You are listening to the IFH podcast Network. For more amazing filmmaking and screenwriting
podcasts, just go to IFH podcast network dot com. Welcome to the Bulletproof
Screenwriting Podcast, Episode number three thirty one. Cinema is a matter of what's
in the frame and what's out. Now, more than ever, we need
to talk to each other, to listen to each other and understand how we
see the world, and cinema is the best medium for doing this. Martin
Scorsese broadcasting from a dark, windowless room in Hollywood when we really should be
working on that next draft. It's the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast, showing you the
craft and business of screenwriting while teaching you how to make your screenplay bulletproof.
And here's your host, Alex Ferrari. Welcome, Welcome to another episode of
the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast. I am your humble host, Alex Ferrari. Now,
today's show is sponsored by Bulletproof script Coverage. Now, unlike other script
coverage services, Bulletproof Script Coverage actually focuses on the kind of project you are
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by three categories. Micro budget, indie, film market and studio film.
There's no reason to get coverage from a reader that's used to reading tempowl movies
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if you need your screenplay or TV script covered by professional readers, head on
over to cover my screenplay dot com. Well, guys, Today on the
show we have Margaret Body, and she is the executive director of the Film
Foundation, the nonprofit organization created by the legendary Martin Scorsese in nineteen ninety and
it's dedicated to the preservation protection of motion pictures from around the world. Over
the years, they have preserved and restored over nine hundred and twenty five films,
including forty nine restorations from twenty eight countries as part of the World Cinema
Project. Now, Margaret and I had a fantastic conversation not only about cinema
history, about restoration, the process of restoration, how important it is for
us to restore and protect our cinematic heritage, but also about their new program
where they're going to be showing free restored projects as part of their restoration screening
room. We also talk about Margaret's experience producing films with mister Martin Scorsese,
and much much more. Now at the end of the episode, I will
give you a link on how to get access to the restoration screening rooms monthly
screenings. So, without any further ado, please enjoy my conversation with Margaret
Body. I like to welcome to the show, Margaret Bodie. How you
do, Margaret, I'm doing great, Alex, It's so great to be
here. Thank you so much for coming on the show. I'm excited to
have you on because we're going to be talking about film restoration and the work
you're doing at the Film Foundation, and as well as some others you do.
You have as a little sidehustole that you do as well, besides film
restorations. We'll talk about that as well. But the first question I have
for you is how did you get started in the business. It's a really
great question because you know, looking back, it all seems so well planned,
but it was really just a random set of circumstances. I did go
to film school, which is, you know, kind of rare in this
business. Usually everyone studied history or politics or global studies. But I studied
film and I my first job out of school was at the Library of Congress,
and I was doing archival work at the Library of Congress. I was,
I was making photographs from either their glass negatives, their nitrate negatives.
There their incredible photographic collection that included, like I said, glass negatives from
Matthew Brady to you know, nitrate you know, four by fours and two
by twos that were created during the WPA era. And I remember I was,
I was making both copy but they called copy prints. This is in
the days of the old fashioned photographic lab where you would you know, you
know, expose the paper and then process it and all these wonderful chemicals that
I breathed for about two years. And what happened was I became it was
like a master's degree in history, in exposure, in photography and also by
extension and film, and so that was that was an amazing milestone in my
career that I hadn't intended really necessarily as as what I wanted to do.
And then from there I went to independent film exhibition. I worked at a
movie theater we booked independent films, and so I had the exhibition side of
it. And then I went to work. I moved to New York and
started work for a fledgling company called Mirramax, and I was doing independent film
distribution and marketing. And there were about twenty people at the company at that
time, so it's early days. And then I worked there for a couple
of years, and then I moved into this kind of miracle where I got
a call from a colleague who said, you wouldn't want to work for Martin
Scorsese? Would you? Would you want to be his assistant? And I
was like, I would sweep a floor for that guy. Like that was,
you know what a question. So it was like, I said,
this kind of random set of circumstances that just now kind of all add up
and make sense, But at the time it was just you know, you
get the jobs you can get that you're interested in, and yeah, exactly
like they I mean, how many filmmakers around the world would like, Hey,
would you like to to work with Martin Scorsese? Can you imagine doing
anything? Doing anything right? Absolutely anything. So that brings me to my
to my next question. I mean, you got to work with him on
some some not his early films, but early nineties films like the Age of
Innocence, which I absolutely adore. I was just obsessed with Age of Innocence
when it came out, Uh and Casino. So I'm assuming as an assistant
and working with him, what did you see on set? Like? How?
Like? I have to ask you the question that every filmmaker listening wants
to know. When you first walked in and met Martin Scorsese for the first
time, what was going through your head? How did you deal with it?
How did you I mean because essentially, even even in the early nineties,
he was still he was already a legend. At that point, he
was absolutely legend. I mean he had just made I mean you Good Fellows
in nineteen ninety, right, and then I started working for him. On
my first night, my first night on the job, was the premier of
Kate Here. So you know, it's it's just he was he was to
me, he was the top of the mountain, you know, I mean,
he was it because he had also started the Film Foundation in nineteen ninety
and when I met with him, which I'll never forget. He lived at
the time at the Metropolitan Towers on fifty seventh Street, and so I literally
it's like I went up, you know that I went up to like,
you know, Mount Olympus exactly, and I remember, you know, obviously
I was I was nervous, but I also was just I had kind of
the attitude of like, I just want to meet this man who has made
films that have meant so much to me and so many people. So it
was really kind of an experience of a lifetime. I thought, whatever happened
with the job, I kind of thought, this was this wonderful opportunity to
meet this to meet this person. And when I met him, we just
really hit it off. He's so warm, he's so smart, he's so
funny. He's really like just an easy person to talk to and get to
know. And one of the things that stood out for him with me was,
oh, so you went to film school, you know about film,
you know about film history. We just started this foundation. Maybe you can
help with that. And so, you know, that was to me that
was part of this glorious package, you know of just you know, being
able to work with someone who's an absolute master of the of the craft and
the art of filmmaking, and someone who cares about other people's films and also
cares about the audience and making sure that you know, the continuum of film
history is available to filmmakers today and in the future who can look back on
the past films and be as inspired by them as Marty has been. That's
remarkable. So when you're are so when you're working on Age of innocenswer a
casino, what, how do you see him working? What do you I
mean, I'm assuming you're trying to take as much in as you can when
you're watching him. Were you on set, were watching him work? Yeah?
