Agee's Lost Films of Laurel and Hardy to be Released
-
Doug Sulpy
- Posts: 431
- Joined: Sat Jan 30, 2010 3:59 pm
L&H
The cost of the shipping from Amazon these days to me from USA & UK is low and with UK the reduction of the VAT more than covers the shipping and if I get more titles at the time the service fee(about UK2.09 currently) is divided between those titles in the exercise and we get a great exchange rate currently. Over the year Amazon UK is the best to buy from. A figure of UK1.65 is the same for a single title or a major box set when so many charge their fee per disc in the box. In the US I might buy a set from Oldies with say 12 discs they want US$24 postage, from Amazon or DeepDiscount it can work out under $2 per set depending what other items you buy. It wasn't always that way and add a major discount of a title for a day or period and the savings means I can get titles I might otherwise overlook.
The rate from Canada is high from Amazon but I have bought. Amazon US used to charge a decade ago $19 to start and I went to DD. Amazon DE charged around Euro15.00 per shipment divided into the order and thus some is kept to charge against a later delivery of a title or two. France I am not sure on but I have bought there. Amazon would have deals with carriers and have sponsored ads that must help keep costs in check.
Some won't ship outside UK like Play.com or US like BearMedia who direct you to Amazon. Probably had problems with people saying they have not got their goods. Always a problem that is greatly reduced these days.
The rate from Canada is high from Amazon but I have bought. Amazon US used to charge a decade ago $19 to start and I went to DD. Amazon DE charged around Euro15.00 per shipment divided into the order and thus some is kept to charge against a later delivery of a title or two. France I am not sure on but I have bought there. Amazon would have deals with carriers and have sponsored ads that must help keep costs in check.
Some won't ship outside UK like Play.com or US like BearMedia who direct you to Amazon. Probably had problems with people saying they have not got their goods. Always a problem that is greatly reduced these days.
Watching TCM's tribute to Thelma Todd last night, it was appalling to see the muddy transfers
that were supplied by Hallmark.
Thank goodness I have the Universal 21 disc box set from Amazon.uk.
My only regret is that I paid so much for it at the time.
I will be thrilled to be wrong, but I would expect to see the Laurel and Hardy
catalog issued on Genius before Mr. Agee comes through with his set.
Probably with Agee's masters to boot.
Sad.
that were supplied by Hallmark.
Thank goodness I have the Universal 21 disc box set from Amazon.uk.
My only regret is that I paid so much for it at the time.
I will be thrilled to be wrong, but I would expect to see the Laurel and Hardy
catalog issued on Genius before Mr. Agee comes through with his set.
Probably with Agee's masters to boot.
Sad.
" You can't take life too seriously...you'll never get out of it alive."
Blackhawk Films customer
#0266462
Blackhawk Films customer
#0266462
For that to happen, Genius would have to get rights from two different rights holders. The sound films are with RHI, and the silents are with Richard Feiner.Scoundrel wrote: I will be thrilled to be wrong, but I would expect to see the Laurel and Hardy
catalog issued on Genius before Mr. Agee comes through with his set.
Probably with Agee's masters to boot.
Sad.
" Genius would have to get rights from two different rights holders. The sound films are with RHI, and the silents are with Richard Feiner."
Feiner's rights to the films may have expired:
http://openjurist.org/883/f2d/1429/hal- ... ompany-inc
Universal had released the silents in the Uk once already.
( the 21 disc box )
also:
http://www.homemediamagazine.com/genius ... taff-17029
Feiner's rights to the films may have expired:
http://openjurist.org/883/f2d/1429/hal- ... ompany-inc
Universal had released the silents in the Uk once already.
( the 21 disc box )
also:
http://www.homemediamagazine.com/genius ... taff-17029
" You can't take life too seriously...you'll never get out of it alive."
Blackhawk Films customer
#0266462
Blackhawk Films customer
#0266462
FWIW the cited Hal Roach case seems to say that Richard Feiner and/or Feiner & Co. only ever had television rights. So the Feiner entities probably are of no moment with regard to production and sale of DVDs.
One of the Feiner counter-claims was that Hal Roach Studios lacked valid and subsisting copyrights to the silent films. This court, which was an appeals court, ruled that dismissing that claim by a summary judgment was improper and sent the issue back to the trial court. We don't know from the cited case whether or not Hal Roach Studios has a valid copyright in the silent films.
