William Friedkin's Sorcerer? (1 Viewer)

[Worth]

A bit of interesting news today regarding this title:
http://www.deadline.com/2012/04/william-friedkin-takes-paramount-universal-to-court-over-%E2%80%98sorcerer%E2%80%99/

Who owns the rights to Sorcerer and how much money has the 1977 thriller made? That’s what William Friedkin has asked the court to find out for him...The Oscar-winner claims that Paramount and Universal are not allowing him domestic rights to Sorcerer nor a full accounting of how much the movie has really made. Friedkin directed and produced Sorcerer and contends he has profit participation in the movie. The suit...says both studios have “recently disclaimed rights to exploit the Picture in the United States, and admitted ignorance as to who, if anyone, currently has such rights.” The suit goes on to add, “Bafflingly, however, defendants persist in denying that Friedkin has any rights to exploit the Picture.”
It was not a big draw in theaters, grossing just over half its $22 million budget...Friedkin believes he has the rights to the movie and to show the print he has, and is asking the court for a three-day hearing on the money matters and to “issue a declaration as to who has the right to exploit Sorcerer in the United States and abroad”.

 

[Charles Smith]

Incredible. Just...incredible.

 

[Matt Hough]

Originally Posted by Chas in CT /t/250341/william-friedkins-sorcerer#post_3916128
Incredible. Just...incredible.

You said it! I cannot believe and do not understand this most cavalier attitude that these studios have about their own possession.

 

[JoHud]

Strange indeed. Looks like any future home video release of this is on hold until this is all sorted out. A shame since the DVD was hardly satisfactory.

 

[bgart13]

Might have better luck from an overseas edition, it seems. Unless these two companies own it (or don't own it...) worldwide?

 

[JoHud]

Might be old news, but there was an interview with William Friedkin at the A.V. Club a month ago that went into greater detail on the lawsuit and other Sorcerer relate news.

AVC: On a different subject, what’s happening with Sorcerer? Last we heard, you were suing Paramount and Universal for not allowing you to screen the film, even as they admit they don’t know if they own the rights to the film or not.
WF: Oh, Sorcerer is now in the Ninth District Court Of Appeals in California. The judge who’s caught the case has ordered a settlement conference to be completed by November 26. And if there’s no settlement, then he has set a trial date for March of 2013. So we’re trying to settle it. And to me, settlement only involves getting the film out on DVD and Blu-ray and loaning it to all the film societies and universities that want to run it. I’m not looking for money from this, and I’ve said that publicly, as I’m saying it to you. If I say it to you, it’ll go public, right?
AVC: Sure.
WF: You don’t just write this thing for yourself and your friends, do you?
AVC: No, I promise.
WF: So it’ll go public, then. Publicly you can say my attitude is, “Fuck those bastards!” I’m suing the bastards, and I hope they read this. I’m trying to, among other things, strike a blow for other films that find themselves in this situation. I happen to have the money, and I don’t give a fuck about them, so that’s why I’m doing it. If I respected them, I wouldn’t do this. I reached out to the head of Universal, and he said, “I’ll get right back to you.” A week later he kicked me off to some guy who’s the head of home video. He said, “What?! I don’t believe this! I’ll look into this right away!” and I’ve never heard back from him. So I had no choice but to sue them. I could lose. They haven’t settled yet. There’s always something that the guilty can hang their hat on in a lawsuit. They’ve got high-priced lawyers, I’m sure, looking for some little hook where they can get away with this and destroy the afterlife of a film I made more than 40 years ago.
AVC: You’ve made films that were successful and films that weren’t, but it seems like the failure of Sorcerer is particularly painful for you.
WF: All of my films are not successful. I don’t have the same affection for all of them. Sorcerer has been a noose around my neck since 1977, but I can’t let it die that way. The films that you make are very much like your children or someone you feel very close to. Not necessarily a relative. You would do everything you could to save them. And that’s what I’m doing. It’s all in God’s hands, and I know that. Believe me, when I heard that both studios were claiming that they didn’t own the film and they didn’t know who did, my first reaction was, “Oh, the hell with it. Let me just let it die.” And then something else kicked in, you know, where I can’t do that. So I have no idea how it’s going to wind up, but if it does wind up that either I can get them to put it out or somebody else, it’ll be out there for whoever wants to see it. That’s all.
AVC: It’s always been true, but it seems especially so now that a film is forgotten if it’s not in circulation on DVD, let alone available in a nice new 35mm print.
WF: There are no 35 prints. A 35 print has a shelf-life of about two years before it starts to fade and die. You take The Godfather, Paramount’s crown jewel. A couple of years ago they went to make a Blu-ray of it, they went into their vaults to get the negative, and it had all faded. In their own vaults! Because that’s the shelf life of a 35. I had a print of Sorcerer. We put it up on reels, projected it, and it was all red! But Paramount had made a brand-new print of Sorcerer a year ago for the American Cinematheque. Or “Cinema-drek,” I’m not sure of the pronunciation. They ran it there; it was a full house, and lines around the block. I was there; the print was beautiful; I did a Q&A. Now they say they don’t own the film and they don’t know who does. And I know what’s going on. I know what’s behind it.
AVC: Which is what, in your opinion?
WF: They’re trying to get rid of all 35s, by hook or crook. They don’t even want to have a bookkeeper up there logging this stuff in and out. What both studios did when they made it, they put it into ownership by an offshore company. It was a company called CIC, Cinema International Corporation, which was only licensed to release films overseas, not in the U.S. That company is out of business. They folded it and they now each have their own distribution, Paramount and Universal. That was like a tax-dodge thing, CIC. And now that’s gone, and I think they have a bookkeeping problem about admitting where the hell it is. A lot of films got caught up in this. A friend of mine at Lincoln Center tried to get Blade Runner and was told they didn’t own it and they didn’t know who did! It was weird, because I happen to know the guy who owns it. He’s a close personal friend. He’s a guy named Bud Yorkin, who with Jerry Perenchio put up the completion bond for Blade Runner. When the film was made and went $8 million over [budget], they had to come up with $8 million in return for which they owned all the ancillary rights: T-shirts, toys, whatever, video. They own the sequel and remake rights, so they’re developing a prequel to Blade Runner. But the studio won’t tell you that Bud Yorkin owns Blade Runner and they don’t.

