The Extras - Classic Hollywood with George Feltenstein: Ben Hur, A Star Is Born (1954), Looney Tunes, and Yankee Doodle Dandy

Episode Date: August 15, 2021

This episode is part 3 of a three-part series with legendary home entertainment executive George Feltenstein.  In this episode George details the home entertainment release history of Hollywood classics Ben Hur, A Star is Born (1954), Looney Tunes, and Yankee Doodle Dandy.  Along the way, we hear the behind-the-scenes stories of the extras, the mystery behind the Judy Garland 1954 version of A Star is Born, and the development of the experiential extra "Warner Night at the Movies”.  We also discuss the current state of streaming and the impact on the physical DVD and Blu-ray market for collectors.The Sitcom StudyWelcome to the Sitcom Study, where we contemplate the TV shows we grew up with and...Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify The Extras Facebook pageThe Extras Twitter Warner Archive & Warner Bros Catalog GroupOtaku Media produces podcasts, behind-the-scenes extras, and media that connect creatives with their fans and businesses with their consumers. Contact us today to see how we can work together to achieve your goals. www.otakumedia.tv

Hi, I'm film historian and author John Fricke. I've written books about Judy Garland and the Wizard of Oz movie, and you're listening to The Extras. Hello and welcome to The Extras, where we take you behind the scenes of your favorite TV shows, movies, and animation, and their release on digital, DVD, Blu-ray, and 4K, or your favorite streaming site. I'm Tim Millard, your host. This episode is part three of a three-part series with the legendary home entertainment

executive George Feltenstein. In part one, we discussed George's early career working with MGMUA during the era of VHS before discussing the swift consumer adoption of DVD in the late 1990s and the importance of film preservation. In part two, we discussed the extras in popular classic Hollywood films, The Wizard of Oz, Thank you. A Star is Born, and Looney Tunes, before wrapping up with a brief discussion on the impact streaming is having on the ownership of physical DVD, Blu-ray, and 4K. Here is part three of my discussion on classic Hollywood with George Feltenstein. So I'd like to talk then a little bit now about some specific titles that you've worked on that you think are worthy of talking

about, not only the film, but the extras that were created for that film. One of my favorite movies growing up was the 1959 religious epic film, Ben-Hur, starring Charlton Heston. I can imagine there was quite a bit of excitement about that release when it came out on DVD. And I believe you created a robust number of extras for that. That has a very interesting history as well in terms of the extras and what was done. Ben-Hur, like The Wizard of Oz, was in that very first group of movies, MGM movies, that were released on home video when MGM went into the home video business. And it was a double cassette and it was really expensive. But it was always one of my favorite movies.

And, you know, at that time, until Titanic, it was the sole owner of the title, the most Academy Award ever given to any film, 11. Now it's tied, I think, with two other films, Titanic and something else. But Ben-Hur held the record alone for the longest time. It's just a magnificent film. It was, as I mentioned earlier, I felt the most important thing that needed to happen early on was to get this film shot in MGM camera 65, which is a 70 millimeter print process that uses a 65 millimeter negative with an anamorphic squeeze and an aspect ratio of 2.76. So it's incredibly wide. As a result, when you would see it on television

panned and scanned, you were only seeing, you know, like a third of the movie. So we did these letterboxed laser discs. And then we did something very risky for the VHS. For the chariot race, we zoomed out to Letterboxd, which was very controversial. Some people really liked that we did that, and a lot of people didn't like that we did that. But when it came to DVD, there was a remaster of the film once again from 35 millimeter reduction elements and it it looked good and it sounded good and what we had done in the 90s for the films I think from doing the math correctly the 35th anniversary of the film Scott Benson at Turner Home, who had done the Casablanca piece, he took it upon himself to create a making of Ben-Hur piece. It was supposed to be narrated by Charlton Heston, but Mr. Heston would not participate because Scott had interviewed