One of the Feiner counter-claims was that Hal Roach Studios lacked valid and subsisting copyrights to the silent films. This court, which was an appeals court, ruled that dismissing that claim by a summary judgment was improper and sent the issue back to the trial court. We don't know from the cited case whether or not Hal Roach Studios has a valid copyright in the silent films.
Jim Henry
Not yet and they took payments by PayPal.kndy wrote:Is there a definite shipping date on these? And was the money taken out from your account already?LouieD wrote:Nope, been emailed back twice that is coming, but I'm not getting my hopes up.Scoundrel wrote:Has anyone received a copy of this yet...?
I have the Universal set also. The silents are a mixed bag on that one. I haven't heard that Agee has done new transfers other than something he said years ago when he first talked about this set.Scoundrel wrote:I have the Lost Films discs as well.
FWIW the transfers are showing their age and the transfers
on the 21 disc UK set from Universal are visually superior.
-
Jack Theakston
- Posts: 1919
- Joined: Tue Dec 18, 2007 3:25 pm
- Location: New York, USA
- Contact:
From Agee's letter announcing the "upcoming" set:
" in January of 1992 I acquired the rights to the pre-1931 films from Richard Feiner "
" These four hundred sets are for sale to you only over the next ten days via PayPal for the actual manufacturer’s cost for which the sets will be sold to Amazon–just $110 plus shipping. And, you will receive the set as soon as they are pressed–two months before anyone else, in around 30 to 45 days. When we ship the 4,000 units to Amazon, they will ship your 400 units to you."
And I'll be in Scotland before ya
" in January of 1992 I acquired the rights to the pre-1931 films from Richard Feiner "
" These four hundred sets are for sale to you only over the next ten days via PayPal for the actual manufacturer’s cost for which the sets will be sold to Amazon–just $110 plus shipping. And, you will receive the set as soon as they are pressed–two months before anyone else, in around 30 to 45 days. When we ship the 4,000 units to Amazon, they will ship your 400 units to you."
And I'll be in Scotland before ya
" You can't take life too seriously...you'll never get out of it alive."
Blackhawk Films customer
#0266462
Blackhawk Films customer
#0266462
-
Jack Theakston
- Posts: 1919
- Joined: Tue Dec 18, 2007 3:25 pm
- Location: New York, USA
- Contact:
You had to pay in advance. I paid using PayPal back in May, so unfortunately my option to get a refund on that has passed but I can always file a mail fraud charge, but really, if I get screwed on this, the world is a small place and karma's a bitch.kndy wrote:Did you guys get charged already or are they charging you right after it's shipped out?
I'm sick of waiting and dealing with Lou and his delays. SICK, I say. So, here we go. This is the email I got from "Michael Agee" on 9/4:
September 4, 2010
Dear Friend:
My name is Michael Agee. As you may know, I have spent all of the years
since 1984 preserving the films of Hal Roach Studios. On October 23rd of
that year, I walked into a meeting to which I had driven my "second father"
Frank Capra between the two of us and the then-Chairman of HRS, Earl Glick,
regarding Capra's desire to Colorize It's A Wonderful Life (don't ever
believe what you hear-he wanted to do it and I still have the signed
contract in my files!). After twenty minutes of my explaining his own
Library to him, Glick asked me to come to work as his assistant. Frank
urged me to do so, and by January of 1985, I had replaced Herb Gelbspan and
was president of the company, creating a new home video division (I had
built the first lab in Hollywood in 1976 after explaining tape cassettes to
the head of Nostalgia Merchant and literally put them in business-the first
non-porn video company in this country) and made sure to include ALL of the
Roach comedies in our releases.
In 1986 I was prevailed upon by the people who ultimately threw HRS into the
1990 bankruptcy (and never accounted to the court for some one hundred
million dollars that simply "disappeared") to create for them masters of the
Laurel and Hardy "Talkies" (essentially all of the films they had not
previously sold to Richard Feiner in 1968) to finally get The Boys back on
television-and in a high-quality version. I blocked an idiotic deal with
King World that would have seen L&H go the same way as had Our Gang thirty
years earlier, then called my friend Paul Spehr, head of the motion picture
division at the Library of Congress and he agreed to make what he told me
was the "biggest shipment in the history of the Archives"-some three million
feet of original nitrate negatives, fine grains, soundtracks-everything that
existed at that time on those titles. I was to have six months to create
these new masters to my standards, the first time ever that L&H would be
televised directly from the original camera negatives. (After I agreed and
ordered the film they said "well, we really need it in four months" which
meant I worked seven days a week, eighteen hours a day, transferring film in
three rooms at once at Fototronics, then editing together the pieces till
dawn at the new facility I had built to service our own Home Video
operation.)
