Speaker 1: Oh gee, is Bolt it show died?
Speaker 2: People pay good money to see this movie.
Speaker 3: When they go out to a theater.
Speaker 4: They want clod sodas, hot popcorn, and no monsters in
Speaker 4: the protection booth.
Speaker 2: Everyone for tend podcasting isn't boring, cut it off.
Speaker 5: Do you remember the movie Harold and Maud While I
Speaker 5: was a teenager. It played for over two years straight
Speaker 5: at my neighborhood theater. It played and played and played.
Speaker 5: I was such a big fan that when the two
Speaker 5: star of the film, Ruth Gordon and Bud Court came
Speaker 5: to town to celebrate the two year anniversary, I got
Speaker 5: to have dinner with Bud Court, and I followed the
Speaker 5: two stars around with my trustee Super eight camera.
Speaker 1: You know, it's a great thing to be a place
Speaker 1: where something goes right. And for two years at the
Speaker 1: Westgate Theater, things have gone right for Harold and more
Speaker 1: and tonight it includes Bodily.
Speaker 2: There's nothing anybody concerned.
Speaker 6: So thank you all.
Speaker 4: For living in the film and making this probably one
Speaker 4: of the most touching months of my luck.
Speaker 3: And I'm sure she said, and God.
Speaker 5: Bless you are at the Westgate Theater. Harold and Maude
Speaker 5: officially became a cult film. I always thought there was
Speaker 5: a book in this unique conflux of the perfect movie
Speaker 5: at the perfect theater at the perfect time, And now
Speaker 5: that book held over Harold and Maud at the Westgate
Speaker 5: Theater is a reality. The book looks at the beginnings
Speaker 5: of the Westgate Theater, the tragic loss of its visionary founder,
Speaker 5: and its struggles to get by for the next forty years.
Speaker 5: Then we go behind the scenes at the making of
Speaker 5: Harold and Maud, the casting choices that could have been
Speaker 5: the accidental moments that made cinema history, and the marketing
Speaker 5: mistakes that nearly doomed the movie. Next, we dive into
Speaker 5: the movies two plus years at the Westgate, the one
Speaker 5: year anniversary, the superfan who saw the movie over one
Speaker 5: hundred and sixty times and formed a lasting friendship with
Speaker 5: Ruth Gordon, the two year anniversary, where Ruth Gordon returned
Speaker 5: and Budcourt joined her and also brought out the protesters.
Speaker 5: The book also looks at what happened to Harold and
Speaker 5: Maud after it left the Westgate, its success in other cities,
Speaker 5: the stage productions as well as the musical version. Finally,
Speaker 5: the book examines the last years of the Westgate Theater
Speaker 5: and their ongoing attempts to find a worthy successor to
Speaker 5: Harold and Maud, which they kept trying to do until
Speaker 5: the theater finally closed in nineteen seventy seven. The book
Speaker 5: is packed with over one hundred and sixty color and
Speaker 5: black and white photos.
Speaker 6: Some of the.
Speaker 5: Photos are rare, while others are being published for the
Speaker 5: first time. It's the story of a film that wouldn't
Speaker 5: die and the theater that gave it life. Check out
Speaker 5: Held Over Harold and Maud at the Westgate Theater.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Projection Booth. I'm your host Mike White.
Speaker 2: On this special episode, I'm talking with author John Gaspard
Speaker 2: all about his book Held Over. It is the story
Speaker 2: of the two year run of Harold and Maud at
Speaker 2: the Westgate Theater in Minneapolis. It's a great story and
Speaker 2: really loving portrait of the film as well as the movie,
Speaker 2: theater and the community around it. Thanks so much for listening,
Speaker 2: and I hope you enjoy the interview. I want to
Speaker 2: know a little bit more about how you became an author.
Speaker 7: I became an author because of a filmmaker named William Baher.
Speaker 7: William Baher was a kind of experimental, semi Hollywood filmmaker
Speaker 7: in the late sixties, and he wrote a book called
Speaker 7: Breaking Through, Selling Out, Dropping Dead, and Other Notes on filmmaking,
Speaker 7: a really good book, a little dated now, but about
Speaker 7: just the ins and outs of making a movie, both
Speaker 7: in and outside of the Hollywood system. And then about
Speaker 7: a year later he did a update of it in
Speaker 7: which he just added the stuff that he'd learned, and
Speaker 7: at the back of it he said, I've become so
Speaker 7: frustrated filmmaking. I've decided to become a novelist. And that's
Speaker 7: what he went on to do until then with life.
Speaker 7: He became a kind of a thriller novelist and was
Speaker 7: very happy doing it. So this is me at age fifteen,
Speaker 7: reading and going, oh, okay, if I get tired of
Speaker 7: making movies, I will write novels. And so for the
Speaker 7: next forty years I held down a corporate job doing
Speaker 7: videos for Fortune five hundred companies, and then in my
Speaker 7: spare time I made a bunch of low budget feature films.
Speaker 7: I started that in high school making I believe what
Speaker 7: is the first super eight sound feature film that was
Speaker 7: done with a code AC system. And then I've shot
Speaker 7: him on sixteen millimeters and various forms of video, and
Speaker 7: the last couple were done in digital video. So I've
Speaker 7: done a lot of screenwriting and a lot of writing.
Speaker 7: This in my day job, so writing wasn't a big deal.