 

[Harry-N]

No-one owns it, but there's still a 1.33:1 DVD out there with Universal's name, logo, and 1998 copyright all over it, and still available new. If they don't own it, why don't they withdraw it from the market?

http://www.amazon.com/Sorcerer-Roy-Scheider/dp/078322947X/ref=sr_1_1?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1346846810&sr=1-1&keywords=sorcerer


Harry

 

[Richard--W]

I hope these problems can be sorted out so that we can all see SORCERER in HD quality. It's a flawed film, but an interesting and very appealing film. The journey through the jungle was too short, too easy. There needed to be more there in there. Yet what's there is very compelling indeed. The cameraman should have got his name on the poster. Not every cameraman can capture the kind of thickness to the light and atmosphere that this cameraman caught. I don't know how he got that quality in the light. I think I'll watch the DVD tonight.

 

[Ruz-El]

I finally saw this over the weekend. I didn't love the film, but the presentation of a copy of a copy of the LD didn't help. Hope we get a bluray out of it. As Richard said above, this film deserves better since the cinematography and textures are better characters than the actual characters in the film.

 

[Harry-N]

Originally Posted by Russell G /t/250341/william-friedkins-sorcerer#post_3970896
I finally saw this over the weekend. I didn't love the film, but the presentation of a copy of a copy of the LD didn't help. Hope we get a bluray out of it. As Richard said above, this film deserves better since the cinematography and textures are better characters than the actual characters in the film.

I'm a little confused.

This comment here - and other comments I've read on the Internet - seems to indicate that some earlier widescreen transfer of SORCERER exists on LaserDisc. Is this true?

I owned a LaserDisc of the movie and even posted about it above in this post. In that post, I noted that the alleged 1.66:1 transfer noted on the LD package looked identical to me to the DVD release. I no longer own the LD, but recall that it never had any kind of widescreen or letterbox nature to it, just a4:3 image.

Were there perhaps two different releases on LD, or perhaps a side-by-side release of one in fullscreen and one in letterbox?

Harry
...curious, online...

 

[Ruz-El]

Originally Posted by Harry-N /t/250341/william-friedkins-sorcerer#post_3977696

I'm a little confused.

This comment here - and other comments I've read on the Internet - seems to indicate that some earlier widescreen transfer of SORCERER exists on LaserDisc. Is this true?

