Latest / Ridiculous History / Lost Media, Part One: What Happened to All Those Silent Films?

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Lost Media, Part One: What Happened to All Those Silent Films? · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
0:27
Speaker 1: back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
0:30
Speaker 1: so much for tuning in. Shout out to our number
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Speaker 1: one super producer, Mr Max Williams. There we go. Yeah,
0:40
Speaker 1: he's looking looking like a real snack today. Uh. Also,
0:44
Speaker 1: I'm being god I sounded it was. It's like a
0:50
Speaker 1: cartoon where where all of a sudden, Max just looks
0:52
Speaker 1: like a roasted chicken kind of lovering, you know, down
0:58
Speaker 1: But then I'm not quite sure am I hungry or
0:59
Speaker 1: am I horny? Unclear? Unclear? In the original cartoon? Yeah,
1:05
Speaker 1: mutually exclusive. Yeah, so I've been your knowl We are
1:10
Speaker 1: exploring something that's been a personal passion for all three
1:14
Speaker 1: of us, uh separately, way before we ever stumbled into podcasting,
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Speaker 1: and that is missing media. Lost media. We're in an
1:24
Speaker 1: age where there's more just media in general than ever
1:27
Speaker 1: before throughout the entirety of human history. It is getting
1:30
Speaker 1: a little bit ridiculous. But along the way, a lot
1:35
Speaker 1: of things have gotten lost. This is part of a
1:38
Speaker 1: continuing series. Our research associate, doctor Zach is also really
1:42
Speaker 1: excited about this. One night over slipped down a doctor appeared,
1:47
Speaker 1: but This is no normal doctor. Who's there. It's Zach
1:53
Speaker 1: Zach the doctor named Zach, and he's here to fill
2:01
Speaker 1: your scraps knowledge. Pet is cat teaching history books and stuff. Oh,
2:12
Speaker 1: let's go with other things. Yeah, that'll work, Zack, And
2:23
Speaker 1: I think we begin it in a way that everybody
2:26
Speaker 1: can identify with. Actually I almost texted you about a
2:30
Speaker 1: related question off air, No, but I didn't want to
2:32
Speaker 1: bother you over the weekend. You ever get the thing
2:34
Speaker 1: where you're like, I kind of remember that song or
2:37
Speaker 1: there's a scene in a movie that I remembered. I
2:39
Speaker 1: really want to figure out the name of it, but dad,
2:42
Speaker 1: gumme it. I've searched everywhere. My Google food is pretty
2:45
Speaker 1: good and I still can't find this. Well. First of all,
2:48
Speaker 1: for me, sometimes those are false memories. Uh, And I
2:51
Speaker 1: think you know, the Mandela effect is strong with many
2:55
Speaker 1: of us. Where my girlfriend once was like, we were
2:57
Speaker 1: talking about the movie Headwig and the Angry and she
2:59
Speaker 1: described I'd this scene and I was like, that sounds awesome,
3:02
Speaker 1: but that wasn't in that movie. She goes, oh, no,
3:04
Speaker 1: it was. No, it definitely was, and we we had
3:07
Speaker 1: to like watch it together. You know, it's no that
3:09
Speaker 1: must have been a special edition or something, because I
3:11
Speaker 1: was definitely in there. And you know, a friend of
3:13
Speaker 1: the show, the creator of that of that movie, John
3:16
Speaker 1: Cameron Mitchell, mentioned it to him. Is like, no, it
3:18
Speaker 1: never happened. But to your point, then yes, there certainly
3:22
Speaker 1: are things that either I hit the cutting room floor
3:26
Speaker 1: and aren't archived past a certain point, or maybe you
3:29
Speaker 1: caught it in a DVD version that was never reissued
3:33
Speaker 1: again and now you can't find that particular copy anymore.
3:39
Speaker 1: You recommended a movie to me a for spooky season,
3:42
Speaker 1: which I love, the Tale of Two Sisters. Not streaming
3:45
Speaker 1: anywhere anymore nowhere, it's tough. I've got the I've got
3:49
Speaker 1: the DVD if you want. It's not too late. We
3:51
Speaker 1: still got a little Halloween time. Yeah, so I'll bring
3:54
Speaker 1: that over. Fabulous, fabulous, scary and genuinely scary movie. You
4:00
Speaker 1: guys want movie. I really wish I could find a
4:02
Speaker 1: copy of what shas Am. I know Shazam is a
4:05
Speaker 1: real movie, and I want to see it. I think
4:08
Speaker 1: you mean, I think you mean Kaboom, she zoom that
4:15
Speaker 1: SHA's am. It is a real movie. I remember watching
4:17
Speaker 1: that in Detroit as a kid with my brother. Is
4:20
Speaker 1: that the one where the Genie is the annoying house
4:22
Speaker 1: guest with Phil Hartman. Well, so there is, because because
4:25
Speaker 1: I was with sin Bad that movie really exists. I
4:32
Speaker 1: I know it doesn't. Checkout Gaslighting the world right now?
4:40
Speaker 1: The world is gaslighting meat. No, Max, it's not. Gaslighting
4:43
Speaker 1: is the thing you made up because you're crazy and scene.
4:50
Speaker 1: I literally have a gaslight anthem poster right behind me.
4:53
Speaker 1: So check out check out our stuff. They don't want
4:56
Speaker 1: you to know episode all about the Mandela effect, but
4:59
Speaker 1: you see this conversation. The three of us are pretty
5:02
Speaker 1: good friends, and even we don't agree on things like this.
