41:19
  companies, you know, but there's a lovable something about them
• 41:22
  old drive-in movies but yeah, so hopefully these films will not
• 41:28
  be forgotten and Like me and Jack Hardy, a grape vine video,
• 41:35
  he's my competitor and I admire what he does very much, you
• 41:40
  know. Hopefully we will be around long
• 41:43
  enough to help a lot of younger people.
• 41:45
  Discover a lot of this old stuff and I want to say one last thing
• 41:48
  real quick. The one thing one of the reasons
• 41:51
  why I got into the book side. Armchair fiction is because
• 41:54
  books are the theater of the mind you are not.
• 41:58
  You're not held back. Like, Cinema has Because a book
• 42:02
  is in the eyes of the reader, okay?
• 42:04
  So even if it's written, you know, from 1925 or 1945 or
• 42:10
  whatever, the young person who picks it up and reads it.
• 42:15
  And again, yeah, it's a, it's a, it's a literary style.
• 42:18
  You might have to get used to, but you can Envision it with all
• 42:21
  the CGI that you want. Okay?
• 42:24
  All the modernization that you want.
• 42:27
  It may be a period piece but you can see it in your own On Modern
• 42:31
  Way. And that's the wonderful thing
• 42:33
  about the book side of sinister Cinema.
• 42:37
  That's for sure, and appreciate it.
• 42:39
  Yeah, let's talk more about sort of what you do with regards to
• 42:44
  film restoration stuff like that.
• 42:46
  You experiment with helping getting this, right?
• 42:49
  The Anna, morphic morphic anamorphic.
• 42:53
  I think you're giving me too much credit when you say
• 42:58
  restore. When you say restore, I think in
• 43:01
  the guys down at UCLA going frame by frame through these old
• 43:04
  films and trying to clean. Um up and making, you know, a
• 43:08
  brand new wonderful-looking print out of, you know, three or
• 43:11
  four old beat-up negatives or or you know, old 35 theatrical
• 43:17
  Prince even sometimes that, you know, they try to put together
• 43:22
  and scientifically restore and create a new vibrant.
• 43:25
  You know. They just did that with Invaders
• 43:27
  from Mars and I hear it looks beautiful.
• 43:29
  They did it with white zombie with Lugosi from 1932 and that
• 43:32
  looks beautiful. Now here at sinister, What we do
• 43:39
  is basically try to get a good copy of a movie onto disk.
• 43:44
  Now I will say that in the days when I was transferring film and
• 43:48
  I haven't been doing it for a few years.
• 43:50
  Now we would take old beat-up Prince and when we, when we
• 43:55
  transfer them to video, we had a device called a wet gate device,
• 44:01
  which was this little reservoir of the stuff called pick clear.
• 44:06
  Solution. Which when you transfer the
• 44:08
  film, it went through right before it went through the
• 44:10
  aperture plate. It was immersed on either side
• 44:13
  of the film with this particular solution, which had this magic
• 44:18
  capability of as the light. It was it was a refraction Airy
• 44:22
  process when the light hit the print and you can have all these
• 44:25
  black lines in the print, it could be just a chewed print.
• 44:30
  There's some type of the fluid with Phil for just a few
• 44:33
  moments, would fill those cracks.
• 44:35
  And there was Is a super fraction Airy process that I
• 44:38
  don't understand them as the film went through the aperture
• 44:41
  plane, and projected, into your camera, which was transferring
• 44:44
  it into a video signal. It looked like, literally a
• 44:48
  brand new print and that is how we restored things for our
• 44:53
  customers. And the other thing about
• 44:56
  anamorphic that you mentioned is that starting back in the early
• 45:01
  50s we went to widescreen. Okay, there was, there was a
• 45:08
  widescreen 16 by 9, there was cinemascope, but even films that
• 45:13
  weren't shot. And cinemascope were composed
• 45:17
  for widescreen. So, there's 4 by 3, which is
• 45:21
  your old full screen and then there's 16 by 9, which is your
• 45:24
  widescreen and there's various formats within those, okay.
• 45:28
  There's all these different numbers.
• 45:29
  I don't want to confuse your your listeners with, but at any
• 45:33
  rate, most older films especially In America from about
• 45:37
  53 or 54 on Ford 1953 or 1954 on forward.
• 45:42
  Even though we saw them full screen on television or full
• 45:45
  screen. Even in the movie theaters, they
• 45:48
  were composed for widescreen. So, when the guys were looking
• 45:53
  through the cameras, filming the movie that on many of the
• 45:58
  cameras as I understand it. I've never actually viewed one
• 46:00
  of these, but as I understand from my readings, there was like
• 46:03
  this area like dotted lines. So, you'd have this for the full
• 46:08
  screen area, and then there were dotted lines, and that was the
• 46:11
  wide screen area. Okay.
• 46:14
  And that's where that's where they composed the main parts
• 46:18
  that, you know, the meat of the film was composed between those
• 46:21
  two lines. So, now you can go back if you
• 46:25
  have a full-screen addition of something you can actually, and
• 46:29
  you can always tell by looking at the opening credits, you
• 46:33
  know, if the opening credits have a lot of space at the top,
• 46:35
  Top and the bottom, you know, it's composed, you know, 99% of
• 46:39
  the time, you know, is composed for widescreen.
• 46:42
  You can literally pull that widescreen image out, put it
• 46:45
  onto video and bring it out in the wide screen format as it was
• 46:49
  composed for originally anyway. And you know, we just did this
• 46:52
  with Santa Claus Conquers the Martians?
• 46:55
  No. Not exactly failed.
• 46:57
  Nice. You know, we did it with attack
• 47:04
  of the Giant Leeches recently where We're doing it with the
• 47:06
  amphibian man, you know, so in that sense, we're doing some
• 47:12
  restoration, I guess if you want to call it that.
• 47:14
  But as far as real restoration goes, that's that's for the boys
• 47:20
  at the Eastman house or down at UCLA or some of these other big
• 47:23
  film archives and you know, bless their heart for the job,
• 47:25
  they do and sometimes our funds are lacking, you know?
• 47:29
  So we get what we can get from them and we should cherish it.