Most of you know the results-I found the "middle reel" of Laughing Gravy
(and was able to ask Hal Roach why it had been cut), found a seven reel
print marked Their First Mistake which turned out to be a different preview
version of Pardon Us from which I created an alternate 70 minute version of
the first L&H feature, located the Spanish versions, and on and on. All of
this stuff I showed to the "Helpmates Tent" of the Sons of the Desert in
late 1986 and was made an honorary member thereof and had attended their
annual conventions every year thereafter till I got seriously ill in
September of 2006 and was unable to travel.
But, in 1992, I had gone to New York to appear on The Joe Franklin Show-TV
and radio-and that night, at 6pm, I met with Richard Feiner and acquired all
of the Roach films he had bought from Herb Gelbspan in 1968, beginning again
an ever more difficult odyssey which really wasn't completed until October
of 2006 (I also met and married Franklin's 18 year old assistant, so that
was some night!). I again worked all night seven days a week for six weeks
in mid-2006 completing the editing on everything I wanted to include on the
boxed set you have purchased. I took the advice of a good friend in the
Sons from Ireland and put all the L&H films in chronological order on the
first five discs, then added seven discs of material I had always wanted to
make available to you and, on the last disc, added to the rare documentaries
I had licensed (or located at the National Archives) a few things I simply
wanted you to see-especially the camera negative of W.C. Fields' classic The
Dentest which is not only amazing quality but is the "pre-code" version,
edited by my mentor William Hornbeck (the man Capra called "the greatest
film editor who ever lived"). I also included one of The Masquers shorts
(Wide Open Faces) which is absolutely hysterical (they were an old
vaudeville showbiz club that donated their time to make all-star shorts,
released by RKO as fund raisers for their various charities). And I wanted
you to see the Edgar Kennedy shorts (because they were made by the entire
production unit and actors S. S. Van Keuren had forced Roach to lay off in
1931 as condition for receiving a large bank loan from Bank of America (and
Van Keuren was forced on Roach from the bank to keep an eye on their money.
He stayed at HRS well into the television era.) I particularly wanted to
show the Kennedy short which Hal Law shot as essentially a re-make of the
one missing L&H film, Hats Off (for the record, there were precisely two
films in 35mm that were complete when I went to retrieve Feiner's
materials!) And included all the original Hats Off stills and script
information for comparison. And I thought Hal Roach Jr. deserved credit
for the really brilliant work he did in the early TV era. If HRS had been
able to absorb the deficit financing the "big studios" would ultimately be
able to support, there would have been no 1963 bankruptcy and, I suspect, no
early death of Hal Roach Jr. So, there's one disc of just TV shows.
All of this was finished in October of 2006. Image was supposed to release
it in early 2007. We had paid Ambient Digital Services almost $60,000 to do
the menus and compression (create the DLT's) and DeLuxe had received over
$36,000 for creating the glass masters and pressers-and twenty test
pressings of each disc which cost $50 each! But some dumb-bum in the Image
legal department didn't realize the entire boxed set was sitting, finished,
in their offices, the test discs had been viewed and sent on to me, and that
the head of their art department had requested we hold the art files until
after Christmas because "everything was piling up on his desk" during the
holidays. After I had suffered an apparent stroke, this moron sent a letter
claiming the set had not been delivered (never bothering to actually ask
anyone about it, just checking her computer to see that the art files were
not actually in house-kept by us as they had requested) so Image cancelled
the release. I was three months into what became almost four years spent
flat on my back, and I simply set aside the boxed set release.
But what you need to understand is that it is all finished-it was finished
in 2006(!!). In fact, I sent two copies of the test pressings of the entire
12 disc set to Russ Babidge and he was to give one set to Rob Lewis at
Helpmates so Rob could review it in his magazine and on his website. This
second set was given instead to Dick Feiner (who had already gotten a copy
from me!). But all these people can tell you-it's done. All the money is
spent, the work completed. These folks have the set, they've seen it. The
pressing for you folks has been delayed due to some changes in the
protective encoding of the discs (the Chinese are stealing everything I have
done because firstly, they don't understand that the Copyright Office
website does not list ANY L&H copyrights or renewals because the online
files were only created beginning in January, 1978, and the very last Roach
L&H film was copyrighted in 1940 and renewed in 1968, so none of the Roach
information is available via internet search. Hell-they even think Gone
With The Wind is public domain for the same reason!) Secondly, the Chinese
don't really give a damn about any U.S. copyright.
