Any Updates On the Ultimate Early Laurel and Hardy Boxset? (1 Viewer)

[Bob Furmanek]

Somebody needs to learn how to spell definitive.

 

[Steve...O]

Originally Posted by Bob Furmanek
Somebody needs to learn how to spell definitive.

Yup. This "release" has all kinds of red flags. I have no doubt that it is from Mr. Agee as it jives with some other information I had heard about this. My main concerns:

1. No way I'm handing over $120+ via Paypal for a product that's not even produced yet. From what I understand, there's a minimum number of orders that have to be filed to make this happen. Using an obscure website with a URL that in no way represents the product ain't gonna attract a lot of buyers.

2. The Image logo is on the back. It would appear that Image has NOTHING to do with this release. I can smell a lawsuit or a cease & desist order coming.

3. Are these definitely DVDs? There were reports at one time that Mr. Agee was considering DVD-R to hold costs down.

4. The original Image DVDs used extremely low bit rates. The contents on this set suggest a lot of material is being put on a single disc. There has to be a quality issue here.

5. These must really be the "lost" films since Disc 3 lists "Hats Off" as one of the featured shorts. (most likely a stills gallery)

I hold no grudge against Mr. Agee. He seems like a quite a guy who has put a lot of time and effort into preserving the L&H legacy. I just question his business sense in going this route. Surely he could strike a distribution deal with a major name label with access to good authoring houses and a solid marketing team. I know that doing so will divert profits from him to the organization but its not like he's going to be making mega millions selling a couple hundred sets over the internet.

It's amazing how inept the rights holders of the L&H catalog (silent and sound) have been over the years at getting high quality product to the market over the years. Universal (Abbott and Costello) and Sony (3 Stooges) have shown that classic comedy can do very well in the 21st century. Why should L&H be any different.

If Warners has $8 billion or so excess cash laying around (reference the story about their potential purchase of MGM), purchasing the Hal Roach catalog should only take a fraction of this and will pay itself back in sales and goodwill.

 

[Paul Penna]

Originally Posted by Brandon Conway
Sure looks like it

Note that the cover art above seems to be of the originally-planned but cancelled Image release; see the 2007 copyright date.

 

[Brandon Conway]

Originally Posted by Steve...O
Yup. This "release" has all kinds of red flags. I have no doubt that it is from Mr. Agee as it jives with some other information I had heard about this. My main concerns:

1. No way I'm handing over $120+ via Paypal for a product that's not even produced yet. From what I understand, there's a minimum number of orders that have to be filed to make this happen. Using an obscure website with a URL that in no way represents the product ain't gonna attract a lot of buyers.

2. The Image logo is on the back. It would appear that Image has NOTHING to do with this release. I can smell a lawsuit or a cease & desist order coming.

3. Are these definitely DVDs? There were reports at one time that Mr. Agee was considering DVD-R to hold costs down.

4. The original Image DVDs used extremely low bit rates. The contents on this set suggest a lot of material is being put on a single disc. There has to be a quality issue here.

5. These must really be the "lost" films since Disc 3 lists "Hats Off" as one of the featured shorts. (most likely a stills gallery)

I hold no grudge against Mr. Agee. He seems like a quite a guy who has put a lot of time and effort into preserving the L&H legacy. I just question his business sense in going this route. Surely he could strike a distribution deal with a major name label with access to good authoring houses and a solid marketing team. I know that doing so will divert profits from him to the organization but its not like he's going to be making mega millions selling a couple hundred sets over the internet.

It's amazing how inept the rights holders of the L&H catalog (silent and sound) have been over the years at getting high quality product to the market over the years. Universal (Abbott and Costello) and Sony (3 Stooges) have shown that classic comedy can do very well in the 21st century. Why should L&H be any different.

If Warners has $8 billion or so excess cash laying around (reference the story about their potential purchase of MGM), purchasing the Hal Roach catalog should only take a fraction of this and will pay itself back in sales and goodwill.

1. It's a 12 disc set, which is pretty good for $120 (pre-tax and pre-S&H). Of course, you can just wait until they're on amazon.com if you are not confident in the direct sale. As I read it there is *up to* 400 of the sets that would go to amazon.com that are being offered at wholesale to buyers directly. If they don't get sold they simply go to amazon.com instead.

2. If they're not the final distributor then I doubt their logo will be on the actual box.

3. He states they are "pressed discs": "In two weeks, the lab will begin pressing four thousand copies of the boxed set."

