Hello and welcome to a bonus Caged in Conversations episode, where I speak to those involved, whether it may be Nicolas Cage films or in this case, somebody who has direct access to the big man himself, Francis Ford. Coppola, of course, you may have seen by the title or you may have read the show notes, it is James Mccoskey who is the head archivist for American Zoetrope. If you're unaware of who American Zoetrope are, it is Francis Ford Coppola's film studio. So James is the man who when they do restorations and stuff like that, or even if he's just looking after all the footage that Francis has there in his vault, James is the man looking after it.
So yeah, we get into a lot of stuff in here and I hope it was a great talk to especially since there was the recent release of The Outsiders on a Brand Spanking New, OK, released studio canal but I'll over here and I'm probably at Warner Brothers in the US. A film that was covered last week on the podcast with James King, so if you haven't listened to that episode already, get on over and listen to it. Yes, it's really good. And if you aren't a fan of One from the Heart, yeah, there's some good news on this episode and if you want to listen to my episode with Boyd Hould on that, go back in the archives to check that out.
There is a fantastic bit of nugget of trivia that I love in this episode, all about a certain zoetrope coffee machine that I hope you'll enjoy. So I can join my conversation with James Mccoskey. Today I have the absolute pleasure of being joined by American zoetrope's archivist and supervisor for all of their restorations. James Mccoskey, how are you today James?
Oh, well, thank you, I appreciate it. I saved the absolute pleasure for it, like Francis or the true artist. You know, I'm just happy to be enjoying it, joining with you. So thank you.
No worries. I'm honored to anyone cares. Well, I'm a massive fan when like stuff I love, like, especially something like The Outsiders gets a kind of a new release or something gets to get seen by more eyes and obviously without a man like yourself that possibly wouldn't have happened not to the kind of the level of quality in detail that has been done to. So no, the absolute pleasure is definitely there, James.
Well, the nice thing about The Outsiders is that we had a strong fan base because of Essie Hinton's novel that she wrote and loved and thankfully, you know, Francis, I think they did a good tribute to the novel and in so much that the fans have both taken on at the love for both the novel and the film. You know, there's not that many films. I think that, you know, when they're adapting a book, you know, there's always problems. I think this one always to stay faithful to pay them to the book and it's one of those rare instances where it all came together.
Yeah, obviously, like I always loved that story of how it came about that. Well, like yourself writing a letter to Francis to get the job at American Zodiac, it was a petition, right from a from a kind of school board that kind of said, hey, Francis, we love this book. Can you turn it into a film? Yeah, Joel and the Saki and, you know, in California, in the Central part of California, loved the book and thought, you know, Francis, she told me, you know, she saw Black Stallion and she thought, well, you know, that was a film of Francis and so it's open.
She thought, you know, they did a wonderful job there, you know, it would be great if Francis would do it. And so she had her students write letters, persuading Francis. And of course, Francis always says that it doesn't take much work. It's to persuade them anytime a kid wants them to do something more than willing to do it.
Perfect. Well, before we get deep into what you do over at American Zodiac, I just wanted to ask about like kind of your beginnings and like, asking you through, what were the films you kind of watched when you were young that kind of made you think like, that's something I want to get into? And was it always kind of, I don't know, when did you kind of realize that restoration was the thing that you wanted to get into too? I didn't get into restoration until like the late 90s, you know, and it wasn't on my radar.
I was a weird kid. I watched things and much probably like you late at night, weird films that no one ever would see with him like drive in there would be weird, be horror films that were programmed late at night. And so those were kind of fun to get into. You know what, my mom worked at a grocery store for 30 years, but next door was a movie theater in Santa Cruz.
And she would get free ticket. And you know, part of my thing, she would get into these movie theaters for free. And I remember, you know, watching Indiana Jones and their teen times as a kid or airport 77, which is weird things to do. And I remember do now, doo, now doo is coming out 40 years later.
But I remember seeing Lynch when waiting in line around the corner, I thought, wow, that was a weird film, but it made an impression on me. And I was eight years old when it came in. That was a funny film to see as an eight year old kid, but I still remember vividly is like sitting in the front row watching it. But you know, 90s night came around.
I was a student, high school student, and I like films in the local university, UCSC was teaching a film course and my wife, my girlfriend at the time, that you know, you should go and see you about the program. You might like it. And I took classes at the local junior college and yeah, there was something there and I enjoyed it. And I production wasn't something that was necessarily my forte, but the history side of things were good and that I really responded to.
And it also helped that the local community was tied into early days of filmmaking, Charlie Chaplin, Bronco Billy Anderson, Tom mixed, Mary Pippertly all came to our area to make silent films and that I loved. And I was like, well, that'd be great. And who's teaching about this stuff, especially local histories and local history about when people came to town and made films in that area, you know, Hollywood in the silent area wasn't Hollywood. It could have been anywhere.