This was ready to go just a few weeks ago when I was approached by a third
party and asked to wait briefly in allowing the pressing to proceed. (Now,
this is very confidential information and if ANYONE posts this proprietary
information or copyrighted missive anywhere you could screw up this entire
deal which will only hurt you and the memory of the Roach library.) The
group that has acquired the rights to put out the entire Roach library
approached me about restoring it (they, of course, have NO masters on
anything save the now decayed analogue tapes I made in 1986-you've seen how
awful they now look on TCM). They had planned to do what every damned fool
has done with the Library since early TV days-just put out the L&H films,
maybe the Our Gang comedies-and write off everything else. I am on the
verge of convincing them to put out everything in the sound era in a series
of at least a dozen high-definition blue ray sets. I am slated to travel
back east on September 22 to meet and make a deal to do this through HRS-but
they want me to hold the silent boxed set till we meet and make it part of
our Agreement. Everything you are waiting for is excepted from any
Agreement we reach and will be produced and shipped to you exactly as
promised immediately upon my either agreeing or not agreeing to do the
entire Library. But I am forced to wait until I can get back there and meet
with them. So I had to delay the shipping of your set.
Since everything on the set is finished, according to Ambient Digital
Services, it only takes a week or two for everything to be pressed, shrink
wrapped, and mailed-the hellish delay of compression was accomplished ages
ago (it took two months, by the way. It is almost fifty hours of material!)
So I ask you to do two things so we can finally get ALL of the HRS films
released: PLEASE keep this to yourself. Blabbing about it or posting this
copyrighted information somewhere could destroy this deal and you will NEVER
see Thelma Todd, Charley Chase, or any Boy Friends or All-Star Comedy on
DVD, much less the non-L&H feature films. And, please wait until I can go
back East and reach an agreement to receive your set. I know you have
waited a long time. I have always delivered for you as, according to what
the "Helpmates" members have told me, no one ever has before. I am
literally slowly dying because of my exposure to the nitrate and it's
resulting damage to my spine, which exposure was required for me to do this
work for you (and in 1986, no one knew this could happen to me).
But I have wanted since 1984 to put out everything Hal made, and now I am so
close to being able to do it. I have to travel these days by ground so it
takes longer to get there and back from California-and I have to stop in
Atlanta to meet with Turner Entertainment about getting some of the silent
films on TCM.
We are on the cusp of finally owning all our favorite films on DVD and in
high definition from the original 35mm nitrate (and I have agreed to re-do
all of the L&H films in Hi Def as part of this proposed project), so please
wait just a little longer.
You can contact me directly at [email protected] if you wish. I have a
lousy computer and even crappier internet service, so it will take me a
while to get back to you but I'd be delighted to hear from you. (And,
please note AOL cannot accept the final "s" on "studios"-it has to be
"studio".)
I beg you-just quietly and confidentially keep you fingers crossed. And
your eyes and anything else you can think of (sorry, men!). It's time to
see not just The Boys but Charley, Thelma, and the Gang in high definition.
I now have the strength and-as of yesterday-the medical clearance to do it.
Thanks for over a quarter of a century of your support. It looks as if
we'll be stuck with each other for a while longer.
Sincerely,
Michael Agee
September 4, 2010
Dear Friend:
My name is Michael Agee. As you may know, I have spent all of the years
since 1984 preserving the films of Hal Roach Studios. On October 23rd of
that year, I walked into a meeting to which I had driven my "second father"
Frank Capra between the two of us and the then-Chairman of HRS, Earl Glick,
regarding Capra's desire to Colorize It's A Wonderful Life (don't ever
believe what you hear-he wanted to do it and I still have the signed
contract in my files!). After twenty minutes of my explaining his own
Library to him, Glick asked me to come to work as his assistant. Frank
urged me to do so, and by January of 1985, I had replaced Herb Gelbspan and
was president of the company, creating a new home video division (I had
built the first lab in Hollywood in 1976 after explaining tape cassettes to
the head of Nostalgia Merchant and literally put them in business-the first
non-porn video company in this country) and made sure to include ALL of the
Roach comedies in our releases.