5:07
Speaker 1: That's one of the most fascinating and infuriating things about
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Speaker 1: what we call lost media. The dry definition is it's
5:15
Speaker 1: anything that was once made for public broadcasts but it
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Speaker 1: no longer exists, or urban legends of media that may
5:23
Speaker 1: have existed at one point. And we had we had
5:27
Speaker 1: a great conversation in our pitch meeting about this for
5:31
Speaker 1: a while. Our pitch meetings are great. I think one
5:33
Speaker 1: day we can record those if we ever need an episode,
5:36
Speaker 1: But uh, a lot, we'll need to censor a lot. Yeah, yeah,
5:40
Speaker 1: because I come in high else, Yeah, so uh so
5:45
Speaker 1: let's see, um one example is uh fairly recent, right,
5:49
Speaker 1: the sci fi series Doctor Who. Like to be clear,
5:53
Speaker 1: we're not talking about old broadsheets and news sprint that disappeared.
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Speaker 1: We're not necessarily just talking about like lost no levels,
6:01
Speaker 1: Doctor Who was on TV. Yeah, and you know, I
6:04
Speaker 1: mean archiving certainly is a very very important UM discipline
6:11
Speaker 1: and an art unto itself, you know, just to make
6:13
Speaker 1: sure to preserve you know, historical things, historical media obviously,
6:17
Speaker 1: all those kinds of things very very important. But when
6:20
Speaker 1: you have things that are in their very nature ephemeral,
6:25
Speaker 1: like certain types of film for example, or whatever it
6:28
Speaker 1: might be that can degrade over time, if you don't
6:30
Speaker 1: jump right on that and make archiving like a huge
6:33
Speaker 1: part of your process, you will end up with lost things.
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Speaker 1: There are nineties seven lost episodes of Doctor Who, and
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Speaker 1: I'm not sure, you know, oftentimes this can be be
6:43
Speaker 1: the result of shoddy you know, archiving. It could be
6:48
Speaker 1: a fire. You know, this is before we had digital
6:50
Speaker 1: backups and server farms and you know, cloud storage and
6:54
Speaker 1: all of that stuff. So if you if the building
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Speaker 1: was lost, then so so was the media. Um So,
7:00
Speaker 1: if you've seen these ninety seven episodes of Doctor Who
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Speaker 1: like when they aired. Uh, then then you are among
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Speaker 1: the chosen few that will have to reserve replaying of
7:10
Speaker 1: these episodes to your literal memory. Yeah, exactly, you know,
7:15
Speaker 1: and this can happen also with content that has been banned.
7:19
Speaker 1: We're gonna talk a lot about stuff in the global West,
7:23
Speaker 1: but make no mistake in eras of repressive governments or
7:28
Speaker 1: authoritarian regimes. Lost media was erased on purpose pretty constantly.
7:34
Speaker 1: So there they are accidents, just human error, and then
7:38
Speaker 1: there are purposeful attempts to erase something from history. And
7:43
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of a lot of people would say, well, hey, guys,
7:46
Speaker 1: that sounds weird because we're in the digital age. Everything
7:50
Speaker 1: is up in the cloud, man, But not quite because
7:53
Speaker 1: for a long time the cloud didn't exist. So let's
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Speaker 1: look maybe this time, let's look at early film history. Right,
8:03
Speaker 1: those are the some of the most common pieces of
8:06
Speaker 1: lost media. There's one in particular. Oh it's the vampire movie.
8:10
Speaker 1: What it We'll get to it London at midnight, something
8:13
Speaker 1: like that. There's a there's a vampire movie or a
8:16
Speaker 1: creepy movie that I've been I've been trying to find
8:19
Speaker 1: for years because I just couldn't accept that the last
8:21
Speaker 1: copies were destroyed. But maybe we talk a little bit
8:25
Speaker 1: about the era of silent films in particular, you know,
8:31
Speaker 1: like um nos ferrato, all all those sorts of things.
8:35
Speaker 1: But absolutely, I mean, you know, the era of silent
8:38
Speaker 1: films uh span from about nineteen twelve to nineteen twenty nine,
8:43
Speaker 1: and these were wildly popular to the point where they
8:45
Speaker 1: were just being churned out. We're talking about, you know,
8:49
Speaker 1: thousands of these films being produced within a relatively short
8:53
Speaker 1: span of time, within you know, around around fifteen years.
8:56
Speaker 1: We are talking in the neighborhood of eleven thousand silent
8:59
Speaker 1: feature or films. But for reasons that that will become
9:04
Speaker 1: apparent pretty soon, only about four per cent of those
9:09
Speaker 1: eleven thousand films remain today, and many of them come
9:14
Speaker 1: from a single studio, Metro Goldwyn mayor MGM, you may
9:19
Speaker 1: know them as the Lion One. We're going to get
9:21
Speaker 1: into why that is. There are a couple of reasons
9:23
Speaker 1: in the first and I think one of the more
9:26
Speaker 1: interesting ones is the nature of of of media itself,
9:30
Speaker 1: the nature of what's the stuff that the film exists on.
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Speaker 1: It is a physical uh, material. And while it represents
9:40
Speaker 1: an incredible, you know, leap in human technology to be
9:45
Speaker 1: able to capture moving pictures on literally a piece of
9:48
Speaker 1: like sellotape looking stuff, it's a pretty imperfect medium, at
9:52
Speaker 1: least the early forms of what we call film. Yeah,
10:02
Speaker 1: nitrate film stock was the hottest thing in town. Unfortunately,
10:06
Speaker 1: it was often literally the hottest thing because nitrate revolutionized filmmaking,
10:13
Speaker 1: but it had one big disadvantage in the world of
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Speaker 1: material sciences. It is cartoonishly flammable. This stuff is so
10:22
Speaker 1: flammable that it can burn underwater. So it's like mean nitrate.