It could have been Ithaca, New York. It could have been town of Barbara. It could have been San Francisco. It could have been London.
It could have been anywhere in the world and Hollywood wasn't really there in that concept. So it's fun to know that there's so many communities that played an important role in film history. And I like that about it. And I came to, after I graduated from UCSC, I came to England because East Anglia, Norwich, England taught a degree for archiving, especially regional film archiving.
And that was very much of how I started, you know, with Santa Cruz and living with the regional film history there, East Anglia very much paid tribute to the early days of film making, especially East Anglia. And that tradition caught on in England. You got the Manchester film archive, you got Sheffield and a great film archive that pays so much tribute to their early days of film history. And that's what I loved about it.
And David Cleveland and JLB who taught East Anglia, really loved. They're the ones that really sort of inspired me to do what I'm doing today. So it all came from England. Amazing.
Amazing. Obviously, like, yeah, what was like the first Francis Ford Coppler film I've seen? Like, do you remember a kind of, yeah, the first of Francis? Black Valley was one very early on that I remember seeing it was a beautiful film.
We saw that in school. Outside, of course, was taught. I mentioned before about you know, everyone here in the States would read that in junior high. And at the end of the reading, you would watch that film.
Godfathers, certainly, I remember seeing it with my mother, but that was something on television. That was of course not when it came out in theaters. My first introduction was on a late night television. But I remember my parents loved seeing it.
My grandparents loved it. We talked about Godfather. I remember seeing Godfather III in the movie theaters. So yeah, it was always there.
And coincidentally, I can see a apocalypse until around college. But I always saw his earlier films. You know, conversation again was a beautiful film that was made in San Francisco in 1974. So that's always stuck in my mind again.
A nice rich local film made in around San Francisco. So obviously, once you left England and kind of headed back, where's that kind of gap? Yeah, what were you doing in that kind of gap before you joined American Zotrope? It was a small gap, but I went to UCLA, film and television archive for about a year or two, worked starting and shipping for a playing nitrate film for researchers and did a lot of screenings for researchers, did a lot of Ben Heck films, which were great to see on the Steamback.
Such a rare opportunity to handle nitrate and seeing it. So I was treated to a wealth of old films that no one would get to see. And then went to work for the David Packard Stanford Theater Foundation. That was connected with UCLA and worked on a lot of preparing 16 millimeter old diasetic prints from the 20s and 30s, getting them ready to be restored.
So what in your eyes, this may sound like an ignorant question, but what does an arc of film archivist do? Just for those who might not quite understand what that is? Well, I, you know, archivists are one that probably wears many hats. I wear many hats.
Zotrope, we sort of do it all that needs to be done in terms of preservation, preserving a film, making sure that it has proper storage. And it's looked after because a lot of, you know, many years these films have suffered and neglect. They were kept in closets or they were as a UCLA story of the 70s that the studios were getting rid of their nitrate. And it wasn't well archivist and that was not really kind of a term there, but Bob Gitt and Eddie Richmond and saw that, you know, they're throwing out these films that there's no other, there's no niggas, but these are the it, you know, if we didn't take them, and so they brought them to campus and sort all their nitrated campus.
And so that's how the film, their archive originated. So their caretakers, we're caretakers of films and we started as collectors. A lot of film archivists were just 35 millimeter collectors because they loved films and no one else were taking care of them. And so it really started out as the love for film and needing to take care of them.
So we preserve films and then eventually became that with technology and thinking of restoring these films, you know, now that we have this collection, how do we piece them together? How do we restore them, finding other prints and making the very best material out of it? Because, you know, sometimes it's a patchwork that he's filmed. Like a godfather or everything, these films were loved and negatives were loved and they were abused and things were removed because of damage.
So we assess our film collection and can make sure that the very best material are used so people can at least try to appreciate them looking at best as they possibly can to these technology. There's a there's a beautiful like sadness not romance to the idea of like especially you talk about those times when stuff was kind of getting neglected and thrown away and you always think of I'm not sure if you're ever tinned through that sadness probably one of the great stuff that we've lost because of those times, right? There's a there's a there's a there's a there's a there's a there's a there's a there's a there's a there's a there's a there's a there's a there's a there's a worry I always have like there's always those great movies out there that still exist that I'm never going to get to see let alone those ones that kind of a lost of the stands of time, right? Yeah, well, you know at that time it was a it was practicality.
It was a business, you know, no one ever saw that these films would have any staying power after it's left in the movie theater and you know on the sign when it makes that there was no home video. There was very little opportunity to see it outside the theater and so these things would just be sitting in the ball and like what what it's just taking a place and you know you had to move on to the next thing. So, personal it's business. So now we're we're we know when some video came on, gangbusters not that long ago, four years or years where things could be shown in a different market.
