The Extras - REPLAY! George Feltenstein: A Career in Classic Film Marketing

Starting point is 00:00:00 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. Hi, Tim Millard here. Can you believe The Extras has now released 100 episodes and been available for two years? That's right. We launched in June of 2021,

Starting point is 00:00:21 just after I finished my tenure at Warner Brothers. Now, I know that many of you were not listening back then because, well, no one was. I started the podcast with zero listeners and just hope that there were other people like myself who enjoy physical media and who enjoy film history and want to know more about the films and TV shows and animation we love. These films and shows are so important to me and to you that I hope you're finding that The Extras is a place where we can all celebrate and enjoy talking about them, hearing from experts, and just learning more about them overall. But my real purpose in this

Starting point is 00:00:56 introduction is to tell you about Replay, which is episodes from The Extras podcast archives that I want to highlight. And that's either because they are from the very earliest podcast we released when it was just me and a couple of friends listening, or because they are important enough that I want to be sure all of our new listeners get a chance to hear them. I don't know how often we'll do these, but if you see replay in the title, you'll know that it's an episode from our archives that you may have already heard or one you missed for whatever reason. Then you can decide if you want to listen to it or not. So for our very first replay episode, I wanted to go back to the very first podcast with my friend and colleague George Feltenstein of Warner Brothers. Even though we worked together for nearly 14 years, I didn't know the story of

Starting point is 00:01:40 how he got started in the film business and the journey his career has taken from MGMUA to Turner and finally the Warner Brothers. It really is a story that spans much of the home entertainment business and is a terrific reminder of why he is just so knowledgeable about classic film. So here is our first replay of episode five of 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, and today we have a slightly different show, as we'll be taking a bird's eye view on the home entertainment industry before diving into a discussion on some classic Hollywood films and animation and their extras. Today's guest has long been involved in the marketing and distribution of classic film and television projects, as well as having served in various creative roles in the production of documentaries. He began his career at MGMUA

Starting point is 00:02:49 Home Video, where he first brought the studio's classic film library to the home video market, eventually becoming the senior vice president and general manager of the division. He joined Time Warner in 1997 to lead various initiatives involving the studio's classics, including serving as producer for over 100 restored soundtrack album CDs. He also served as executive producer for several documentaries seen on PBS, TCM, and BBC, including Cary Grant, A Class Apart, and Stardust, The Betty Davis Story, for which he earned Emmy nomination. The 2004 American Masters documentary Judy Garland by Myself earned him the Emmy Award for his role as executive producer. He also served as executive producer for the

Starting point is 00:03:31 theatrical concert film documentary Elvis That's The Way It Is Special Edition 2000. In 2002, he officially joined the executive ranks at Warner Brothers Home Entertainment as senior vice president of theatrical catalog marketing, overseeing the restoration and release of the studio's massive classic catalog. Throughout the decade, he developed specialized box sets, collections, and the concept of the Ultimate Collector's Edition. In 2009, he was part of the team that launched the studio's Warner Archive Collection, a specialty sub-label dedicated to film enthusiasts, which has released more than 3,500 films and television programs from the company's library on DVD and Blu-ray disc. In 2005, the National Board of Review presented him with the William K.

Starting point is 00:04:15 Everson Award for his contribution to film preservation. And he is a huge Trekkie. I have had the privilege of working with Tim for the past 13 years that I worked for Warner Brothers Home Entertainment. He is a legend in the home entertainment industry. George Feltenstein, welcome to The Extras. Well, thank you very much, Tim. That was a very, very nice and humbling introduction. I'm very, very grateful.

Starting point is 00:04:44 Oh, you're welcome. I was amazed when I read through your bio just how much you have done in your career. One of the things that I always thought set you apart, George, is your love and knowledge of film. How did that love for film come about? I would say it started as close to infancy as possible. I started watching movies on television as early as I can remember. And I was fascinated by film history at a very, very young age. And I was able to read by the time I was two. So I was reading the arts and leisure section of the New York Times at that time.