• 47:33
  So but anyway, that's that's my take on Duration one fun aspect
• 47:38
  to this, as well as like, particularly if you have like an
• 47:42
  old, they say they filmed two versions or something like that.
• 47:46
  And there was a widescreen version before ever reason they
• 47:48
  weren't able to put that out or something like that.
• 47:51
  When you get these white screen versions, you can sometimes see
• 47:53
  like mistakes. Like, maybe the it sound guys
• 47:56
  too far into the picture or something like that?
• 48:00
  Well, I think you've got it backward.
• 48:01
  Christian, what it is. Is the widescreen version.
• 48:04
  You'll see more mistakes. In the full screen version.
• 48:07
  For instance, you'll see, we've got this.
• 48:10
  What's this movie is a Robert Clark movie Hollywood
• 48:13
  confidential or not Hollywood. Something, it's a little
• 48:17
  exploitation film from the early 60s.
• 48:20
  And it was, it was composed for widescreen, but it was shot in
• 48:23
  full screen as well. At the same time simultaneously
• 48:26
  and you can see microphones hanging down and all the time.
• 48:30
  I mean, I've seen more mics hanging down in that specific
• 48:33
  movie than any movie I've ever seen before.
• 48:36
  So, yeah. So, and you know, I'll tell you
• 48:39
  a couple of funny stories real quick.
• 48:41
  Some of these old movies from the 30s, we sell a lot of old B
• 48:44
  westerns what, we don't sell that many anymore, but we've got
• 48:47
  hundreds available. But some of these films were so
• 48:51
  cheaply made that for instance, there's a movie called,
• 48:56
  lightning range. This made a 1934, I think it's a
• 49:01
  superior talking pictures production, which was anything,
• 49:05
  but what they were They're the cheapest movies ever made and
• 49:09
  they the, the the name of the title of the film and the
• 49:15
  opening credit is misspelled. And instead of saying lightning
• 49:20
  range, it says lighting range, you know, and you can see all
• 49:27
  kinds of mistakes that because there were so cheap, they just
• 49:30
  didn't bother to correct. You know, I've seen even things
• 49:34
  in big movies where they made mistakes.
• 49:35
  Son left them in. You know, that grinds my gears
• 49:38
  so much. I can let it go when it's a
• 49:40
  small production, if anything like me and my dad, like to
• 49:43
  watch like bad. Like bad budget.
• 49:45
  Horror movies for fun, it's a bit steep but I just find it
• 49:51
  funny hilarious. Like, I remember years ago
• 49:54
  watching one bad horror movie that had like zero budget and it
• 49:58
  was so easy to figure out who the killer was.
• 50:01
  It was basically just like a band in a studio years off.
• 50:05
  Dudes doing a other like a reunions record or whatever and
• 50:10
  the guy who was the killer like came in with a really bad
• 50:14
  attitude and then suddenly two minutes later, he's acting like
• 50:18
  really really aggressive and it's that was obviously this guy
• 50:20
  come on and then when they did the big reveal it's like, oh
• 50:23
  wow. Never saw that coming.
• 50:28
  It's funny. I don't know it's good but the
• 50:31
  nice thing about being a movie aficionado And and even just if
• 50:37
  you're just an old movie Aficionado, they made so many of
• 50:41
  them that we can never see them. All in our lifetime II.
• 50:46
  Will, you know, I'll live to be maybe 90 or 95 hopefully
• 50:51
  healthy. Hopefully and I will still have
• 50:54
  plenty of old movies to watch because they made so many of
• 51:00
  them that you literally, unless you're watching him 24 hours a
• 51:03
  day, you know, you just can't see them all.
• 51:05
  Lifetime. There's too many hours, you
• 51:07
  know, one thing about that as well.
• 51:10
  But I think it that meant that fact, right then makes ratings
• 51:15
  and reviews so much more important but you take a gamble.
• 51:19
  See, that's the thing that it with a modern movie, let's say
• 51:21
  it's critically acclaimed. Sometimes you go and see that
• 51:24
  movie and it's terrible, but then the flip is true.
• 51:27
  Sometimes a movie gets critically panned and it's
• 51:30
  amazing. So you you really take a gamble
• 51:34
  every time if you rely on the Alex and the reviews
• 51:48
  that movie was good outside was nice and I saw it in the
• 51:53
  theater, you know, if you had told me Well, let me put it to
• 51:59
  you this way, top gun Maverick, right?
• 52:01
  Which took us back to the 1980s again?
• 52:06
  It was the kind of action film that we hadn't seen in many many
• 52:09
  years. Steven Spielberg, I believe,
• 52:11
  said, recently the Tom Cruise saved Hollywood last year.
• 52:15
  I'll tell you that movie probably for, for, every one
• 52:19
  person that saw and enjoyed the film that won best picture.
• 52:25
  There were probably 20 people who saw Enjoyed perhaps even
• 52:29
  more top gun Maverick because it was just much more Mass Appeal
• 52:35
  than the other film. The other film was a great film.
• 52:39
  It was well made, but it's not a movie that you're going to watch
• 52:44
  more than once or twice or maybe three times over a long period
• 52:47
  of time to top gun. Maverick people were going back
• 52:49
  to see that in the theaters over and over and over again because
• 52:53
  it had that Mass Appeal element, and it was extremely well done.
• 52:57
  You No, that's a really good point as well, because I'm not
• 53:00
  sure I agree with your point on that movie.
• 53:02
  I thought was particularly Sensational but I do hundred
• 53:05
  percent agree with you that a big part of what makes a film
• 53:08
  great is replayability. Like, I remember hearing one
• 53:12
  time, someone refer to a movie as being like a weekend
• 53:16
  Blockbuster, which was a term back in the day.
• 53:19
  I don't know if they still use this but what that kind of
• 53:22
  implies is that yeah, for one weekend it was the Talk of the
• 53:26
  Town and now no one can. Cares.
• 53:28
  And it's it's interesting because You still see that
• 53:33
  sometimes you'll see everyone go on about something like yeah.
• 53:36
  You gotta see this guy, see this and you see it and it's great.
• 53:39
  And then you never come back to it again.
• 53:41
  But there are movies you and TV shows that you continuously
• 53:43
  binge watch all the time because they're so well written.