10:27
Speaker 1: When I hear nitrate, I think of like nitro glycerin,
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Speaker 1: which is also very unstable. I know it's not the
10:33
Speaker 1: same thing, but you know, obviously there's there must be
10:35
Speaker 1: some route to the two. Yeah, the this stuff eventually
10:40
Speaker 1: ends up being discontinued by Kodak in ninety two, and
10:44
Speaker 1: you have to be so careful with the preservation of it.
10:48
Speaker 1: Humanity has learned the hard way to uh, how to
10:52
Speaker 1: properly handle this stuff. As a matter of fact, if
10:56
Speaker 1: you ask the Library of Congress right now, they'll tell
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Speaker 1: you that less than one percent of American silent films
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Speaker 1: survived today. Uh, and only like half of the one
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Speaker 1: shot before survive at all, because even if it doesn't
11:11
Speaker 1: catch on fire, the film will degrade over time. Yeah.
11:15
Speaker 1: By the way, nitro cellulost which is just one of
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Speaker 1: the primary materials and uh nitrate prints is referred to
11:21
Speaker 1: as gun cotton. Um. It is the first replacement propellant
11:26
Speaker 1: for gunpowder essentially, So I mean we're literally talking about
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Speaker 1: very very combustible stuff. Uh. And then you're right, then
11:33
Speaker 1: the deterioration. I think there was an advancement in film stock,
11:38
Speaker 1: but even the next level kind of version of what
11:43
Speaker 1: what they updated it to still had its own problems.
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Speaker 1: Something called vinegar syndrome. Cellulose acetate film will start to
11:50
Speaker 1: get really brittle, and you can tell when this degradation
11:55
Speaker 1: is occurring because it smells like vinegar. So if you
11:59
Speaker 1: walk into a film archive and you're like, WHOA, who's
12:02
Speaker 1: cleaning with vinegar? No, that means the films in trouble.
12:05
Speaker 1: There is a really cool label. I guess you could
12:08
Speaker 1: call it reissue company that actually specialized in preserving kind
12:12
Speaker 1: of schlocky horror and exploitation movies, like you know, things
12:17
Speaker 1: like Amityville, horror and blood Delirium, Wolf of the Moon
12:22
Speaker 1: like titles like that, the Werewolf versus the Vampire Woman,
12:26
Speaker 1: and it's called vinegar syndrome. Then they specialized in, you know,
12:29
Speaker 1: restoring these kind of like you know, sixties and seventies
12:33
Speaker 1: and eighties kind of you know, chlucky horror and trash films,
12:37
Speaker 1: but really really need company if you want to check
12:39
Speaker 1: out some weird sci fi and kind of uh, very
12:43
Speaker 1: bespoke b movies. So people are on a mission, right.
12:46
Speaker 1: There was an attempt to replace cellulose nitrate film with
12:51
Speaker 1: cellulose acetate, but it came with its own vinegar themed problems.
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Speaker 1: No matter what you do, after a certain point, you
13:00
Speaker 1: can't save this stuff. So there was a ticking clock
13:02
Speaker 1: and by the nineteen eighties experts were saying, look, the
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Speaker 1: majority of nitrate film will have decomposed by two thousand,
13:10
Speaker 1: the year two thousand if we don't do something. So
13:13
Speaker 1: they started copying it. They deep freeze it. Uh. And
13:16
Speaker 1: what they're doing when they're deep freezing this, by the way,
13:19
Speaker 1: they're not solving the problem. They're kicking the can or
13:23
Speaker 1: kicking the film canister a little bit further down the
13:25
Speaker 1: road to get some time to figure out how to
13:30
Speaker 1: how to save these stories. You know, it's interesting about
13:33
Speaker 1: that the idea of deep freezing it that is also
13:36
Speaker 1: a term has kind of been co opted into data um,
13:39
Speaker 1: you know, archiving or whatever. So when you like have
13:41
Speaker 1: a massive data banker, like an archive of whatever it
13:45
Speaker 1: might be, let's say a companies, you know, video files
13:48
Speaker 1: or the production company, if you put it into deep freeze,
13:52
Speaker 1: I think it's kind of like it compresses it a
13:54
Speaker 1: little bit. It makes it a little smaller, and then
13:56
Speaker 1: you can like put it off site in a different place.
13:58
Speaker 1: But you can't directly access said in the same way.
14:01
Speaker 1: You have to like faw physical media in order to
14:04
Speaker 1: access that. I think it just occurred to me. That's
14:05
Speaker 1: like that's where that comes from. Yeah, yeah, that that's
14:09
Speaker 1: a huge thing. You'll hear that all the time. We
14:12
Speaker 1: hear it over in podcast land. But material science aside.
14:17
Speaker 1: It is fascinating, It is dangerous. Love your nitrate, but
14:20
Speaker 1: love it carefully because it could quickly become an explosive romance. Uh.
14:26
Speaker 1: As much as we love that stuff, we have to
14:27
Speaker 1: acknowledge another problem with silent film and why so much
14:32
Speaker 1: of it is lost. This stuff was everywhere. Right. Uh,
14:36
Speaker 1: this was a relatively short era of time, as you described, Noel,
14:41
Speaker 1: but it was a very prolific time for studios, and
14:46
Speaker 1: they didn't have any compunction about killing their darlings, you
14:49
Speaker 1: know what I mean. It was rare for a studio
14:51
Speaker 1: to say we're going to save this silent film for posterity. Instead,
14:56
Speaker 1: they would say, we can't get any more money from
14:59
Speaker 1: this thing, throw it out. We we don't have enough
15:02
Speaker 1: room in our in our film library. And then of
15:06
Speaker 1: course think about it, your studio head in the air
15:09
Speaker 1: of silent film, and then talkis come out. Now you
15:12
Speaker 1: can hear, you know, the stars of the silver screen.