Starting point is 00:05:33 I was kind of a little bit of a of a strange child because I was a dichotomy. There was a part of me that was an adult trapped in a child's body. And then the other part of me was socially immature. I spent days in the library at 791.43, which was the Dewey Decimal System location of film books. up, but I knew it had to involve film. It was something that grew. I used to cut school. I grew up in suburban New York. I would hop on the train and go to the Museum of Modern Art to see films that you couldn't see on television. And I would stay up in the middle of the night, much to my parents' horror, at wake up at two o'clock in the morning to watch an important film. So I really had to do this kind of on my own. I don't know what someone like me would be like growing up now when there is such access. But when I was a kid, access was very, very difficult. was a kid, access was very, very difficult. So you had to plan a day for one screening at the Museum of Modern Art at 1230 on a Wednesday afternoon to see a Harold Lloyd movie because

Starting point is 00:07:15 his movies were out of distribution. So things like that. And fortunately, when I was in high school, I met a whole bunch of wonderful people who were a few grades ahead of me, but they were all 8mm and 16mm film collectors. And the idea of collecting film, talking about film, I finally had friends because I had people that I could talk to about my interests. I went to film school to be a filmmaker, but I didn't really want to be a filmmaker. What I wanted to do is what I ended up doing, but what I ended up doing didn't exist then. And I went to college at what is now called Purchase College. It's part of the State University of New York system. So at the time, it was called State University of New York College at Purchase, and they had a film program there.

Starting point is 00:08:15 But that really wasn't my education for preparing me for the working world. And preparing me for the working world was running the college's AV center, basically, sending projectors and films all around the campus as an on-campus job. And I also ran the campus film series, which had lost money traditionally every year. When I took it over, it became a very, very very profitable venture and as a result I was solicited by a film distribution company recruited I should say while I was in my senior year of college they said when you graduate we want you to come work for us and I graduated college when I was 20 and I went to work for this company called Films Incorporated, where I was the national sales manager for their theatrical repertory business by the time I was 21. And I really

Starting point is 00:09:13 wanted to be in the home video business, which was just starting out at that time. And I sent my resume over to MGMUA Home Video with what I had done with the various libraries that Films Incorporated distributed to repertory theaters. And I went over for an interview that night and they said, we want to hire you, but our company is being bought and sold by Ted Turner. It was a real mess. But after an eight or nine month period of waiting impatiently, I finally got hired as their director of programming. And this was in New York. And in the middle of the process, they said to me, how do you feel about moving to Los Angeles? We're moving the company to the studio in Culver City. And I lied and I said, that'll be fine. And the reason why I said I lied, because the idea of not being in Manhattan, I thought New York was the center of everything. And it really is, except for the film industry.

Starting point is 00:10:22 The film industry is very much here. And the video industry, the home video industry, kind of grew out of one of two places. It either grew out of people who had been in the record business or people who had been in the non-theatrical business, like I was when I was at Films Incorporated. So the people that ran MGMUA Home Video used to be at Columbia Record. Right. So in those early days, the record people or the non-theatrical people

Starting point is 00:10:53 were kind of where the studios put their executive power. And they were moving the company out to the West Coast. And all the other studios that still had New York headquarters followed suit so by the early 90s the whole home video industry was in LA right so I was the director of programming for mgUA, and then right after I started working there, and my job specifically was to start releasing classics from their library. business had developed where they were charging huge amounts of money for video cassettes because they were being rented and they weren't being sold. By the time I was recruited to work at MGMA, UA Home Video, they were starting to push the prospect of movies to own at a more reasonable price, which at that time was $29.98. Right. And was VHS kind of by this time the dominant format?

Starting point is 00:12:14 VHS pulled out in front in the early 80s, way before I was in the business. I made the error, at least in my family's eyes as a child, of recommending that we buy a Betamax because Betamax had better quality. And my parents were saying, but VHS records longer and it's cheaper. I said, no, no, no, Beta is better. And it took me 10 years, actually, before I actually broke down and bought the inferior format. But it clearly pulled out in front. And that format, Sony never had a chance. But Betamax, I have Betamax tapes from 40 years ago that still play perfectly.