Yeah, they're for us all to create our own archives of the films we love to write at home. Right. And so when like yeah, how did how did the job of American Zodro come about? I've read that you wrote a letter to Francis, right?
I read up to the Zodro and I said, you know, much like the founding of Zodro and Francis, they they didn't see themselves being a studio in LA or Hollywood. They wanted to be outside. I make their own films without anyone over sign of these studio heads. And so I didn't see myself living in LA all my life.
It was a great town but it took place to work experience and I still have going back but I my roots were in Santa Cruz, my roots were in the Bay Area in San Francisco area. And so I said, you know, if you're ever an opportunity, I this is what I do and I would love to come up and talk to you about it. So, it just so happened. They were wrapping up apocalypse now redone and that was a rather difficult experience for them because it's so much material.
I think it's like three million feet of film that they had to go through and they all this stuff was kind of in a warehouse and didn't really have a full time person to go through. They had a wonderful person named Catherine Craig who was the archivist at the time. It also worked at ILM. It's sort of her day job, but she sort of split duty.
And when they were going into one from the heart cut new cut restoration, photo chemical restoration and outsiders, the complete novel cut, they said, well, we let's try to do this again. Let's maybe get someone that can go in and figure out what we need because it make it easier to make our jobs easier. And so I fell into a good time. Don't look, I fell into it by changing findings, everything.
What was that first meeting with Francis like? Was a family nervous? Oh, of course. I mean, I remember the first time seeing Francis, I was in San Francisco and he was looking at a cut of one from the heart and we got that hired me with Kim Aubrey, a treatment that brought me on.
And he said, well, come on, Francis is in town. Why don't you talk to him? And so that was sort of my first introduction to him. He says, Francis, this is the guy who's taking over to look over your library film.
So since then, I guess I haven't stirred up too much. I've been over 20 years. Amazing. So what was the first project you worked on?
Was it one from the heart? Was that kind of already the one from the heart and the outsiders were both going on at the same time? Amazing. One from the heart.
Like, I'm a massive lover, especially if those like 80s kind of forgotten Francis films, what I'm the heart being, one of those kind of. It doesn't get as much love as we'd like. But I mean, I hope that that we will come will do we will do a four-year restoration on it. And I think it will look good, especially with an HDR with all the neon, right?
I think it lends well to HDR, especially I think, pop let's write out for HDR in some way. So there's some fun things to explore with new technology and that's been a very fun thing for Francis and the company to get involved in. Well, because you dug through the archives right to put together the dream studio, that documentary that kind of came out on that release, right? On one of the hearts, that's all Jim Aubrey's and I hope to find all the extras that went in to making that.
Amazing. I love that kind of insight into that again, that kind of the idea of the art studio is a fascinating story that I absolutely love. Yeah, well, what great thing about Francis and the company is that they didn't throw anything away. Francis saw that as something the studios did, but he thought was very wasteful.
Of course, it was practical for them because it's costing them money. But Francis said, you know, it's going to cost me, I had to reshoot that stuff. It's going to cost me some money. I'm going to keep it for historical interest.
And maybe I'll reuse it. And you know, a lot of the music cues that we use in apocalypse, a lot of the coral music we've reused throughout and sprinkled throughout many of those other productions. And we've used footage, the stuff that you saw for the dream studios, that was all shot on 3.25 inch by Tony Scott at that time. Because he thought, you know, people for the press or publicity are marketing, you need that stuff, you need all that extra stuff in some ways.
And so why don't we do it? So the studio is hiring or paying extra, they could hire us to do that. And so we was always very much thinking about that, especially on a apocalypse, you know, Eleanor, his wife shot a lot of behind the scenes and that later became hearts of hearts of darkness. But he always thought at that time, have a crew on set shooting the stuff, because they've packaged that for some other thing.
So yeah, looking for a lot of the kind of DVDs or whatever releases of of the films, whether it's Francis or Sophia's and Romans, you always kind of see Eleanor's name pop up. I think it's recently I was watching Mary Anne Tuna and she kind of again filmed the kind of behind the scene stuff of that. And I love that kind of family aspect that you get from American Sotra. What is it like being a part of that kind of is it like a family atmosphere to kind of like getting things done over there?
Yeah, you know, Roman is very much sort of the family documentary. Or Ellie, in any way, also the doc and Terry, and she's always always on set to capture her family's films, Roman's films or Sophia, she would be there capturing from that home movie kind of aspect of it, because these were her family films. But you know, Roman is always very much aware of the archive and wants to make sure that we do preserve it. And it's just not lost.
So they do care about the library. It is for them home movies, you know. Of course. Yeah, with this new release of the outsiders, tell us a bit about what it was like putting together this new 4K restoration of the film.
Well, with the 4K restoration, you know, and Francis had talked about this in intro is that the photography had to be there to do that. And Stephen Burham's photography is phenomenal. Francis is loyal. He has some great cinematographers from Portorio, Caleb Dashnail, Carol Bell.