Speaker 7: But as I got older, making a little bunch of
Speaker 7: movies get just a little bit harder. The hours are harder,
Speaker 7: the gear, although lighter now than it used to be,
Speaker 7: is still clunky, and you can't do it alone. You
Speaker 7: do need a talented group, which normally I can assemble,
Speaker 7: but it's just it's Mike. It's a lot of work.
Speaker 7: And I had an idea for a series of novels
Speaker 7: about a magician because I had a lot of friends
Speaker 7: who are magicians. I'd booked a lot of magicians in
Speaker 7: the corporate world, and I also had friends who are magicians,
Speaker 7: and so I wrote a book about a magician who
Speaker 7: stumbles into some crimes, and that got popular, so I
Speaker 7: just kept writing them. There's now ten of those. And
Speaker 7: then I wrote another mystery series about a community theater
Speaker 7: that keeps stumbling into murders. Three books in that one.
Speaker 7: I wrote a couple of filmmaking books, first with Michael Wise,
Speaker 7: back in the day when he was still alive and
Speaker 7: doing things. I mean, Michael Wisi Publications is still out there,
Speaker 7: and then they did a couple of other filmmaking books on
Speaker 7: my own. So not afraid to sit down and write
Speaker 7: not really an issue. And now that I am in
Speaker 7: rehirement age, that's my hobby because I just sit around
Speaker 7: and write stuff.
Speaker 2: How did you get the idea for held Over?
Speaker 7: On occasion, I do a film podcast called the Occasional
Speaker 7: Film Podcast, and I had interviewed a guy named James
Speaker 7: Davidson who had written a book called hal Ashby and
Speaker 7: the Making of Harold and Maud. And it was a
Speaker 7: pretty complete book on that process. And it wasn't a
Speaker 7: book I was interested in writing. I didn't want to
Speaker 7: ever do any of that in depth. But Harold and
Speaker 7: Maud was a big movie for me. It ran for
Speaker 7: two years here in Minneapolis at the Westgate Theater. I
Speaker 7: saw it many times when it was at the Westgate Theater.
Speaker 7: It had a first year anniversary. I went to that
Speaker 7: and met Ruth Gordon. It had a second year anniversary.
Speaker 7: I went to that and met Ruth Gordon and Bud
Speaker 7: Court and had dinner with Bud Court and shot some
Speaker 7: super eight footage of them and just knew a lot
Speaker 7: about the movie and realized that it was in that
Speaker 7: two year span that it became a cult film. It
Speaker 7: probably would have been a cult film eventually, but the
Speaker 7: fact that it played continuously seven nights a week, two
Speaker 7: shows a night, three shows on Sunday for over two
Speaker 7: years at one theater got the attention of a lot
Speaker 7: of other theater owners around the country, and they started
Speaker 7: booking it and used that fact in their advertising. Hey, Detroit,
Speaker 7: what does Minneapolis know that we don't know? Hey, New York,
Speaker 7: same thing. And from that it became a cult film.
Speaker 7: But it wouldn't have happened the way it happened if
Speaker 7: it hadn't sat at the Westgate for that amount of time.
Speaker 7: And I thought, that's something it hasn't been explored. I
Speaker 7: have unique visuals from that time that nobody else has.
Speaker 7: I have the inside track on it. Let's just sit
Speaker 7: down and see what this could become. And I did
Speaker 7: it at the perfect time in indie book writing. In
Speaker 7: that world, you can now easily get really high end
Speaker 7: full color, black and white color photographic paper books printed
Speaker 7: on a print on demand basis, so I don't have
Speaker 7: to order five hundred books and have them sitting in
Speaker 7: my garage. I can order ten twenty as I need them,
Speaker 7: which is a little bit more expensive, but I didn't
Speaker 7: want I didn't want to die with five hundred books
Speaker 7: in the garage. So I thought it's perfect time to
Speaker 7: do a coffee table book that it looks at that era,
Speaker 7: that every page has a nice surprising image on it,
Speaker 7: every page has a nice surprising factor to bid something
Speaker 7: you didn't know about either the theater, which had, as
Speaker 7: it turned out, pretty interesting history, or the movie, or
Speaker 7: what happened to both of them after they split up
Speaker 7: in nineteen seventy four. So it just seemed it seemed
Speaker 7: like a perfect time to do this sort of large
Speaker 7: scale project.
Speaker 2: And the layout of the book is just gorgeous. Who
Speaker 2: did that? Or did you do that yourself?
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 7: If only I could no. And that was one of
Speaker 7: the things that made me decide to do it was
Speaker 7: I approached there's a couple in England that do run
Speaker 7: a company called Design for Writers, and they have done
Speaker 7: virtually every book cover that I've done, and I've done
Speaker 7: a lot of books, and they're very creative and really
Speaker 7: easy to work with. And I approached them and said
Speaker 7: here's what I'm thinking. This isn't going to be covered.
Speaker 7: This is going to be one hundred and sixty some pages,
Speaker 7: and every page is designed. There's a template insofar as
Speaker 7: we have a look for the overall thing and what
Speaker 7: a caption looks like and that kind of hmplate, but
Speaker 7: every page is different and every page is going to
Speaker 7: be designed. You guys up for that, and they said, yep,
Speaker 7: if you give us enough time, we'd love to do that.