15:17
Speaker 1: And this means from a financial perspective that these these
15:21
Speaker 1: studio folks say, well, we don't need this, you know,
15:24
Speaker 1: why would we will keep one? I guess if we
15:27
Speaker 1: ever have a museum. But sometimes sometimes it requires a
15:31
Speaker 1: bit of hindsights even appreciate a past version of a
15:35
Speaker 1: thing that that then was improved upon. Right, It's like,
15:38
Speaker 1: you know, for the beam counters and and maybe even
15:41
Speaker 1: the you know, the theatergoers, it's like, yeah, God, throw
15:45
Speaker 1: all the silent films in the trash, because that was
15:48
Speaker 1: antiquated and now we have something that's like next level.
15:51
Speaker 1: But then enough time passes and you kind of realize, oh, wow,
15:54
Speaker 1: that represented you know, a time and place, and we'll
15:58
Speaker 1: never be able to get that back again. And so
16:00
Speaker 1: you know, that's when archiving becomes really important. And archivists,
16:03
Speaker 1: i think, tended to look at these kinds of things
16:06
Speaker 1: through a different lens than consumers, traditional consumers of media
16:11
Speaker 1: or the folks you know with their hands on the
16:13
Speaker 1: purse strings. Yeah, the purse holders, the puppet masters of
16:19
Speaker 1: the purse. We're also looking at cellulois nitrate films in particular,
16:24
Speaker 1: and they're saying, hey, these things are made with silver.
16:27
Speaker 1: Why don't we just melt it down and we can
16:29
Speaker 1: save a little on the back end, uh, you know,
16:31
Speaker 1: from our silver budget. So so Samuel Goldwyn of the
16:37
Speaker 1: film students we were describing, the infamous Samuel Goldwen. Uh,
16:41
Speaker 1: he was asked once upon a time about the destruction
16:45
Speaker 1: of sets on the studio back lot he had taken over.
16:49
Speaker 1: The Museum of Modern Art Film Library contacted him and
16:53
Speaker 1: he said, look, you have to realize I cannot rest
16:57
Speaker 1: on the low ls of the past and cannot release
16:59
Speaker 1: trade issuans instead of current pictures, so they were mainly
17:04
Speaker 1: focused just on current releases. And I think you make
17:06
Speaker 1: a good point about the benefit of hindsight because they
17:10
Speaker 1: their response would have been, you know, we're not a library,
17:14
Speaker 1: we're not a museum, We're a working motion picture studio.
17:18
Speaker 1: We want what's hot maybe, and they had a point. Yeah,
17:22
Speaker 1: And I mean, you know, we've obviously got processes now
17:25
Speaker 1: to submit things to the Library of Congress for archiving,
17:29
Speaker 1: you know, in in the National Archives and all of
17:31
Speaker 1: that stuff. But you know that requires effort, that requires forethought.
17:34
Speaker 1: You know, that requires someone caring enough to to do
17:38
Speaker 1: the thing. And it's abmitute. And when you're just kind
17:40
Speaker 1: of go go go, uh money, money, money and all
17:42
Speaker 1: that stuff like you are in old Hollywood, those things
17:45
Speaker 1: can can literally, you know, fall by the wayside. But
17:48
Speaker 1: you know, despite Mr Goldwin's you know, maybe proclivity for
17:53
Speaker 1: smashing sets, as as we had mentioned or alluded to
17:56
Speaker 1: the top of the show, it was the MGM Studio,
18:00
Speaker 1: the Metro Goldwyn Mayor Studios that uh that did have
18:03
Speaker 1: some forethought and decided, you know what, we think this
18:06
Speaker 1: is worth doing and we're going to you know, make
18:10
Speaker 1: an effort to preserve, uh, these films that wouldn't be
18:14
Speaker 1: until decades later. So at this point, you know, the
18:18
Speaker 1: Goldwin is sort of out of the picture, and we've
18:20
Speaker 1: got some new, you know, more thoughtful folks in charge.
18:23
Speaker 1: Perhaps no, because I jump in here for things. I
18:25
Speaker 1: got something on that point in COmON Coston, so you
18:28
Speaker 1: guys know, to all the ridiculous historians in this room
18:31
Speaker 1: with us right now. I was on in Portland recently,
18:35
Speaker 1: and in Portland I went and checked out two to
18:37
Speaker 1: separate places. One was Movie Badness, in another place was
18:41
Speaker 1: next Level Arcade. I think since you got photos of
18:43
Speaker 1: this stuff. But what I found interesting with both those
18:46
Speaker 1: places they weren't classified as like a for profit. They
18:49
Speaker 1: were all nonprofit museums. Because that's like, it's these people
18:54
Speaker 1: who had the dedication to be like, we have to
18:56
Speaker 1: treat this as a museum, like well, obviously we want
18:58
Speaker 1: people to come, like rent the movies or play the
19:01
Speaker 1: arcade machines, because what's the point of just having that
19:03
Speaker 1: you can't use them. But these are just independent people.
19:07
Speaker 1: And it's a really tricky thing because to the point
19:10
Speaker 1: that Golden was making, is there responsibility to save it?
19:14
Speaker 1: Who knows, but it's like, I feel like saving this
19:17
Speaker 1: stuff is super important, and so is it, uh, like people,
19:21
Speaker 1: the fans of the stuff, is it our responsibility to
19:24
Speaker 1: save it or is it partially responsibility of the people.