And Stephen, you know, to do his cinematography justice, you really have to go back to the negative. There's always a bit of controversy about, you know, making it sure that the what people saw in the theaters. Well, a lot of times when things went into the theaters, it was often interactive that's regenerations away and things get crushed. Things the image gets crushed.
The resolution is not quite there and you lose a lot of that detail. And it's not necessarily what Francis or Stephen wanted. You know, at best, we would rather we would want him to see a print off the original negative. But you know, practicality, you don't want all that wear and tear on your negative.
You have to go through that intermediate stage to make thousands of prints. So the practicality of it, it's not possible to give you that answer. But now I think you can get back that experience that Francis and Stephen really wanted. So they were much of an advocate to go back to the original negative and use that to really highlight and preserve that original information that no one really got to speak.
And I think you see that the Gone With The Winds segments, the clouds, the beautiful sunsets, the rich detail, that sort of murky or loss that went through that release printing process. Now it's kind of there for everyone to see. There's an amazing special feature on the disc that you kind of break down a couple of elements of it. And there's that one of the flashback sequence of their parents and stuff like that.
And you kind of like, it's great to see those kind of the different prints of it, whether it was the kind of 2000 like mid 2000s kind of DVD release or whatever. And yeah, the richness and colors and stuff like that. Like obviously having Steve Burham, like he was involved right with this kind of research. He was certainly from day one involved with it with the color and you sort of you need that, you have to have Francis and you have to have the artist instead of talking to bless the material, you know, I'm lucky to have that many archives don't have I've lost that you know they passed on and they don't have that.
So I'm lucky I still have them to guide the restorations and what they want and how they want to present the films. So the interesting thing, you know, I've seen some reviews and I think maybe we've done a four job of highlighting this but there's a difference between the 1983 color grading versus the 2005 color grading and it was intentional for Francis for Steven, the complete novel is a different film and it was different intense. So you do if you do it side by side comparisons but on the 4k release and he said, well there is a difference in the scene versus the 83 4k why and maybe they were being sloppy and they didn't carry it over. It's like, no, it's intentional.
It's certainly the intent of the 83 release and the original release was a more romantic, dreamy aspect of the color grading versus in 2005 where we chose a sword. It was contemporary, it was more natural. So when you look at the skin tones, you look at the the brothers, it is a very more neutral experience than you decide by side comparison to 2000, I see the 1993 original release and I think that we could have probably done better in marketing than this is that you know when you see these they are two different experiences, different films. I've had you mentioned in other interviews that when obviously you were restoring apocalypse now the kind of 4k release that Francis kind of said to you, I'm not quite done with that film.
Was there ever a thing with the outsiders we were working on this restoration? Is Francis going to come through the door and say like, hey I'm not quite done with that or was it kind of you new from day one, we can rest easy and kind of just work on this restoration without any tinkering happening? No, I think he always in the back of my mind that Francis could come in and say, you know, there was something I wasn't able to do but outsiders was one he felt that 2005 real that was that was it because of the novel because when he shot he felt that was as complete as possible. Now apocalypse is a story that you know he shot a lot of material and there's a the script so dense and even he didn't know how it was going to cut until he got back from the Philippines and so it was more malleable.
It was it was it had ways it could go into different directions and so the 79 cut came out of the time and in the studio and where his mind was at the time but there was still a lot lost that that he thought wasn't appropriate at the time but after but 30 years thought hey not as weird it's not maybe it could work let's try let's throw everything in but then what 2019-28-2018 comes around he says you know maybe everything in the kitchen sink wasn't quite it let's try to find something in the middle so you know apocalypse kind of was that filmed it's right for for that reworking and reschelling and it's good I always I like that as an archivist it's not just that we were sitting in one this is it Francis is very much of the artist to say storytelling is malleable I think and they do change of the years and that's because the audience is being there of course of course and obviously whether it's yeah famously stuff happens with studios right whether it's I don't know old taste change I know one of the early projects we worked on was the cotton club on-core right when with that yes cotton club on-core was god was it please that was a five-year journey I think we started in 2011 and ended in 2016 or something like that never knowing that we would ever see the light of day but he started it and invested his own money to do it but thankfully it did come out in 2016 with a limited theatrical release but it was a vision of his that you know what what 1984 that it wasn't controlled the film and he had to work for hire but he had to make decisions based on what they they had wanted at that time and Robert Evans say was I was a very difficult project for him at that time so the decisions were made that wasn't exactly what he felt he wanted to do they wanted a god body that was not his interest he already made that and but for whatever it was he will say that you know his critiques were too many black people and too many dance numbers and he says well what the hell is that about it's the cotton club you know this is about an African-American experience in New York and how else to tell that so what 30 years later he got the chance to really make the story more even more balanced one more e-signs and Gregory Heins and telling that beautiful story between those brothers and that was missing what was it