• 53:46
  And it's like, I don't know. Like what necessarily are the
• 53:50
  components that make something replayable and we joyal
• 53:54
  enjoyable over time? I guess part of it is up to the
• 53:58
  individual viewer, part of it is just Just connecting in a way
• 54:03
  that makes it Timeless. I know that could example, that
• 54:09
  comes to my mind right now is the TV show.
• 54:11
  How I Met Your Mother. I think the reason why it's got
• 54:15
  this kind of long-term appeal, is that It doesn't, it's not
• 54:20
  some, it's not a series that's rooted in its time period.
• 54:24
  Like there will be things in their references, in their jokes
• 54:28
  in there that you really needed to appreciate at the time.
• 54:30
  And so, when you watch it years later, it becomes kind of
• 54:34
  outdated. But the principal kind of
• 54:37
  lessons about or the fundamentals of it, remain the
• 54:39
  same and they remain enjoyable over time.
• 54:43
  And I think that's especially true with like good horror
• 54:45
  movies and and Classic Cinema will go back to We were talking
• 54:50
  about earlier with like good dialogue.
• 54:52
  Much, you know, my biggest criticism with old Cinema has
• 54:55
  nothing to do with production. My biggest criticism is more the
• 54:59
  acting sometimes. I actually feel in certain
• 55:02
  Productions, they were too much like theater acting because they
• 55:09
  were still figuring it out. Do you know what I mean?
• 55:10
  There was and that's, that's an important point because theater
• 55:13
  acting and on screen acting very different things and that kind
• 55:18
  of goes into the hole. Believability aspect of things
• 55:21
  and being able to suspend your disbelief, you know, well,
• 55:24
  you're right to a degree. But you have to remember that
• 55:28
  the literally the style of language in America Union back
• 55:34
  in the 1930s, and the 1940s was very, very different 100%.
• 55:39
  And so, you know, in some films and sometimes I see your point,
• 55:45
  like, if you take a big spectacle film with, with, like,
• 55:49
  a lizard, Mathematics, it's filled with British actors and
• 55:52
  actresses, you know, or the Errol Flynn's Australian, you
• 55:55
  know, and they are doing it, like a Shakespearean play in a
• 55:59
  way in a way. But yet, if you take a movie,
• 56:03
  like, you know, the big sleep with Bogart or the Maltese
• 56:07
  Falcon with Bogart, this is more of a whole New York thing.
• 56:11
  You know, that, that, that gumshoe downtown gritty, you
• 56:16
  know, Manhattan, feel to it and And or the Bronx or wherever.
• 56:21
  And so those guys were, there were not that dissimilar to the
• 56:32
  people on the streets of New York or Los Angeles during those
• 56:36
  days. So, when we look at it, now, it
• 56:40
  seems different or maybe not real, not as real, but it was
• 56:46
  closer to two real than Maybe. Do you think because of the time
• 56:53
  period that it was made? And you know, I think that if
• 56:57
  you had lunch with a G Robinson He would be talking to you, in
• 57:04
  his normal voice. And you'd be think you're part
• 57:06
  of his movie, because that's the way he was.
• 57:10
  You know. So it wasn't so much that they
• 57:12
  were So what you're saying is back in the day, life was more
• 57:18
  like movies. It is.
• 57:43
  Or or in Jezebel or all that, you know, in the later.
• 57:47
  What happened to Baby, Jane? This woman could act, same
• 57:51
  thing, Hepper, you know, the only person I can think of
• 57:54
  really off top my and I'm not trying to slight anybody.
• 57:56
  Modern, you know, Dame, Judi is wonderful, Meryl, Streep is
• 58:00
  wonderful, but these ladies back from that time period had acting
• 58:05
  chops, the likes of which I've never seen and that doesn't
• 58:09
  apply to all of them. A lot of were just great,
• 58:12
  presences on screen, you Smooth actresses, who did a great job
• 58:16
  you know but there's some of those some of those ladies and
• 58:19
  Davis is the one that to me stands like a beacon that woman
• 58:24
  could act. I mean, you just need to.
• 58:26
  If you haven't explored her works, I say, go start around,
• 58:29
  1935 watch dangerous and then work your way up, right through
• 58:33
  the 1940s. And a lot of them are soap
• 58:35
  operas and things like that. But I mean, there's some really
• 58:38
  fine work there bite by a consummate actors who hopefully
• 58:43
  will You will never be forgotten.
• 58:46
  I'd like to talk a little bit now about your experiences as a
• 58:50
  DJ. You mentioned at the top of the
• 58:51
  show that you were a DJ on the radio.
• 58:55
  So always the craziest or the most unexpected moment you had
• 59:00
  as a DJ There are many, you know, I started in a little
• 59:07
  small markets, I was a top 40, TJ change my name numerous times
• 59:12
  over the years from Station to Station and you know we were
• 59:15
  alive back then you know you did.
• 59:18
  It must a lot of stuff today, you know, there isn't that much
• 59:21
  live radio anymore. It's all recorded and stuff like
• 59:25
  that, radios really change, at least in America.
• 59:27
  I don't know about Great Britain the UK because it's it really
• 59:32
  depends. We do Lot of live radio but I
• 59:34
  know exactly what you mean. Like, yeah, now there's this
• 59:36
  kind of blur between. Yeah.
• 59:39
  And especially I music podcasts. And yeah, yeah.
• 59:42
  But but we used to. We used to go on the air live.
• 59:45
  You know what? I have three minutes.
• 59:48
  You know, we, when I was a cameo, which is the last station
• 59:52
  I worked for that was in San Francisco.
• 59:53
  We were big station, you know. I can we, you know, I Howard and
• 59:57
  I use guy. I worked with, he did
• 1:00:00
  afternoons, I did evenings. I remember when we interviewed,
• 1:00:03
  Duran Duran, John, and Andy Taylor came in and it was a
• 1:00:07
  madhouse. I mean, the building we were
• 1:00:10
  right, sitting next to Pier 39 right there.