Speaker 7: And they did just a beautiful job. Speaking of time,
Speaker 7: when did you decide to do this project, and how
Speaker 7: long did it take? I decided late summer last year,
Speaker 7: twenty twenty four, and immediately began to dive into the
Speaker 7: research because although I knew a lot, I thought I
Speaker 7: knew a lot about those two years, I knew nothing
Speaker 7: about the theater from before seventy four. I worked there
Speaker 7: as an usher in nineteen seventy five and seventy six,
Speaker 7: so I knew the layout of the building and I
Speaker 7: knew what it was now. But I had to dive
Speaker 7: in and find out what was it when it opened
Speaker 7: in nineteen thirty five, and why did it open in
Speaker 7: nineteen thirty five in the middle of the depression put
Speaker 7: together by someone who was in the insurance business and
Speaker 7: had been a concert violinist, but to become successful in insurance,
Speaker 7: and he decided he wanted to build a movie theater
Speaker 7: in South Minneapolis when there was another one six blocks away.
Speaker 7: Why did he do that? What were his plans for it,
Speaker 7: what was it going to be? What did it become?
Speaker 7: And it was just fascinating going to architectural libraries. I
Speaker 7: got very lucky and was connected to the founder's granddaughter,
Speaker 7: and she had lots of photos and memories that her
Speaker 7: mother had written down about the theater. So I was
Speaker 7: able to reconstruct why the Westgate popped up in nineteen
Speaker 7: thirty five, why it almost immediately wasn't a hit because
Speaker 7: the guy who founded it died right away, so there
Speaker 7: was no visionary behind it after like year two, and
Speaker 7: it struggled for forty years until it became what one
Speaker 7: critic called a resting home or a nursing home for
Speaker 7: comedies that aren't completely understood. And it did become that
Speaker 7: in the late sixties and early seventies, which is why
Speaker 7: Harold and Maud ended up there. There was a reputation
Speaker 7: for that. Yeah, so I had to do that research.
Speaker 7: I also had to figure out what had happened to the
Speaker 7: theater after I left it in seventy six, and what
Speaker 7: happened to Harold Maud after it left that theater in
Speaker 7: seventy four, So there was a lot of research. Newspapers.
Speaker 7: Dot com is fantastic for that sort of thing. I
Speaker 7: was able to track down the assistant manager from the
Speaker 7: theater at that time talk to an old usher at
Speaker 7: that time. When the second year anniversary came about, there
Speaker 7: was a neighborhood protest and people had picket signs walking
Speaker 7: up and down the sidewalk as the two stars entered,
Speaker 7: the signs saying we want a new movie and we
Speaker 7: need variety. And I was able to track down and
Speaker 7: talk to the husband of the woman who organized that,
Speaker 7: so there were still some people around. And then all
Speaker 7: the existing articles and interviews from the time and also
Speaker 7: from now, I was able to cobble through those and
Speaker 7: put together a pretty good timeline of what happened. And
Speaker 7: that took about eleven months, ten months something like that.
Speaker 7: The book was being laid out the middle of summer,
Speaker 7: so almost a year of research in writing.
Speaker 2: And it pays off so well. I was just so impressive.
Speaker 2: It was so deep in so many areas, and I'm
Speaker 2: just like, how was he getting this material? This is
Speaker 2: amazing to find out about all of these people that
Speaker 2: ran the theater and having all of the the bills
Speaker 2: as far as what's playing and all that. Even didn't
Speaker 2: you have like architectural drawings of the theater.
Speaker 7: I did, which was for me since I had been
Speaker 7: there Mike in seventy five seventy six, I was able
Speaker 7: to go back and figure out when I started there
Speaker 7: and when I stopped there just by based on what
Speaker 7: movies were showing, and I remembered it was a worn down,
Speaker 7: tired theater with the seats were not the original seats,
Speaker 7: but they were not new seats. When they were put in,
Speaker 7: they were used for another theater. The screen had been moved,
Speaker 7: the stage used to be set to hold almost a
Speaker 7: full orchestra. Because he had intended to have lots of
Speaker 7: live entertainment. There had been in nineteen thirty five a
Speaker 7: huge clubroom right off the lobby where people could rent
Speaker 7: and use that for bridge clubs or for parties and
Speaker 7: then go in and see a movie. They had a
Speaker 7: full catering kitchen in the basin for that. They had
Speaker 7: its own candy store that was also attached on the
Speaker 7: other side. But in seventy five when I was there,
Speaker 7: none of that was there. It was a cramped lobby
Speaker 7: and a weird little room next to the lobby, and
Speaker 7: the restrooms and the auditorium. So getting those original drawings
Speaker 7: and going, oh, that's where the clubroom was, that's the
Speaker 7: beauty parlor that was next door. They must have put
Speaker 7: up a wall and made it a beauty parlor. And oh,
Speaker 7: that's where the candy store was. That's now a little library,
Speaker 7: And they put up a wall and made that its
Speaker 7: own building. And that's why in fifty five or whatever,
Speaker 7: they built a candy display case in the lobby. All
Speaker 7: this stuff that I had no idea had happened in
Speaker 7: that theater was fascinating to find, and nowadays it's a
Speaker 7: little bit easier to find stuff. I was able to
Speaker 7: track down those drawings and go to the architectural library
Speaker 7: and find the original blueprints of the guy who made it.