Yeah, and you are taking as you're taking it all in. But
you know, everyone on that set has this mission, right, and you
know there you don't have a lot of time for reflection, so you're not
necessarily, you know, kind of absorbing and processing. You're just kind of
like running from like as an assistant especially, you're running from one task to
the next, and your mind has to be very sharply focused on, you
know, whatever he has, you know, needs you to do, has
asked you to do, whatever communication you have to give to the various different
department heads. So I'm not like I wasn't ever involved in like the make
of the film. It was just there to support all the things that he
needs. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor, and now
back to the show. But the set is an extraordinary place to be with
Marty because it's so it's such a pure expression of filmmaking where it's all about
what do we need, how do we get it. He's brilliant about,
you know, creating an environment where the actors feel like it's all about what
they need to do, where the DP feels like it's all about what he
or she needs to do. Everyone feels like they're the most important person in
that process. And it's just it's a it's kind of a I mean,
you know, not to be you know, I have drank the kool aid.
I will admit to that, but it is like kind of a sacred
place. It's a really exciting place to be, but it's very much there's
nothing frivolous about it. Yeah it seems to be. And I mean I've
any filmmaker worth their salt has studied Marty's work over the years. I mean
and every documentary. I mean, I remember working at a video store in
the eighties and early nineties, and I was I saw Good Fellows in the
theater multiple times, I mean, and you just sit there and you wait
for any making of document Back in the day when there wasn't any information about
my first laser disc was Raging Bull because I wanted to hear I wanted to
hear Marty's commentary on it, you know, things like that is fascinating.
There was an early laser disc of The Last Waltz. I remember, it
came out like in the mid eighties, early eighties, and I remember just
you know, I had seen The Last Waltz is aging me quite a bit,
But I had seen The Last Waltz when I was like in high school,
and I remember just being it was something very special. I couldn't really
articulate it because a lot of people were making documentaries in that way that weren't
verite, you know, I mean you think about like Woodstock, Yeah,
you're capturing everything, and that's that was really what was happening with music documentary
at that time. And then I remember the Last Waltz felt like a film,
right, And I remember thinking like, that's interesting, what's really happened?
What is he doing differently than everybody else's And didn't he also work on
Woodstock as an editor? He was I think he was assistant director and I
think he did some editing. Yeah, but Michael Wadley, you know,
was the director of that film and both Marty, and that's where Marty and
Thelma I think first worked together. The almost Schoodmaker was an editor on Woodstock.
And you know who knew back in you know, seventy two or whenever
that I can't remember the exact year of Woodstock, you know who knew that
that would create this, you know, legendary partnership. No, I mean,
has there ever been a partnership like that in the history of film that
I can think of? An editor that's she's edited everything he's done. She
has edited everything from Raging Baal on so nineteen eighty. Yeah, that's a
forty two year a lot of a lot of masterpieces in there. Oh my
god, to say the least. Now, tell me about the work you're
doing in the Film Foundation. What is the Film Foundation? Well, the
Film Foundation was created in nineteen ninety and it really grew out of advocacy that
Marty had already been involved in in the after Raging Ball in the nineteen eighty
eighty one era, Marty was he started a campaign to get to encourage Kodak
to create a low fade color film stock. And in fact, one of
the reasons that Marty made Raging Ball black and white was because he didn't want
it to fade in ten years. And he was, you know, aware
of every filmmaker wants their film to last, right That's that's the goal you're
putting. You're putting a work out into the world, and you don't want
it to go away. You don't want it to look like, you know,
diminished, you know, in terms of color and and and degradation after
you know, five or ten or fifteen years. You hope that it will
survive the test of time, as they say. And so he decided to
use black and white for Raging Bull for you know, I mean artistic reasons,
but also for that practical reason. And so after the film was released,
he used the press tour in Europe and all over the world to talk
about this issue of color color film stock fading, and thankfully Codected U create
a low fade lpp stock. I believe it's called that would that would last
if it was properly cared for, Would it would last for fifty two one
hundred years with a stable color, you know the color. The color wouldn't
change over time. So he was always thinking about film and the history of
film and how much it meant to him and how much it meant to his
fellow filmmakers like George Lucas and Steven Spielberg and Francis Coppola, Stanley Kubrick at
the time. So Marty got these galvanized these filmmakers and came together and said,
look, will be so much more impactful if we form this organization and
if we use our collective power or collective clout to go to the studios to
talk about working in partnership with these archives, these film archives that are in
the nonprofit world who have been collecting negatives, cast off material over the decades,
and let's try to build a bridge so these two important parts of the
film world can work together to preserve films for the future. And I don't
think that there was a real clear cut, concrete plan of how this would
get done, but it was definitely agreed. You know with this group and
with many other people in the field, that it's something needed to be done,
something needed to be done, because you know, Marty talks about this
story a lot, where in the nineteen seventies when he was living in Los
Angeles, he went to a screening at LACMA and it was it was a
Fox retrospective and on the particular night that Marty remembers, there was a double
feature of Niagara and the Seven Year Itch, Okay, and the seven Year
Itch came. The projectionist put up the put up the film print and it
came on screen and the entire he describes, the entire audience erupted with booze
because the film the print had faded to pink, so everything, everything looked
magenta. There was no there was no reflection of what the film was supposed
to look like. So you couldn't see like the actors face, you couldn't
see with the colors of the set and what the color design was supposed to
look like. And you know, you think about it, that was maybe
twenty years at most after the film came out, no more than twenty years,
so you know, the realization hit Marty and many other film scholars and
filmmakers and people who just care about cinema. If this is happening to a
huge hit with Marilyn Monroe right, what's happening to silent films, what's happening
to industrial films or you know documentaries that were made. We can't just lose
all this, you know, at that point, you know, eight eighty
years of film and of our culture. So the idea was, let's create
an organization that can advocate for film preservation and restoration and also for this is
as important as that as for getting these films back out to the public.
Because if people, if young people don't know about films from the past,
if they don't see them, then what's the motivation to preserve them. So,
you know, between the preservation program that we created the Film Foundation,
and the education program, we have a curriculum that teaches young people the language
of film, the unique language of how stories are told visually, and then
and then access. You know, we make sure that the films that we
the films that we help fund the restoration of and make sure are preserved,
get out to the world through festivals, archives, screenings on you know,
Turner classic movies and other outlets, and also our great partnerships with places like
Criterion Channel and the Criterion Collection and Movie and many other organizations and companies around
the around the world that really present film in what is a very kind of
like wonderful, celebratory and respectful way, making sure that people see the films
without commercial interruption and the way that the directors intended them to be seen.