• 1:00:13
  San Francisco Bay and our building was surrounded by
• 1:00:17
  hundreds of screaming girls. You know, and I remember they
• 1:00:22
  had a dummy limousine come in right up to the door and go into
• 1:00:29
  the back parking lot around to the back of the building and
• 1:00:31
  this throng of girls Chase this dummy limo and the real limo
• 1:00:36
  came up and unloaded John and Annie right by the service
• 1:00:39
  access door on the side. But there was I remember Auntie
• 1:00:44
  Kate got out of the car and John who is taller, got out of the
• 1:00:47
  car. And obviously, there was a
• 1:00:48
  couple of girls who had gone through this before, and they
• 1:00:51
  knew the routine, they knew that that first limo is a dummy.
• 1:00:55
  And Suddenly, I See This teenage girl, the body of a teenage girl
• 1:00:59
  fly up and grapple John Taylor God, kiss you It right on the
• 1:01:03
  mouth and he peels her off and we get him inside slam the door
• 1:01:07
  and it's locked and we hear this thump, you know, and you know we
• 1:01:12
  got him up on the are not getting him back into their
• 1:01:15
  limo. That was another thing
• 1:01:16
  altogether not was, you know, the whole beatles thing and and
• 1:01:21
  in fact during the years that I was in radio from the late 70s,
• 1:01:25
  right into the late 80s about 10 years, I think Duran Duran.
• 1:01:30
  I'm not saying that they were the best-selling new group of
• 1:01:32
  all time. But they certainly had more
• 1:01:36
  hysteria in terms of the fans surrounding them.
• 1:01:40
  I mean, everywhere they went it was just it was like 1964 and
• 1:01:44
  the Beatles all over again and so that was that was quite a
• 1:01:48
  moment and I'll never forget after the after John and Andy
• 1:01:51
  left. Okay?
• 1:01:54
  The girls surrounded the bill they were still there.
• 1:01:57
  Two hours later, finally, my GM. My general manager says suddenly
• 1:02:01
  job my name was Sonny Joe. Fox back then, they gave me that
• 1:02:04
  name by the way, that was the name of that.
• 1:02:05
  I had picked up sonny, Joe, Fox Cameo anyway.
• 1:02:11
  He said, go down and sign some autographs.
• 1:02:14
  Okay? And so I went down to the back
• 1:02:17
  parking lot and I'm standing there and I was very popular.
• 1:02:21
  I had high ratings in the girls home study.
• 1:02:24
  Jose honey, do you know, you got to talk to John and Annie.
• 1:02:26
  So I'm signing all these autographs and the mistake I
• 1:02:29
  made was I said yeah girls robbed again.
• 1:02:33
  And here is the hand who shook hands with John Taylor?
• 1:02:36
  They I mean, they rushed me to over.
• 1:02:40
  They were pulling at my hand and I'm going, no, no, you know, and
• 1:02:44
  for a second there, it was like a mob, you know?
• 1:02:47
  And that's one story not. Another story was when we had
• 1:02:52
  the Beastie Boys on the Beastie, Boys had a reputation of, and I
• 1:02:59
  think this was part of their stick and I'm not trying to To
• 1:03:03
  if they're listening, I'm not trying to step on their feelings
• 1:03:06
  here cause many problems. But when they came to KMEL, they
• 1:03:11
  came into the studio. We were warned ahead of time
• 1:03:13
  that they might do weird stuff on the air because the air they
• 1:03:17
  could at times be very disrespectful, rude that on.
• 1:03:20
  So I got them into the studio, we had them all mic'd up and,
• 1:03:25
  you know, it went fairly well. They were a little Curt at times
• 1:03:28
  but finally, after about, I don't know interview them for
• 1:03:31
  like, 45 minutes. So finally, I tried to wrap up
• 1:03:35
  the interview, right? So and they said why you don't
• 1:03:38
  want us anymore. We're not leaving you know?
• 1:03:43
  And so I'm going to record night come back and they'd still be
• 1:03:47
  there. I go.
• 1:03:48
  Well, guys, you know, I want to thank you again for being here.
• 1:03:51
  Hey man, you trying to get rid of us.
• 1:03:53
  We're not going or staying right here, you know.
• 1:03:55
  And finally what I they wouldn't leave the studio.
• 1:03:58
  So finally, what I had to do is I just started segueing record
• 1:04:01
  to record to record to record Occurred and not saying anything
• 1:04:04
  in between the records. And finally, the manager said,
• 1:04:07
  okay guys, let's go and I got up and I left, you know, and so
• 1:04:11
  yeah. It was, it was, that was quite
• 1:04:13
  an experience, some weird like it's just weird.
• 1:04:17
  Second like, normally the story you hear is that the artists
• 1:04:21
  don't want to be in the interview and you're desperately
• 1:04:23
  trying to keep them in the room and stuff.
• 1:04:25
  Like I can't imagine a scenario where they're like, oh no, we
• 1:04:28
  want to be here. We want to stay.
• 1:04:29
  We want to sleep over and take your job.
• 1:04:31
  I don't know. The book.
• 1:04:33
  I remember the time Debbie Debbie Gibson came and, you
• 1:04:38
  know, she became a big Superstar won't.
• 1:04:41
  She was what 16 17 years old. I mean, I don't even know if you
• 1:04:45
  know who Debbie Gibson is, but she was huge during the 1980s,
• 1:04:49
  okay? She was a young star and the
• 1:04:53
  remarkable thing about her, she was like, 16, 17, 18 years old.
• 1:04:56
  She was she was writing all of her own music and recording it
• 1:05:01
  and I'll never forget. She had, you know, she had top
• 1:05:04
  five records and stuff like that.
• 1:05:06
  We brought her into the studio and I interviewed her on the
• 1:05:08
  air. She was one of the sweetest
• 1:05:10
  people I ever met and I'll never forget her, mother came in with
• 1:05:13
  her, because her mother, you know, she was like 16 or 17
• 1:05:16
  years old. Her mother went everywhere, with
• 1:05:18
  her escorted, her everywhere, and they were just the nicest
• 1:05:21
  people. And then fine, young cannibals,
• 1:05:24
  they came in the two main guys who lead singer and what are the
• 1:05:28
  top, you know, one of the, the founders of the group, I guess.