that took that project so long to kind of like see start to finish was it kind of finding some of that like old footage like yeah we never could we're still missing that nine minutes but negative and I have to go to a daily positive prince at a daily's material to find basically tall ten and terrific number is daily's roles positive prince that they used cheap material just for review purpose to use it in the work print and that was all that I could find I never defined the negative that made those dailies and those not my minutes still missing they look great I don't think you could ever tell or they think when people have been kind of the same I don't know maybe they can but you know it's a great number to have lost over time and so I'm glad we were able to do we and there's all the weird things too where Lynette McKee's great number of thorny weather we couldn't find the quarter inch that they had recorded it in the Sherry-Nadon basement where her vocal coach was in the piano piano doing the number and they were practicing and rehearsing and it would be recording this so they could have playback on set yeah well so we we have a work print of that a couple generations away from that quarter inch never could find that quarter inch we have that mono recording now that's all we have and that's all we were able to use because they they just cut that number pretty early on and they decided never to go into studio to rerecord that so what we have from the basement of that hotel is basically what you see in this cut and it works well I think you know people I think the number hasn't lost it's not chicant it doesn't sound part what am I trying to say I guess I'm happy that how it turned you know amazing so how decisions made with you guys of which film is going to get a restoration is it a case of like the outsiders it's an anniversary or or stuff where it's just like I don't know Francis gives word and says hey should we revisit this one now or yeah how do those decisions get it it's luck of a draw it is the numbers turning 40 certainly outsiders is 40 is coming up not yet but that came out because we're good friends with Tom Luddy and Kelly right and they wanted to do something in time with an article that came out before COVID they let it down and they wanted to do it and they said well I said you know it doesn't look great we have something but it's not the best if we have it out of the festival I would like it looking as best as possible so COVID kind of gave us an opportunity to go back and do it properly and so we'll do it ahead of the four years anniversary and then there's a play coming out for the four years so it'd be great to have it looking as best as possible so but then you know things with the apocalypse you know Francis is on his mind he says I don't want to go back to it so things are sitting noodling around that he wants to go back and and and tinker so we just sort of you know as things go it's like okay you know one from the heart probably go to the next thing that we really work on and it just lines up perfect but I'm running out of films you know the library is not you so I can't do things too quickly I'll be out of a job so yeah I guess well how did it work with certain films because I know that I film like rumblefish like a few years ago got a like a restoration done else would you know I wasn't a leak line did a fabulous job with this with his crew at criterion and I don't see how we could improve on that even it was involved in that and we had a proper 4k restoration 2011 we could that was a little early we were quite involved in restorations at that time we were just doing them outside at labs that I would oversee and but it wasn't called that we thought oh hey we should start doing this and looking into it and the technology certainly was approachable for us to kind of learn we've been sitting in sessions long enough know what we want and it'll mark so amazing yeah because I know that um recently I picked up the indicator Blu-ray for Gardens of Stone and is that one that's owned by Zoe Tropez that guy knows that would be a Sony and good friends with the people at Sony and maybe hopefully one day we will we'll touch that is yeah it's no it's the same a piggy he's also with that yeah done as well so and I guess what is it next year will be the 50th anniversary of the godfather right seven father serving yes so we did godfather three which we titled soda death on microcorlium but next year will be the big year for godfather so paramount cooking cooking something up that will be special hopefully people will be excited and turn out for do you get to be involved in stuff like that or is it kind of out of here we were we certainly were involved so you'll hear more about that perfect perfect on their on their timing amazing sir i'm not not trying to push you James don't worry is it not gonna miss like we're not opportunity like 50 of course not of course the hunger is definitely there from the fans i'll tell you that for sure and so what yeah what is the working relationship with yourself in Francis and kind of how how hands on how hands on is it a boss like well you know in the very beginning the restorations you know he when we did a popular sport of blu ray we sat in the color he he will say what he wants and what we would spend our time on and over over the years we sort of grew to understand what what he cares more about and how he would approach it so um i think you know when we start the restorations i have in mind what what he likes and dislikes and it's been very rewarding to have it in-house because we could spend the time on it when we're at a lab you know it's of course the meter is running and it's more harder on the budget so that's the nice thing especially i could do things in my living room and at the time and weekend late nights if i want to but Francis you know at the end we'll come in to look at the color and we'll say okay what where how far more he will want to go clean up or for color he'll make his notes so usually you know at this point we're in a good good position where we will get we'll tee it up for him we'll get things to a point we'll get it ready to go to a lab and and we'll bring him in at the end to see and usually that's been been good we've known him long enough to know what how we should present so what do you think like this might be a weird question but like the job of like restoring a film is in a way because obviously like there's people have these romanticized ideas of like i don't know seeing films on like the way they saw them originally right whether it's like they might have sent it on