I mean, you're doing God's work. I mean, this is this is
a very very important mission, and I'm so glad that Marty. I think
it's needed to be someone like Marty to be able to spearhead this. You
need, you need someone with his kind of gravitas to to let everybody knows,
Hey, wait a minute, Yeah, we need to keep an eye
on this. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor, and
now back to the show. What I always found fascinating about film preservation is
that it is a constant moving target. It never it never sits. It's
unlike the Pyramids that will be around for three thousand years. I mean,
stone is stone, but film, even today, we still have to preserve
it and continue to move it as technology changes. So even film stock today
in five hundred years. We don't know if film stock is going to be
the way these things are projected, if if that's projection still around, is
it going to be on a hard drive. And if it is going to
be on a hard drive, how long will that hard drive live last before
it crashes? How many So it's a constant, it's a never ending So
just because you you restore a film today, you're thinking, okay, in
thirty years, or in twenty years or in five we have to check to
see where it is, and we have to keep moving the ball. It's
almost like a game of hot potato. You constantly have to keep moving it
along history or along the future. Is a correct alex, you're hired.
I mean, you know, if you have it, you have it.
You hit the nail on the head, because you know, we were lucky
that we had this technology for what one hundred and twenty years or so of
film history, where yes, the film stock changed over that time, but
it was still using light and emulsion to capture life, to capture whatever you
want to create and put in front of the camera. And we were also
very lucky that even as ephemeral and fragile as film is and has been,
We still have films from the silent era that you can go up the best
then you can run through a projector you can also hold it up and you
can see, oh, yeah, there's people dancing, and then oh there's
a tint the blue. You know, old films can still be viewed.
The issue with digital and you know, we all know digitals is wonderful innovation.
You know, it's allowed a lot of filmmakers who haven't been represented in
the past to make films and get their stories out there. And that's vital.
That's that's that's an infusion of energy into the into the whole art form.
But the big butt on that is digital is untested in terms of the
longevity of digital and the changes in digital technology. I don't have to tell
you are just I mean, the cycle is spinning so fast. Do you
remember D one tape? Of course, I'm I'm older than I look mark
where. Yeah, I remember one tape, I remember D two tape.
I remember three corner ranch or one inch or two inch? I edited I
edited one inch between. Yeah, real's real back in the day. Yeah
yeah, So you think about the span the lifespan of digital is what thirty
years maybe so far how many formats have there been in that really short period
of time. So we will be the archivists of the future, and the
present are just going to be unraveling that. You've got to make sure that
you've got the hardware that will play back those formats. You've got to be
able to, you know, migrate that digital data now every I mean,
they recommend every six months. I mean, but you know, filmmakers,
yeah, and filmmakers are you know you you well, you know, you
know, well, when you make a film, you're just onto your next
project. You know. Most filmmakers don't have the time to kind of like,
well, let me manage all my data from my last five projects.
I'll take a couple of months here to do that. You know. It's
it's it's its own challenge, and I don't think that maybe the industry,
maybe the studios, you know, have a handle on that, and they're
managing their assets, you know, because they have the budgets for it,
and there's also and it's also money. Now they realize that it's ever ending.
You know, how many how many versions of Star Wars have I purchased?
How many versions of Godfather? Every time there's a new version, a
new rest, you buy a new platform. So from VHS, the laser
disc, the DVD, the Blu ray and digital, it's constant. So
that's where the money is. I think the studio is finally caught up.
We're like, oh wait, there's money to be made here. That was
key. That was key having this what they call monetized, right, having
having the classic film libraries and collections of the studios, had having another outlet
in another way to like you said, package and release on home home video,
home video, laser disc, DVD, you know, streaming now those
that we were so lucky that those formats demanded the best possible resolution and audiences
demanded the best possible resolution. So you did have to go back to the
original camera negative. You did have to go back into the vaults and take
a look at your assets and see if you had the original camera negative,
if you didn't have the original camera negative, what were the best elements that
you could find so that those DVDs or that you know, whether it's a
SDHD, four K, whatever the format is you're working from, you know
the best possible source for that for that transfer. And I think we were
very lucky that there was that robust home entertainment market in the in the nineteen
nineties and the two thousands, and now with streaming, it's a it's a
different it's a different stories I think, you know, unfortunately because the business,
because it is a business and an art for you know, there's a
different economic model now and it might be harder to you know, justify although
I don't like to use that word, but a vast expenditure of money on
a single title that may not make that back, right, I mean we
of course, yeah, that's what we do all day, you know.
We we advocate for that and we try to find ways to you know,
to make that as appealing as possible for studios and other rights holders because you
know, we think we think of of something like film, and this is
true, and with books and and and paintings and you know, other art
forms, music and theater. You know, people can't really own it,
right, You're a bit of a custodian. We can't. We can't own
anything. We're only on the earth for a certain of time. So even
land, you eventually have to give it to somebody else. It's like,
which is your fort a moment of time? So if you have. Let's
say, let's say, what's your favorite film, Alex, Oh God,
for one, I love Shawshank, Redemption. I love Saw Pemption. Okay,
so let's say you obtain the rights to Redemption, right you, you
know you have the rights to it, but you know, I would argue
that you are also holding it for the rest of us too. Oh right,
I'm not gonna put if I had bought It's like imagine if I got
the rights to Shawshank, I would like, I'm putting it in my vault
only I can see it. All copies have taken off the shelves. No
one could ever see it again. No, you're a custodian of art for
the work, for the good of the populist, the good of the world.
That's what you should That's how film should be, and arguably has how
studios should be as well. But with them, it's a business, now,
is it. You know, as you know, the corporations have taken
over the main studio as it before it was run by film bakers, and
now it's more more corporate. Yeah, I mean, it's always been a
business, and I think that's part of the challenge I think with the film,
with film as an art form and a commercial I won't say product,
but as a commercial endeavor. Right, films were made for the weekend and
the months that they could be in the theaters and then really until television,
there was no there was no maybe there would be a re release maybe ten
years later of the hit one of the hit ones. Yeah, but what
about the every B picture? And you know, until television came along,
it was considered you know, disposable is a strong word, but it was
considered that's an old movie. What are we what are we putting out you
know, next weekend? What are we putting out next year? And that?