Speaker 7: It was fun. Of course, at some point you have
Speaker 7: to stop and write the book. But one of my
Speaker 7: goals was because James Davidson has this great book hal
Speaker 7: Ashburyen making Harold Mard that has all this detail. I
Speaker 7: wanted to find stuff that wasn't necessarily in that book,
Speaker 7: or that I, as a pretty diehard Harold and Maud fan,
Speaker 7: wouldn't necessarily know. So I was able to talk to
Speaker 7: John Rubinstein. John Rubinstein as an actor and a director,
Speaker 7: and it was the original Pippen on Broadway, but he
Speaker 7: was good friends with the screenwriter of Harold and Maud,
Speaker 7: Colin Higgins, and the part was written for him, And
Speaker 7: so I was able to talk to John about that
Speaker 7: and his feelings about his audition with Gordon, what he
Speaker 7: thought about the finished product. And he's a huge fan
Speaker 7: of what Bud Court did. But I also learned from
Speaker 7: him that Alice Lanchester was supposed to play Mode, which
Speaker 7: I hadn't known, And he said, if you read the
Speaker 7: script and hear her voice in your head, now else
Speaker 7: the Lanchester. For anybody to listen to this podcast should
Speaker 7: know who else Anchester is. But she was a bride
Speaker 7: of Frank Kenstein. She was Katie Nana, the original nanny
Speaker 7: who quits at the beginning of Mary Poppins. She was
Speaker 7: Miss marbles In murdered by death. She had a very
Speaker 7: long career and if you read the script with her
Speaker 7: inflections in mind, you can absolutely see Colin Higgins meant
Speaker 7: for that part to be played by her, and I
Speaker 7: think she would have been terrific.
Speaker 2: Having worked at a movie theater in my youth as well,
Speaker 2: I'm curious what are some of your favorite memories of
Speaker 2: the theater itself. One memory that.
Speaker 7: Happened when I wasn't there, but that one of the
Speaker 7: ushers told me, which I thought was fascinating. If Harold
Speaker 7: and Maude, you know that very near the end of
Speaker 7: the movie, if you haven't seen it, I don't want
Speaker 7: to say something is said to Harold and he pauses
Speaker 7: for a long time, and then he yells, what really loud?
Speaker 7: And that is immediately followed by the sound of a siren.
Speaker 7: Because the movie played so long at the theater, and
Speaker 7: if you worked in a kind of theater I worked in,
Speaker 7: there's a lot of downtime when you're in that sort
Speaker 7: of thing. That sound coming out of the auditorium was
Speaker 7: the signal to everybody that, oh, we got to get
Speaker 7: back to work. The audience is about to come out,
Speaker 7: And so I thought that was just delightful when I
Speaker 7: was working there. I don't know what the original setup was,
Speaker 7: but if you were an usher, you had to add
Speaker 7: black pants and white shirt and a bow tie and
Speaker 7: a coat. And I don't know where the girls went,
Speaker 7: but the boys had to go backstage, and you would
Speaker 7: change backstage behind the screen, and if you understand the
Speaker 7: laws of the physics, a light is hitting the screen,
Speaker 7: it's bouncing off the screen. No one can see you,
Speaker 7: but you can see the whole movie. Which is really
Speaker 7: fun to be standing back there and seeing Warren Baties
Speaker 7: motorcycle riding up Bullhull and drive from Champoo night after night,
Speaker 7: because that was about the time I.
Speaker 2: Was getting changed.
Speaker 7: However, one employee famously kept forgetting the laws of physics
Speaker 7: and needed to see what he was doing, and he
Speaker 7: would turn on the light back there, which would give
Speaker 7: everybody in the audience their own special little phil. Hey,
Speaker 7: look there's the strip Tee's going on behind the screen.
Speaker 7: The other thing I remembered, and it certainly isn't an
Speaker 7: issue now was. There was a columnist here in the
Speaker 7: Twin Cities named Will Jones, and Will Jones is important
Speaker 7: in the success of Harold Mard because he's the one
Speaker 7: who championed when it came to the west Gate. He
Speaker 7: didn't champion Harold and Maud. He said, that's a great movie,
Speaker 7: but there's a short that played before Harold and Matt
Speaker 7: every night called Diduva, And he wrote a whole column
Speaker 7: on that two days before Harold and Matt opened up
Speaker 7: the west Gate, and the theater staff is pretty sure
Speaker 7: that's why they almost had to sell out that first night,
Speaker 7: because Will Jones had said, you've got to go see
Speaker 7: the short. It's sent it's very funny. But anytime he
Speaker 7: would come to the theater, we were put on high
Speaker 7: alert and we'd have an usher on either side of
Speaker 7: the theater. There was a one of those things where
Speaker 7: you had a door on either side. There's no middle
Speaker 7: aisle there to side aisles, and we had to stand
Speaker 7: there and watch and make sure that nobody in the
Speaker 7: theater started smoking. There was no smoking in the theater,
Speaker 7: but that didn't stop them sometimes because we'd learned from
Speaker 7: fast experience. If somebody smoked in the theater, that was
Speaker 7: all Will Jones would write about in his column. He
Speaker 7: wouldn't write about the movie, he would just write about
Speaker 7: the smoking. It was sort of a boring job, except
Speaker 7: that I got to see certain parts of certain movies
Speaker 7: again and again and again and again, which was interesting.
Speaker 7: And I've always felt that although I wasn't working there
Speaker 7: during Harold Mott, I did see it, let's just say
Speaker 7: a lot. I saw it a lot. And although I
Speaker 7: was in a film program at that time in high
Speaker 7: schools and I was in a special film program made
Speaker 7: movies and did things like that every afternoon for three years.