19:26
Speaker 1: And I don't know the answer to that, but I
19:28
Speaker 1: found that really cool that when I was out there,
19:30
Speaker 1: and like it's one of those things. Also, it's like,
19:32
Speaker 1: how do we get more places like that because physical
19:35
Speaker 1: media is going away obviously, like arcades, as you guys know,
19:38
Speaker 1: are basically non existent nowadays. And so it's like watching
19:42
Speaker 1: this stuff because it's so easy, because it's the mainstream stuff,
19:45
Speaker 1: if it will survive because it's no but the smaller
19:48
Speaker 1: stuff won't. So that's that's my five cents. And then
19:53
Speaker 1: the question becomes too, is like just because it's old,
19:56
Speaker 1: is it a value? Like does it what where? What
19:59
Speaker 1: is it represent in the kind of continuum of culture?
20:02
Speaker 1: Like you know, if you're a museum curator, you don't
20:05
Speaker 1: put everything ever that existed in in the history of
20:09
Speaker 1: art or civilization in the museum. That would be impossible,
20:13
Speaker 1: but you pick and choose and kind of paint a picture.
20:16
Speaker 1: So it's like you know exactly and curating that that
20:18
Speaker 1: applies to film that applies applies to There's a really
20:21
Speaker 1: awesome pinball museum in Asheville, And I bet you they
20:26
Speaker 1: have some sort of nonprofit status too, because they've got,
20:29
Speaker 1: you know, placards on everything that like tells you about
20:31
Speaker 1: the manufacturing of it, when it was made, you know
20:33
Speaker 1: during what period, and you know what it kind of
20:36
Speaker 1: sprung from and what was inspired by and stuff like that.
20:39
Speaker 1: I love all this stuff. But yeah, yeah, and and
20:41
Speaker 1: and then I mean, do you think it's up to
20:44
Speaker 1: individuals like us, the people that actually kind of are enthusiasts,
20:47
Speaker 1: or is the nature of commerce such that it's gonna
20:51
Speaker 1: just kind of stamp that stuff out if it isn't
20:53
Speaker 1: making anybody a buck, and it's just gonna be up
20:55
Speaker 1: to people crowdsource this stuff. And is it eventually going
20:59
Speaker 1: to be an uphill bad to the plant if people
21:00
Speaker 1: are just going to kind of give up. It's up
21:02
Speaker 1: to the passionate, you know what I mean ultimately, And
21:05
Speaker 1: I know that sounds a little ted talky, but it's
21:07
Speaker 1: very much true. Like I I love the pinball museums.
21:11
Speaker 1: You guys are both named in my head their museums.
21:13
Speaker 1: I also like places like the Neon Museum out in Vegas.
21:17
Speaker 1: I love people who are incredibly passionate about very specific things.
21:21
Speaker 1: If you know everything about Neon, lunch is on me
21:24
Speaker 1: bro uh and I want to learn all all the
21:27
Speaker 1: weird facts. But that's why we that's why we do
21:30
Speaker 1: the stuff we do on Ridiculous History and the many
21:32
Speaker 1: other shows were involved with. It's it is up to
21:36
Speaker 1: in many cases, it's up to the really driven people
21:39
Speaker 1: who are head over heels in love with the particular
21:42
Speaker 1: art form or medium and don't need to make a
21:46
Speaker 1: ton of money off of it, genuinely, you know what
21:49
Speaker 1: I mean. It's kind of like how you know the
21:52
Speaker 1: best bookstores you run into are the little family shops
21:56
Speaker 1: where it's clearly somebody who just started a room to
22:02
Speaker 1: house all their books that they couldn't fit in their house.
22:05
Speaker 1: You know, their cats there, you know, they hang out,
22:08
Speaker 1: they don't care if Yeah. So those people I think
22:11
Speaker 1: are really the future of preservation. And when they team
22:15
Speaker 1: up into nonprofits and foundations and issue grants, they can
22:19
Speaker 1: do some truly wonderful things. They can fight against lost media. Unfortunately,
22:24
Speaker 1: society just didn't get there in time because the odds
22:27
Speaker 1: were stacked against silent film. I'm glad you mentioned grant
22:30
Speaker 1: because that really is that's an important piece. When you
22:33
Speaker 1: have an endowment, you know from let's say it whole
22:37
Speaker 1: Hollywood kind of executive and there fin their state they leave,
22:40
Speaker 1: you know, an endowment for a very specific purpose, which
22:43
Speaker 1: is archived. That's usually what it takes because there isn't
22:46
Speaker 1: the whole hell of a lot of money to be made.
22:47
Speaker 1: Even if you're like a passionate collector, you're only gonna
22:50
Speaker 1: buy that that blu ray of of of you know,
22:55
Speaker 1: Night of the Leapists, the one time you and you're
22:59
Speaker 1: you know, fifty other you know, nerd brethren or whatever.
23:02
Speaker 1: These are not like big hot ticket you know, flying
23:04
Speaker 1: off the shelves, uh, selling like hotcakes kind of situations,
23:08
Speaker 1: like I said, the kind of stuff vinegar syndrome selves
23:10
Speaker 1: or or maybe there's an actor that's such a big
23:15
Speaker 1: deal that they hold some sway as to maybe the
23:18
Speaker 1: films that they're in start to get paid a little
23:21
Speaker 1: bit more attention to and treat it with a little
23:23
Speaker 1: bit more reverence other than just you know, a lot
23:25
Speaker 1: of those old silent films, they're like character actors that
23:28
Speaker 1: didn't really become quote unquote celebrities. But then you have
23:31
Speaker 1: someone like Mary Pickford. Yeah, Mary Pickford, Okay. Mary Pickford's
23:42
Speaker 1: films survived a lot of them because of her own initiative.