like a beaten up 35 mill print that kind of got road showed around and like yeah who do you have in mind i guess like when you kind of restore these films is a kind of how the the director and the dop might have intended it or the stuff that they go i really want to do this but i couldn't quite do it well yeah i'm not i mean that's a good point because i i mean the philosophy in the especially my field is you're not doing anything that is not true to what people had thought originally with that i mean that's that's a hard thing to a key because you're never going to get the same speakers and people heard the films back then so sound is never going to be quite the same uh are we achieving a like an experience of like film print that's been road showed for 100 trainings you know no but you know karen cheeno loves all that scratches and the dirt and that's kind of embedded that's how he experienced it but you know that's not necessarily how either vp or frances would want people to see he wants that sort of gets in the way of the story you have to kind of let go that oh for him as an artist it is about the story and those things kind of get get in the way so wait there is a balance i'm not going to do anything or add anything that wasn't there um you know for instance the outsiders uh we we we went back and found all the obstacles that they get that went to the office that's something they could have done back in a three but time the budget or whatever they didn't do a b rolls to create those days and dissolve they were printed in um but other films like apocalypse now those those weren't printed and those uh those days and dissolves they created a navy role because they had the budget and outside they did so we felt that frances but now we we have the ability to do something that they could have done then but chose not to do it because of that economic so i don't feel that something that's unnatural um you know we were certainly not doing effects uh that computer effects that the visual effects that we are creating that wasn't able to do at that time so uh so it is a bit of a discussion i for us how far we go but i try to at least have balanced that out that we're creating that experience as if it was a print off the original negative for the for the first time looking probably a little bit better than anyone has ever seen it or then thought there but you know that's sort of our discussion of where it's appropriate and not for i guess it's that thing a lot of the time for people it's it's how and when they saw a film that kind of that is the thing that they're kind of crossing on to not necessarily the kind of uh they're right but we saw those are the things that they grew the look i don't think anyone's really ever heart made as a few people that still want that look of a VHS but i i don't think people are but you know they're not that sentimental of it but they are with film and i get that you know i not want to remove that film grain i'm very much like an outsider i did no green management and i think we've been awarded uh rewarded with the comments people have noticed it and it's never always never gotten away well you know a lot of other there's different philosophies and other places and they do want uh those that stripped out or dialed down and i i i feel that's that's a red line or something i don't cross i don't want to erase that on the static it's definitely it's a beautiful aesthetic like the and i think it does come back down to yeah like the the photography from steve and boram it kind of feels like what you've done with this restoration is just honored that i know the your colorist uh the special feature talks about the fact that there's like tweaks or something like the blood on that scene when jonnie kade kills leaf garrets character but that is that is kind of signed off by steve boram himself right it's kind of we wanted to or like or like you were saying about like the kind of the dissolves in the fades it's like that thing of that the technology wasn't quite there to make it as punchy as they originally intended right well i don't know it wasn't as punchy because they they layered and made it a duke negative it had all this up front together but now now we could scan it separately and relay it and you're not losing that and that's kind of what steve and boram you know it was it was beautiful but it lost something during that release it was for generating blood generation some guessing but away and so it sort of brushed it made it milky or you sort of lost uh resolution and here you kind of you you preserve his original photography and that that uh it makes it on par with the rest of the negative so so especially it's important that you go to porting because you can notice those differences you know when we saw the first dvd you don't notice those differences so much but if you go from a original negative or a fork a to some do you do see a shift uh between it's not cutting well and so you don't want you don't want people to be taken out of of the story it's not a brectian experience that you do uh you shouldn't be able to take it be taken out of the story definitely yeah yeah there's definitely i always have those moments with like stuff when it's kind of restored onto uh higher resolution and i'm not going to name films but you kind of there are certain films so you're like are they very much fit the time they were made in the kind of quality of of of presentation that they had because all of a sudden you start seeing some glaring errors once you kind of uh boost up to like a 4k rest of your jimmy and this is this is a problem i know i've worked out like another when we did a film it was a concern when you do older titles and you're gonna project it on larger a larger screen are those effects gonna hold up and a lot of times they don't thankfully apocalypse now wasn't a heavy visual effects yes so they were all practical effects and thankfully we haven't had that problem but a lot of visual effects films from that era do sort of fall apart and yeah i i wouldn't ever try to correct that to make it better but um that's just you know that's a discussion i can we we'll have with with our artists though but i i've never come from i shouldn't be the one making those decisions if the artist is gonna do it and you know and i something to say is that you know that's kind of why it's been nice to have these separate versions the complete novel or redox or final cut is that they allow them to explore doing something different there is a different presentation you know we'll offer the original cut as it was back in the first release but