• 1:05:30
  I can't remember their names and they That great hit record, good
• 1:05:34
  thing, and plus a number of other things, and I'll never
• 1:05:37
  forget when I had them mic'd up there soon again, either I meant
• 1:05:40
  my control console on talking, just like you are into your mic
• 1:05:43
  right there in front of me, on either side, talking into their
• 1:05:46
  mics and suddenly the lead singer just give its up and
• 1:05:51
  walks across to the corner of the room and sits down in a
• 1:05:54
  chair over there. I'm going back.
• 1:05:57
  No, I'm trying to single them without, you know, because you
• 1:05:59
  can't see me because I'm on radio.
• 1:06:00
  I'm not right. You know?
• 1:06:03
  And so I just continued with the other guy for like 10-15 minutes
• 1:06:07
  and finally, the other guys like, okay, I'm ready to come
• 1:06:10
  back and he comes back and he says down I start talking to him
• 1:06:12
  again, you know. But those are, you know, those
• 1:06:16
  are some of the celebrity stories.
• 1:06:18
  I have, I could go on and on about all kinds of funny, other
• 1:06:21
  stuff, you know, I was gonna say, did you get like regular
• 1:06:23
  coolers cool? Anything that kind of like was
• 1:06:25
  difficult to manage. Wasn't me.
• 1:06:28
  I tell you, Justin, if you really want to find out about
• 1:06:31
  Kami are there's a warehouse Website, called KMEL forever.
• 1:06:35
  Good friend of mine keysmith. He keeps it up and I think it's
• 1:06:37
  still on the internet. If you go on a cami off forever,
• 1:06:41
  you can go on. First of all, you can see me on
• 1:06:44
  the air. Go down.
• 1:06:45
  Look for Sunny. Joe fox in the video gallery,
• 1:06:48
  there's about a two or three-minute thing of me doing
• 1:06:50
  my show. It's like a blast from the past,
• 1:06:53
  you know? And but there's also the audio
• 1:06:56
  gallery and they have little interviews, a little short
• 1:06:59
  things. Like two, three, four minutes
• 1:07:01
  long. Certain things that happened at
• 1:07:03
  the station and if you go into the audio gallery and look under
• 1:07:06
  Sunny Joe Fox, you find all these little things with me
• 1:07:09
  talking about the kind of the very stuff that you're talking
• 1:07:12
  about and you know, people call in there was this one lady, I'll
• 1:07:15
  tell this real quick, there was this one, lady who called, and I
• 1:07:21
  had seen her at a station function.
• 1:07:23
  One time, she was actually an older lady probably in her late
• 1:07:25
  20s, and I was about, I don't know, 30 to something like that.
• 1:07:29
  Sonny, Joe rocking the hits every night.
• 1:07:32
  Anyway, she started calling me on the air, on the request line,
• 1:07:36
  on a regular basis. And finally, one day she goes,
• 1:07:38
  you know, I think I've decided that you and I should go out or
• 1:07:41
  something to that effect and I was married.
• 1:07:44
  And so she said, finally, she said, you know, I'm going to
• 1:07:50
  come down to the station. I'm going to come in there and
• 1:07:52
  I'm going to have my way with you, like college and and I
• 1:07:57
  said, do not do that. Do not come down to the station,
• 1:08:01
  you know, you Not come in here. First of all, I wasn't worried
• 1:08:04
  about it because the door was locked and I was I was the
• 1:08:07
  evening John, so, and I didn't think much of it.
• 1:08:09
  I got off the phone with her and I our program director and a guy
• 1:08:14
  by the name is Steve Rivers was in.
• 1:08:16
  He was he eventually went to Kiss FM, a Los Angeles.
• 1:08:20
  Great guy. Anyway.
• 1:08:22
  He, he came into the studio. He was doing some work in his
• 1:08:25
  office. He was working late.
• 1:08:27
  As most program directors were prone to do back then, but I
• 1:08:31
  said, no, no. Look I just had this call Steve
• 1:08:33
  from a lady if somehow she gets into the building and you see
• 1:08:36
  this lady in skimpy clothing, walking around like she wants to
• 1:08:40
  seduce every guy in the in the station.
• 1:08:43
  You know, it's not my fault. Okay, so anyway, so you know
• 1:08:49
  it's like maybe 45 minutes later and I don't know how she did it
• 1:08:53
  but in the studio you had there was another Studio next to it
• 1:08:59
  and another Studio next to it on the other side.
• 1:09:02
  I know that and there were glass windows between each one.
• 1:09:06
  So the very next Studio next to the main control, room was where
• 1:09:09
  the news guys worked. So, in the morning, when you're
• 1:09:12
  on the air, you know, uq the news guy and all that, you know?
• 1:09:15
  And and then there was a Production Studio.
• 1:09:17
  So all of a sudden I'm about, I don't know, it's maybe 45
• 1:09:22
  minutes to an hour later, I look up in The Newsroom and here's
• 1:09:26
  this lady Uncle. How did you get in here and
• 1:09:31
  she's standing there? With your hands on her hips,
• 1:09:33
  looking at me, like, I'm here for you, you know?
• 1:09:37
  And so I saw rivers in the Production Studio in the next
• 1:09:41
  Studio over. So I had this little intercom.
• 1:09:44
  So without really looking at her, I looked at I look down and
• 1:09:47
  I go Steve, you know that lady? I told you about it goes.
• 1:09:51
  Yeah, and go. Well, she's in The Newsroom
• 1:09:56
  looking at me right now and he looks up and he sees her so you
• 1:09:59
  know she got taken out and kicked out of the building
• 1:10:02
  Building. But, you know, things like that
• 1:10:04
  would happen on a regular basis. You know, I we I remember when I
• 1:10:09
  hosted the Wham, Will they still Wham UK?
• 1:10:14
  There is George Michael and Andrew ridgeley II.
• 1:10:17
  Did the hosted the Wham day on the green at the Oakland
• 1:10:21
  Coliseum. There's like, you know, forty
• 1:10:23
  thousand, screaming, teenage girls, all screaming to get, you
• 1:10:30
  know, get after George, Michael or Andrew ridgeley anyway, after
• 1:10:34
  we can d/l had. We had our own bus, right?
• 1:10:37
  And so, I hosted it that day. We have The Pointer Sisters and
• 1:10:40
  Katrina, The waves. I got to interview Katrina.
