Speaker 1: Old you is, folks, It's show died.
Speaker 2: People say good money to see this movie.
Speaker 3: When they go out to a theater. They want cold sodas,
Speaker 3: hot popcorn, and no monsters. In the protection booth.
Speaker 1: Everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring. Got it off? Le me
Speaker 1: get Yeah. Also really was had to.
Speaker 2: Hey, folks, we'll do a special episode of the Projection Booth.
Speaker 2: I'm your host, Mike White. On this episode, I am
Speaker 2: talking with Chantusky. He is the vice president of distribution
Speaker 2: at Gee Kids. It is an organization out of New
Speaker 2: York that is distributing all kinds of great films, including
Speaker 2: the film Linda Linda Linda, which is having a revival Screaming.
Speaker 2: Definitely check your local listings and if you happen to
Speaker 2: miss it, it will be coming out on Blu ray
Speaker 2: and hopefully digital pretty darn soon. I had a chance
Speaker 2: to see it a few years ago on a not
Speaker 2: that great DVD, so I'm super excited that this is
Speaker 2: getting a restoration and more people will have a chance
Speaker 2: to see it. It is a lot of fun, and
Speaker 2: I hope you have fun listening to this interview. Can
Speaker 2: you give me a little bit of your background.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm originally from Nashville, Tennessee. I moved to New
Speaker 1: York in two thousand and nine to go in YU,
Speaker 1: where I intended to study classics and ended up in
Speaker 1: film studies and sort of the rest was history. It
Speaker 1: was through that department that I met the president of
Speaker 1: our company, Dave Jestett, who I think was also an
Speaker 1: alumnus of the film studies program there, And I got
Speaker 1: an internship at che Kids back in twenty thirteen, which
Speaker 1: at the time was really focused on these sort of
Speaker 1: prestige animated films, you know, the Secret of Kel's at
Speaker 1: cat and Paris, Chico and Rita, and had made a
Speaker 1: name for itself on that stuff. And then basically I
Speaker 1: had been hired to help handle you know, repertory screenings.
Speaker 1: At the time, we had just taken over theatrical rights
Speaker 1: for the Gibley Catalog, and so I was managing the
Speaker 1: theatrical tour of those thirty five milimeter prints before they
Speaker 1: were digitized into DCPs and stuff. So I've been at
Speaker 1: the company ever since, and I've seen it grow from there.
Speaker 1: But in terms of me personally, basically, I've been at
Speaker 1: the company long enough that it is sort of me
Speaker 1: so there you go.
Speaker 3: For G Kids.
Speaker 2: Is that Gibley or does that stand for Godzilla?
Speaker 1: Technically it stands for gorilla, like gorilla warfare. I like
Speaker 1: to think that it can stand for whatever you wanted
Speaker 1: to stand for. So the Gibli Association is nice, the
Speaker 1: Godzilla Association is nice. But a Gorilla Kids was I
Speaker 1: think the production company that the CEO ran that helped
Speaker 1: produce the festival, out of which G Kids then spun
Speaker 1: complicated situation. A lot has changed the last year, but
Speaker 1: long story short. The CEO of the current CEO, Eric Beckman,
Speaker 1: founded the company as a kind of spin off of
Speaker 1: a festival he'd been running since the nineties, the New
Speaker 1: York International Children's Film Festival. So when I joined, the
Speaker 1: two companies were essentially the same still, but around twenty
Speaker 1: thirteen twenty fourteen, the technically or i guess more formally split.