Gore Vidal, who had, without screen credit, been one of the people that worked on the screenplay of the movie. And Charlton Heston had such hatred for Gore Vidal and what he was talking about in terms of his involvement with the film, that not only would Charlton Heston not participate, but he also told Martha Scott, who played his mother, and other people not to participate either. So to make this 35th anniversary making of documentary, we used Christopher Plummer as the narrator because he did such a good job on making of A Legend Gone with the Wind. And it's a really really good documentary but to have a ben hurd documentary without ben hurd himself especially since he was very much alive and healthy at the time was a little bit awkward so when it came time

for its first dvd debut which I believe was in 1999, we got Charlton Heston on board to do a scene-specific commentary. He also did a publicity tour with our beloved Ronnie Sass, our late publicist, the wonderful woman. And Ronnie and Mr. Heston went all over the country promoting the film. And he's very proud of the film. He obviously won the Oscar for it and learned a lot from it and had his journals from the film. So that was the 1999 DVD release. When it came time for the Blu-ray, up until that time, there was really no way to take a 65 millimeter negative film and put it on video with quality without making a 35

millimeter reduction element. There was only one facility in town that had 65 slash 70 millimeter capabilities and the quality of their work was not to our liking and they are no longer in business. So by the time the 60th anniversary rolled around, if I'm thinking right, the 50th anniversary rolled around. That would have been 2009. It didn't come out until 2011, so I jokingly called it the 52nd anniversary edition. But I was not involved on that project. shot at Cinecittà Studios in Rome, where the film was shot, and also to Mr. Heston's diaries, because Mr. Heston passed away from Alzheimer's disease sometime in the mid-2000s. And it was very much a testament and tribute to his father. But most importantly, the original 65mm camera negative was used as the source for the scan this was an extraordinarily

expensive project because there were some damaged elements to the negative that needed special care it's also twice the length of most movies so it's like doing two movies. And it was shot on that 1959 film stock, just like North by Northwest. So you had the fading issue. Each one of these issues was successfully tackled by Warner Brothers Motion Picture Imaging to make a lustrous, beautiful, wonderful master. And the Blu-ray was just a triumph and continues to sell and sell and sell. So that leads to the inevitable question, well, where's the 4K? I think this is just me talking, but you know, what I would say to people two, three years ago was, well, you don't see a 4k of the 10 commandments around because it's the same issue, you know, an older film, the cost involved with the four hours and widescreen and the eastern color negative. Well,

10 commandments just came out on 4k. And I don't know how it sold, but I bet it sold really, really well. And I'm hoping that the powers that be at Warner Brothers will see it as an obvious opportunity because they did do a remake of that film about three, four years ago because the underlying literary property is in the public domain.

And the remake was awful and died and lost a ton of money. And obviously the 1959 film is a masterpiece directed by the great William Wyler. And there was no need to do a remake. When you have a film that takes place at the birth of the crucifixion and whatnot,

it's a period piece, and they went to great lengths to make it accurate to scholarly references and to the novel on which it's based. And, of course, it's a remake of a 1925 silent version that was part of earlier deluxe edition. So I see that all of those pieces that have been gathered together over the years going back to the 1980 first VHS and most recently the Blu-ray, the 4k is the obvious next step. Right. And it'll look amazing. It'll be expensive, but it'll look amazing. Right. Right. Well, I'm looking forward to that. We have not touched on animation yet. And yet, I know you actually are kind of a animation historian.