And that is just by nature the way that the that the movie business
you know, works and it makes sense because you know, you know,
you're profits are only in the future and only on your current films. Everything
is pretty diminished once it's made its initial run. So yeah, yeah,
these are the challenges I think in terms of trying to you know, balance
you know, the high minded notion that film is an art form and needs
to be protected and preserved and the reality of you can't spend a million dollars
restoring one film. You know, that's not no one's gonna you know,
no one's gonna it's not really you know, necessary most of the time,
and it's not something that a studio is going to put that kind of money
in. So we do what we can, and we make sure that we
try to get both the kind of the high minded advocacy and awareness out there
and then also work practically to try to make sure that these as many films
that can be restored in any given year can get restored. We'll be right
back after a word from our sponsor, and now back to the show.
And I've heard lately that there is you know, you work with film and
films from nineties, back from nineteen nineties and back from what I understand from
your from my research, but there's an issue now with movies created in the
eighties that now the best quality versions of them are VHS tapes, like that's
all the negatives are gone because they were so disposable in those kind of b
movies and you know, these kind of things. But it is still cinema.
So I know there's a lot of organizations trying to even save VHS tapes
because that's or LaserDisc might be the best version of it out there. So
it is a problem. It is a problem're losing our We're losing movies every
day. And you know, it's interesting because you know, the eighties were
this, I mean, especially with what you do, right, the eighties
were this kind of the goal old and era of independent filmmaking. Eighties and
nineties. I mean that's when you know Jane Campion and Spike Lee and John
Sales and Mirror Nair, you know, all these mid gym Jarmush, all
these amazing independent filmmakers that you think of as these you know, kind of
legends, right. They were making movies for small companies, and there were
a lot of very successful small companies like Synecom. And that's when Mirramax started
and uh new Line. You know, there was this new world. I
mean, we could probably if I dig back in my memory banks, I
could think of even more. I mean even even you know, Sony Pictures,
Sony Pictures, Classics, No Ryan Ryan, Ryan, Cannon and Cannon
right and Troma oh okay, forget okay, forget Lloyd. So you know,
and and when those companies then and no longer, you know, we're
no longer in business, you know, those collections, it's it's it's unclear
you know where they bought who bought them. And I've talked to, you
know, so many filmmakers who say, I don't know where my elements are
for that hit, for that, for that independent film hit that I that
I made in you know, in the mid eighties, you know, and
they have maybe a sixteen milimar print of it, you know, if they're
lucky, they have a thirty five millimeter print of the film. But those
are It's like detective work. You have to follow. You have to trace
everything back. You know, was it at a lab that closed? Did
then those materials go to an archive? Hopefully they were saved and they're in
an archive it was that was that collection then sold outright to like maybe a
television company. You have to trace all those things back. And I do
think that archivists, you know, do have a certain kind of detective gene
that they that they tap into where they track these films down. I'll tell
you a story and interesting this is just one example of many when we work
very closely with all the different archives in the US and around the world,
and we have a great partnership with the UCLA Film and Television Archive and at
the time, there was an archivists working at UCLA, Ross Lippman, and
he was, as they often do, he was he was made aware that,
you know, got a call from a lab. We're closing. We're
getting rid of all the stuff here. You got today to come by and
find whatever you want to pick it up. So he and his team go
over to the lab and they're looking through the material and there's all these elements,
all these film elements, and some of them have proper labeling, many
of them don't. And he finds on the label the name of a New
York based producer, and he just thought, you know, that guy produced
the one film that Barbara Lowden made, Wanda, she that she started,
directed, wrote and directed, and it's kind you know, it's it's considered
this kind of independent film, you know, milestone and independent cinema and and
and you know feminist, you know, films made by by women. So
you know, he takes it. He puts all these elements in his trunk.
It turns out this was the original negative for the film Wanda. And
were it not for the archivist, the knowledge that this archivist had the kind
of random serendipity of you know, the lab thankfully calls the archive materials are
gathered, the thrown into his trunk and you know, contact the Film Foundation.
That was one of the films that they asked us to support the restoration
of that given year. And you know, now that film has inspired so
many people who hadn't they would never be able to see that film in the
way that it exists now, restored and saved for filmmakers and audiences to to,
you know, get inspiration and joy from these films. Yeah, it's
it's remarkable. I know there was a movie that Marty found, at least
the legend goes, there was a wonderful film called I Am Cuba years ago.
I'm Cuban of Cuban descent. So I was very interested in watching that
film. And then it was released through Criterion. I think it released once
and then really rereleased through a Criterion And it was him and Francis who presented
the film and they said, I remember, I remember when it came out.
It was like, if this movie would have come out when it was
made, it would have changed cinema, like it it would have skewed cinema
in a certain direction, Like there are those landmark films that when once that
comes, are like, well everything's changed, and it was, and it
was I think it was found in in a closet somewhere, I don't know,
in an archive somewhere, in a salt mine somewhere. Uh. And
when they saw it, it was just a game changer. And any filmmaker
listening, if you haven't seen Im Cuba, please go out and see im
Cuba. I mean P. T. Anderson, you know, he he
borrowed a very famous shot from that and he says, I was inspired by
this shot in im Cuba and the stuff that they did in a film like
that, Like you're looking back like they're running around with a hundred pound camera
and it looks like it's a steady camp but it isn't. How do they
do that? How did they hang the camera over these two? Like this
is this is cinema at its best. But it was lost, it was
gone. Yeah, yeah yeah. And you know, I'm glad you brought
that up because you know people, you know, filmmakers, and there's not
many of them, right, filmmakers like Marty and Francis Ford Coppola. Putting
attention, putting a spotlight on these films has been a really crucial part of
this whole movement, right, the film preservation and appreciation movement. You have
filmmakers who are beloved and masters putting a spotlight on a film like I Am
Cuba, or a film like you know, even even a big popular film
like I think when when Marty and Steven Spielberg, I think, did the
first Lawrence of Arabia restoration way back in the photochemical era, and I remember
going to the Zigfeld and watching it on that big screen. I had never
seen Lawrence of Arabia and and and I just you know, I remember one
of the main reasons I went to see it was I knew that, like
Martin SCORSESEI a filmmaker that I love who I just if he likes this film,
I want to go see it. And it's obviously a masterpiece. So
directors filmmakers who you know are generous in that way, and I think they
instinctively are, because you know, when something hits you in a profound way,
you want to share that. And I think if the Film Foundation has
been successful over these years, I think that's that's it's really all because of
Marty and the other directors on the board who have generously shared their enthusiasm for
these films and their and their dedication to making sure I mean, they have
a righteous anger about like, you know, let's not lose these films.