4. It looks to be~4hrs of content per disc, which is within the guidelines of a Dual layer DVD. It may be stretched a bit thin, but so be it, IMO. It's not like these are coming in a better release anytime soon.

5. Probably is just stills for that one.

As for Mr. Agee getting a better distribution deal - who knows other than him what he's tried. After reading through his troubles the last few years, I don't blame him for getting them out in this manner.

Personally speaking, I'll be the forum's guinea pig. I'm just waiting for the $$$ to get to my paypal account.

 

[Brandon Conway]

Originally Posted by Paul Penna
Note that the cover art above seems to be of the originally-planned but cancelled Image release; see the 2007 copyright date.

True, but the content should be the same as was planned then.

 

[Steve...O]

If Image is not the final distributor why would an outdated image be used for promotional purposes as opposed to using the one that will actually be used? Just another thing that makes this effort look less than professional.

 

[ahollis]

Is this April 1st?

 

[Brandon Conway]

Originally Posted by Steve...O
If Image is not the final distributor why would an outdated image be used for promotional purposes as opposed to using the one that will actually be used? Just another thing that makes this effort look less than professional.

Because he didn't update the art work on the website. I've seen major gaffes on art work in formal press releases from major studios many times. I understand some of the hesitation, but Mr. Agee has been known to be working on this release for a LOOOONG time now. It's not as if he'd suddenly be out to con people.

 

[DeWilson]

Originally Posted by Steve...O
5. These must really be the "lost" films since Disc 3 lists "Hats Off" as one of the featured shorts. (most likely a stills gallery)

Quiet a few still exist for this lost film!

 

[DeWilson]

Only thing I don't like about the box is all the non L&H extras.

 

[ahollis]

Originally Posted by DeWilson
Only thing I don't like about the box is all the non L&H extras.

This looks to me just a packaging of all the Lost Laurel & Hardy & Friends from the lasers and the few DVD's that were released. Were they not also released through Image? If this happens, it will be a buy for me, but not through PayPal.

 

[Jon Martin]

Originally Posted by Steve...O
It's amazing how inept the rights holders of the L&H catalog (silent and sound) have been over the years at getting high quality product to the market over the years. Universal (Abbott and Costello) and Sony (3 Stooges) have shown that classic comedy can do very well in the 21st century. Why should L&H be any different.

If Warners has $8 billion or so excess cash laying around (reference the story about their potential purchase of MGM), purchasing the Hal Roach catalog should only take a fraction of this and will pay itself back in sales and goodwill.

Although it seems to be only in this country that the rights holders have done very little. Universal's set in the UK was very nice, if maybe not perfect.

If Warner had the catalog, they would indeed do a nice job with it. That way, they could have all the Little Rascals together as well.

Warner did release one L&H set that had some very good extras. Imagine what they would do with the entire series.

 

[GeorgeJA]

Originally Posted by DeWilson
Only thing I don't like about the box is all the non L&H extras.

Quite a few people think the box should be slimmed down to just the L&H material, and maybe have separate releases for the rest, but Michael Agee seems adamant to sell this as one big set.

Brandon, thanks for being the guinea pig. I have to admit that I'm reluctant to pull the trigger on this set for some of the reasons Steve mentioned. But if the reviews are positive, then I'm in.

 

[Steve...O]

For the record and to be clear...I have no doubts that Mr. Agee is an honorable man.

However is business acumen would seem to leave something to be desired. Maybe it's just his ego that is forcing the "my way or the highway" approach to this set. Everything about this release just seems "not quite right". From poor marketing to a questionable sales mechanism this just smacks of an amatuerish effort at best and frankly makes this look like one of the many bootleg operations on the net.

This is saddening as I would love nothing more than a high quality release of the silent L&H films to be released successfuly. Jon Martin is correct; if WHV controlled the R1 home video rights to the Roach library we would all be much better off.

 

[Gary OS]

Gotta agree with Steve on this one. I'd love to have a nice set of the silent L&H movies as well. But this set looks a little too Mickey Mouse for me.

Gary "and like Steve, I too imagine Mr. Agee is a sincere and nice guy - but this setup just doesn't look professional at all" O.

 

[Brandon Conway]

Brandon, thanks for being the guinea pig. I have to admit that I'm reluctant to pull the trigger on this set for some of the reasons Steve mentioned. But if the reviews are positive, then I'm in.

Order is in. I'll be sure to share my thoughts when it arrives and I look it over.

 

[Mark Zimmer]

He should hire a proofreader: "Definative"? Good lord.