Speaker 7: It was a seventies film program, which meant it was
Speaker 7: the film is a form of expression, and we're not
Speaker 7: going to teach you how to do match cuts or
Speaker 7: close ups or coverage or anything like that, and don't
Speaker 7: you dare try to tell a story. So my film
Speaker 7: school was watching what hal Ashby did to make Harold
Speaker 7: and Maud, the decisions he made on how to do
Speaker 7: a montage, when to bring in music, how to hold
Speaker 7: for a laugh, even casting, and then reading the script
Speaker 7: and going, oh, but he did. He cut out a
Speaker 7: lot of stuff in this movie and made it better.
Speaker 7: And sometimes when you take things out, they're better, which
Speaker 7: is a hard thing to do when you're a young filmmaker,
Speaker 7: if you're going to all the trouble to shoot something.
Speaker 7: But it did teach me that, which is if that's
Speaker 7: not working. It's got to be cut. And he was
Speaker 7: pretty fearless about that. So that was that movie's an
Speaker 7: education in itself for a young filmmaker.
Speaker 2: Why do you think we're still talking about this movie
Speaker 2: all these years later.
Speaker 7: I think it hits people on kind of a primal
Speaker 7: emotional level, and that's why it stays with them. And
Speaker 7: that's to do with the way hal Ashby made it
Speaker 7: and the way Counigans wrote it, and the use of
Speaker 7: Cat Steven's music. The three of those things together create
Speaker 7: a feeling at the end that just doesn't happen normally
Speaker 7: in your normal life. When we discover Harold at the
Speaker 7: top of the cliff and he straps on his banjo
Speaker 7: and he starts playing and notes he's playing Segway beautifully
Speaker 7: into Cat Stephens singing, and we've just been through this
Speaker 7: emotional experience with him. A lot of movies don't give
Speaker 7: you that. And what Harold and Maud was able to
Speaker 7: do for those two years and then when it was
Speaker 7: reissued in the eighties is it was a thing you
Speaker 7: brought people to and it was a litmus test. Hey,
Speaker 7: I want you to see this movie, and if you
Speaker 7: don't like this movie. I have to think about you again,
Speaker 7: because it's something people wanted to share, and there's not
Speaker 7: a lot of those out there. Rocky Horror was different.
Speaker 7: Rocky Horror came about a year later, and Rocky Horror
Speaker 7: was conticipatory. But it's different than Harold and Maud. Harold
Speaker 7: and Maud with the exception of it's run in New
Speaker 7: York for a while where they the theater or complained
Speaker 7: that people were talking during the movie by saying the
Speaker 7: lines during the movie. That was not something had happened
Speaker 7: to Hald Maud. With Harold and Maud, you sat, you smiled,
Speaker 7: you laughed. If you're bringing someone for the first time,
Speaker 7: you would turn and look at them when you saw
Speaker 7: a scene was coming up. You wanted to see the
Speaker 7: reaction to It was a very shared thing, but it
Speaker 7: wasn't something you interacted with. You just absorbed it.
Speaker 2: With that breath of information that you're going into. Was
Speaker 2: there anything that didn't work out? Were there any areas
Speaker 2: where you're just like, I can't find enough information about this,
Speaker 2: or did you have that planned out before you even started?
Speaker 7: No, it was an exploratory thing. I realized early on.
Speaker 7: I wanted it to be as much about the images
Speaker 7: as it was about the words, So it is I
Speaker 7: think a pretty equal balance between. As I told the designer,
Speaker 7: I loved turning a page and seeing a full page picture,
Speaker 7: and I also like old movie ads. I put those
Speaker 7: in as well. But I did spend the majority of
Speaker 7: my budget on licensing photos. I tried not to license
Speaker 7: the most common Harold and mog photos because you can
Speaker 7: see those anywhere. What I was looking for was stuff
Speaker 7: you didn't necessarily see all the time, and I found
Speaker 7: a stockhouse that had They claimed that they showed me everything,
Speaker 7: although I'm not really sure, but they had about two
Speaker 7: hundred behind the scenes photos that I'd never seen before,
Speaker 7: and you could see where there'd be a sequence of
Speaker 7: photos and you can know that if the next one
Speaker 7: is there, that's the one I'm used to seeing, but
Speaker 7: I haven't seen the one before this. And it allowed
Speaker 7: me to drop in some photos that just as a
Speaker 7: Harold and Mog fan, excited me. A really good close
Speaker 7: up of Bud in character shot from far below looking
Speaker 7: up at him. Stuff with Hal Ashby talking to Vivian
Speaker 7: Pickles as they walked down to the pool. Stuff with
Speaker 7: Sherry Summers sitting talking to bud Court, just stuff I
Speaker 7: hadn't seen before. And that's really what I wanted was
Speaker 7: I wanted, here are the visuals that are telling the
Speaker 7: story in a new way. Now. If I couldn't find
Speaker 7: visuals or something, I had to abandon it or not
Speaker 7: bother going there for me the biggest hole, and it
Speaker 7: would mean nothing to the people outside of the Twin Cities,
Speaker 7: But across the street from the Westgate Theater almost the
Speaker 7: entire time the Theater has been there, and it still
Speaker 7: stands there today as a little hamburger joint called the
Speaker 7: Convention Grill, but was built in the mid thirties. It's
Speaker 7: a classic Art Deco hamburger joint with maltzburgers and fries,
Speaker 7: and it's just gorgeous. When I was shooting Super Eat
Speaker 7: movies in my teens, I shot scenes in there. It
Speaker 7: was just gorgeous. And so I tracked down the Grand
Speaker 7: and the owner who now runs it, and I said,
Speaker 7: I would love to do it. Two page spread in
Speaker 7: this on Convention Grill because it was part of the
Speaker 7: ritual you go to Harold Maud then either before or
Speaker 7: after you'd go over to the Convention Grill. And he said,
Speaker 7: I'm sorry, John, we just don't have any historical photos,
Speaker 7: and I thought, Okay, then I guess we're not going
Speaker 7: to do that. But I was able to track down
Speaker 7: Doug Strand. Doug Strand saw the movie one hundred and
Speaker 7: sixty times while I was here in the Twin Cities
Speaker 7: and was Ruth Gordon's date when she came for the
Speaker 7: first year anniversary, because the theater management said, you've seen
Speaker 7: this movie a lot, and Budcourt's not coming, do you
Speaker 7: mind just being an escort for Ms Gordon when she's here.