In 1986 I was prevailed upon by the people who ultimately threw HRS into the
1990 bankruptcy (and never accounted to the court for some one hundred
million dollars that simply "disappeared") to create for them masters of the
Laurel and Hardy "Talkies" (essentially all of the films they had not
previously sold to Richard Feiner in 1968) to finally get The Boys back on
television-and in a high-quality version. I blocked an idiotic deal with
King World that would have seen L&H go the same way as had Our Gang thirty
years earlier, then called my friend Paul Spehr, head of the motion picture
division at the Library of Congress and he agreed to make what he told me
was the "biggest shipment in the history of the Archives"-some three million
feet of original nitrate negatives, fine grains, soundtracks-everything that
existed at that time on those titles. I was to have six months to create
these new masters to my standards, the first time ever that L&H would be
televised directly from the original camera negatives. (After I agreed and
ordered the film they said "well, we really need it in four months" which
meant I worked seven days a week, eighteen hours a day, transferring film in
three rooms at once at Fototronics, then editing together the pieces till
dawn at the new facility I had built to service our own Home Video
operation.)
Most of you know the results-I found the "middle reel" of Laughing Gravy
(and was able to ask Hal Roach why it had been cut), found a seven reel
print marked Their First Mistake which turned out to be a different preview
version of Pardon Us from which I created an alternate 70 minute version of
the first L&H feature, located the Spanish versions, and on and on. All of
this stuff I showed to the "Helpmates Tent" of the Sons of the Desert in
late 1986 and was made an honorary member thereof and had attended their
annual conventions every year thereafter till I got seriously ill in
September of 2006 and was unable to travel.
But, in 1992, I had gone to New York to appear on The Joe Franklin Show-TV
and radio-and that night, at 6pm, I met with Richard Feiner and acquired all
of the Roach films he had bought from Herb Gelbspan in 1968, beginning again
an ever more difficult odyssey which really wasn't completed until October
of 2006 (I also met and married Franklin's 18 year old assistant, so that
was some night!). I again worked all night seven days a week for six weeks
in mid-2006 completing the editing on everything I wanted to include on the
boxed set you have purchased. I took the advice of a good friend in the
Sons from Ireland and put all the L&H films in chronological order on the
first five discs, then added seven discs of material I had always wanted to
make available to you and, on the last disc, added to the rare documentaries
I had licensed (or located at the National Archives) a few things I simply
wanted you to see-especially the camera negative of W.C. Fields' classic The
Dentest which is not only amazing quality but is the "pre-code" version,
edited by my mentor William Hornbeck (the man Capra called "the greatest
film editor who ever lived"). I also included one of The Masquers shorts
(Wide Open Faces) which is absolutely hysterical (they were an old
vaudeville showbiz club that donated their time to make all-star shorts,
released by RKO as fund raisers for their various charities). And I wanted
you to see the Edgar Kennedy shorts (because they were made by the entire
production unit and actors S. S. Van Keuren had forced Roach to lay off in
1931 as condition for receiving a large bank loan from Bank of America (and
Van Keuren was forced on Roach from the bank to keep an eye on their money.
He stayed at HRS well into the television era.) I particularly wanted to
show the Kennedy short which Hal Law shot as essentially a re-make of the
one missing L&H film, Hats Off (for the record, there were precisely two
films in 35mm that were complete when I went to retrieve Feiner's
materials!) And included all the original Hats Off stills and script
information for comparison. And I thought Hal Roach Jr. deserved credit
for the really brilliant work he did in the early TV era. If HRS had been
able to absorb the deficit financing the "big studios" would ultimately be
able to support, there would have been no 1963 bankruptcy and, I suspect, no
early death of Hal Roach Jr. So, there's one disc of just TV shows.
All of this was finished in October of 2006. Image was supposed to release
it in early 2007. We had paid Ambient Digital Services almost $60,000 to do
the menus and compression (create the DLT's) and DeLuxe had received over
$36,000 for creating the glass masters and pressers-and twenty test
pressings of each disc which cost $50 each! But some dumb-bum in the Image
legal department didn't realize the entire boxed set was sitting, finished,
in their offices, the test discs had been viewed and sent on to me, and that
the head of their art department had requested we hold the art files until
after Christmas because "everything was piling up on his desk" during the
holidays. After I had suffered an apparent stroke, this moron sent a letter
claiming the set had not been delivered (never bothering to actually ask
anyone about it, just checking her computer to see that the art files were
not actually in house-kept by us as they had requested) so Image cancelled
the release. I was three months into what became almost four years spent
flat on my back, and I simply set aside the boxed set release.