 

[Brandon Conway]

Originally Posted by Mark Zimmer
He should hire a proofreader: "Definative"? Good lord.

As said before, that art work is over three years old, and was always temporary. I'll be sure to let everyone know what the actual packaging looks like. Ultimately, a one letter misspelling will mean nothing as long as the content is presented well.

 

[Mark Y]

Originally Posted by Brandon Conway
As said before, that art work is over three years old, and was always temporary. I'll be sure to let everyone know what the actual packaging looks like. Ultimately, a one letter misspelling will mean nothing as long as the content is presented well.

(1) A shout-out to anyone who has ordered this -- did you receive it? (I am guessing if so, someone would have chimed in and reported back by now.) I did a cursory search at Amazon and did not see anything on the new box set. I would have pre-ordered it, but so many times there have been announcements that this release was imminent, and then nothing...

(2) Any word on the U.S. RHI Laurel & Hardy talkies collection that was rumored not long ago? Last thing I saw was that it had been scheduled for this fall (!) but has been delayed due to unspecified issues. I really do hope this sees the light of day. Just recently I went back and watched a good chunk of the Genius/RHI Little Rascals box. Yes, the set does leave something do be desired, but I believe their hearts were in the right place in putting that together. There was some effort to make it into something decent for fans/collectors -- they did new extras, with new interviews with a few surviving Rascals (regrettably and inevitably with the passage of the years, there are fewer and fewer of these people available to be interviewed). And all 80 talkies were included, none withheld for reasons of political correctness issues, etc.

Where they fell down was not soliciting the input of someone very familiar with the product (a champion in the sense that Jerry Beck is a champion for classic animation), who would have known right away that the Blackhawk prints weren't the originals (and directed them where to find the right ones), might have caught the edits in a couple of the shorts, would have been able to tell them they had the wrong kid's name under a picture in the book, etc. It would have been nice (though not a deal-breaker) to have included Leonard Maltin's intros from the Cabin Fever releases, but apparently there was/is some legal issue with those -- heck, even if they would have reissued the Cabin Fever series as a DVD set, that would have been awesome, even if they weren't chronological. (I just realized that the recent DVD set has three silent shorts, and the Cabin Fever set had four, all of which were mutually exclusive -- though CF did later include "Dog Heaven" on another tape alongside a few repeated talkie shorts with a dog-centric theme.) What would have been cool would be to include all the extant M-G-M released silents -- ten of which were actually part of the original TV package in the 1950s (though not included in later incarnations of the package).

So I don't have the definitive word, but I wonder if a delay in an L&H set may have something to do with wanting to "get things right" (to whatever extent is possible) given the feedback they received regarding the Little Rascals set. I sure hope it doesn't become a casualty of Genius going under, or whatever happened.

Far as I know, here is what RHI controls:

Most of the talkie shorts (all except "Unaccustomed As We Are" and "They Go Boom"), 38 shorts

The Hal Roach feature films -- except:
The Devil's Brother (aka "Fra Diavolo," aka "Bogus Bandits")
Bonnie Scotland (aka "Heroes Of The Regiment")
Babes In Toyland (aka "March Of The Wooden Soldiers")
Pick A Star (aka "Movie Struck")

There are a number of things they could add as extras...
Foreign language versions of certain films
"On The Loose" (cameo in Thelma Todd short)
"On The Wrong Trek" (cameo in Charley Chase short)
The Flying Deuces (public domain)
Utopia (public domain)
Zenobia (Hardy w/o Laurel)
Various trailers

...of course, for all I know, the project could be (1) already a done deal, or (2) dead in the water altogether, or (3) ???

(If they really are in negotiations to release a set like the ones out in Europe -- be prepared for MAJOR negotiations between the various parties who own the silents and the talkies -- and I would guess that would result in having to fork over some $$$$$$$$)

 

[Steve...O]

Hi Mark Y ,

I have not been able to find out anything about the reason that the R1 collection of Roach talkies got stalled. From what I understand (and this originated from someone well connected to the L&H legacy), a set was supposed to come out this year but some issue popped up to to stop it.

Regarding the Agee set, I wouldn't hold my breath on this ever gettting released. If he can't bother to put together a publicity campaign that uses up to date artwork and which has been run through a basic spell checker I can only imagine that this project will be the latest in a long line of empty promises. One will note that none of the major L&H Sons of the Desert tent websites (including one that gave this project a lot of publicity several years back when it was first being discussed) make mention of this release. That is very telling. Having said that, I hope Agee surprises everyone and makes good this time.