So let's talk a little bit about the Looney Tunes catalog. I believe, was it around 2003 that you released the first volume on DVD? Yes. Kind of tell us a little bit about the Looney Tunes cartoons and how you came about with figuring out that release schedule and the different plans you had for that collection. split in half when Jack Warner sold off the pre-49 library in 1956 to a company which soon turned it around and sold it to United Artists and then MGM UA was bought by Turner and Turner was bought by Warner Brothers that brought all the cartoons back together again, but they had been split off. So when I was at MGM, I was really angry about the fact that cartoons were classic animated films made by the studios, especially Warner Brothers and MGM were marketed as kids product. And when I got to MGM, you a home video,

they had a line of clamshell VHS tapes, VDO for kids. And then they would have things like the bugs, bunny cartoon festival featuring hold that lion Lion Please. That's a great title, right? Right. What happened was you had people who knew nothing about the cartoons, just slopping anything together on a cassette. And that was pretty much the industry standard. Now, separately, about a few years before that, in 1985, Warner Brothers had a classic animation division that is long defunct. And the people that ran that division engaged my good friend Jerry Beck to work with them on assembling video cassette compilations built around characters and directors. They celebrated the 50th anniversary of Looney Tunes. Now, in fact, in 1985, it wasn't

the 50th anniversary of Looney Tunes. Looney Tunes popped up in 1930. But in 1935, that was the first time you saw what became a were very, very successful. And it was also subscribing to my theory of market these films as classic animation that was shown in theaters. They're not TV episodes shown in theaters and market them to an adult audience. And it's perfectly okay for the kids to watch too. So they did that very successfully. So when I got to MGM UA, we had both Tom and Jerry from the MGM side, and we had the pre-48 Warner Brothers cartoons that United Artists had bought. So we released four videocassettes,

one called Bugs, with a big exclamation point, one called Elmer, one Forky, Daffy. It was programmed and marketed to adults, but it was okay for kids to watch it too. And they sold like gangbusters. And we marketed them under the moniker of MGMUA Cartoon Movie Stars. Then for the Laserdisc market, my friend Jerry Beck and I conspired to create something called the Golden Age of Looney Tunes. And we put together the best of the pre-48 Warner Brothers cartoons, which were Looney Tunes and Merry Melodies,

which I can explain in a moment. We only thought it would be a one-shot deal. So we had a 10-disc, five-hour compilation of Warner Brothers cartoons from the best elements at the time, which were 35- millimeter prints. The cartoons were uncut and it was 10 hours of cartoons. And the price was either a hundred dollars or $125. And we sold a ton of them. And it ended up that we did five volumes of them during my tenure at MGM. And then of course, the ownership of the cartoons moved where it belonged to Warner Brothers in October of 1996. That then led people to discuss as DVD descended upon us, well, what are we going to do with Looney Tunes? Now, there were two schools of thought.

One school of thought was, well, cartoons are for kids and they thought they were for television and people didn't know. They thought, you know, one cartoon is the same as the other and it doesn't matter. Here's a list, you know, pull 10 off the list and that'll be a release. We'll sell them to moms and kids at Walmart. Now that's one approach. And there is a reason to have something like that at a low cost that a mom can buy for her little kids. They also need to be the right cartoons. Right. Because these cartoons from the 30s and 40s and 50s have things in them that need to be reviewed because there could be stereotype humor in there that is inappropriate to be shown to children out of context.

Not for kids at all, but it's okay for collectors if it has proper contextual warning. So my proposal, and I was in theatrical catalog marketing, and even though these were made for theaters, this was the purview of the Warner Home Video Kids group. This was the purview of the Warner Home Video Kids group, but they asked for my help. And Jerry and I basically put together a plan to present to management to release 10 volumes of Looney Tunes Golden Collection as DVD sets with the best cartoons and spread them over 10 releases so you didn't have all your best cartoons in volume one. Right. Because then later volumes are going to sell lesser. So we put together this collection, but we didn't stop at just beautiful remasters of the cartoons.

We also found archival interviews of some of the animators and some of the directors. And if my memory serves me correctly, I believe I'm almost sure of it, that Chuck Jones was still alive and very much interacting with us at the beginning. I'm almost certain of that. I think he even did one of the introductions for us. special features with New Wave Entertainment and Constantine Nazar, who became a great friend to Warner Home Video and then became his own producer. We got cartoons to have their own commentaries from animation historians.