You know, we don't we don't know who is going to be hit by
these films and inspired in the future. And it's a it's a it's a
deep well that I think we have to make sure, you know, stays
available for filmmakers who you know are working today and who are going to be
working in the future exactly. I mean, how many painters and artists have
been inspired by van go or Basquiat or Pollock or any of these Like just
imagine if van go would have never been found I think got he mean nine
hundred of those things. He just kept making them in no one bottom,
but he just kept making them because he had to, because he was an
artist. But imagine if that was all lost in a fire ones and no
one would have known about Van Gogh. What a loss to humanity that would
be. Any thing, That's how you look at it, Yeah, And
I think it's It's also kind of interesting because film inspires filmmakers, but it
also inspires painters and musicians and dancers and scientists and you know, I mean
people. And we'll be right back after a word from our sponsor and now
back to the show. And yeah, because I think if you if you
look at art and cinema, art and you know, fine art, if
you look at it as a transcendent experience, I mean, it's really one
of the things that makes life worth living, you know, I mean we
we we transcend our daily lives when we read a book or when we look
at a painting, or when we watch a great film, and when we
you know, experience a dance that we're seeing, you know, performed.
These are things that take us out of the daily you know grind of you
know, working, and you know, I mean, I think that we
have to remember that there are so many important issues in the world, but
this is this is a vital thing that we want to really keep alive and
keep available to people because it's what kind of propels us into the future in
a in a kind of renewed way. Well, there's no there's no question
because the a's a conversation about the arts. You know, that's the first
thing they cut at school when the budget's going. Look, but art is
what makes your mind. Think what creates and what creates imagination, and that
is what creates innovation in our in our in humanity. Without the great scientific
or the sci fi books of H. G. Wells, a lot of
that has come true. Yeah, we don't have a time machine yet,
but there's a lot of concepts that were laid out there that we're inspired inspired
scientists and they wanted to go And then I mean, and then many of
the filmmakers we've spoken about today. If it's inspired so many scientists, so
many artists, so many people in the world, art is something that needs
to be preserved and needs to be protected. And even if there isn't a
monetary reward right away, there's a much greater reward, which is the culture
of it. And I always tell people, you know, when I when
I try to inspire filmmakers to go out and make their films, I go,
you have no idea who you are going to touch what your film.
Your film might be seen by ten people, but one of those ten people
might go off and make the great cinematic masterpiece, or might go off and
become that doctor because of the story that you're telling, or go off and
save lives or change. You've no idea the power that art has in changing
people's lives. And that's why I think the work that you do in Marty's
doing is so so so important in the world. Well, I have to
say that we are a small team, so I want to take a moment
to give your shot up to the other three or four people who work get
the Foundation with me. Jennifer On is our managing director. She's been at
the Foundation for over twenty years and she's, you know, kind of a
genius in many ways in terms of creating programs, creating partnerships with people who
will, you know, help fund these restorations. And she's truly a partner
for Marty and I and she's just in an extraordinary talent. And Chris Christin
Morola, who's our program manager, who is just, you know, again
just so dedicated and devoted to film and cinema and it's just it's no one
who can keep more things in the air at the same time, she's terrific.
And my colleague here in New York, Rebecca Wingle, who's actually moving
on to grad school. We're sad to see her go, but she's been
with the Foundation for six years. So we're kind of a very small and
kind of dedicated group that you know, we're lean and mean, and we
make a lot happen. So I just want to give a shout out to
my colleagues at the Foundation. Absolutely no question about it. Now I have
a question a few questions I want to ask you that are kind of the
nitty greedy of action film restorations. We've talked about the ideas and the concepts
and the love about it, but how long does it take to restore a
film? Well, it varies depending on the addition of the materials, the
length of the film, the type of of workflow that you decide. The
first the first thing you want to ask is like, is this is this
the original negative? Is this the best element to work from? If it's
if the original negative is damaged, if it doesn't exist, if it's missing
reels. That time to track down and to kind of bring together all the
best surviving elements for a film can be very time consuming, but it's really
crucial because you don't want to spend resources and time preserving something that you think
is the best element. And then, oh, you know this archive in
you know, in Germany they have this whole film and it's it's a better
element than what you're working from. So this consortium of archives in under this
group called FEE, the International Federation of Film Archivists, they're really crucial in
this process. The archives will do these calls around to the world to make
sure that they're working from the best the best materials. That's it's a long
way of saying it can take a long time. However, if you have
an original camera negative that's in you know, really good or decent condition,
and you know that you're going to do either a photochemical preservation or a digital
restoration, you know it can be It can be as short as you know,
two to four months, you know, if you can really focus on
that and if the if the if you don't have to track down materials,
if you don't have to do a lot of physical repair and manual work on
the film itself. We've worked on projects that take ten years. Wow.
And at ten year time frame is from the time that someone first starts talking
to you about hey. And in this instance, I'll tell you what the
project was. One of Marty's oldest dearest friends, Jay Cox. Every time
I would see Jay, and he's a renowned writer. He would say to
me, we got to save the memory of justice. It's this Marcel Opal's
four and a half documentary on Nuremberg, Vietnam and the French Algerian War.
It's a masterpiece. We have to save that. No one can see it.
So from that instigation, right, you have to then find out.
In the instance of this project, it was the subject of various lawsuits.
It was you know, bought and sold. There was only a sixteen millimeter
print at the New York Public Lib and so we had to do tracking down
finding you know, the original sixteen millimeter was it was made on sixteen millimeter
sixteen milimeter negative. In this instance we had to which is one of the
only times the Film Foundations ever had to do this. We had to go
back because it's a documentary and it had like three hundred and eighty cues of
you know, clips, music. We had to go back and re license
all that material and scan the sixteen milimeter negative, do all the work involved
in restoring a film of that length. Then we found the original German,
French and French language tracks. And at the time the film was made,
it was, you know, in the nineteen seventies mid seventies, it was
common a common stylistic decision in documentaries where you would kind of put the original
language track down or take it out entirely and have a very staid British you
know voiceover. Yes, I remember. Yeah. So we contacted Marty contacted
Marcel Opals, the filmmaker of the director of the film, and said,
you know, we found these language tracks, what would you like to do.