Speaker 1: The festival still runs as its own nonprofit, the ge
Speaker 1: Kids became its own standalone for profit distribution entity, and
Speaker 1: we basically made it work for a really long time. Basically,
Speaker 1: it's just compared to these sort of billionaire own, venture
Speaker 1: capital backed independent companies, we were really scrappy and for
Speaker 1: a long time we were about four to seven people,
Speaker 1: and around twenty eighteen we started to work more in
Speaker 1: the anime space, and I think that'll facilitated a broader
Speaker 1: range of projects for us to work on, and we
Speaker 1: brought on a lot more people, and about a year
Speaker 1: ago October of twenty twenty four, the company formerly sold
Speaker 1: to Toho in Japan, and it's still fully autonomous, but
Speaker 1: we now report into the bigger Toho conglomerate and it's
Speaker 1: a period. I guess you could call them sort of
Speaker 1: cousin companies that kind of exist inside of it. But
Speaker 1: mostly everything has basically stayed the same, and we're just
Speaker 1: handling Toho projects that we probably would have been bidding on.
Speaker 2: Anyway, you now have an a in. I suppose it's.
Speaker 1: Nice to have friends. I guess that's the way that
Speaker 1: I think about it, compared to like when you're out
Speaker 1: there alone in the independent space, things feel a little lonely.
Speaker 1: A lot of the New York distributors and exhibitors can
Speaker 1: attest to what.
Speaker 2: Are some of the things that Ji Kids have brought
Speaker 2: out over them in the last few years.
Speaker 1: Most notably we handled the US and Canadian distribution and
Speaker 1: for The Boy and the Heron, which is Miazaki's latest film,
Speaker 1: and I would say after that Bell was a pretty
Speaker 1: big one, which was Mamora SODA's last film. He has
Speaker 1: a new film coming out from Sonia's here called Scarlet.
Speaker 1: But we've handled everything big and small, like we do
Speaker 1: a lot of repertory stuff and and here I guess
Speaker 1: I'm part to talk about Linda Linda Linda. We've handled
Speaker 1: a theatrical re release of the End of Evangelion from
Speaker 1: Pidiaki Ano Memorro she goes from Michelle Too Innocence, and
Speaker 1: then in addition to that, we do a lot of
Speaker 1: European film still. So last year we did Mars Express
Speaker 1: from Jeremie perm and Chicken for Linda from Sbastian Loden
Speaker 1: Book and Kira Malta, and so trying to like basically
Speaker 1: keep a little bit of balance in there, because she
Speaker 1: Kids's mission initially was really about the best animation from
Speaker 1: all around the world, and so we still try to
Speaker 1: live up to that where we can.
Speaker 2: Linda Linda Linda is not an animated film, So can
Speaker 2: you tell me a little bit about how that project
Speaker 2: came to you?
Speaker 1: The history with that film goes back quite a bit
Speaker 1: to the festival that I mentioned, because I think a
Speaker 1: lot of programmers from the mid two thousands remember this
Speaker 1: film very fondly, and I believe it's screening that Nika
Speaker 1: for the New York Children's Film Festival back when the
Speaker 1: film came out, and it just retained this very positive
Speaker 1: energy and became kind of a cult occult film over
Speaker 1: time with periodic repertory screenings. I believe Japan Society held
Speaker 1: some a few years ago, and we ended up working
Speaker 1: on one of the director's most recent films, What's Happened
Speaker 1: to be animated called ghostcat Onto, and so you mashed
Speaker 1: us On had work together with an animator, Yoko Kuno,
Speaker 1: to basically create I mean, it's like a slacker in
Speaker 1: D comedy and it's shot like one but it's used
Speaker 1: as rotoscoping in a really innovative way, and so it's
Speaker 1: kind of like it's like a Totuo esque but it
Speaker 1: has a lot of the same sort of endi comedy
Speaker 1: vibe that you would expect from the director. And so
Speaker 1: I think that that basically like when we started handling that,
Speaker 1: we thought, wouldn't it be like a great idea to
Speaker 1: work on the Liland Linda or re release that, and
Speaker 1: then that's in the post us and we said, we'd
Speaker 1: absolutely love to kind of work on this, and it's
Speaker 1: not totally without precedent. Earlier this year we did Anna's
Speaker 1: Love and Pop, which was filn from the late nineties
Speaker 1: that Anno had worked on, and so there was a
Speaker 1: little bit of, oh, if you know this director from
Speaker 1: their animated work, we can carry that audience with us
Speaker 1: into live action. But I expect that we'll continue to
Speaker 1: work on developing this vertical for sure. I think it's
Speaker 1: a really special film with a kind of I don't know,
Speaker 1: like a fundamental elemental power that like sticks with people
Speaker 1: over time, which is why I think it's developed this reputation.