And it ended up that Entertainment Weekly voted the Looney Tunes Golden Collection as the number one home video release of 2003. And we sold over a half million units. Wow. Which we will never see the likes of that again. But it was hugely successful. Stay with us. We'll be right back. Hi, this is Tim Millard, host of The Extras Podcast.

And I wanted to let you know that we have a new private Facebook group for fans of the Warner Archive and Warner Brothers Catalog physical media releases. So if that interests you, you can find the link on our Facebook page or look for the link in the podcast show notes. It just points to the consumer appetite for the curation that you and Jerry did. And how you curated it and mixed it with all of those extras that you found. And that were newly filmed. Right. And, you know, a proper budget was set aside for the remastering and for the new special features.

And we looked for little cool things that we as animation buffs and collectors like Bugs Bunny Film Festival trailers from the 50s and stuff like that. We kept looking for cool things for each volume. Sales were very, very strong and robust for a good long time. And we separately created a reduced number of cartoons version with different titling. I believe it was either the spotlight collection or the showcase collection. I can't remember, but they were all cartoons that didn't have smoking or guns or anything that caused concern that it wouldn't be appropriate for kids. And this way, we could make

some of those cartoons that were not appropriate to be shown to little children, we could include those for the adult collector with a label on the package saying it's intended for the adult collector and not appropriate for children. Right. So the kids' cheaper version with less cartoons and no offensive content went out along with the deluxe and both iterations sold well and that dual approach was very successful and continued on for several years but we never got to 10 volumes and the reason was the economy tanking in 2008 you know whenever that big recession was when you know Lehman Brothers or whatever you know because that happened in tandem with the collapse of the video market as we knew it, because we lost our video specialty retailers like Tower and Virgin and Suncoast.

And a lot of the mom and pop stores went out of business. It became harder and harder to get these things sold. And not unlike with television seasons, if you have a show that is, you know, 10 seasons, unless it's Friends or The Big Bang Theory or something like that, sales are going to diminish less and less for subsequent seasons. Right. Unless there's a diehard fan base.

And there is a diehard animation fan base, but the sales started to deteriorate to the point where they were too expensive to do. So volume six was the last volume. And then there was a desire to try to make the cartoons available in Blu-ray. And so we started the Platinum Collection. When I say we, I was not involved in the marketing. Just Jerry and I were doing the programming of the cartoon. And one of the problems that we faced was we couldn't go chronologically because chronologically is ideally the best way to go with something like this.

But the first five years of Warner Brothers cartoons did not have characters in some of the cartoons. not have characters in some of the cartoons and the one the big cartoon character stars of the early Warner Brothers cartoons were Bosco and Buddy who no one has heard of except for diehard animation fans so we would have been dead in the water we had to start with the best and the brightest and some rediscoveries maybe that people didn't know about. And so that immediately brought the whiners and complainers about, well, why isn't this available? Why isn't that available? purpose from volume one duck dodges in the 24th and a half century and what's opera doc two of the most famous warner brothers cartoons of all time we deliberately left them out because if i'm remembering which ones we left out because it's been 20 years we left those out for volume two so that we could have some marquee titles to keep the energy going on the series.

And to keep coming up with new special features started to become problematic in terms of who was available. People were passing away. There was less to say. People were passing away. There was less to say. So the series kind of ran out of guests as well as places to get it to the sales some cartoons that have never been available before but we also have to repeat some of the essentials so people can have them in high def so immediately that started a new round of complaints from the diehard enthusiasts you're like you know i don't want to have to keep buying this and you know and know, and I already have this. And how much better is it on Blu-ray? So people really love to complain,

especially on the Internet, where they can be invisible and people don't know which of their mother's basements they live in. So, you know, the people who enjoy the releases, very rarely will they take the time to say, thank you so much, and we really appreciated this, and we really love what you do. typewriter typewriter to listen to me run to your keyboard of your computer and get on a board or a forum and make all your nasty comments and to run to your board and say i just watched this disc and it looks magnificent and i entertained i just love it so much thank you warner brothers so to be fair there are those people and we appreciate those people. And it's also good to take valid criticism if it's ever warranted. And on occasion, we made some choices that maybe weren't right or maybe the best choice or we could have picked a better cartoon or whatever. But one of the other things we did was we ran into the issue of the sensitive content cartoons.