Speaker 7: And he did that and then they became fast friends
Speaker 7: and were friends until she died, so I have a
Speaker 7: nice I was able to check Doug down, which is amazing,
Speaker 7: and there's a nice too page spread on him. I
Speaker 7: was able to track down the guy who owns the
Speaker 7: rights to De Duva, which was nominated for an Academy
Speaker 7: I think in sixty eight and is a very funny
Speaker 7: black and white film. If you guys haven't seen it,
Speaker 7: just go on YouTube and look for Di Duva. It's
Speaker 7: an Iigmar Bergmann parody. It's Madeline Kahn's first film appearance.
Speaker 7: It's very funny. I was able to track down the
Speaker 7: guy who owns the rights to it and do a
Speaker 7: two page spread on that. If I'd found more Harold
Speaker 7: and Maud photos, there'd be more in there. But I
Speaker 7: think I pulled the best from that, and I think
Speaker 7: I pulled the for the real diehard herold and mod fan.
Speaker 7: There's some surprises in there, which is what I wanted
Speaker 7: to see, but there's also enough for a newbie to
Speaker 7: understand what the production is like, and the problems with
Speaker 7: the marketing and the problems with the advertising and all that.
Speaker 7: There's enough for the die hard and the newbie.
Speaker 2: How many people do you think you talked to for this.
Speaker 7: Surprisingly little, not a big number, because not a lot
Speaker 7: of them are around anymore. I probably only did nine
Speaker 7: ten interviews, maybe a little more, but I was able
Speaker 7: to find a lot of extant interviews, some stuff I
Speaker 7: hadn't found before. I did, of course, reach out to
Speaker 7: Bud Court and never heard back, but that was expected
Speaker 7: because he doesn't really like to talk about it that much.
Speaker 7: Everybody else was. I reached out to Tom Skarrett because
Speaker 7: he plays a very small but funny role in the film,
Speaker 7: and his agent said, Tom says, thanks, but it's fifty
Speaker 7: years ago. He doesn't really remember anything that happened there.
Speaker 7: But there's a lot of good stuff that I dug
Speaker 7: out from past interviews, things that I didn't know, things
Speaker 7: that hal Ashby said after the fact about the way
Speaker 7: it was marketed, some great stuff from Peter Bart who
Speaker 7: was at Paramount, who in his book was very honest
Speaker 7: in his assessment, saying this was when they previewed the movie.
Speaker 7: He said, this was the best preview I've ever been
Speaker 7: to in my life when it comes to an audience response,
Speaker 7: he said. And he also said, we're absolutely the wrong
Speaker 7: company to market this movie. And he was right. They
Speaker 7: were the wrong company. And the biggest surprise, which maybe
Speaker 7: other Harold Matt fans knew I didn't know this found
Speaker 7: in an interview with Colin Higgins, was that the Harold
Speaker 7: Moutt came out around Christmas nineteen seventy one in Minneapolis,
Speaker 7: had played for two weeks at one of the big
Speaker 7: theaters downtown and then was pulled. It was supposed to
Speaker 7: be Paramount had promised all these theaters around the country.
Speaker 7: They'd promised in The Godfather for Christmas, and it wasn't done.
Speaker 7: Paramount's only other movie that they had was Harold Nutt,
Speaker 7: and they threw it into all these big theaters with
Speaker 7: a bad marketing campaign, and audiences had no understanding of
Speaker 7: what it was, and so of course it died. Now,
Speaker 7: if The Godfather had been done, I'm guessing they would
Speaker 7: have released Harold and Wutt in a more traditional arty
Speaker 7: house kind of way. It would have opened in New
Speaker 7: York and LA, although it didn't get great reviews in LA,
Speaker 7: but they wouldn't have thrown into that many theaters at once.
Speaker 7: And I think having just been reading a book out
Speaker 7: Robert Wise's version of the It's Star Trek movie and
Speaker 7: how theater owners had sued the theater companies for not sending
Speaker 7: them the movies they said they were going to that
Speaker 7: they'd booked, and so Star Trek went out in a
Speaker 7: messy shape because it had been promised to the theaters
Speaker 7: for that date. And it might have been the way
Speaker 7: theater owners were burned not getting The Godfather and being
Speaker 7: stuck with Harold and Maud, because it's not like the
Speaker 7: theater owners were thrilled they had a movie that nobody
Speaker 7: was going to and they had planned to have this
Speaker 7: huge Christmas hit, So you can understand when they were
Speaker 7: upset about it, and you can understand why Harold Maud
Speaker 7: died at that point.