We don't want to change anything about the film unless it's a directorial,
you know, choice, he said, I always wanted to use the original
language tracks. They made me put that voiceover on. So what happens when
you put the original language tracks and you know, you're these are interviews with
former Nazis, right, so you want to hear the tone of their voice.
You want to hear the tone of voice that Marcel Opals is using to
interrogate these guys, and so it's a whole different experience. So we we
really look at that. That was that was a massive undertaking that the Film
Foundation took on with the Academy Film Archive, and it brought back a work
of art film, a really important monumental documentary to the world where you know,
I don't think anyone could have seen it, and we were able to
work with Thank thank you Sheila and Evans at HBO because she loved the film,
she knew of the film, and she was able the HBO licensed it
and we were able to pay for all those licenses so that audiences could see
the film because it's an important milestone, it's an educational tool, it's it's
a real document for for for the twentieth century. So that's just one very
long winded example of how long it can take to fully restore and make a
film available to audiences. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
and now back to the show. And what is the average cost?
I know that depends obviously on the length, but generally the average cost of
a color film, a black and white film. Yeah, generally a black
and white film is somewhere on the fifty to eighty thousand dollars range if it's
a feature. If it's a feature length film, it can be more.
Obviously a color film is more than that. It's usually somewhere more like,
you know, eighty two, one hundred and twenty thousand dollars for a full
feature to do a full restoration where you're really doing frame by framework. And
again there are that's kind of a ballpark. There are outliers that are less
than that and more than that, but that's the general ballpark. Now,
tell me about your monthly on demand screenings that you guys have just started up.
Well, this is a very exciting opportunity for the Foundation to reach the
audience directly. When we when we were in the pandemic and everything was shut
down and we had our annual board meeting the directors, we were talking about
all these great festivals that we work with that had migrated online and pivoted to
presenting films virtually, and also companies like Criterion Channel and Movie and and and
great organizations and also great theaters like the Film Forum and Anthology, Film Archives
and MoMA. They all had kind of presented their offerings online. And our
board said, hey, you know, we should do that, you know,
once in a while. We don't need to, you know, obviously
we're not. There's all these great organizations doing it, but we should show
people what we do and the kind of work that we that we support.
And so we went to a wonderful supporter who who used to be at IBM.
Jeff Schick and is now at Oracle, and we described the challenge to
him and he worked with us as pro bono to kind of build a site
that would allow us to present once a month for twenty four hours, a
fully restored film, and we build around each presentation interviews with archivists, filmmakers,
actors, scholars, historians, talking contextualizing the experience for an audience and
giving information about the restoration, about the film, why the film is important
to you know, any given filmmaker, how it inspired them. So we're
creating really kind of like a bit of of a festival experience online for people
you know all over the world. Most of the time, I mean,
it depends on film by film we have. We have more or less territories
available, but it's free and you can look at it if you look at
it in a live way, like we start each screening at seven o'clock in
your local time zone, and if you're in the US or the UK or
Canada, you can join us for a live chat if that's the way you
like to watch films. If you're seeing a film for the second or third
or fourth time, or for the first time, and you just like to
talk to people while you're watching a film, which is kind of anathema to
some people, but you know, we have that option. And then we
also have an on demand option for the majority of the people who just want
to be able to watch the film either on a large laptop or on their
hopefully on there the television that they have at home, where they can cast
onto a big screen and enjoy the film. And and you know, the
films, you know, look beautiful, you see the restoration, and if
if you have never seen the film before, you can learn all about the
film and join in in this community that we think is still really vital every
month and see a wide range of films everything from you know, for the
for the initial launch, we showed a nineteen forty five British film called I
Nowhere I'm Going that's this one of the great romantic films of all time.
We showed Lastrata, which is you know, Felini's masterpiece that we you know,
restored in partnership with the Tinneteca to Bologna and Criterion. And then after
that we have a wonderful double feature because we love our double features. It's
a film noir double feature of The Chase, Arthur Ripley's The Chase and Edgar
Almer's Detour. Yes, so we're thrilled about about that because you know,
we really we want to show as many films as possible. So it's it's
fun to be able to show some double features here and there too. And
now you're going to be doing this. It's a monthly it's a monthly screening,
right, it's every second Monday of each month. It was one of
them make it. Yeah, we we just wanted to make it. You
know, we don't have the band with with our small team to be doing
this, you know, you know every day. We also have so many
great partners who do do this all the time. But we did want to
have, you know, an opportunity to kind of directly connect with an audience
and show them the kind of work that we support. We're going to be
showing films from our World Cinema project, you know, films that have been
you know, made in regions where you know, a lot of times these
films aren't really only known in the region that they were made in, like
Gamadi and like Samba Zanga, which is a French Angolian Angolian film that was
directed by Sarah Malderer and it's it's a wonderful film. Uh, you know,
a political film that's uh again being being discovered and rediscovered because of the
restoration. And you know, we're just really thrilled to get a real diverse
offering of films out to audiences because you know, film is pretty, it's
it's rich, and it's broad and it's genres and era and we want to
celebrate all of that. Yeah, and it's and you're gonna be doing this
every every month, moving forward, every month, Yeah, moving forward.