23:47
Speaker 1: She was proactive. She did this. The studio didn't do
23:50
Speaker 1: this for her. She would send the films that she
23:53
Speaker 1: started to the Library of Congress, and she didn't send
23:58
Speaker 1: other films, mainly the ones that she started. And she
24:02
Speaker 1: wrote this letter to them in and she said, I
24:06
Speaker 1: wish to say to you how happy I am that
24:08
Speaker 1: my pictures will be housed in the Library of Congress,
24:11
Speaker 1: and how greatly I appreciate the honor conferred upon me
24:14
Speaker 1: by a wish to have them there. And this goes
24:18
Speaker 1: back to the idea of international film archives, US archives
24:23
Speaker 1: all curating their collection. They had to make the call, right.
24:27
Speaker 1: Curation is really um at At a very basic level,
24:32
Speaker 1: curation is the act of building a narrative right in
24:36
Speaker 1: a specific story about some part of history or science
24:41
Speaker 1: or you know, if there's a frying pan museum, it's like,
24:44
Speaker 1: what are the most influential pivotal moments in frying pan history?
24:49
Speaker 1: And there's nothing wrong with that, but that means that,
24:52
Speaker 1: like you said earlier, you can't have everything in the
24:55
Speaker 1: museum because then it's just the Museum of Everything. Yeah,
25:01
Speaker 1: it's just impossible. Uh speaking of everything, I got this
25:06
Speaker 1: is more of a thing to talk about suthing I
25:07
Speaker 1: want you to know. But there's an incredible new documentary
25:09
Speaker 1: on Netflix about the idea of infinity, and it has
25:13
Speaker 1: really gotten me thinking about, like what is everything? What
25:16
Speaker 1: is the nature of everything? And how is there a
25:19
Speaker 1: finite amount of like stuff in the universe. When you
25:22
Speaker 1: say the Museum of Everything, that's what I think of.
25:24
Speaker 1: It's like a museum that's just like fractals that just
25:27
Speaker 1: kind of just infinitely dumps into a black hole and
25:30
Speaker 1: never really stops. Um. I wanted to add to that.
25:33
Speaker 1: Mary Pickford was one of the original founders of the
25:36
Speaker 1: Motion Picture Academy. Her endowments and philanthropy created numerous Hollywood
25:43
Speaker 1: institutions kind of like around the idea of preserving the
25:47
Speaker 1: culture and uh history and physical medium of of old Hollywood. Yeah. Yeah,
25:53
Speaker 1: and the Museum of Everything really reminds me of this
25:56
Speaker 1: excellent story about a library by Board Hayes. And in
26:01
Speaker 1: this library, the story is really weird. It's just a
26:04
Speaker 1: description of this endless library I want to go to there,
26:07
Speaker 1: as Liz Lemon would say on thirty Rock. But barring
26:10
Speaker 1: the world of fiction right now, humanity still has a
26:13
Speaker 1: lot of constraints. And that's why things like the Motion
26:17
Speaker 1: Picture Academy and things like these film archives played such
26:21
Speaker 1: a role in preserving what we do have from this era.
26:26
Speaker 1: And this is where we have to talk more about MGM,
26:29
Speaker 1: because they really stand out when it comes to preservation.
26:34
Speaker 1: They ponied up money, their own money from from the corporation,
26:39
Speaker 1: and they preserved a hundred and thirteen silent films. Uh
26:44
Speaker 1: that's that's a pretty significant chunk of silent film overall.
26:49
Speaker 1: And uh, it wasn't just the films made by MGM.
26:53
Speaker 1: They they preserved some of the films of their ancestor
26:56
Speaker 1: companies and they started giving them to what was it
27:00
Speaker 1: George Eastman House at first, correct, which is you know,
27:03
Speaker 1: I think one of the Eastman being co founder of Kodak,
27:07
Speaker 1: so again skin in the game, you know, in terms
27:10
Speaker 1: of like the actual physical medium. So it's interesting that
27:13
Speaker 1: this is the George Eastman House is one of the
27:14
Speaker 1: largest archives and museums and collections of photographic history. Um so,
27:20
Speaker 1: but this is they were already doing something along these lines.
27:23
Speaker 1: In the thirties, they were giving prints or negatives for
27:27
Speaker 1: these films, you know, to be archives. But it wasn't
27:30
Speaker 1: until the sixties that they started a duplication program, which
27:36
Speaker 1: is a big deal because when you make a duplicate,
27:38
Speaker 1: you're starting that decay process from zero. Yeah, you're resetting
27:43
Speaker 1: the clock on on that. Uh that that that slowly
27:46
Speaker 1: degrading piece of of of ephemeral and once and shout
27:51
Speaker 1: out to Ephemeral one of our favorite podcasts. Yeah, nice way, Max,
27:55
Speaker 1: well done. Uh so the uh and and Alex and
27:59
Speaker 1: Trevor is so the the process here makes a lot
28:03
Speaker 1: of sense. They're doing their best to accurately reproduce a film,
28:09
Speaker 1: make a duplicate of it in a less finicky medium.
