My Three Cents

FLASHBACK – Another Life

Yesterday I decided it was time to venture forth in the community to someplace other than Home Depot, Lowes, or the gym. The house (since we moved) is looking pretty good – pictures hung, furniture arranged. The vacuuming can wait until another day.

After living in Port Angeles for fifteen years where the local movie theater a.) never heard of matinee screenings or b.) insisted on showing blockbusters on every available screen, it felt good to learn that not only was there a multi-screen AMC complex 15 minutes away, but they not only had matinees, but $5 screenings on Tuesdays!  Plus, they were showing an indie that had won awards at Sundance, DIARY OF A TEENAGE GIRL.

Where does the “flashback” part come into play?  After buying my ticket (which turned out to be $7 because I’m a senior, but, alas, a senior without a special $12 pass. Still $7 seemed very reasonable for an afternoon at the movies plus I don’t eat popcorn when I go by myself – big bargain!)

I entered theatre #3 a few minutes before previews and no one was there. I sat through who can remember how many coming attractions and still it’s just me by myself near the back in the center. I check my email since no one would be bothered by my bright screen and then mute the ringtone, just in case another patron comes in late.

It wasn’t that long ago in my mind (although in actuality it’s been more than fifteen years) that I worked for SONY Pictures on the old MGM lot in Culver City. Hired to supervise the restoration of the SONY library which included the films of TriStar, the entire MGM library, independent SONY acquisitions, and any number of television series, a considerable portion of my day was screening prints (usually without audio). The screenings took place in the executive building where I think six or eight rooms were available each with a big screen, four executive chairs and approximately four rows of theatrical seats for event screenings.

I met with Hank, the projectionist to confirm the title and then sat in the back row next to the controls. It was just me in the theater and Hank in the projection booth. Once we started rolling he passed the time watching reruns of LAW & ORDER on a small TV next to the projector and I watched with pen in hand, notating the reel footage on the counter in the front, every time I saw a film scratch or flaw or negative dirt or when a torn perforation would skip by. Then I would go back to my office, type my notes, and contact the lab that had made the latest print to see if maybe there was another element (of the dozens I may have located and sent to them) that might be used to splice together a few frames to replace the damaged scene.

It’s hard to imagine with HiDef digital photography now being the norm rather than the exception, why this approach was taken, so a little bit of history.

Prior to the availability of tape in the form of Beta/VHS, laboratories, with the blessing of the studios, used what was known as an “IP/IN” process. They would take the original final cut of the negative and make an InterPositive of the movie. From that IP, an InterNegative or IN was created (if it was a big picture, sometimes more than one) and from that IN multiple prints were made and shipped to movie houses around the world. If a picture had a low budget or was deemed second tier they would sometimes skip the IP/IN process and strike prints from the original negative. (FIVE EASY PIECES with Jack Nicholson is a cult classic today but because the negative was used for distribution prints and scratched badly it took forever to pull in any number of prints to make an acceptable film master.)

Elements were found in the attics of private collectors, remote projection booths of old theaters, and even an occasional barn in the country. Once I deemed a print acceptable (and this would often take months of back and forth with the lab and screening the same film dozens of times), it was time to add the audio.

Similar to the film laboratories, specialty audio facilities gathered magnetic tracks from any and all possible resources to restore the sound to its original levels.

One aspect of my work that I thoroughly appreciated and respected was that SONY stressed “restoring” the film, not “improving” or “polishing” the elements. Even in the nineties it was possible to eliminate hiss on a track or a heightened look to a scene, but the mission, at least as I understood it and strived to accomplish, was to restore the vision of the director, not alter it.

[Note 1: Prior to working at SONY, I worked at Howard Anderson Company and had as a client Turner Pictures shortly after Ted Turner bought the MGM library. His vision was to colorize the old films, an idea that met with outrage by filmmakers none less notable that Martin Scorsese and Woody Allen. But before they blocked Turner’s marketing efforts, I sat in on a screening of THE AMERICANIZATION OF EMILY with Julie Andrews. It is one of my favorite “war” pictures and was filmed in black and white. It was startling to hear non-filmmakers in the control room discuss what shade of blue her classic black dress should now be!]

[Note 2: One positive outcome of Turner’s actions was the attention his people needed to pay to the elements, searching for undamaged product with which to work. It triggered an awareness in the industry that films needed to be preserved, not only for posterity, but for future revenue avenues instead of being stacked on shelves in faraway vaults.]

During my less than two-year tenure at SONY I worked on hundreds of films. Mornings were spent tracking elements, contacting labs, writing reports and after lunch (usually at the SONY commissary) I went to my solo screening. Those two hours of my day were the best. It didn’t matter that I had to watch in silence as Streisand and Redford’s relationship blossomed and then soured in THE WAY WE WERE more than seven times or that I got a creepy crawly feeling screening THE COLLECTOR with Terence Howard tormenting Samantha Egger too many times to count. (Once would have been enough.)

When the restored audio was added the screenings became fun. Watching the very young actors, Jack Lemmon and Glenn Ford be silly in COWBOY and Van Heflin sweat buckets in the original black & white 2:10 TO YUMA made the job tolerable. The “work”, actually making films better for all time, far surpassed the politics and tedium of the people surrounding me. No wonder I loved my time in the dark and mostly in the silence.

I quit January 1998 and moved back to Pennsylvania.

Do I regret leaving the business? No, it was the right time to move on. Many colleagues thought I was foolish to leave. At the time I was respected for my knowledge in a tough industry. With each move I was ascending the corporate ladder. Of course, with the advent and acceptance of digital technology, film laboratories soon became a thing of the past and I would have had to adapt to the changes.

Do I miss it? Well, I certainly miss the money! But I also miss contributing to preserving films. There are so many wonderful works of art that have gone by the wayside. If I hadn’t worked for SONY I would never heard of Frank Capra’s THE BITTER TEA OF GENERAL YEN. A movie far, far ahead of its time dealing with intercultural, interracial relationships starring Barbara Stanwyck.

But for a few minutes yesterday, before watching the latest attempt on film of making a sexual coming of age story new and exciting (and not succeeding), I had a flashback and remembered why I still love watching films alone in a dark room.