Starting point is 00:13:03 And I still have a working beta max. Wow. But it was beta VHS and Laserdisc. And Laserdisc was something that was very niche, and it was something I really didn't know that much about. I had heard about it, but when I started at MGM in New York, I got a call from a gentleman named Doug Pratt, who ran the Laserdisc newsletter, which at the time was a very popular publication for niche enthusiasts that were into Laserdisc. Laserdisc was a very niche market. very niche market. And he and his wife lived around the corner from my apartment. So he invited me over to see the format and I was hooked. And meanwhile, it was around this same time,

Starting point is 00:13:55 a few years before, that the Criterion Collection had released their first laserisc, which was finished in cane, that had extras and a commentary. So that was a pan of what was to happen in the future in the business. They started with that. And so I got to MGM and I started releasing classics on videocass cassette and a little bit on Laserdisc, and then more and more on Laserdisc and tape. And then we started releasing collections and digging deeper into the library. And the 90s were a very heady time, but it was the Laserdisc that we really put the special features concept into play. However, I will say this. My first day at MGMU A Home Video, I was in a meeting and they said, well, we need to release some musicals in the fall. And I suggested a few and the people there really

Starting point is 00:15:08 weren't familiar with the content at all. They used to look in a book called The MGM Story and pick titles out of the book, you know, just randomly. I'm not kidding about this. So I suggested some titles. And one of the titles I suggested was a film called Summerstock with Judy Garland and Gene Kelly, which was her last film, Judy Garland's last film for MGM. And I suggested, hey, why don't we add the short subject that Judy Garland made in 1936 every Sunday to that last feature film she made because people don't have a chance to own this or see it anywhere and it'll make it really cool and it costs really nothing to put it on the cassette right and people were looking at me cross-eyed like what's a short

Starting point is 00:16:02 subject and uh that was the beginning of me starting to do things a little bit differently and that extended into the laser disc market as well. So to kind of before we jump too far ahead for that VHS error when you first started at MGMUA you were involved in what was called VAM. Is that correct? The value added material, even at that point? Well, it wasn't, it hadn't gotten that name yet. And I think the first time that we did it at MGM was in 1989 for the 50th anniversary of The Wizard of Oz. And we did it for both the video cassette versions, beta and VHS, as well as the Laserdisc. And it's kind of interesting because when MGM entered into the video business in 1980, that's when the studios were finally entering the home video industry, late 70s, early 80s. And in the first group of, I think, 12 to 15 films that were released by MGM CBS Video at the time. It was a joint venture.

Starting point is 00:17:27 Wizard of Oz was catalog number one, released in October of 1980. And it was $59.98 for a cassette. And the Laserdisc didn't come till a few years later. But it was taken off of print. And for $60, you could watch The Wizard of Oz whenever you wanted, instead of waiting every year for when it would air on television, which had become basically a national pastime. So we can talk a little bit more about that later. But when I joined the company, Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind. And believe it or not, anniversary really almost don't like talking about. I feel responsible for having created a monster. That's so funny. But I kind of joke because obviously some films are worthy of celebrating an anniversary.

Starting point is 00:19:08 And especially if it's a major one like a 25th or a 50th or 75th. Well, going back to the kind of the Laserdisc, the Laserdisc format really allowed you to go into that value added or extras. And you mentioned that Criterion did that initially in 1985. How did MGM and others respond to that idea of putting extras on? Is that something that quickly became the standard for whenever you released a Laserdisc? 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,

Starting point is 00:20:03 you can find the link on our Facebook page or look for the link in the podcast show notes. Well, Criterion was pretty much on by or part of Janus Films, a legacy, world-respected international and art film distribution company. So they had this joint venture to do these Laserdiscs. A few years into the future, in the early 90s, it became fully owned by Janice slash Criterion. There was no more Voyager Press. And that's really when Criterion exploded. exploded, still in the Laserdisc business, and then eventually DVD, Blu-ray, and so forth and so on. And they're wonderful people. But they pretty much had that to themselves. What I did with Wizard of Oz was we had an isolated music and effects track so you could hear the music of the film without any dialogue we didn't have separate music dialogue and effects on wizard of oz so you had to hear the chirps of the chicks at the beginning and so forth and so on but the underscoring of that movie is so