you know when i do a restore i don't know restoring is the right world but i call these things a new presentation i rather use the word presentation because it allows the affordability for instance to go out and present something in a different way and i'd like to hopefully find a new audience it's great to look at one part and we need you'll be an opportunity in our fan to give a new release that's why we're here today appreciates films because they've held a candle to say these films shouldn't be forgotten but we we need to find a new audience so it continues to find you like well beyond us definitely it never feels that there's sometimes with like restorations or kind of like new releases that feel i don't know there's there could be a cynical edge to it with these kind of restorations you can tell that there's uh love and attention gone into it and it's kind of doing right by the artists do you know what i mean yeah well there's about about you know fans are great and they can be very opinionally rightfully so uh and it's hard it's hard if there's ever changes or drastic change that doesn't live up to their experience and that so i at least want to be able to try to obtain their experience but also offer something that's uh a new generation doesn't know film brain and you sort of have to re-educate people why that's sort of important and a lot of people won't care we're dying out the people who love film that a certain film you know thank you know pagerly tarrantino and nolan out there highlighting what what what don't feel shooting on film but you know we are kind of like a different kind of niche film enthusiast but more and more and more yeah they don't know what film is it's on grainism so you have to it looks weird you it looks wrong yeah there's something on our digital tv it's raining it looks pristine and sharp and clear and like you know it's it's never going for us our films are never going to look like that yes yes so say um was there a difference between like working on a project over lockdown and kind of you said it obviously afforded you more time but did you kind of workflow change at all was it kind of a lot more freeing to kind of go we've got this time and i've got and you said you can kind of work home did i think yeah i think we were covid ready uh we were already working from our home playing at work station i have my editor works in his home in the central valley maddesto and uh we were ready i what i think we were we had a good setup already established and then when lockdown happened uh it was hard for other studios to get work done uh let's see is that working they couldn't go to china or even because they they were also experienced lockdowns and the places with the studios that they were working with they couldn't get cleanup so we picked up some extra work for that because we we were continuing to do it um we're not as fast as those but to people but we were able to keep the machine going and and uh thankfully able to to help out on other projects beautiful it sounds like you're very much there like tucker doing stuff in his in his kitchen building car so it's good to be that is that is the zoetrope experience you're a very home-grown studio and you know we don't have all the like fancy yeah it's at all but we make it work yeah i always remember those are a great great story of like the original kind of zoetrope studios that Francis and George Lucas kind of set up and the one thing that made it special to lots of people was the fact that they had a cappuccino machine and it's that thing as long as you got a cappuccino machine you can get a film made that machine and that's still around me actually i went over to this guy walker ranch over george's facility over is uh in the north day here and that's sort of a proud moment people who know they they once probably to replace that machine the cappuccino machine was given to them a tucker when he worked on tucker and friends gave it to them and uh besides the new administration came in and wanted to take it out and put a machine that you know just push a button and people were like wait a second where's the whole cappuccino they spread some machine oh we were gonna get rid of it and they said oh no that makes great coffee and so they had it they brought it back in they put it special place in the kitchen for it and got new plumbing for it and all it's still there perfect that's a little plaque on it from zoetrope studios amazing that that that thing is a part of uh cinema history so i'm glad to hear it's doing okay um so actually you've you've been in rooms with ronc's Ford copper i imagine like water merch if you it's their moments when you've kind of like almost had to pinch yourself being like as a film fan and kind of especially this like this localized thing these kind of bay area legends so that's a moment where you've gone what am i doing here? well certainly i certainly have learned to just shut up and listen because when they're talking you know you're you're certainly learning and that's why i was trying to be the fly on the wall and uh and absorb uh what they're what they're saying i'm doing because it is a special walter's walter is brilliant and it's so wonderful what's great about walter is not just that the all the way he's doing he has such a great knowledge about the universe and he's these connections around and things going on around him and uh he'll he tries to connect with his work and i always enjoy just sitting and listening to these these guys uh and i always build i mean i'm out of my death because i'm not that intellectual i'm kind of dumb you know i just wish i'm bad but and just like i'm just feel i'm honored to be at that that table and just listening to to what these guys experiences are and what what inspires them is there any like words of wisdom or kind of lessons you've learned that you'd be willing to share i think i just had it just shut up and listen just shut up and listen up no no no i obviously didn't learn that lesson when you said it uh what a fool that is something i would definitely take on moving forward amazing so um what yeah what what kind of stuff are you working on at the moment i was all kind of harsh usher at the moment oh i i know i i i'm gonna work on one from the heart eventually that we're gonna round i mean in my library is so small you can probably guess what i'll be doing and i have fight a guy what i haven't done um you know so you'll see of course we have the 50th we've alluded to that and i wonder one of the hard ones be special to us i think we'll do but you know there's still a we still have a few things in