And that's when we came up with the disclaimer, you know, so that the legal department would let us release certain cartoons that were normally off base, off limits, I should say. Right. If we had a disclaimer that has now become used on narrative feature films and other things, too, which at the time we never thought was going to be the case. But society has changed and this is a necessary thing as long as things aren't suppressed. Right. things aren't suppressed. There are some animated cartoons where the offensive material is so offensive that the company is not comfortable making them available at all. And there have been several attempts to loosen that tight grip. And in recent years, given what's going on right now, I don't see that getting to be an easier thing. People are very sensitive and we have enough headaches trying to do the best we can with all the other aspects of the job. So we're grateful that all of these cartoons are available. More just became available this past Christmas when the kids group did the Bugs Bunny 80th anniversary collection.

And Terry and I gave them all the cartoons there and we made sure that most of the cartoons had never been available before. Wow. And that was really exciting. Yeah. I just wish we could have had 80 cartoons instead of 60. 80 cartoons would have been better than 60. But be grateful for what you can get. Right.

We've got maybe a couple more titles I'd like to talk about. One is a recent, was recently remade by Warner brothers and that's the Judy Garland and James Mason classic, a star is born released in 1954. Tell us about bringing that to the DVD release. Well, before DVD, in 1983, there was a huge event surrounding this film. This film opened in 1954 at, I believe, 181 minutes.

It was meticulously made. It cost $6 million. It was a huge, huge risk for the company. And it was also a big thing for Judy Garland because she had been fired from MGM and this was her return to the screen after four years so there was enormous pressure on her and the film was absolutely brilliant got rave reviews it's directed by George Cukor and the the three-hour running time did not go down well with the theater owners or with Jack Warner. And without the permission of the director,

George Cukor, or the involvement of the director, George Cukor, no less Judy Garland, George Cukor, no less Judy Garland, whose production company was behind the film. They cut out from 181 minutes down to 154 minutes, and they cut out two very, very important musical numbers that were important dramatically, actually two in the later part of the movie. And then they cut out about 20 minutes at the beginning of the movie. They were very important to the character and story development. And the negatives were ordered cut. They cut the prints at the exchanges. And to this day, there is no known copy of the full 181 minute version.

copy of the full 181 minute version. And what happened in 1983 was a gentleman by the name of Ron Haver, who was the head of the film department at the LA County Museum of Art, joined forces with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences with the approval of Terry Semel and Bob Daly, who were running Warner Brothers at the time, to go through every nook and cranny on the lot and try to find the missing footage. They did not succeed completely, but they did find the two missing musical numbers from the second half of the movie. They found the complete soundtrack magnetically in mono. It's a stereo movie. And they found in the stock footage library shots from the deleted sequences where you couldn't recognize anybody's face.

You know, if it was a hand or a long shot of a car, as long as anybody wasn't recognizable, they saved it for reuse in another way. But the actual, you know, scenes were gone. And using stills, the complete soundtrack, the numbers that were found, the film was put back together again, and George Cuger was supposed to see it as it was getting ready, and he died the day before he was going to see it. And it had its re-premiere at Radio City Music Hall. I was there. It was an amazing night. It was an amazing night. The place was packed, 6,000 people, and people went crazy seeing an approximation of what the original film was. dialogue driven where you're basically looking at stills and seeing little shots cut in here and there. It put a lot of things in context,

a lot of references in the script that didn't make any sense before suddenly made sense. And the audience laughed in acknowledgement and it was such a success. It went all over the country and there was a literary issue. And when it came out on home video, it had been out in the short version on cassette, but there was a double cassette that came out in 1983.s. And for DVD, more alternate takes of Judy Garland seeing the man that got away were found and added. We went through so many reels of footage, but could never find what we really, really needed. But we continued to find other things that were interesting.