Speaker 2: How was it we're visiting going back to the old
Speaker 2: stomping grounds, if not physically, but emotionally, reliving that period
Speaker 2: of your life when you're so tied to this movie
Speaker 2: theater and these great films that were coming out.
Speaker 7: As I get older, and I think a lot of
Speaker 7: people when they get older, they you tend to just
Speaker 7: finally look back at these things with rose colored glasses,
Speaker 7: and I don't think I need rose colored glasses for
Speaker 7: that era. It was a delight every time I saw it.
Speaker 7: It was a delight when it came out again, when
Speaker 7: they reissued it and they put out brand new prints
Speaker 7: because the print that was at the West Gate was
Speaker 7: really beat up, and would you knew the points where
Speaker 7: it was just going to as they made the real changes,
Speaker 7: it was going to be ugly, it was going to
Speaker 7: be cut up. And in fact, the system manager said
Speaker 7: that they kept asking Paramount for a clean print, and
Speaker 7: Paramount didn't want to make a clean print, but they said,
Speaker 7: here's what we're going to do. We're going to send
Speaker 7: you every print we have and you go through and
Speaker 7: pick the best reels and you can use those and
Speaker 7: send everything back. So that's they cobbled together the best
Speaker 7: they could do to show up because it was one
Speaker 7: hundred and fifteen weeks, twice a night. Original I think
Speaker 7: the original projectors from nineteen thirty five. I think it
Speaker 7: took a total on the film, but it was always
Speaker 7: a delight to just settle into those uncomfortable seats. The
Speaker 7: lights go down, Deduva starts. The fun of watching Didouva
Speaker 7: with an audience who doesn't necessarily know what's going on
Speaker 7: with it is that it takes about three to five
Speaker 7: minutes them to realize the people are not speaking Swedish,
Speaker 7: because it sounds like it's Swedish with English subtitals, but
Speaker 7: they're actually just speaking a pigeon Swedish and you don't
Speaker 7: need the subtitles. You can hear you understand exactly what
Speaker 7: they're saying. If Bergmann, it's funnier. But even if you don't,
Speaker 7: the field of Bergmann film has permeated enough that you
Speaker 7: get the jokes, and then you slide into the beginning
Speaker 7: of Harold mod It's very quiet. The door closes, we
Speaker 7: follow the feet down the steps. You can hear of
Speaker 7: a clock tolling somewhere in the background when Harold's feet
Speaker 7: at the bottom of the stairs, title Harold and Maud
Speaker 7: comes up. And if you've seen the Holdovers, same titles,
Speaker 7: the same pont they really they took that seventies look.
Speaker 7: And then he walks over and starts against ephen song.
Speaker 7: It's just it's a warm hug and you couldn't do
Speaker 7: that at that time with any other movie. There was
Speaker 7: no VHS. When a movie was gone, it was gone.
Speaker 7: It might turn up on TV, but it's going to
Speaker 7: be truncated and there's going to be commercials and it's
Speaker 7: not going to be the same. Nowadays, you can binge
Speaker 7: to say movie over and over. You couldn't do it
Speaker 7: back then. But this was a case where there was
Speaker 7: something that was worth watching more than once, and you
Speaker 7: could go see it more than once.
Speaker 2: So obviously I want to leave people wanting more. But
Speaker 2: I did really want to ask you first about the
Speaker 2: advertising campaign that you discussed and why was that such
Speaker 2: a bad ad campaign.
Speaker 7: It's considered one of the worst ever picture yourself as
Speaker 7: a Paramount market executive in the nineteen seventies. Paramount's a
Speaker 7: pretty staid company. They've been around for a long time.
Speaker 7: They know how to do movies, and here comes a
Speaker 7: movie with no stars, although one Academy Award winner about
Speaker 7: a seventy nine year old woman who appears to have
Speaker 7: an affair with a nineteen year old boy. At its
Speaker 7: most bare bones synopsis, that isn't really what it's about,
Speaker 7: but that's what is being hung on. And you have
Speaker 7: to entice people in to see the movie. Oh and
Speaker 7: by the way, it starts with the suicide, and he
Speaker 7: commits suicide several times throughout it. And it makes fun
Speaker 7: of the military, and it makes fun of the church,
Speaker 7: ani makes fun of psychiatry. What do you do? What
Speaker 7: picture do you put up? What do you say? They
Speaker 7: were very lucky. Judith christ the critic, loved it and
Speaker 7: she gave them a really nice blurb that they used everywhere.
Speaker 7: But other critics didn't like it and said, Variety hated it.
Speaker 7: So you don't have that you used to have a
Speaker 7: nice review. You don't have any stars. Really, you don't
Speaker 7: have rom com thing you can tie and do. There's
Speaker 7: nothing to hang onto really except the weirdness. And they
Speaker 7: weren't used to doing weird movies. They didn't know how
Speaker 7: to do that, and so they came up with a poster,
Speaker 7: white poster, pink and blue letters Harold and Maud, and
Speaker 7: that was it, and the told audience is nothing.
Speaker 5: One of the.
Speaker 7: Critics who reviewed the movie when it played for its
Speaker 7: two weeks here in the Downtown theater wrote in his
Speaker 7: review and he loved the movie. He said, I had
Speaker 7: trouble describing what it was about to the couple behind
Speaker 7: me in line, and he said, if I can't describe it,
Speaker 7: how is anyone else going to describe it? Because if
Speaker 7: you just hang on the weird stuff, hey, it's an
Speaker 7: older woman and younger guy. Do you want to see that?