Starting point is 00:21:41 magnificent that you know it won the the Oscar over even the score for Gone with the Wind. So we thought that was a nice extra. And we also had whole movies shot by composer Harold Arlen on the set of the movie. We had a musical number called The Jitterbug that was cut out of the movie before release, and it didn't exist except in audio form, but we used composer Harold Arlen's whole movie shot on the set when they were doing that movie and recreated the number. So we created a little bit of special features slash value-added material in 1989. And it was on the Laserdisc and the videocassette versions of the 50th anniversary of Wizard of Oz with a little booklet. So that was extremely revolutionary for a major studio to do. And then after that, I got very involved on the Laserdisc side because I was director of programming and marketing for Laserdisc, which again was a niche business. So I was working directly with the accounts and I started doing letterboxing on catalog titles like Ben Hur and Dr. Chivago,

Starting point is 00:23:17 which at the time was considered insanity by other people. Overseas, letterboxing was pretty common, especially in Japan. But in this country, people were like, what are those black bars on the top of my television? And, you know, the original aspect ratio be damned. I wanted these anamorphic CinemaScope Panavision films to be seen as they were shot and not pan and scan. Laserdisc in Letterboxd format, we had to get half the funding from our Japanese licensee, a company called Harold Boney. But it was a huge success. And because of that, 20th Century Fox decided to release Die Hard, which was a brand new movie studios started releasing films in letterbox format on Laserdisc and doing special things on Laserdisc. I say, you know, Criterion was their own, you know, they had no competition as being the best of the best in terms of creating special editions. But on a studio basis, I think what we did at MGM was very, very impressive and very proud of what we did. And in fact, a lot of the things that we did at that time later morphed into DVD and then Blu-ray and even 4K.

Starting point is 00:25:16 George, let's jump right into 1996 when the DVD format was introduced and fairly quickly, I think, probably adopted by the studios. Tell us a bit about that technology development and its impact on the home entertainment business. Well, I'll go back to Pioneer Electronics, who, by the way, had that patent on the Laserdisc format. Pioneer was very, very aggressive with having that patent and really pushed the business. And the thing that stood in the way from Laserdisc getting more mass adoption was they were incredibly expensive to make, and therefore they were higher priced. and therefore they were higher priced. And they never got past the fact that you had to turn it over.

Starting point is 00:26:13 You could only get one hour on each side and so forth and so on. But going back to 1989, there was a Pioneer electronics demonstration in Marina del Rey at a hotel where all the home video companies were getting a look at Pioneer's new machines. And I was at MGM at the time still. And across the aisle from me was a gentleman by the name of Warren Lieberfarb, who started at Warner Home Video in 1982 and was the head of the division for 20 years and quite a remarkable and visionary individual. And I didn't know him at the time, but he stood up when they were looking for questions and he said when are you going to be able to make me a cd that's five inches that can hold a movie with laser disc or better quality that i can manufacture for a dollar this was in 1989 and he had the vision that he he knew that if it was the cost of making a video cassette was like $2.60.

Starting point is 00:27:32 And the cost of making a laser disc was $8.50 raw for just a two hour movie. So if you did go to a third disc, it was even more expensive. disc was even more expensive. So to get manufacturing costs down, quality up, Warren envisioned that a CD movie, let's call it that because the word DVD hadn't been invented yet, could be a game changer because studios could sell movies at low prices and people could build collections. And that's where he was focused. And Warner worked with Toshiba in developing a format. Sony was developing a format.

Starting point is 00:28:17 And Sony had recently bought Columbia Pictures. recently bought Columbia Pictures, and Panasonic was developing a format because their parent company, Matsuchita, had bought Universal Pictures. Right. So there were three basically competing DVD formats being developed around 1995, 1996. And Warren, being the astute visionary, again, I'll say it, that he was brokered a deal where instead of a format war like beta versus VHS, that each of the three companies could have a satisfactory piece of the patent pie. And so when the DVD was introduced in 1997, it was test marketed, I believe, in Seattle and Atlanta for a few months before it went nationwide. I think $24.98 list price and quite a wide assortment of recent theatrical titles from all the major studios.

Starting point is 00:29:34 And it hit like a bang and got adopted by the consumers with a rapid amount, the quickest adopted, biggest consumer electronic industry product in history. I believe that still holds true. It was revolutionary because you didn't have to rewind it. There were special features added to some of them. There's that special features thing. And the price was reasonable so you could collect and build a library of discs the way you would build a library of books or records or CDs or so forth and so on. So the industry was a united front.