• 1:10:43
  She was real, nice. I'm Walking on Sunshine anyway.
• 1:10:47
  Yeah yeah, yeah. She was real nice.
• 1:10:49
  I think was their only hit but so you know, the concerts over
• 1:10:53
  and people are screaming out and my wife and I are in The Cameo
• 1:10:58
  buswell. Rivers might my boss had told me
• 1:11:02
  over the years. You could be married.
• 1:11:03
  All you want, I don't care but just don't talk about it.
• 1:11:05
  On the air. Sunny Joe fox in the eyes of his
• 1:11:09
  listeners is a single man. That's We want that's the image
• 1:11:12
  we want. So I couldn't tell people on the
• 1:11:15
  on the air that I was married. I had to be single Sunny Joe,
• 1:11:18
  right? So we're in the bus, the KMEL
• 1:11:21
  bus in this is after the whammed in the green and it's dark
• 1:11:25
  outside. And these girls they see me
• 1:11:28
  through the window. One of the bus Windows, they see
• 1:11:31
  me and they come up and they gonna send each other Sunni,
• 1:11:33
  Joe. Hi.
• 1:11:34
  You know, so I open the window I tell my wife Lisa go to the
• 1:11:38
  back, it can't see, you know. And so They're they're all there
• 1:11:42
  and all of a sudden there's this huge crowd of kids.
• 1:11:45
  Talking to me and want me to sign autographs, and all the
• 1:11:47
  stuff. And the funny part about this
• 1:11:50
  story is, do you remember? I don't know how well, you know,
• 1:11:53
  the Beatles and the Dave Clark Five and all that stuff.
• 1:11:56
  But there used to be this song that they would sing to the
• 1:11:59
  Beatles all the time is goes, we love you Beatles.
• 1:12:02
  Oh yes we do. You don't love anyone as much as
• 1:12:05
  you and it went on and on and on.
• 1:12:07
  Right. So these girls started singing
• 1:12:10
  this stupid. Song to me, we love you, sonny,
• 1:12:14
  you know? And and so my wife is in the
• 1:12:17
  back of the bus throwing up, you know.
• 1:12:20
  So yeah but you know radio is filled with these fun little
• 1:12:24
  moments, you know? And it was it was like being
• 1:12:26
  paid to play, you know, and I did it for 10 years and I don't,
• 1:12:32
  I don't really miss it because I never really looked back at it,
• 1:12:36
  but I look back at it fondly, you know, it was a great period
• 1:12:39
  in my life. I hosted television shows do,
• 1:12:44
  but, you know, it must feel like, living multiple different
• 1:12:49
  lives. I think that's the thing that
• 1:12:50
  fascinates me because I've, I've lived a fair bit already, and I
• 1:12:54
  can certainly say that. Like, when you delve back into
• 1:12:57
  those times you, it feels and looks different and you look
• 1:13:01
  back on that person. Like that was me once, that's
• 1:13:04
  not me anymore, but it's like that was then this is now kind
• 1:13:08
  of thing and it's interesting. Reflect, yeah, well, I look
• 1:13:11
  Myself in the mirror right now and then I go back and look at
• 1:13:13
  that. Sunny Joe Fox clip.
• 1:13:15
  I was telling you about is like, who is that guy?
• 1:13:17
  You know, I know exactly what you mean.
• 1:13:19
  You know, where does the time go?
• 1:13:22
  Where does the time go? Any stories from your times
• 1:13:26
  present in TV? I mean, I'm intrigued.
• 1:13:28
  Well, you know, like I said, you know, I don't know if you know
• 1:13:31
  much about the Winchester Mystery House, but I was
• 1:13:36
  shooting at my Sinister Cinema TV show and and this is one of
• 1:13:39
  the things usually With these weekend horror movie shows that
• 1:13:43
  you'd have a New York or Los Angeles or Chicago, you'd have a
• 1:13:46
  local guide to dress up in fangs and a cape and all that stuff.
• 1:13:50
  Well, again, my boss Rivers, he says, you can't do that, you got
• 1:13:54
  to be. If you're going to do this show
• 1:13:55
  you got to do it a Sunny Joe Fox, you know, because he didn't
• 1:13:59
  want his popular teenage night jock to be dressed up in, you
• 1:14:05
  know, with a cape on and fangs and weird makeup and all this
• 1:14:08
  stuff really. I had to be sunny Joe.
• 1:14:13
  So I would go down and I'll never forget, we the Winchester
• 1:14:20
  Mystery House. I don't know if you know much
• 1:14:21
  about the story, but I think her name was Margaret Winchester.
• 1:14:24
  She was like, the Widow of, I can't remember his first name
• 1:14:27
  but the guy who developed the Winchester rifle.
• 1:14:31
  Oh wow. Yeah.
• 1:14:33
  And the Winchester rifle was instrumental.
• 1:14:36
  I guess in the Indian Wars and the 1800s and you know,
• 1:14:39
  thousands and thousands of Indians died from bullets, from
• 1:14:43
  the Winchester rifles that were issued to the military.
• 1:14:46
  Okay, so she had found out, I guess mrs.
• 1:14:50
  Winchester and her, she was very rich because they developed that
• 1:14:54
  rifle made a lot of money selling it to the government, I
• 1:14:57
  guess, you know, the military. But she had been cursed by
• 1:15:02
  Indian tribes and I can't remember all the exact attitudes
• 1:15:09
  of the story, but Actually, she kept building onto this house.
• 1:15:15
  It's huge day and night for many years construction because
• 1:15:21
  somehow all the noise at night and the construction that was
• 1:15:25
  going on, would kind of keep it Bay the evil, Indian spirits
• 1:15:31
  that she knew were coming after her.
• 1:15:35
  So that's why this house some parts of the house.
• 1:15:38
  Don't make any sense. For instance, we shot One of our
• 1:15:41
  shows, you open this door, right?
• 1:15:43
  And there's a stairwell, well the stairwell leads nowhere,
• 1:15:46
  there's a ceiling that goes straight across and the
• 1:15:48
  stairwell ends, you know, and and you know that's just an
• 1:15:53
  example rooms that went out. And then you have a door, you
• 1:15:57
  walk out the door and you fall two stories, you know.