That's that's a that's an amazing service. I will do everything I can to
get the word out to to my audience because I think it's it's it's really
really important for filmmakers to to watch old cinema. And I mean, we
all know the usual suspects we all have to watch, but discovering those the
im cubas of the world and those kind of films that are not mainstream classics,
that's where a lot of really interesting uh filmmakers and voices are heard that
should be seen by different generations. Without question. I had one one question,
where do when you when you're done restoring it now, I'm assuming you
put it on sell Lord Archival Selly Lord and put in an assault mind somewhere
and then also digital Yeah, when when when the film we still do photochemical
preservations with some of the archives, in which case you want to make sure
that the original materials and elements are held in cold storage, temperature and humanity
control as well as the new film elements. But it allows, you know,
film prints to be circulated at theaters that are still showing thirty five millimeter
film. And then when we have digital workflow and when we restore films digitally,
we always have we have a film negative that's output from the digital files
and then thirty five millimeter film prints made from that negative. So we always
have thirty five millimeter film print and a DCP available to theaters so that audiences
can see they have the theaters have the option of showing either. And I
think, you know, it's important for us to always now have some kind
of digital element, so because that's really the way that the majority of people
are going to see the films. So we try to kind of as long
as films available, we'll be we'll be making some prints and negatives of the
films that we that we help restore. But there's some there's some four K
and maybe eight K quick Times out there somewhere. Absolutely well. Quick Times
are probably held by the rights holders, but yeah, we we but as
archival for our co, yeah, absolutely well. Lto tape is usually what
we're preserving at Wow. Yeah, because I mean again it's you're you're fighting
against time. Time is the enemy here. It's it just it just keeps
pounding away. And these elements, I mean, eventually, hopefully they'll be
a hard drive that will last indefinitely. And I think that will happen one
day. But who knows, you know, well a diamond or something.
What we hear is it's going to be DNA DNA So what is that exactly?
DNA storage? So what is DNA storage? I have no idea.
What d you know, Bigger brains than mine are going to have to explain
that. But you should try to get someone on the show who can talk
to you about DNA storage because that's apparently the future, not just for film
preservation and film storage obviously, but for data storage. I mean, we
are creating the amount of you know, computing power needed to store all that's
being created on the Internet, and you know, crypto, everything is just
so massive. I think the goal and the future is to have a DNA
strand hold all this information. Apparently it's exponential, the amount of material that
can be held once you Once you can you know, kind of like block
kind of like a blockchain mixed with a DNA kind of world. We'll be
right back after a word from our sponsor, and now back to the show.
Yeah, again, brain's bigger than you and I. We'll have to
explain this to as smart as we are. It's just a little beyond us,
right when, because you're on the cutting edge of everything. I mean
you're talking about it's kind of like us trying to explain to somebody in the
nineteen hundreds this thing right here is really really important. Yeah, exactly.
We use it all day every day, but we cannot tell you how it
works, right exactly exactly. I can tell you. I can tell you
how a toaster works. I can't tell you how this thing works exactly.
Now, Margaret, I'm going to ask you a few questions. I ask
all of my guests, what is the lesson that took you the longest to
learn? Whether in the film industry or in life. Hmm. Interesting.
I feel like I'm still learning things. I'm not trying to dodge the question,
but I'll tell you what I'm glad I haven't learned yet is the word
no, yes, thank you. I really I can be kind of a
pain in this way, but I don't feel like anything is impossible, and
I try to do, you know. And maybe it's because I've worked for
Martin Scorsese for over thirty years, but I never I never say no.
I really try to make that I'm tenacious, and I think you need to
be tenacious in in, you know, roles like I have with the Film
Foundation. You can't give up on things. You know, how many people
are going to, like, you know, hang around for a ten year
restoration of a nineteen seventy six documentary, you know. So I'm trying to
think of the lesson. So I don't know if you can unwind that into
like the lesson no, it makes it. I mean, the lesson I
think that you're learning is to not take no for an answer, which is
a very very big lesson for people to go out if you can understand that
no is the default. No is what everyone's going to say to you most
of the time, especially in the film industry. You know, I'm sure
Marty. I'm sure Martyn can attest to that because he's been said no to
so I know, I know. And even even now it's funny because people
will say, well, he's Martin's say you can you can do anything.
It's like, yeah, people say no to him all the time. So
it's like, you know, you you really have to find ways to work
around you know, you have to. You have to commit to your dream
whatever it is. If you're you know, if you want to be an
actor, if you want to be a writer, if you want to be
a filmmaker, you know, you gotta believe in yourself because no one's going
to believe in you unless they see it coming from you first. Absolutely,
that's how it's conveyed. No, I think we might have answered the question,
but I'm gonna ask it anyway. What advice do you have for a
filmmaker trying to break into the business today. I think this seems like an
obvious bit of advice, But know your story, have a story to tell
and know what that story is, and you know, as much as you
can draw deep from your own personal experiences, knowledge, you know, bring
the emotion to it. And I think that's what people respond to. You
know, people respond to the truth of something. And even if it's not
like, yeah, I'm not talking about documentary truth, I'm talking about something's
authentic, you know, try to try to make it. Try to tell
a story and make a film about something that matters to you and that you
know. Hm, that's a great piece of advice. And my last question
and arguably the most difficult question you can be asked, three of your favorite
films of all time? Oh wow, that is really difficult because it changes,
as you know today. I always say, as of right now,
what comes it was tomorrow change, yesterday was different. Right now? What
are the three favorite films? I would say Vertigo, and this is in
no particular order. I would say Vertigo, it's so good. I would
say mean Streets, I mean, maybe my I mean it's a hard it's
a hard call because I have so many Uh Scorsese favorites. You know,
I'm really loving two thousand and one. Yeah, I mean it's it's I
mean, my my favorite Kubrick. I'm a huge, huge, huge Kubrick
fan. I've gone down the rabbit hole, probably a little too much with
with Stanley, but I love Eyes Watch Shut. I just adore it is
not the one that everyone talks about, but for me, I just I
still remember walking out of the theater in ninety nine and my friends are asking
me, what did you think I go? I don't know. I don't
understand it, but I will in ten years. And that's generally all of
Stanley's movies, they all are understood about a decade later, really truly like
appreciated. And then I saw it ten years later after I was married,
and it hit me at a whole other level because you're just like, oh,
oh God, I understand what he was trying to say. And it's
just it's such a hypnotic film, and and Mean Streets there's a there's a
rawness and velocity, but like this this energy energy that a young Scorsese is
making there, you know, and I've seen I've seen who's that knocking?
Or what is a girl? A good girl? What is it you're doing
in a place like this? Yeah, I saw that one. I've seen
almost all of Marty save short films and everything, but Mean Streets has this
this raw kinetic. That's a kinetic energy that you can start seeing the seeds
of what's coming. And that's what that is as a brilliant piece of work
as an independent filmmaker. It's really and and it's it's the definition of what
we just talked about of like having a story you know important to you goes
deep. That's like a personal you you know these people, you know this
story. I will add one film that I that I mentioned before is you
know I did watch some like It Hot again recently, so good and there
are you know how many films hold up and make you laugh so hard every
time you see them and over you know, film was nineteen sixty I think
maybe you know however many years you know, seventy years later, it's it's
just it's it's a real masterpiece. And you know, I've had a real
Billy Wilder reappreciation. Really. I mean, I'll tell you from from my
generation of filmmakers, which was coming up in the eighties and the nineties.