Starting point is 00:30:28 There was a robust retail environment because you had places like Power Video and Suncoast and Virgin, all these different stores. Everybody got behind the format. The industry was in love with it. Now, at the same time, you had DVDs going to Walmart where nobody wanted Letterboxd, nobody wanted original aspect ratios. So there had to be almost two versions of new movies you know when they came out or later on they developed the technology to have what are the flipper discs which you're probably familiar with right and then eventually once widescreen televisions hit in the middle of the op, that was the end of Pan and Scan, thank God. The adoption of DVD was rabid, and it also expanded the audience into a mass market product for owning movies. And it was a phenomenal time because everybody

Starting point is 00:31:50 was only seeing upside. And it really was a time when what a film could do on DVD could sometimes be more money for its owner than theatrical performance or any other media at that initial release period. It was very, very exciting. Yeah, that was an extremely revolutionary time for those of us who were kind of growing up in that era. Just the ability to, I mean, the quality level of what you were used to seeing on your traditional television just shot up. And then just kind of the satisfaction that no matter where you lived, you could own that movie. Yep, absolutely. And the price was low enough that it was affordable and you could move chapters. Like it had a lot of the functionality.

Starting point is 00:32:48 It was like a little LaserDisc. It had all the functionality that LaserDisc had. It did not have initially uncompressed digital audio. It was lossy audio like you get on an iPod, compressed audio. But that didn't last very long and went from Dolby Digital to Dolby True HD and DTS. And so you had lossless audio eventually at a later date. And that really, I think, I think that really hit with the Blu-ray disc, I think that really hit with the Blu-ray disc, which was another format where Blu-ray versus HD DVD in 2005 and 2006.

Starting point is 00:33:36 That was where you had the lossless audio. But that's all part of what made this product so attractive. I look back to 1997, the movies that were really making a difference. Sony's release of The Fifth Element was a brand new movie, and it was 5.1 surround audio and beautiful picture and director commentary and all those different things. A lot of those things had only been available on these very expensive laser discs. And now they could have even far better quality on a little DVD disc that was relatively inexpensive. So it was a game changer. inexpensive. So it was a game changer. And the first title to sell a million units on DVD happened within the first two years. And it was The Matrix, which as a DVD itself, was a remarkable disc in terms of extra features. That is the first disc I ever purchased. Obviously I was a huge fan of the movie itself. And when that DVD came out, I just recall the excitement that I had and fans had.

Starting point is 00:34:57 It's always the movie itself first, but then when you bought the movie and when I watched it and I saw all of these extras, because the movie was so mind blowing, you did want to know how did they do this? Well, you know, from the writing all the way to the visual effects. And that was a game changer for me. Absolutely. And the thing is, is that this tiny little market of Laserdisc, This tiny little market of Laserdisc, Laserdisc never got the local store at a very reasonable price, having those extra features. I was working at Microsoft Studios back in that era. And so I worked with a lot of people in technology. And there was, of course, you know, a desire to be kind of on the cutting edge.

Starting point is 00:36:04 But a lot of us were watching our movies on our computers. Those because they had DVD players. Right. So that was another part of the expansion of the DVD. We're not just the standalone players, but also the whole PC market at that time. Was the Matrix kind of a turning point in the industry? And did extras then become just more prominent in terms of their importance for the sale and promotion of the films? I would say that it was the most ambitious DVD produced up to that time in terms of extra features, and it set the bar higher.

Starting point is 00:36:50 There had been previous to that, both on Laserdisc and sometimes even a little bit on tape, where there'd be a director commentary or there'd be a little feature at documentary, commentary or there'd be a little feature at documentary, but never anything quite so creative as what was done with The Matrix. It was a game changer and it raised the bar and it challenged disc producers to have to be able to think out of the box and do more creative things. And I had no involvement with the creation of the Matrix DVD. Someone that you and I both know, Paul Hemstreet, he was the genius in charge of the Matrix DVD. It was all his vision. He certainly didn't do it alone, but practically. And he worked with the filmmakers. And that's the other thing great about DVD is filmmakers embraced Laserdisc, but it was not a mass market product. DVD was embraced by filmmakers and it was a mass market product. So filmmakers felt that

Starting point is 00:38:09 they could get a lot more of their message and they could take pride in the DVD that was created on a new movie. And I say all this where my focus had primarily been almost entirely focused on older films, classic films, and the restoration of them. There were a few new theatrical films that I was involved in during my tenure at MGM because I was the head of the division. So, you know, things like Thelma and Louise, I was very involved with that. And that was the number one head of the division. So, you know, things like Thelma and Louise, I was very involved with that. And that was the number one title of its year. And I took great pride in that.