We found the premiere footage, and it became quite the package. And then when it came time for Blu-ray, it was time to do it in high def and make it look great. That turned out wonderfully. def and make it look great. That turned out wonderfully. But again, there's this, you know, bittersweet aspect of the fact that you've got this 20 minute sequence toward the beginning of the movie where you're cutting in and out of stills. And there's a card before the film begins that thanks the Academy and speaks to film preservation, but doesn't tell the viewer what actually had been done, you know, and why you were seeing stills and so forth and so on. Now, at the time, the publicity for this was so massive that everybody who went to see it

understood what the history was. And then something happened that I never really thought of. And that is that when the wonderful, wonderful Bradley Cooper, Lady Gaga version came out and I was I was hesitant about a fourth version of the film. And I turned out to be so delighted by what he did and what she did and their work in the film. And I thought it paid homage to the earlier films, but it was its own organic piece and it was just wonderful. But because of that, a lot of people, especially digitally, they were renting or buying the Garland version. And they're seeing all these stills and they don't know why.

They don't know the history. And it never dawned on me. And if you go to Amazon and you read like consumer reviews, I don't like these stills. And for me, this was like well-known, but I never dawned on me that, well, of course, all the decades have passed and a lot of these folks don't know what it is they're looking at. And I called Charlie Tabish, who's the head of programming at TCM, and I asked him if they ever had any viewer complaints and he said no, but I have recommended that they create a hybrid version

of the film to keep the reconstruction available but to create a hybrid version of the film that cuts out the stills portion at the beginning distracting, especially for an audience that doesn't know the background. Is there an extra on the Blu-ray release that does go into that history and explain it a little bit? No, no. And that's, that's what I'm saying is that, you know, the last release was, uh, 11 years ago. I have proposed to people that this be done because it would not be expensive at all. It's just an edit. Right. And frankly, it would be nice if it was 4K.

But, you know, the audience for 4K classics, it's just like what we experienced with DVD and Blu-ray. The early adopters are not interested in older movies. And you're not going to get the people who are interested in older movies to become adopters if you don't have the films they want to look at. So the fact that there now are films from Hitchcock and Kubrick and Clint Eastwood and so forth and so on coming out in 4K and Frank Capra. And I see the tide is turning and I'm hoping that we will see Warner Brothers do the same thing. So that's the story of Star is Born. Yeah, that is a very interesting story.

And I think we found an extra that needs to be made for that 4K release. Without question. Yeah, not to mention really dealing with all the other versions, because there have been four A Star Is Born films, three musically based remakes from Warner Brothers. Then there's the 1937 non-musical original. And then there's a film that we also own that was made five years before the first Star is Born called What Price Hollywood? It was made in 1932 at RKO. And the story is similar.

It's not a direct... You can't draw a line and say, yes, there are five of them, actually. But they're so close. David O. Selznick was the head of production at RKO at the time, what Price Hollywood was made. And David O. Selznick independently produced the first dramatic Star is Born. So make of that what you will. But if I were creating a piece to explain the history of allfod service, I think they did have all four when the new Bradley Cooper movie came out. Interesting. Well, there's one other extra kind of unique extra that I wanted to bring to the listeners' attention.

And that was with the release of the 1942 musical Yankee Doodle Dandy starring James Cagney. Can you talk about the Warner at the movies that you developed? That was really a tentpole beginning to bring the classics to market. We wanted to create two disc special editions stuffed with extras and we did it with three iconic Warner Brothers movies. We did it with

Yankee Doodle Dandy which earned James Cagney the best actor Oscar and is a beloved film and we did it with The Adventures of Robin Hood which was the first major

Technicolor Warner Brothers film and a huge hit and a film that really Captain Blood put Errol Flynn into stardom and Adventures of Robin Hood is probably the first film that people think of when they think of Errol Flynn. And especially because it was shot in Technicolor.

