Robert Harris on The Bits: Resurrecting and Restoring the Alamo! - Page 7

I understand the love of The Alamo by everyone but it all boils down to one thing like Robert said, The Alamo is owned by a private corporation, MGM/UA. Without their approval, funding and over-all blessing you won't ever see anything done with this film. I don't care how much people snort over a weekend or drink in a year, if MGM doesn't feel it's worth the time and money it won't get done. You have to remember that there are a ton of films they have done over the years that have just as much value and probably a higher priority than The Alamo. MGM filed for Chapter 11 last November and now Spyglass Entertainment is set to take control of 5% of the company. That may not seem like much but it's another hand in the cookie jar and another vote when it comes to things likes this.

If you combine the list of MGM & UA films they number close to 3000 in the last 100 years. The Alamo is just one film in that large list. Plus I see they have another 12 films currently on their list of future films. A bit off-topic but I had to laugh when I saw they were going to do a sequel to an old stinker of a film. The Return Of The Killer Klowns From Outer Space is due out in 2012. Plus like Robert said Bond #23 is due out next year.

If they had a nice clean crisp copy to work with they might consider it in a New York minute but it won't be a simple restoration. IMO, using a laser disc is not an option. I have several copies of The Alamo on laser disc. I took one out a couple years ago to play and it had rotted in a sealed case. I have to say, although not perfect, my transfer of the VHS version to DVD-R has been a success for me. I constantly enjoy watching the film as I do all Duke's films. Quite frankly I rather see a Blu-ray copy of The Quiet Man and the cavalry trilogy before The Alamo.

Yes, there are a few nice things in the auction from The Alamo. Especially Duke's script from the film that has his personal notes and changes written on the pages. Plus a few other items. It should be a great auction.

It seems ironic, and unfortunate, that the extensions of time granted in the law to benefit individual and corporate owners of copyrighted materials may result in the lost footage of The Alamo withering on the vine, so to speak.

The policy reasons for extending the time for copyright protection presume that owners will preserve these assets rather than stand idly by while such works are lost and destroyed by the ravages of time.

 

 

I would tend to think that a film becoming public domain quicker would stifle any reason to preserve an asset.  If Warner did not have control over their titles from the 30's, would we have had a Blu-ray of The Wizard Of Oz or Gone With The Wind or would we have the Archive Collection. 

 

The Alamo's problem all along has been the economic conditions of it's owner.  The same goes for Hawaii and It's A Mad Mad Mad Mad World.  MGM does not have the funds to do any major restoration work on their films. 

 

Edit: Timothy, I think I may have misunderstood your post - Sorry. 

Edited by ahollis - 9/11/11 at 7:32pm

Comparison of different edits with screen captures:

http://movie-censorship.com/report.php?ID=3869

Off topic again but I hardly think KILLER KLOWNS FROM OUTER SPACE is a "stinker". It's a very clever and amusing film made by a group of guys who obviously loved what they were doing and that's evident in every frame of that little gem.

Vincent

Y U NO restore film that is good/good.

After an absence of nearly a year, I can only conclude that todays bizarre posts mean that:

(a) Gordon has taken up trolling. As a hobby.

(b) His account has been hacked by someone who not only has a narrower taste in films than the account holder, but who is also less tolerent and more familiar with textspeak than is good for them.

(c) Where is Gordon McMurphy and what have you done with him?
Edited by John Hodson - 9/14/11 at 3:35am

Dear Mr. Harris,
My family and I are huge fans of The Alamo and especially of John Wayne's 1960 "The Alamo". I have heard and read that you are planning on restoring the 1960 Alamo movie and make a Blu-Ray release. I wanted to let you know that my family and I are behind you 100% ! Also, I was wondering if you could tell me how far along this project has come ? Thank-you for taking the time to read my question.

Project is dead in the water at the moment.  The new regime at MGM seems to have little interest in allowing their library to survive.