• 1:16:01
  So we shot all these shows there and I would come down there
• 1:16:04
  every week. They tell me what movies
• 1:16:06
  actually got to where I was programming because I knew the
• 1:16:09
  horror movies better than they did.
• 1:16:11
  And because my knowledge of it, you know, and so I remember we'd
• 1:16:16
  go in there, they get the cameras.
• 1:16:18
  We'd have my director and they'd look at me and they point the
• 1:16:21
  camera. Okay, we're doing dead.
• 1:16:23
  Men walk and the monster maker this weekend, so the monster
• 1:16:28
  didn't walk is the first movie, okay.
• 1:16:30
  Do your intro. And then you've got 90 seconds
• 1:16:32
  to talk about the movie and they Point their finger and they say
• 1:16:36
  go. And if you've learned anything
• 1:16:38
  about me in this last hour that we've been doing this interview,
• 1:16:41
  you know, that I am not at a loss for words and because I was
• 1:16:44
  in radio, I had this clock in my head, you know, when you're
• 1:16:48
  doing radio you have like this record has a 30 second intro.
• 1:16:52
  This one has a 15 second intro before they start singing that
• 1:16:55
  you can talk up before you don't want to hit the vocals.
• 1:16:58
  So DJ has developed this timer in their head and so they said,
• 1:17:03
  okay, you got 90 seconds, Okay? Blah blah, blah blah, blah,
• 1:17:06
  blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, boom.
• 1:17:09
  And you know that, That's how we did it.
• 1:17:12
  And I do five shows in one weekend for shows sometimes and
• 1:17:17
  very smooth, we bring people down.
• 1:17:20
  I will tell you one time, we had on a witch, she was local from
• 1:17:26
  the Bay Area interviewed her and she was a white witch white
• 1:17:30
  magic, okay? And we got into talking about
• 1:17:37
  white witchcraft is it was called at the time or white
• 1:17:40
  magic. Eric and she got on the subject
• 1:17:43
  of you ever. Heard of Anton LaVey?
• 1:17:46
  Yes. Anton LaVey was like the head of
• 1:17:49
  the, was it the satanic a church, something like that the
• 1:17:53
  Church of Satan or something bad and he was in the Bay Area and
• 1:17:56
  this is back in the, in the 60s and the 70s.
• 1:18:00
  Anyway, I don't even know he's still alive.
• 1:18:02
  She started talking about him and she did not talk about him
• 1:18:05
  and very complimentary tongs, you know, because she didn't
• 1:18:08
  think too much of black magic. So, So we ran the show and the
• 1:18:14
  following day. The station gets a phone call.
• 1:18:17
  Anton LaVey. wants to come on my show and have you know, his
• 1:18:25
  chance to challenge what this this woman had said and I'm
• 1:18:29
  going up, you know, this guy is, you know, I don't know, maybe
• 1:18:34
  it's just in some ways, just a normal guy but you hear all this
• 1:18:38
  stuff about Anton LaVey and the Church of Satan, and we got
• 1:18:41
  really kind of scared, and we just didn't return his phone
• 1:18:46
  calls and you know what they called a Of times and then they
• 1:18:51
  stop calling we thought you know dodged a bullet on that one.
• 1:18:57
  So that's one of my interest in TV stories.
• 1:19:00
  Thanks for sharing. Yeah, a couple of quick fire
• 1:19:03
  questions for you now, what's the best advice you've ever
• 1:19:06
  received? Believe It or Not, Sometimes the
• 1:19:14
  best advice you ever get is for movies.
• 1:19:19
  And I'll tell you one of the I just quoted this to my
• 1:19:23
  granddaughter the other day. You remember that scene in A
• 1:19:27
  League of Their Own where Is it League of Their Own, anyways?
• 1:19:35
  Tom Hanks talking to someone and he says, Someone is complaining
• 1:19:41
  of, it's too hard, one of his players or something like that,
• 1:19:45
  and he looks at him and he says, the hard is what makes it great?
• 1:19:50
  If it was easy, everyone can do it.
• 1:19:53
  You know, the hard is what makes it great dome in in essence.
• 1:19:59
  Don't be afraid. If something is hard grapple it
• 1:20:02
  take it by the horns. You know?
• 1:20:04
  And work hard at And one of the other lessons I've always
• 1:20:09
  learned is, you treat people. Well, and, you know, it's like
• 1:20:16
  If you treat people. Well, if you are honest with him
• 1:20:18
  and I'm not perfect. You know, I have my moments for
• 1:20:22
  I've done things that I regret we all do but I try to go
• 1:20:26
  through life treating people. Well and if you treat them,
• 1:20:30
  well, generally speaking, they will treat you well back, you
• 1:20:35
  know, and you know, that's some advice, I guess, I'm giving.
• 1:20:40
  But I was like that one in the movie and I hope I've got the
• 1:20:43
  movie right. I believe it was A League of
• 1:20:45
  Their Own. You know, the heart is what
• 1:20:47
  makes it great. And another time I came out of
• 1:20:52
  and this is many, many years ago before I started Sinister
• 1:20:54
  Cinema, I was as a DJ I was, I wasn't necessarily struggling,
• 1:21:00
  but I was in the media market. So I was working in the Fresno
• 1:21:04
  Market, which is not a is not a major Market, you know.
• 1:21:08
  And you could be fairly successful, you had something
• 1:21:10
  to, you know, you had accomplished to get to a media
• 1:21:13
  market like Fresno California. That was That was, you know, a
• 1:21:16
  bit of an accomplishment, but it's still not like, like
• 1:21:19
  working a kfr. See you in San Francisco or khj
• 1:21:22
  in Los Angeles, right? So, I remember, I went to see
• 1:21:25
  the movie Reds, with Warren Beatty, which is all about the
• 1:21:29
  early days of Communist Revolution and all the stuff, it
• 1:21:32
  was a three-hour movie. Have Warren Beatty, Jack
• 1:21:35
  Nicholson, Diane Keaton, and a host of other people.
• 1:21:39
  It's one of the greatest movies I had ever seen that movie, even
• 1:21:42
  though it had nothing to do with radio.