Laser discs were the thing, and the Criterion Collection introduced me to films.
If it just came out on the Criterion Collection, I would be like,
I have to watch this. So the graduates. I saw. I saw
movies, classic movies when there wasn't a lot of information about movies unless you
were in film school, and like the Lady in the mid eighties lad eighties,
there just wasn't there's no internet unless you went on studied in books.
You really couldn't know what was something you should watch. And the Criterion Collection
was one of those those collections that you're like the graduate, Okay, some
like it hot. I saw some like it hot to laserdis for the first
time. So that was in these in that collection, especially the early stuff,
and then of course Raging Bull, Taxi Driver, I think Bean Streets
came out afterwards, and then Lawrence of Arabian and the list goes on or
not. But yeah, there's those films up. But I remember, even
when I was a knucklehead in the video store days, which I was a
teenager, I called myself the knucklehead because I had no taste in cinema.
I was learning my taste in cinema again. I was watching like, you
know, John klavon Dam films and going he is the best actor ever.
But because I was, you know, sixteen, so of course, you
know, but even then films like the graduate films like some like It Hot
pierced through that because it hits you at a whole other level. It's not
a superficial level. And that's when I fell in love with Billy Wilder,
Preston Sturges. It's just these these filmmakers, those films like Preston stir Sullivan's
Travel still holds so well, yeah, even more, even more. And
you know, the thing is is it's important to note I think that comedy
is hard and that it can last. Yeah, and we can think of
like oh lighter, you know, the critics and awards, you know,
groups, I think underestimate how hard it is to make people laugh hard.
And and you watch a master like Billy Wilder and something like that's a absolute
masterpiece. It's it's a comedy. It's a comedic masterpiece. The timing,
the arts, the writing, just that everything, the entity. It's just
such a well made comedy. And then yeah, because comedy is like,
oh, it's everyone's laughing, so you shouldn't take it seriously. And that's
a lot of like awards and you know, Oscars and these kind of things
don't don't usually award these kind of films. But it's so hard. We'll
be right back after a word from our sponsor, and now back to the
show. So hard I've I've worked on comedies. It's the timing. You're
talking about a frame here or frame there, the joke lands or it doesn't
land on that frame. It's such such a nuanced art form. You know,
one of my favorite comedies of all time is Airplane and because of the
ludacy, but that is another deceiving comedy. It is so well time,
the timing of the jokes, how they did it, and you do know
the story of their review their Oh god, what is when when you go
in a test audience, the test audience review, you know, that's so
when they did it was one of the worst tested films ever. Paramount thought
it was going to be a bomb because nobody wanted to admit that they were
laughing. Nobody wanted to admit that they enjoyed it because it was so silly
and there was really had never been a film like that. That's that's true,
crazy slapstick. And but then when the audience it when it hit the
theaters, it just exploded. But it was considered one of the worst tested
films that because nobody wanted to admit that they were having a good time.
So it's even then. Yeah, thank goodness they didn't like it. I
mean that launched a whole that was groundbreaking. It launched a whole nature genre
that didn't exist before, right, right, And so these are these are
pieces of cinema that you know. In the world that we live in today,
Margaret, we have so much content and so much information coming at us
and with you know, I remember a time I always tell I took filmmakers
this young filmmakers. I'm like, I remember a time where I could watch
everything that came out that week because I was working at a video store and
every movie that came out on that given week, five movie, six movies,
maybe I watched them all. Yeah, maybe a day. You could
take a day and watch everything there a weekend and you're done, and I
would watch everything and I would be you know, That's how I got my
cinema knowledge. But today's world, there is so much coming at you.
The content in the in the amount of films, the amount of television,
and let's not even talk about YouTube and content created there, but just in
cinema and in television, storytelling. There's so much coming at us. You
and I could spend ten lifetimes and not watch at all. It's it's insane.
So it's that's why it's so important to highlight these wonderful pieces of art
that you are working with the Foundation to to bring light to because like content
and cinema has become disposable in many ways, where before you know, there
was only three channels. Yeah, I know, I know, well,
no, Alex. It's so we're so grateful for you to, you know,
be talking about this year audience, to be highlighting it because I think
for filmmakers, this is it probably is just this really important. I mean,
nothing is more important to filmmakers than having that well to draw from where
you can go back and be inspired by a film that was made. That's
part of that legacy. It's part of the continuum of the creative evolution of
storytelling on film, right exactly. And I can't I can't imagine a world
without the filmography of Mark Scorsese or Stanley Kubrick, or Steven Spielberg or Hitchcock
or Corsawa. You pull these just those those names alone, or Coppela,
you pull them out of cinema. Can you imagine the next generation of filmmakers
without being able to see main streets or jaws or to those Yeah, I
mean, nothing exists in a vacuum, and you know you can't have you
know, you know you can't have you know, fill in the blank,
contemporary filmmaker without their antecedents, you know, without without the things that came
before them. Because everything it's it builds on it. It's music is the
same way any art form. It echoes the past and then create something new.
Right now, we're not we're not mimicking the past. We're using you
know, we're kind of building on that and you know, using your own
voice and your own story, but always having that awareness of what's come before.
Margaret, it has been an absolute pleasure and honor talking to you.
Thank you so much for coming on the show, and thank you Marty and
your entire team at the Film Foundation for what you do because it is such
important work and I'm so glad that that I can, in my small way
help you along the way. So thank you again and please continue the good
work you are doing God's work. Without question. Thank you, Alex.
It's been such a pleasure and Hopefully we'll be back and talk about other restorations
in the future. I want to thank Margaret so so much for coming on
the show and sharing her knowledge and men's cinematic experience with the tribe today.
Thank you so so much, Margaret. If you want to get links to
anything we spoke about in this episode, including how to get access to the
restoration screening room, head over to the show notes at Bulletproof Screenwriting dot tv.
Ford Slash three thirty one. Thank you so much for listening to guys.
As always, keep on writing no matter what. I'll talk to you
soon. Thanks for listening to the Bulletproof Screenwriting podcasts at Bulletproof Screenwriting dot tv.