 

RAH

Watching and hoping for new developments on the restoration of this movie. But with Robert Harris informing us that the project has stopped at the first hurdle my hopes were fading. However maybe there is a saviour out there who may help fund the restoration of the movie. The saviour could be Phil Collins of the former pop group genesis. I was listening to a BBC radio programme about him and his collection of anything to do with the battle of the Alamo. It was called Phil Collins: King of the wild frontier. He may fund the restoration if he was informed that the full version of John Wayne's version was at risk of disappearing from the face of the earth!!!!

I do believe the producer of the radio programme was trying to contact Robert Harries about the movie using this website forum.

Hooray for Phil Collins!  If this does come true, then all is forgiven for inflicting Sussudio on the listening public.

I odnt mind Sussudio, It's in the air tonight that i cant stand.

Anyway this is a stretch but would be great if it happened.

On pins and needs. Needles and pins.
All I can say is, I hope it's true.
Would MGM / the Wayne family accept Phil Collins' non-corporate money?

Thanks to the very generous Chas in CT, I've been watching the long version of The Alamo.
Every frame of the film and every second of the exposition is essential.
It will be a tragedy as epic as The Alamo itself if it is not saved and restored.

Reading the original post carefully, I think the original poster was engaging in wishful thinking about Phil Collins. I think what he was saying was that Collins MIGHT be interested in funding the restoration IF he knew. Actually, I think a lot of people might be interested in funding the restoration if they knew. (If anyone knows anyone at the NYT or 60 Minutes?). I have been following Mr. Harris's posts from the beginning. Originally, he was going to accept multiple donations of small amounts from individual donors. Then, I believe that he announced that someone had been found to fund the entire project. Sometime later, I asked in this thread what the status was and he replied that nothing was being done and that the management at MGM had decided that they did not want indidual donations, but they wanted funding from a foundation or something, but that no foundations had expressed any interest. Very depressing.

I don't know much about the technical details of these things, but if it would work, I don't see why they don't just fund "safety" copies of the existing elements. That would at least allow potential restoration at some point in the future.

Here's an idea. Why not use Kickstarter and let the fans fund the project? That's how Sam Nelson (grandson) is funding the restoration of The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet.

What actually occurred is that with MGM's support, and a contribution from them to kick things off, a journalist who shall go unnamed, questioned the motives of what we were doing, published a column about it, and basically killed the project, at which time, monies that had come in were returned.  MGM had a concern, with which I cannot argue, that they might be made to appear in a negative light for not saving their own film.

 

Reality was, that MGM had done everything that they could to be of help and move things forward.

 

Whether the project can be jump-started again is in question, as MGM has gone silent about restoring the film.

 

RAH

A journalist killed The Alamo project? I'm speechless.

Here it is, from the Talk with the Insiders Forum

post #1 of 2 9/23/11 Thread Starter Crockett Patrick Humphries

offlineJoined: September 2011
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Dear Mr Harris, I am currently preparing a BBC Radio 4 documentary on The Alamo and would very much appreciate an opportunity to talk about the possible restoration of the 1960 John Wayne film.

Don't know if this is the same guy who interviewed Phil Collins.

We did communicate.  I gave him whatever information he needed.  Nice chap.

 

RAH

 

Hmmm.. . "MGM had a concern ... that they might be made to appear in a negative light for not saving their own film." I think that concern has been amply demonstrated.

It makes me think we should revise Shakespeare's dictum about lawyers to apply to "journalists."

Mr. Harris, if you have a deteriorating old film is it possible to transfer what you have to some kind of safety stock without losing anything? How much of a restoration budget does that take?

Here's a variety article about the background of the Alamo restoration project: http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117869245?refcatid=1236&printerfriendly=true.