Starting point is 00:38:52 But for all intents and purposes, I'm the classic movie guy. Let me go back to transition kind of into that. I want to quote an article from AV Club back in 2005, where you were featured. Quote, it says, by and large, the DVD business is driven by recent theatrical releases, just as the VHS business always has been. DVDs usually contain more special features with a substantially lower initial retail price. But aside from calculating the first run to home video window, it doesn't take a lot of thought to make an insert your movie title,

Starting point is 00:39:32 the movie into, again, insert the movie title into the DVD. The visionaries of the DVD business and the heroes to movie lovers everywhere are the ones who find a way to present older movies in such a way that they look vital and relevant. So let's talk about that. You were that or have been that classic movie guy. There's these two products that kind of that general audience and then the niche audience with your role in catalog marketing, you were focused on that niche audience. When did that niche audience start to become more important to home entertainment revenue? Uh, this really goes back before the days of Laserdisc, even, uh, to videocassette. Uh, what I did at MGM when I got there was I started doing something that is now very common,

Starting point is 00:40:27 and it's called brand marketing. We started releasing six films with a certain actor or performer or director or character. We didn't, if my memory is not failing me, we didn't really do the box sets in the VHS era. That was more of a DVD thing. But for example, when I was at MGMUA, the rights to the James Bond movies had been sold by United Artists to CBS Fox Video, and they reverted back to MGMUA on video in 1988. So I released the six Sean Connery movies as the Connery collection and the six Roger Moore movies as Moore Bond. And these were new masters and I was playing up the quality. Now this is, this is a long time. It is like 30 plus years ago. But at the time that was considered, Oh, time that was considered, oh, wow, this is different, you know, like taking groups of movies together and marketing them in a way that was interesting and affordable.

Starting point is 00:41:54 We developed a franchise, if you will, in the late 80s of movies made before the production code that we called Forbidden Hollywood. And my good friend Leonard Maltin was critically involved in the development of that concept. And he hosted the first releases with opens and closes. And this is way before there was TCM. And this is way before there was TCM. TNT was just getting launched. And TNT in its early days was a little bit like TCM with commercials. But there wasn't any curation to it. It just was a place for Ted Turner to show his library.

Starting point is 00:42:42 to show his library. But my point was that we took a little extra effort to market these things in such a way on both cassette and Laserdisc that took on a life of its own. And eventually there were forbidden Hollywood DVD box set. There have been 10 volumes of that. There were three Laserdisc boxes. And then TCM put out their own Forbidden Hollywood book.

Starting point is 00:43:11 So I'm very happy to say that we were at the beginning of that. and film noir films are the best kind of old, old movies to entice and interest younger audiences. Why is that? Because they surprise the audience member. If it's a good film, when they start watching it, they're shocked at kind of the reality. You know, the pre-code movies were far more realistic and dealing with themes that weren't allowed on the screen for the next 30 some odd years. So there is a shock value to it. And also the films are very well made, especially the films that were made at Warner Brothers. And the film noir movies really are timeless in their ability to attract an audience, especially the good ones.

Starting point is 00:44:16 And we really hit the jackpot with film noir when we we started film noir collections on dvd in uh 2004 and we did five volumes of them in every other studio basically uh ate the strategy and uh film noir is now far more of a magnet and far more well-known now than it was in 2004 when we put out our first DVD box set. So those are just examples. Right, right. One thing you can't kind of go and talk about what you did with the older films and bringing them to the DVD format without also talking a little bit about the role of film preservation. As many of these films are, you know, we're decades

Starting point is 00:45:11 old. Maybe you could talk a little bit about the unique relationship Warner Brothers has with UCLA and how working with them maybe impacted some of your release schedule for these classic films? Well, UCLA Film and Television Archive has been around for more than 50 years. And they were really, along with several other organizations around the world, various archives, they were dedicated to trying to rescue films. And this was long before there was home video. And they would search out the best materials and try to get nitrate film elements before they would deteriorate and protect and preserve them.