I owned a LaserDisc of the movie and even posted about it above in this post. In that post, I noted that the alleged 1.66:1 transfer noted on the LD package looked identical to me to the DVD release. I no longer own the LD, but recall that it never had any kind of widescreen or letterbox nature to it, just a4:3 image.

Were there perhaps two different releases on LD, or perhaps a side-by-side release of one in fullscreen and one in letterbox?

Harry
...curious, online...

The copy I talked about was either pan & scan or full frame unmatted. I don't know how it was shot, but it was certainly fullscreen, 4:3. I presumed it was from the LD, maybe it was a from the DVD. Or a vhs. I don't know. It looked pretty shit.

 

[Worth]

Sorcerer has only ever been available in 4:3 on home video - the same transfer was used as the basis for all VHS, laserdisc and DVD releases. The back of the laserdisc sleeve states:
The film on this laserdisc was transferred from the 1.66:1 original camera negative. Director William Friedkin supervised all aspects of the audio and video element transfers.
I think the wording of this is a bit clumsy and has led some to the mistaken belief that the disc featured a widescreen presentation - but it actually means that a cropped 4:3 transfer was made from the original 1.66 (presumably hard-matted) negative.

 

[Harry-N]

Thanks for the info. As I said, I read that same legend on the old LaserDisc that I no longer have and posted it above. Still it is a bit confusing.

My other source of confusion was the above post that stated that he watched a copy of a copy of a Laserdisc, and my mind then interpolated that as, "Why watch a copy of a copy of a Laserdisc unless there is something special about it?"

Then I read this review on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/review/R1R6CFOCX88VRU/ref=cm_cr_pr_perm?ie=UTF8&ASIN=078322947X&linkCode=&nodeID=&tag=



Quote:

By

clicclic

[COLOR= rgb(228, 121, 17)]This review is from: [/COLOR]Sorcerer (DVD)
The Laserdisc of this movie is in its original widescreen glory. I highly recommend you find a buddy who is dumb enough (like me) to keep buying laserdiscs...

I dreaded hearing that one of my all-time top 5 favorite films (The Wages of Fear) was remade in the seventies. But I was mistaken. Friedkin 'modernized' the concept - bringing the plot into the gritty, ugly seventies. The climax truck scene is just as good as the original and possibly even more tense.

If you like nail-biting, almost documentary-type cinema check out this sleeper.



Bold is mine and underscores why I thought there was something magical about a LaserDisc I wasn't aware of.

Again, thanks for confirming that the existing transfer is in fact the ONLY transfer.

Harry

 

[Ruz-El]

Originally Posted by Harry-N /t/250341/william-friedkins-sorcerer/30#post_3977833


My other source of confusion was the above post that stated that he watched a copy of a copy of a Laserdisc, and my mind then interpolated that as, "Why watch a copy of a copy of a Laserdisc unless there is something special about it?"
Harry

Because a friend brought over a DVD copy that he ripped from a friends VHS copy of another friends which we think was the LD version and all of us are too cheap to pay retail on a full screen version.

 

[Harry-N]

Originally Posted by Russell G /t/250341/william-friedkins-sorcerer/30#post_3977845
Because a friend brought over a DVD copy that he ripped from a friends VHS copy of another friends which we think was the LD version and all of us are too cheap to pay retail on a full screen version.

Well that certainly makes sense, but you can understand why I was led down a path to wondering about it.

I determined that for my purposes, since I love the movie, having the less-than-desirable DVD was, in fact, desirable. It looks a little better than the old LaserDisc did, certainly on my 55" HDTV.

Harry

 

[Ruz-El]

Originally Posted by Harry-N /t/250341/william-friedkins-sorcerer/30#post_3977926
Well that certainly makes sense, but you can understand why I was led down a path to wondering about it.
Harry

Not really since at no time did I mention the aspect ratio of the copy I watched, but as long as it's all sorted... Hooray!

 

[Harry-N]

Originally Posted by Russell G /t/250341/william-friedkins-sorcerer/30#post_3978327
Not really since at no time did I mention the aspect ratio of the copy I watched, but as long as it's all sorted... Hooray!

It was a combination of your post plus the erroneous info on the web that had me wondering. It's all a moot point anyway as the LaserDisc I had and got rid of didn't have anything other than a 4:3 image, matching the DVD.

Let's all hope for something better in the future.

Harry

 

[John Geelan]

Wish this would be released in 4K!