Here's a critical sounding blog post by (I think) the well known Ford scholar: http://www.palmbeachpost.com/blogs/content/shared-blogs/palmbeach/culture/entries/2009/04/08/a_restoration_of_the_alamo_pai.html. He makes the point that Fox funded the restoration of The Robe themselves and suggests that MGM should do the same. Given the changes that have occurred at Fox since The Robe's restoration, I wonder if they would go to a similar expense again (I think I read that the Robe cost them a few million)? Moreover, I don't think that The Robe was in as bad shape as The Alamo. In addition, there's a world of difference between a major studio like Fox that is owned by a major media empire and a financially struggling smaller studio like MGM. It goes to show you that knowledge of film history is not the best base from which to make financial judgments.

Further to my first post my aim was to highlight that there could be other possibilities of funding for the restoration of the film. A possible source of funding may come from Phil Collins, who has largest private collection of memorabilia of the battle of the Alamo in the world if he was made aware that the extend version was deteriorating.

The BBC radio programme was about Phil Collins collection and his interest of the battle. He talks about being brought up on Fess Parker's Davy Crocket and then John Wayne's Alamo. Here is a link to its contents http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01b8w65. Sorry there was no mention in the programme on the restoration of the movie

Sad to hear about all this. My grandfather was a cameraman on this film so it's got a special place in my heart. Guess it's time to pull out the old LD box set and give that a whirl. Hopefully the folks at MGM will come around.

-Bob-

After reading Mr. Harris' posts that this project is, sadly, on hold, I ordered the DVD version from Amazon.
It's scheduled for delivery today, Thursday.
A favorite of mine; saw it when it first released in theaters.
No sense waiting for a restored version on Blu Ray that may never happen.

I followed the second link I posted but failed to get the blog post to which I thought I was linking. Here it is:

A restoration of “The Alamo” …paid for by you and me?
By Scott Eyman | Wednesday, April 8, 2009, 02:54 PM

The news that the archivist Robert Harris, whose restorations have ranged from the superb (“Lawrence of Arabia”) to the dubious (“Vertigo”) is soliciting public funds to restore John Wayne’s “The Alamo” is, as Arte Johnson would say, “verrrrrry interesting.”

Now, I don’t have any quarrel with Harris’ taste; “The Alamo” doesn’t have a good script, but when the Mexicans finally start coming over the walls, Wayne pulls together a great action sequence, as good in its way as the chariot race in “Ben-Hur,” and the chariot race is the only thing anybody ever remembers about “Ben-Hur” - or needs to.

Beneath the inflammatory rhetoric about it’s-now-or-never, the film-is-deteriorating-as-we-speak, what this really means is that MGM, who owns the film - John Wayne sold it off in the late ’60s, I believe - doesn’t think they could sell enough DVD’s to justify the expense of the restoration. They’ll ante up some, but not nearly enough.

Follow the money a little further: MGM will reap the rewards, of course, but all the contributors get for their money is a tax deduction.

Well.

Either the DVD market is much, much worse than we’ve been led to believe - a 10-15% decline is the figure usually quoted - or the appeal of John Wayne, the primary male movie star for several generations - has fallen a lot more than I think it has. (Paramount anted up serious dollars a few years ago for the film library of Batjac, Wayne’s production company.)

By way of comparison, I don’t see Fox asking the public to pay to restore “The Robe,” and “The Alamo” is a lot more commercial than “The Robe.”

Besides an amazing corporate hustle, what’s going on here?

I'm listening to the score by Dimitri Tiomkin for The Alamo right now on Cinemagic. Fun and majestic music!

I have it on CD - it's a score to rouse the blood; fabulous stuff.

If the estimable Mr Harris ever gets to restore this film (and I hope he does) there is one particular line of dialogue that I hope is beyond rescue and if it isn't, then I hope Mr Harris just cuts it out. It's near the end when John Wayne's real-life daughter says, "Where's daddy mommy?" And that, I think, is the squirmiest, cringiest, toe-curlingest line in movie history, destroying an otherwise marvellous scene. It's up there with the line, "Truly this man was the Son of Gard" from another epic opus.
Edited by AdrianTurner - 2/24/12 at 12:17am