Starting point is 00:46:08 Warner Brothers started to deposit all of its nitrate holdings with UCLA in 1979. So the studio's relationship with UCLA goes back a very, very long time. And their archivists are remarkable people. And most recently, this shows you how technology improves and what changes. In the 80s, there were two very rare Warner Brothers prints that belonged to Jack Warner. One of them was a film called Dr. X, which was shot in the two-color technicolor process. And a film made the year after called Mystery of the Wax Museum, which was also shot in the two-color Technicolor process. And it was a red-green process that didn't look realistic. The Technicolor company thereafter developed a three-color Technicolor process that perfected the way color looked on film.

Starting point is 00:47:27 And that began to be used slowly but surely in the latter part of the 30s by the studios, climaxing in 1939 with films like Gone with the Wind and Wizard of Oz. But going back to this early two-color, technicolor period, the two-color process was so different that the ability to manufacture prints and distribute them for the future was basically considered, nobody really was thinking about the future in the 30s, and they certainly didn't think about being able to make prints of these things. So only black and white negatives were kept on both of those films.

Starting point is 00:48:24 And the only way that you could see the original color presentation was with Jack Warner's personal beat up prints. Now, in I believe it was the late 60s, early 70s, the AFI, along with other organizations, made duplicate negative materials on Mystery of the Wax Museum so you could actually see it on television. It looked awful. It was beat up. It was scratched. The colors were not right. But you were getting to see a facsimile of what it really was supposed to look like. And then in the 80s, UCLA did photochemical preservation of those elements. And that was released eventually on Laserdisc and videocassette in the late 80s. And I was involved in that. But in the last two or three years, UCLA and Warner Brothers have been working together on various projects,

Starting point is 00:49:38 along with the Film Foundation. And both Mystery in the Wax Museum and Dr. X were completely restored, so they now look immaculate. And they're available on Blu-ray through the Warner Archive collection, which we'll talk about in a little while. But that's just indicative of the way that UCLA and Warner Brothers work hand in hand, especially since they retain all of our deposited studio nitrate prints. And we constantly are in conversations with them. And they'll say, hey, this film is starting to go. Do you have protection? And so forth and so on. But they put a lot of focus at UCLA on films that we call orphan films,

Starting point is 00:50:37 films that were produced by companies that are no longer in business and they protect them. So, really, really do wonderful work and it's a wonderful partnership. And we share the same kind of partnership with the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, New York, which is where most of the MGM nitrate is stored. And we can't not mention another incredible, important home for a lot of our early negatives on the Warner Brothers and RKO side, which is the Library of Congress. Right. And we also work very closely with the film department at the Museum of Modern Art. So those are really the primary partners in preservation that we work with now. And we worked with them 30 years ago photochemically to make new negatives

Starting point is 00:51:38 and new prints. Now what we're doing is we're scanning these elements where nothing touches the film, so the film can't be damaged. We're scanning at 4K or 8K, and we're scanning for the future. So you have that raw scan backed up on several servers. And right now we've made these new masters that are available on Blu-ray and can be shown as DCPs digitally in theaters. But if somebody needs to go back to the film element, they don't want to touch it because it's going to get more brittle and it's being stored very carefully. We can go to the scan that's in our archive and work from there. So if something is going to happen in, let's say, 2028 or 29, and we're working in 12K or something, a format we can't even think of today,

Starting point is 00:52:41 there'll be that to go back to. So it's trying to future-proof. today, there'll be that to go back to. So it's trying to future-proof. Film preservation is incredibly important and the industry has come a tremendous way in recognizing the value of its films because initially there were only two studios that started doing film preservation with nitrate film, which is extremely flammable and subject to decomposition and deterioration in the 1960s. And those companies were MGM, whose library through 1986 is owned by Warner Brothers now and has been for decades, and Disney. The Warner Brothers film ownership was kind of split between United Artists and Warner Brothers, and it wasn't until the older Warner Brothers films made it on the journey from United Artists to Turner,