Speaker 7: So the stuff that really attracted people, which was the
Speaker 7: love and the relationship and the soundtrack and all that,
Speaker 7: audience has had to discover that and they had to
Speaker 7: tell Paramount, here's how you advertise it. Here's Harold and
Speaker 7: Maud on a motorcycle and the wheels have daisies. And
Speaker 7: it's the sort of movie that is going to be
Speaker 7: successful because someone told someone else to see it. That's
Speaker 7: what's going to make it successful. And that's what it did.
Speaker 7: When it opened in Paris. It didn't have that problem
Speaker 7: because French audience is like whatever. Sure folk can see that,
Speaker 7: but it was a very hard sell for the Paramount
Speaker 7: Marketing department, and the fact that it opened in theaters
Speaker 7: that it should have opened in pretty much doomed it.
Speaker 2: So what is next for you?
Speaker 7: I actually don't know. Getting the book out has been
Speaker 7: interesting because it was designed in the United Kingdom and
Speaker 7: it's printed over there because they can do this weird
Speaker 7: sized book on photo quality paper better than anyone here
Speaker 7: could have, at least.
Speaker 2: At the time.
Speaker 7: Maybe that'll change in the future, and so there are
Speaker 7: I'm not dealing with tariffs or anything because books currently
Speaker 7: are following into that, but it is still getting things
Speaker 7: from there to hear. Being that it's self published, a
Speaker 7: little harder to get into bookstore. It is on Amazon,
Speaker 7: but you can also get it directly from me if
Speaker 7: you hate Amazon. Doing it independently is a harder way
Speaker 7: to do it. But I realized early on if I
Speaker 7: could find a publisher who wanted to do it, they're
Speaker 7: not going to let me do it the way I
Speaker 7: did it. They're not going to pay all that money
Speaker 7: for those photos. They're not going to put it at
Speaker 7: that size, They're not going to put it in that
Speaker 7: quality paper, and that's assuming I can even find someone
Speaker 7: who wanted to do it. It's a very niche book for
Speaker 7: a very niche audience. I quote Dana Gould when I
Speaker 7: talk about it, the audience is guys my age who
Speaker 7: are me. I don't think there's a huge audience for
Speaker 7: the book, but the audience that is therefore it is
Speaker 7: going to love it, and that's important thing.
Speaker 2: And if those people do hate Amazon and want to
Speaker 2: buy it from you directly, where's the best place to go.
Speaker 7: Just go to my website, which is Albertsbridge Books dot com.
Speaker 7: That's Albertsbridge Books dot com. It's the first thing that
Speaker 7: pops up, and it's in currently in three different formats,
Speaker 7: the nice paperback and nice hardcover, and then a special
Speaker 7: hardcover that has end papers with a lot of fun
Speaker 7: Herold and Maud photos in the front of the back
Speaker 7: of the book. And that was one of the reasons
Speaker 7: it was so hard to get this book done, is
Speaker 7: getting it with those endpapers. But it's worth it because
Speaker 7: it's really fun. Circus Bard, thank you so much for
Speaker 7: your time. This is wonderful talking with you. It's a
Speaker 7: delight to be on a podcast. I've listened to so
Speaker 7: much and not geek out too much. I got we
Speaker 7: got our geeking out done before we started.
Speaker 3: Left my happy home to see what I could find out.
Speaker 6: I left my fault and friends with the aim to
Speaker 6: clear my mind. Got hit the roby roll.
Speaker 3: Then it comes out like that many stories told me.
Speaker 6: How they got there.
Speaker 5: So long a long.
Speaker 6: Ago, second stick, the time up.
Speaker 3: So much left know when I'm long ago to find out?
Speaker 3: End the hand down.
Speaker 6: On the way I want you do.
Speaker 3: Through descendants now through the fasting thunder and.
Speaker 4: Listen to the wind come down telling me about to hurry.
Speaker 8: I listen to the roded.
Speaker 6: Song, say no to go there?
Speaker 4: So on and on the door sick and stick the
Speaker 4: time out, so much.
Speaker 3: Left to know?
Speaker 4: What a mom the gold to find out?
Speaker 6: Who?
Speaker 3: Then I found myself alone, hoping someone goodness me, thinking
Speaker 3: about my home and the last horn to kiss me,
Speaker 3: kiss me?
Speaker 8: There's sometimes you have to move, but nothing seems to.
Speaker 4: Suit your Nevertheless, you know me your last to walk
Speaker 4: if you.
Speaker 6: So long long ago.
Speaker 3: The second stick with the time out, so much left
Speaker 3: to know.
Speaker 6: When I'm on the fool to find out?
Speaker 8: And I found my head one day when I wasn't
Speaker 8: able to try and and here.
Speaker 3: I have to say, because there is no use in lying.
Speaker 2: God, I guess the anser life with end.
Speaker 6: So why not take good up?
Speaker 4: Now, God there with him forgot pick out the food book.
Speaker 4: Now it's the answer, life with end.
Speaker 3: So why not.
Speaker 4: Take a look now the god dell Usen they got
Speaker 4: the ot the look book now, yes, as salize with
Speaker 4: So why not saying look now the god dell Uson
Speaker 4: they got to got the loo.
Speaker 6: Look now, oh