28:13
Speaker 1: And then once they got that preservation process down, they
28:16
Speaker 1: take the nitrate master copy and they donated to the
28:20
Speaker 1: Eastman Museum, which is legit it's the oldest museum ever
28:24
Speaker 1: dedicated to photography. And right around like the sixties is
28:29
Speaker 1: a big year for this in the In the a
28:32
Speaker 1: FI American Film Institute is funded by the National Endowment
28:37
Speaker 1: of the Arts, and they start placing other nitrate collections
28:41
Speaker 1: with archives. Again, this is not really the stuff you
28:44
Speaker 1: can keep at home, folks, right you you need a
28:47
Speaker 1: dedicated spot for your horde of nitrate. So the Library
28:51
Speaker 1: of Congress gets prints from Paramount Columbia Pictures, Warner Brothers,
28:56
Speaker 1: they get some Silent negatives and and they also get
28:58
Speaker 1: a few features from Reversal. The Museum of Modern Art
29:02
Speaker 1: gets the Fox Studio nitrate prints, and then they spread
29:06
Speaker 1: out to these other archives. And honestly, it's good to
29:10
Speaker 1: decentralize this right, to have it in multiple archives, because,
29:14
Speaker 1: like humans learned with the Library of Alexandria, keep all
29:18
Speaker 1: your all your bits of media in one place, you
29:20
Speaker 1: might regret it later. But I had an existential computer
29:24
Speaker 1: meltdown crisis of epic proportions the other week, which you'll remember.
29:28
Speaker 1: I had to skip out on recording because I thought
29:31
Speaker 1: that my hard drive that I have like you know,
29:33
Speaker 1: music projects, podcast back up all of the things on
29:37
Speaker 1: had failed. And I realized it was something else that
29:39
Speaker 1: I was able to fix. But the feeling of of
29:43
Speaker 1: having potentially lost this just like years of work, you know,
29:47
Speaker 1: of my life, uh, really kicked me into a reality
29:51
Speaker 1: mode and I immediately invested in like a subscription online
29:55
Speaker 1: um cloud backup service called carbon Nite, and we are
29:58
Speaker 1: not sponsored by them. By it literally you know, you
30:01
Speaker 1: can restore your stuff from the cloud. And also I
30:04
Speaker 1: ordered a second drive that I'm going to have mirrored
30:06
Speaker 1: to my original drive because that feeling is one of
30:09
Speaker 1: the worst. Can you imagine if you were the person
30:12
Speaker 1: that maybe was responsible for overseeing that that library of
30:16
Speaker 1: Alexandria and then to watch it go up in flames.
30:19
Speaker 1: I can't even handle the three novels I lost, Like
30:22
Speaker 1: Mitch Hedberg, I just I have no option now but
30:24
Speaker 1: to convince myself they weren't that good because I'm not
30:27
Speaker 1: rewriting them. Or you can lie to yourself, like how
30:30
Speaker 1: all y'all are lying about how Shazam is not a movie.
30:33
Speaker 1: Come on, look at the link. Look at the link
30:35
Speaker 1: I put in. Read that whole link. I read that
30:38
Speaker 1: whole link. That's what I was doing when I was
30:40
Speaker 1: quiet earlier in this episode. And yeah, you guys are
30:43
Speaker 1: just gas lighting me. Look, we're gonna you know what
30:46
Speaker 1: we should do. It's not that you can stay to
30:47
Speaker 1: convinced me. Here's a more healthy way to do this.
30:50
Speaker 1: Let's bracket the conversation out of respect for our friendship
30:53
Speaker 1: and preserve our broship like it's nitrate film and instead,
30:57
Speaker 1: let's reach out to sind Bad and see if he'll
30:59
Speaker 1: just may hizam or if you prefer make another one. Okay, Uh,
31:04
Speaker 1: what's he doing sim Bad right to us? We can't
31:06
Speaker 1: wait to hear from you. Uh. We want to bring
31:09
Speaker 1: this to reality. So these archives they're kind of fighting there,
31:14
Speaker 1: fighting the good war against entropy, and they get films
31:18
Speaker 1: from individual collectors, you know, a states of cinephiles, small
31:23
Speaker 1: companies overseas archives, and they're trying to get titles that
31:28
Speaker 1: would have been lost or at the very least not
31:30
Speaker 1: available in the States. But they don't have like a
31:33
Speaker 1: common rubric, right, they don't have a uniform code of
31:38
Speaker 1: what to do. So they have different policies for collecting stuff.
31:41
Speaker 1: They have different parent organizations, they have different financial woes.
31:45
Speaker 1: And the five major U S archives that emerge now
31:51
Speaker 1: that they all have different processes and they constitute the
31:55
Speaker 1: national collection, it's difficult to say which archive has the
32:02
Speaker 1: most titles or especially when it comes to silent film,
32:06
Speaker 1: just because they were all going about the game so differently.
32:10
Speaker 1: We know that again, foundations play a role. There's a
32:14
Speaker 1: lot of philanthropy in this, right. This is not this
32:17
Speaker 1: is not one of those charitable causes that people typically
32:22
Speaker 1: donate a couple of bucks to write. It's not MPR,
32:26
Speaker 1: it's not a Sarah McLaughlin pet drive, you know. This
32:30
Speaker 1: is this is something where if you heard about it
32:33
Speaker 1: for the first time, you would say, don't we have
32:36
Speaker 1: people for that. Don't we have folks already doing that?
32:40
Speaker 1: Why do they need money from us? But thankfully a
32:43
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of pretty well healed film buffs
32:46
Speaker 1: who played a big role in this, not just actors
32:49
Speaker 1: like Pickford, but folks like David Woodley Packard, Yes, David
32:52
Speaker 1: Woodley Packer and heir to the that printer fortune, Hewlett Packer,
32:58
Speaker 1: Hewlett Packer, I mean, you know, and then they like
33:00
Speaker 1: laptops too, but I think today they're mainly known for
33:02
Speaker 1: their their combo printer, scanner fax machines. Um. But yeah,
33:07
Speaker 1: he has air to that mass of fortune. And through
33:11
Speaker 1: the David and Lucille Packard Foundation and then the pack
33:13
Speaker 1: of Humanities Institute, he was responsible for a wealth of
33:18
Speaker 1: of of archive of of archival activities. Also the Packard
33:22
Speaker 1: Campus for Audio Conservation UM, which was built by the
33:27
Speaker 1: p h I for the Library of Congress started you know,
33:32
Speaker 1: opened its stores in two thousand and eight. With it
33:36
Speaker 1: is really the height of of archival storage facilities to
33:39
Speaker 1: make sure that all kinds of medium media could be preserved.