So that was a restoration using our then new ultra resolution process, which brought sharpness and unparalleled quality to older Technicolor films. We subsequently used it on Singing in the Rain and Gone with the Wind and Wizard of Oz. Now it's just a matter of technology has improved so much that it's not a proprietary technology anymore, and we've improved upon it. anymore and we've improved upon it. The other films that we released at the same time, the third one was The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, another multiple Oscar winner with Humphrey Bogart and directed by John Huston and with Walter Huston, who won an Oscar supporting actor. We took those three films, stuffed them with extras, and also created Warner Night at the Movies. And once again, Leonard Maltin to the rescue, he hosted it and

explained if you were going to the movies in 1942 to see Yankee Blue Dandy or 1938 to see Adventures of Robin Hood or 1948 to see the Treasures of Sierra Madre, you wouldn't have just seen the movie. You would have seen at least one, if not two trailers. You would have seen at least one, if not two cartoons. You would have seen a travelogue, a travelogue, a newsreel, a featurette, a short subject. And we wanted people to be able to experience the movie in that context. And we'd call it Warner Night at the Movies 1938 for Adventures of Robin Hood, Warner Night at the Movies 1942 for Yankee Doodle Dandy. And then if they just wanted to watch the movie, they could watch the movie or they could go through the whole everything. And then when all the extras were done, they would see the movie.

And then we had audio commentary and radio shows and other things, too. But we really went whole hog with that concept. We had Leonard do that for several more releases. And then we eventually got the consumer so familiar with the process that we no longeronard involved because people knew what it was it was something that we did on many many releases i just think that's an extremely creative fun way to approach the extras obviously the film is is there but to recreate that whole experience for you know there'll be some fans who maybe recall that but for the younger audience to just kind of go through it and compare that to the modern days is a lot of fun and then as an example uh the blu-ray just came out of

madam curie with greg arson playing marieie. And there was an earlier MGM short called The Romance of Radium about the discovery of radium that was made a few years before that feature. So that was put on that disc. The use of the company's short subjects and cartoons as extras was a way of giving the consumer something extra that wouldn't strain our ever shrinking budget. Well, George, you're well known for your work in the Warner Archive collection and movies on demand. However, we are going to have to leave that for another discussion in the future. We've gone through so many great movies already. But before we finish our talk today, I'm interested to get your perspective on the current streaming environment and how you see that impacting fans desire to own their favorite films and TV shows? Well, I think that there is something to be said for physical media

in that it's on your shelf, you own it and it's there and no one can take it away from you. And it's there and no one can take it away from you. Now, as an example, I just got a new iPhone. And I wanted to be able to use the same ringtones that I had gotten from iTunes when I got my first iPhone. And it carried over all the ringtones except one. One is no longer available. I bought it. I paid for it, but it's no longer available. So I can't have that ringtone anymore. And that has happened not from Warner Brothers,

but I know other studios and other content providers, both in terms of music and film and television, have sold people something digitally and suddenly it's not in their locker anymore because of a rights thing or whatever. so that is a little different than the streaming thing but what's happened now is that people are saying oh i heard about this really good movie where can i stream it it's like well you know for just a little bit of money you could own it and it'd be yours forever with great quality and probably some extras and whatnot. And the consumer should have choice. Now, I have subscriptions to virtually every streaming service. I have over a thousand films in my digital locker. And I have many thousands of films in all formats physically in my house. And I'm probably not your average consumer or enthusiast.