Starting point is 00:53:44 on the journey from United Artists to Turner, back to Warner Brothers, that the Warner pre-49 library started to get preserved properly. And all that has a very, very happy ending because film preservation is extraordinarily important to the company. And I'm very grateful to be part of the group of people that works on that. And then brings it out on home video. Right. Yeah. Kind of in terms of the timing, how did you look at the preservation process? Did you when you went to look at a release of a film and I'm not talking about one of the films that maybe has been released multiple times. But as you started to go a little bit deeper into the catalog,

Starting point is 00:54:26 would kind of how did that process work? Would you talk to somebody at UCLA about a title and then they would look at it and you would say, okay, this is going to take six months, a year, two years to get to the place where we could release this. How did that impact your release schedule and thinking and planning? How did that impact your release schedule and thinking and planning? Well, for I would say the first many years of my career, I was relying on the work and judgment of other people who had those responsibilities within the organizations, whether it be MGM or Turner or then Warner Brothers, my job was to, I told them what I wanted, you know, let's release this pre-code movie baby face.

Starting point is 00:55:23 We need a new master. So it looks really, really great because the old master is from 1988. So we would get a cost and run a P&L and make sure it was profitable. And then it would be put into play. And that's a very important thing to also mention is I always have to put profit before passion or preference. Profit before passion or preference. I've been blessed to be able to do. But what happened was in the last 10 years, I started to become much more personally involved with the actual film element process. about original negatives and interpositives and internegatives and versions and audio tracks and magnetic tracks and dealing with vinegar syndrome, which can basically destroy a safety film movie. I started to work very closely with our colleagues at Warner Brothers Motion Picture Imaging on finding ways to

Starting point is 00:57:08 make beautiful new masters of our films where the quality was absolutely pristine and we could do so in a way that could be profitable. And that has been a great gift. I learned more new things. I developed additional skills and abilities. And the benefit also was the company got to release a lot more classic product and make a lot more money from it. So that's a really, really good thing. Right. And then it's used in other media. Right. Like it's used on television and it's used on airlines and streaming and in schools and in theaters.

Starting point is 00:57:55 So when you have the world's largest film library, that's a very, very significant responsibility. significant responsibility. And we have on staff one person who just retired, and I'll mention his name, Stephen Anastasi, who goes back to the days at Turner, who's just phenomenal in terms of taking care of all of our assets. And he just retired, and his second man is now leading the charge. he just retired and his second man is now leading the charge. So what's going on at Warner Brothers right now is what we jokingly refer to as preservation on steroids, because basically these films, a lot of them have to be prioritized in terms of triage. What's in the worst shape? What is at risk that has to be put before other films unless there's also something commercially driving the need for another film? And when they come together, then that's the beauty of it because you're preserving, saving an asset, improving it, and also getting to monetize it. But it isn't strictly the monetization that is behind the preservation. It's both.

Starting point is 00:59:15 And it has been particularly rewarding for me to work with the colorists at MPI, the people that are scanning the film, so forth and so on, to make sure that we get just the right results. And the consumers have been very happy with the end product and that's very gratifying. Right. I've always thought as a person working on the extras that the extras in and of themselves oftentimes are another part of the preservation, not of the film, but of the story of the making of the film. And part of that is talking to the producers and the writers and some of the crew people, things that in the olden days, of course, you know, they didn't think about necessarily doing, but we do think about that now.

Starting point is 01:00:07 You've been listening to part one of a three-part series with legendary home entertainment executive George Feltenstein. In upcoming episodes, I will be speaking with George about his work on classic Hollywood film releases, The Wizard of Oz, Casablanca, Singing in the Rain, and many more. For those of you interested in learning more about the extras discussed in this show today there will be more

Starting point is 01:00:29 information on the website at www.theextras.tv and if you're enjoying the guests we have in the show please subscribe and leave us a review at iTunes, Spotify

Starting point is 01:00:39 or your favorite podcast provider until next time you've been listening to The Extras with Tim Millard. Stay slightly obsessed. The Extras is a production of Otaku Media, producers of podcasts, behind-the-scenes extras,

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The Extras - REPLAY! George Feltenstein: A Career in Classic Film Marketing

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