But what you need to understand is that it is all finished-it was finished
in 2006(!!). In fact, I sent two copies of the test pressings of the entire
12 disc set to Russ Babidge and he was to give one set to Rob Lewis at
Helpmates so Rob could review it in his magazine and on his website. This
second set was given instead to Dick Feiner (who had already gotten a copy
from me!). But all these people can tell you-it's done. All the money is
spent, the work completed. These folks have the set, they've seen it. The
pressing for you folks has been delayed due to some changes in the
protective encoding of the discs (the Chinese are stealing everything I have
done because firstly, they don't understand that the Copyright Office
website does not list ANY L&H copyrights or renewals because the online
files were only created beginning in January, 1978, and the very last Roach
L&H film was copyrighted in 1940 and renewed in 1968, so none of the Roach
information is available via internet search. Hell-they even think Gone
With The Wind is public domain for the same reason!) Secondly, the Chinese
don't really give a damn about any U.S. copyright.
This was ready to go just a few weeks ago when I was approached by a third
party and asked to wait briefly in allowing the pressing to proceed. (Now,
this is very confidential information and if ANYONE posts this proprietary
information or copyrighted missive anywhere you could screw up this entire
deal which will only hurt you and the memory of the Roach library.) The
group that has acquired the rights to put out the entire Roach library
approached me about restoring it (they, of course, have NO masters on
anything save the now decayed analogue tapes I made in 1986-you've seen how
awful they now look on TCM). They had planned to do what every damned fool
has done with the Library since early TV days-just put out the L&H films,
maybe the Our Gang comedies-and write off everything else. I am on the
verge of convincing them to put out everything in the sound era in a series
of at least a dozen high-definition blue ray sets. I am slated to travel
back east on September 22 to meet and make a deal to do this through HRS-but
they want me to hold the silent boxed set till we meet and make it part of
our Agreement. Everything you are waiting for is excepted from any
Agreement we reach and will be produced and shipped to you exactly as
promised immediately upon my either agreeing or not agreeing to do the
entire Library. But I am forced to wait until I can get back there and meet
with them. So I had to delay the shipping of your set.
Since everything on the set is finished, according to Ambient Digital
Services, it only takes a week or two for everything to be pressed, shrink
wrapped, and mailed-the hellish delay of compression was accomplished ages
ago (it took two months, by the way. It is almost fifty hours of material!)
So I ask you to do two things so we can finally get ALL of the HRS films
released: PLEASE keep this to yourself. Blabbing about it or posting this
copyrighted information somewhere could destroy this deal and you will NEVER
see Thelma Todd, Charley Chase, or any Boy Friends or All-Star Comedy on
DVD, much less the non-L&H feature films. And, please wait until I can go
back East and reach an agreement to receive your set. I know you have
waited a long time. I have always delivered for you as, according to what
the "Helpmates" members have told me, no one ever has before. I am
literally slowly dying because of my exposure to the nitrate and it's
resulting damage to my spine, which exposure was required for me to do this
work for you (and in 1986, no one knew this could happen to me).
But I have wanted since 1984 to put out everything Hal made, and now I am so
close to being able to do it. I have to travel these days by ground so it
takes longer to get there and back from California-and I have to stop in
Atlanta to meet with Turner Entertainment about getting some of the silent
films on TCM.
We are on the cusp of finally owning all our favorite films on DVD and in
high definition from the original 35mm nitrate (and I have agreed to re-do
all of the L&H films in Hi Def as part of this proposed project), so please
wait just a little longer.
You can contact me directly at [email protected] if you wish. I have a
lousy computer and even crappier internet service, so it will take me a
while to get back to you but I'd be delighted to hear from you. (And,
please note AOL cannot accept the final "s" on "studios"-it has to be
"studio".)
I beg you-just quietly and confidentially keep you fingers crossed. And
your eyes and anything else you can think of (sorry, men!). It's time to
see not just The Boys but Charley, Thelma, and the Gang in high definition.
I now have the strength and-as of yesterday-the medical clearance to do it.
Thanks for over a quarter of a century of your support. It looks as if
we'll be stuck with each other for a while longer.