But my point is that when you're streaming something, it's there. But the next day it may not be there because things are licensed for a certain period of time. And that's why there are certain things you only need to see once. There are certain books you only need to read once. But some things are a keeper. And I do believe that the ease of streaming is extraordinarily seductive, and it's only going to continue to get better because the ability of the internet to provide better quality with larger files. And I think all of that is very, very exciting. What I'm concerned about is,

and there are happily exceptions to this, is that, like, obviously, if you go to, like, look at, like, classics on Netflix, that you see, like, Dances with Wolves or something, you know? Now, being realistic, Dances with Wolves is a 31 year old movie. I think of it not as a classic old movie because I'm still thinking about, you know, all of our pictures from the 20s and 30s and 40s.

And so that's a whole different perspective. Sure. But to a young that streaming provides ease. And the key to making it all work as a good ecosystem is to not put one out to pasture at the expense of the other. The consumer should have the choice of being able to buy it, being able to rent it, being able to buy it physically, being able to buy it digitally or rent it digitally, or watch it on a streaming service and download it while it's under license to the streamer make it the best of all worlds but there's no reason to not continue especially with the infrastructure that we developed uh with the warner archive, where there is a real tight eye on manufacturing,

limited qualities, and a no-risk situation where there's only upside to making a physical version available. Because we can't live in a world where there are tractor trailer trucks or warehouses filled with discs that nobody wants. And I think that that's one of the problems that hurt the business was that pallets of products of not very good movies would be sold by a salesman to get his bonus check or her bonus check and then be returned to the studio. And then what do you do with them? So there needs to be a lot more care on the physical basis. But I also do believe that not counting new releases and contemporary content, but classic content on physical is going to become, and it already has become, a niche business. And it's a very distinct and specific group of enthusiasts that are really dedicated. So it's more like the Laserdisc community. The Laserdisc community was very robust, but it was concentrated. And what ended Laserdisc was DVD coming along

and people just throwing in the towel on Laserdisc very soon thereafter. And the studio started licensing the things out. And it was like so obvious. Why would you want to still be making these big, expensive discs when you can make these DVDs for a dollar? So with streaming, you're not making a commitment, but you're not also given the opportunity to make the choices because especially with older films, there are so many films that are not in the streaming universe. And that was where the Warner Archive Collection and other entities that followed that business model,

solve that dilemma. Everything should be made available to everyone. That's my belief. Right. So it's very utopian. Well, there appears to be a, you know, a strong appetite for collectors, whether it be for, you know, the Funko or vinyl records or comic books, there's, you know, the Funko or vinyl records or comic books, there's,

you know, there's a robust market for collectors and consumer products. So, you know, I think there's going to continue to be the desire to own the movies. You know, oftentimes TV was the way you watched something or going to the theater, you would watch it. And then if you truly were a fan about that movie or TV show or animation, then the opportunity to buy it when it comes out, there's going to be that audience that still is going to want to do that. So whether you're introduced to a show or a movie through streaming, it's still, that's your introduction. And the idea of wanting to own it, whether it's digitally or physically, is still going to be there. And I think there's still then going to be a place for very imaginative exploratory extras as well, so that those fans can continue to learn more about their favorite stories, their favorite actors, their favorite directors.

That I don't think necessarily changes, but the economics from the business side will be interesting to see how that develops over the next few years. Oh, for sure. And I think that you don't want to throw the baby out who your customer is and just proceed with caution and the black ink of the bottom line in mind. Right, right. Well, George, it's been a real pleasure talking with you today. Real pleasure talking with you today. Thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing your knowledge,

your stories of classic Hollywood and the home entertainment industry with the fans. It's my pleasure, Tim, and I look forward to our next opportunity to do so. Yeah, there is a lot of territory we did not cover. That's a part of your career, and we'll hopefully get back to that at some point. For those of you interested in learning more about The Extras discussed in the show today, there will be detailed information on the website at www.theextras.tv. And if you are enjoying the guests we have on the show, please subscribe and leave us a review at iTunes, Spotify, or your favorite podcast provider. Until next time, you've been listening to The Extras with Tim Millard. Stay slightly obsessed.

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