33:44
Speaker 1: Because we think about these nitrate films right um, certain
33:49
Speaker 1: conditions are going to you know, speed up or slow
33:52
Speaker 1: down that breakdown. Yeah. Absolutely, And there's there's another transformation
33:57
Speaker 1: that occurs in the world of archiving in the nineteen
34:00
Speaker 1: eighties thanks to the efforts of one Sir J. Paul
34:05
Speaker 1: Getty Jr. And that's a little bit of a tease
34:08
Speaker 1: for an episode we have coming very soon. We can't
34:12
Speaker 1: give you more info than that. We're gonna focus on
34:14
Speaker 1: the good stuff right now. The film archiving so h
34:18
Speaker 1: old JPG Jr. Funds a conservation center and new nitrate
34:24
Speaker 1: vaults for the National Film and Television Archive over there
34:27
Speaker 1: in the UK and in the US, more wealthy philanthropists
34:32
Speaker 1: are donating additional funds for infrastructure, particularly folks like Celeste
34:37
Speaker 1: Bartos or the Meyer Foundation, the Academy Foundation. There again,
34:42
Speaker 1: they're fighting the good fight and they're getting films that
34:48
Speaker 1: are American films from other countries this is truly a
34:52
Speaker 1: global international effort. I think the largest collection of exported
34:56
Speaker 1: American films came from a place called the now World,
35:00
Speaker 1: the film Movie Archive in the Czech Republic. I do
35:04
Speaker 1: not none of us speak that language natively. Uh. The
35:08
Speaker 1: foreign films are huge resource because they often have missing material,
35:15
Speaker 1: right Like, if a segment of a film has decayed,
35:18
Speaker 1: you can get another copy from someplace halfway across the
35:22
Speaker 1: world and they might have that sequence. So of the
35:26
Speaker 1: three thousand, three d and eleven US silent feature films
35:31
Speaker 1: that survive in any form, even not completely, eight eight
35:36
Speaker 1: six of those were entirely found overseas. Pretty neat stuff,
35:40
Speaker 1: and I think it speaks highly of what US film
35:44
Speaker 1: nerds can do when we're motivated. Oh yeah, I mean,
35:46
Speaker 1: I think we've always sort of seen a bit more
35:49
Speaker 1: appreciation for the art of cinema abroad, you know what
35:53
Speaker 1: I mean. Like Hollywood certainly is you know, ground zero
35:57
Speaker 1: for big blockbuster movies and all that stuff, and it's
35:59
Speaker 1: big business there, and you know, but I do feel like,
36:03
Speaker 1: you know, companies like Studio Canal, for example, which I
36:06
Speaker 1: believe is based in France, there is just a little
36:08
Speaker 1: bit more reverence for film as an art form abroad
36:13
Speaker 1: in some ways than there is right here in America.
36:15
Speaker 1: I mean, look at you know, what they give out
36:17
Speaker 1: oscars for. I mean they're usually, you know, they're fine.
36:21
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to you know, crap all the oscars entirely,
36:24
Speaker 1: but it just seems like, you know, it's a little
36:26
Speaker 1: more broad here. It's a little more designed to kind
36:29
Speaker 1: of be an award show with like trotting out celebrities
36:33
Speaker 1: and stuff, whereas you know, can and like the palm
36:36
Speaker 1: drawer and things like that, like those are just they
36:38
Speaker 1: are really truly looking for something very unique and like
36:42
Speaker 1: very you know, cutting edge, and it's like, you know,
36:44
Speaker 1: moving the art form in different directions. So that all
36:46
Speaker 1: makes sense to me. Yeah, And you know, this is
36:49
Speaker 1: not to say that the battle has been one or
36:51
Speaker 1: that everything went smoothly. It wasn't all trumpets and angel
36:55
Speaker 1: farts in the fight to save Silent Film. And we're
37:00
Speaker 1: gonna pause it there because this is how we know
37:03
Speaker 1: we're onto something with this series, folks. Lost Media has
37:07
Speaker 1: already become a two parter. The first part of this
37:10
Speaker 1: is already a two parter. We're doing a one A
37:12
Speaker 1: one B thing, right, here and I couldn't be happier
37:15
Speaker 1: about it. No, oh same. I have a problem with
37:18
Speaker 1: what happens if we lose part one of this series
37:21
Speaker 1: and it just jumps into part two. That's all people
37:23
Speaker 1: ever here. We can never find it again. It's a mystery.
37:25
Speaker 1: Will be perfect indeed so until we return with Part two.
37:30
Speaker 1: Huge thanks to super producer Max Williams Alex Williams Hukomoss
37:33
Speaker 1: theme and also the creator and uh the presenter of
37:38
Speaker 1: and a curate tour of Ephemeral which we love very much,
37:41
Speaker 1: which Max works on as well, and you'll hear more
37:46
Speaker 1: about it in Part two, assuming both pieces of this
37:49
Speaker 1: media survive in the meantime. Thanks to Jonathan Strickland, a
37:53
Speaker 1: k a. The Quister, Thanks to Heves jeff Co, Christopher
37:55
Speaker 1: Hasiotis uh and thanks to all. Thanks to all the
37:59
Speaker 1: fellows cinephiles out there. This was a fun one. See
38:03
Speaker 1: you next time, folks. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio,
38:12
Speaker 1: visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever
38:15
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.