the archive that we've yet to touch tonight we will get around to it will that um i know that just before covid happened there was supposed to be a kind of um like the conversation was supposed to hit the road right as a new 35 millimeter yes with us we made 235 millimeter prints uh it was a photo chemical restoration we did back in the first first start i want to say round 2002 it was about 2002 we made new intermediates at that time it had never been shown uh and we were supposed to go with rialto uh but for whatever reason the deals never done and you're just that language not in the ball forever so now we're getting we were getting ready and we made the deal with rialto to go back and and release uh a print from from that effort um of course it's almost 20 years uh that no one's seen those prints it's new 35 millimeter prints off restored film elements um but eventually we were gonna have to do a proper 4k digital restoration of it and i think there are two different efforts one from the photo chemical world and one will be from the digital world so perfect so do you ever like worry that you got to keep keeping up because obviously like imagine in like 20 years like kind of we send the advent of blue right yeah it was like early dvd they we've had the advent of blue rain out it's 4k where do you see that going or you're kind of like kind of coasting yeah i know my wife always says she gets me sir you know you always say we're like let me do we do it you know it's like didn't we say that a blue ray that we were done but you know i think with 4k kind of hit a plateau uh if you you look at um i think we did on the apocalypse now the four years of uh home video releases from the cedist and for this dvd and the jumps in quality that was made in home videos and now starting the kind of plateau in just the general i think a general audience can see the difference between the hs dv and that was a huge jump and then dvd to blue ray kind of picked it up a little bit better but now you're kind of getting leveling often those differences are kind of for the general audience are kind of like i don't i don't i don't i don't i don't see it other than us crazy people but i mean after 4k i just go d d what that is they're gonna d detail that no one ever saw i remember seeing an election advocating doing ak or iris gans gan gate well gate whatever and the difference in the shine of a necklace of pearl no whatever never never there and even the answer for that was lost so i don't know how much in the weeds we need to go i i think we're at a very good point in technology that this is if this is it i'm very proud of this work that both the atrical the home video experiences kind of got to that a good level preserve the quality that had been lost in home video over so many years amazing well thank you so much for your time james this has been it's been a great insight into the dream studio that is americans i would try and uh i'm happy to talk as you can say i shut up and listen but you can't talk to you about this i'll play this i'll have too much i know it's it's been an absolute pleasure i said at the beginning and i'm going to say again it's been an absolute pleasure having you on the podcast james well thank you very much well there we have it guys that was my conversation with james kokoski i hope it was uh as informative and uh a joy to listen to as it was for me to have that conversation i really i really love this and i'm i'm always amazed that the people who speak to me speak to me and it was absolutely honour to have james on and uh yeah do do be sure to check out all the stuff he's he's doing with americans oh tropon what kind of like um i don't know like that it doesn't feel cynical what they're doing over there when we kind of touched on it in the episode and that might sound a bit sycophantic but it doesn't feel like they just they they really want to share these films with people it's not just being like oh there's a new format let's cash in which i know can often feel like the case sometimes when you get like oh it's a v8 just release it's a dv release it's a blue ray it's four k it's eight k it's beened into your eyeballs through through modern technology that doesn't exist yet but i'm sure will exist when our robot overlords come to take over a massive apology to anyone who was uh looking forward to this episode and the fact that it's late i've just not been a very well boy lately i've been feeling a bit ill so yes sorry about that but it's here now it's only a few days late uh and yeah very much hope that you enjoyed it so uh as for next week well yeah as for the next episode on the podcast it will be my conversation with charlie vero martin all about the jason no the john swartzman not jason jason has nothing to do with this film it's the john swartzman lens no it's not even that so it is uh the uh first in a triple bill chat of the fifty shades of grey film starting obviously with fifty shades of grey um and there is no co-preconnection with this film but it felt like we needed to talk about the first one before we got on to the second two which are lensed by john swartzman not jason so um it was a lot of fun and i think you guys are gonna have a lot of fun with this one so do check out that one next week because oh boy will we get steaming we get hot we get sexy and we also get put through a lot of pain when we talk about fifty shades of grey so if you enjoyed this podcast please don't hesitate to support by heading over to patreon which is patreon.com forward slash cajun in pod where you can um yeah just for two power fifty a month you can get access to the brand new movie brat bros series which i'll be looking at these films of brian de parma and seeing how they compare to the films of france's forward cobbler in the given year that they were released or you can head on over to coffee.com so that's k-o-fi.com also ask cajun pod and just buy me a digital cup of coffee so i like them digital cups of coffee they really keep me nourished and full and that would be bloody lovely or you can always head on over to apple podcast a cast or wherever you're listening to this podcast right now and leave a sterling five star rating and a little review tell me what you think about the podcast tell me what your answer is to what does built mari say to sartia hansen at the end of loss in translation i would love to know your answers so as always i have been petris pat celvis your guide for the crazy world of the cobbler family tree remember to keep it caged in and i'll catch you next time this podcast is 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