• 1:21:44
  I remember getting out of That movie, I was so inspired by
• 1:21:48
  Beatty's filmmaking. And I remember, I drove out to
• 1:21:53
  this point where I could see all these these different radio
• 1:21:56
  towers, and I was looking at them, and I was saying to
• 1:21:58
  myself, you know, you've got it in you.
• 1:22:02
  To do the kind of quality work that you just saw on the screen.
• 1:22:07
  And I did, you know, I really worked hard, and I made my way
• 1:22:11
  up through radio and TV. And when I left, I left on my
• 1:22:15
  own terms, you know, I never look back, you know, Harry M
• 1:22:20
  dummy movies, you know, 39 years later, but still loving it.
• 1:22:26
  And Sharon. Yeah.
• 1:22:28
  What's the biggest life lesson you've learned so far?
• 1:22:33
  Wow, where that's a good one. Give me about 30 minutes, I'll
• 1:22:38
  come back, biggest life lesson. Well, part of it is about, you
• 1:22:44
  know, like I said, treat people. Well, you know, I just, I'm more
• 1:22:48
  of a traditional guy, you know, I believe in supporting family
• 1:22:53
  and friends and in try to be there for people, you know, I
• 1:23:02
  I'm a capitalist, I'll be, you know, I don't mind making money.
• 1:23:07
  But I believe in and doing good things for people, you know,
• 1:23:12
  whether it be contributing in sponsoring a softball team at my
• 1:23:15
  softball league or helping someone out who's down or you
• 1:23:20
  know I had a guy who's working for me for years.
• 1:23:22
  I gave money to do stuff for me all the time because and
• 1:23:27
  sometimes I just go over and give him money because he was
• 1:23:29
  destitute. And I knew that, you know, He he
• 1:23:35
  was doing his best but some people just need an extra hand,
• 1:23:40
  you know, and so you try to give people an extra ham once in a
• 1:23:43
  while your kids you know, whatever it is.
• 1:23:47
  And sometimes they try your, I got five of them, you know
• 1:23:51
  something, yeah, you know, you know but they're all pretty good
• 1:23:55
  kids. And so, yeah, life lessons.
• 1:24:01
  I learned real young from my upbringing in Walla Walla
• 1:24:05
  Washington and Pendleton Oregon. Traditional standard common, I
• 1:24:11
  want to say Common Sense, morality of treating people.
• 1:24:15
  Well, not cheating, not stealing, try, not to lie.
• 1:24:21
  We all lie once in awhile, but try not to, you know, and that
• 1:24:25
  was really ingrained Into Me by my mother, my dad had been a
• 1:24:30
  servicemen during World War Two and so he had multiple sclerosis
• 1:24:36
  and he was in the VA hospital in In Walla Walla the last few
• 1:24:39
  years of his life, you know. So it's just Mom, raising my
• 1:24:42
  brother and I and, you know, she and her own Latent way, how did
• 1:24:52
  those those types of values into my brother and I, and we've kept
• 1:24:57
  them ever since and frankly, you know, the media back then, you
• 1:25:03
  know, we live by the Hays code and all that in our movies and
• 1:25:06
  TV was just a strict, you know, you portrayed.
• 1:25:11
  Virtue far more back in those days then you do now and then it
• 1:25:17
  was important to be virtuous. And you know the good guys
• 1:25:22
  always won the bad guys always lost and that was the way it was
• 1:25:26
  supposed to be you knew what the good guys were in.
• 1:25:29
  Spite of all the stuff you hear about how bad America used to be
• 1:25:31
  no, you know, there we had our problems especially if you're a
• 1:25:34
  black person living in the South.
• 1:25:36
  I don't, I don't, I don't debate that for a moment but There was
• 1:25:41
  a true goodness in our culture back then.
• 1:25:44
  And you know, I got to live through that.
• 1:25:47
  Those were those were wonderful times.
• 1:25:49
  They truly were, you know? And it's not like, my parents
• 1:25:53
  were Rich. We worked in scrape for
• 1:25:55
  everything we had and what I got out of college, you know?
• 1:25:59
  And thank God, College didn't cost that much back then.
• 1:26:02
  I've worked my rear off to do what I've done, you know, so
• 1:26:07
  those those are some of my life lessons.
• 1:26:11
  Thank you very much for sharing and for being on the show it's
• 1:26:14
  been a real pleasure. Do you have any upcoming
• 1:26:16
  projects or maybe some final thoughts you'd like to share
• 1:26:18
  with our lessons? Um, as in the, you know, Bob
• 1:26:24
  Wilkins, when he had his show creature features on channel 2
• 1:26:29
  from San Francisco. All those years ago and God, I
• 1:26:32
  love Bob Wilkins. I got to interview him.
• 1:26:34
  In fact, we sell an interview with me and Bob Wilkins on one
• 1:26:39
  of our disk. I can't.
• 1:26:40
  It's coupled up with a, what is it?
• 1:26:44
  A Christopher, Lee short. And this other thing, I'm
• 1:26:49
  getting old. Can't remember.
• 1:26:51
  I think it's Solitaire, maybe. Anyway, this is.
• 1:26:54
  So he used to do his show from a rocking chair, okay, and he
• 1:27:00
  smoked a cigar and he was, in a sense.
• 1:27:03
  He'd never dressed in fangs anything.
• 1:27:04
  He had glasses on this little with Weasley kind of guy and he
• 1:27:09
  had this big chalkboard thing that said watch horror films,
• 1:27:14
  keep America, strong and that Hello badass.
• 1:27:19
  That's kind of, that's kind of my closing message, I guess, you
• 1:27:22
  know, love it. Thank you so much.
• 1:27:25
  It's been an absolute pleasure having you on the show, man.
• 1:27:28
  All right man, I appreciate it. It's been, it's been a great
• 1:27:30
  time. You want to do it again,
• 1:27:31
  sometime, we can do it. I would absolutely love that.
• 1:27:34
  And thank you very much to the listeners of the Christian read
• 1:27:37
  podcast. I hope you've enjoyed this show
• 1:27:39
  as much as I have and be safe. Be well, I'll see you in the
• 1:27:43
  next one.