Sincerely,
Michael Agee
-
Onlineboblipton
- Posts: 13804
- Joined: Fri Jan 18, 2008 8:01 pm
- Location: Clement Clarke Moore's Farm
I write this with a great sense of warmth for the people who do the work in this HOBBY of ours, since it is almost invariably a labor of love: even those who manage to eke out a living in it are never going to get rich, and Kevin Brownlow's Oscar has been awarded so that he can can be trotted out the next time the big boys want another extension on their copyrights, for which they will graciously allow him to make a clean copy of, say, a Clara Bow film at the Eastman House, so long as he limits his showings to the BFI on any February 29th that falls on a Tuesday. So long as he shleps to Rochester and does everything himself. Maybe Louie will help him in his spare time, but that's about it.
There are maybe 50,000 people in the world who want to see these things, and maybe one in ten will pay for the privilege, which will give them the right to grouse endlessly about something -- that there weren't fifteen music tracks, or there is a smudge on a frame or that sixteen cents is too much to pay for the disk or the popcorn is lousy or the speed is wrong or something. They'll be miserable, never fear.
Mr. Agee's letter strikes me as the sort of thing I've seen several times, the insane belief that someone, somewhere, has something that's immensely valuable, like that poor, battered print of the 1910 FRANKENSTEIN with what's-his-name's logo plastered over it. Or the story Serge Bromberg told about the woman who seemed to want about half a million Euros for her print of Melies' VOYAGE DANS LA LUNE. Serge has dozens of stories about disappearing prints.
Folks, if you've got it, maybe you'll make a few bucks out of it, but you're not going to get rich. Cut the c**p, cut the disks and sell a couple of thousand of the Roach masters. Because the rest of it is bs.
Bob
There are maybe 50,000 people in the world who want to see these things, and maybe one in ten will pay for the privilege, which will give them the right to grouse endlessly about something -- that there weren't fifteen music tracks, or there is a smudge on a frame or that sixteen cents is too much to pay for the disk or the popcorn is lousy or the speed is wrong or something. They'll be miserable, never fear.
Mr. Agee's letter strikes me as the sort of thing I've seen several times, the insane belief that someone, somewhere, has something that's immensely valuable, like that poor, battered print of the 1910 FRANKENSTEIN with what's-his-name's logo plastered over it. Or the story Serge Bromberg told about the woman who seemed to want about half a million Euros for her print of Melies' VOYAGE DANS LA LUNE. Serge has dozens of stories about disappearing prints.
Folks, if you've got it, maybe you'll make a few bucks out of it, but you're not going to get rich. Cut the c**p, cut the disks and sell a couple of thousand of the Roach masters. Because the rest of it is bs.
Bob
The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there.
— L.P. Hartley
— L.P. Hartley
-
radiotelefonia
- Posts: 4097
- Joined: Thu Feb 14, 2008 11:00 pm
That letter is a typical display of stupidity. What confidentiality, this is not about test for a cure for breast cancer. The business is DYING for these people and it is about time that they recognize it.boblipton wrote:I write this with a great sense of warmth for the people who do the work in this HOBBY of ours, since it is almost invariably a labor of love: even those who manage to eke out a living in it are never going to get rich, and Kevin Brownlow's Oscar has been awarded so that he can can be trotted out the next time the big boys want another extension on their copyrights, for which they will graciously allow him to make a clean copy of, say, a Clara Bow film at the Eastman House, so long as he limits his showings to the BFI on any February 29th that falls on a Tuesday. So long as he shleps to Rochester and does everything himself. Maybe Louie will help him in his spare time, but that's about it.
There are maybe 50,000 people in the world who want to see these things, and maybe one in ten will pay for the privilege, which will give them the right to grouse endlessly about something -- that there weren't fifteen music tracks, or there is a smudge on a frame or that sixteen cents is too much to pay for the disk or the popcorn is lousy or the speed is wrong or something. They'll be miserable, never fear.
Mr. Agee's letter strikes me as the sort of thing I've seen several times, the insane belief that someone, somewhere, has something that's immensely valuable, like that poor, battered print of the 1910 FRANKENSTEIN with what's-his-name's logo plastered over it. Or the story Serge Bromberg told about the woman who seemed to want about half a million Euros for her print of Melies' VOYAGE DANS LA LUNE. Serge has dozens of stories about disappearing prints.
Folks, if you've got it, maybe you'll make a few bucks out of it, but you're not going to get rich. Cut the c**p, cut the disks and sell a couple of thousand of the Roach masters. Because the rest of it is bs.
Bob