Speaker 1: And I think a lot of people who have seen
Speaker 1: it on DVD because it sort of like came out
Speaker 1: and peaked DVD era, I think you'll be really surprised
Speaker 1: when you revisit it in the restoration because it's just
Speaker 1: it looks really, really gorgeous in a way that I
Speaker 1: was put off guard by the first time I saw
Speaker 1: the restored version.
Speaker 2: Yeah, with the DBD version that I saw, it was
Speaker 2: very tough to tell when it was supposed to be
Speaker 2: the cam quarter footage versus not the camp quarter footage.
Speaker 2: So having that distinction I'm sure was going to be
Speaker 2: very eye opening.
Speaker 1: So much of the film is in its braining and
Speaker 1: its interiors and things like that, and so as a
Speaker 1: visual experience, like I would say, it's deceptively simple in
Speaker 1: terms of what it's how it's presenting. There's a lot
Speaker 1: going on, but beats it to you in this way
Speaker 1: that you don't realize how much information that's conveying to
Speaker 1: you in the moment.
Speaker 2: You're right, it is very universal, the whole struggle of
Speaker 2: high school students, especially outcastish type of girls. It just
Speaker 2: really spoke to me. And just also the music is fantastic.
Speaker 1: The music, I think is what sticks with people. It
Speaker 1: reminds me of Nashville or something. Right, It's like people
Speaker 1: leave the theater like thinking about the song that kind
Speaker 1: of like leaves you with that last impression. And so
Speaker 1: when you're watching it or when you're rewatching it, part
Speaker 1: of the anticipation of that moment is just so much
Speaker 1: a part of the experience, and I think lends itself
Speaker 1: to like the act of rewatching or the act of reexperiencing,
Speaker 1: but also like to your point, there's like a kind
Speaker 1: of nostalgia for this kind of moment in youth where
Speaker 1: everything as a sort of special, like I said, like
Speaker 1: an elemental power to it. And I feel like the
Speaker 1: film like captures that in microcosm, and that kind of
Speaker 1: gives it this unique quality.
Speaker 2: He touched a little bit about how the company grew
Speaker 2: in twenty eighteen, and I'm curious how the pandemic affected
Speaker 2: you guys.
Speaker 1: Ultimately, it worked out for us. I think we got
Speaker 1: really really lucky because we had around twenty seventeen twenty
Speaker 1: eight eighteen, we had taken on more rights on the
Speaker 1: side of the Jibie catalog and we were in the
Speaker 1: process re releasing a lot of those films on the
Speaker 1: new Blu Ray editions and things like that, and I
Speaker 1: think we were able to pivot to a model that
Speaker 1: was more video oriented, and I dare I say, like
Speaker 1: repertory oriented. Like I said, we've been in that space
Speaker 1: from the beginning, because a lot of what I was
Speaker 1: doing when I joined the company was managing like touring retrospectives.
Speaker 1: But being able to enter the DVD and Blu Ray
Speaker 1: market with such heavy hitters I think really helped the
Speaker 1: company grow. Speaking personally, a lot of what I was
Speaker 1: working on twenty twenty one was like the sort of
Speaker 1: low key, I guess you could call it, like the
Speaker 1: life support cinema experience. So working on the ASCOL releases
Speaker 1: of films like Wolf Walkers and Earwig in the Win
Speaker 1: which as much as I could, and then separately working
Speaker 1: on a like a direct sale store online like online
Speaker 1: e commerce play. And we had taken over the rights
Speaker 1: for Neon Genesis Evangelian at that time, and so we
Speaker 1: had this luxurious, you know, ultimate edition that we were
Speaker 1: putting out to the market, but also just regular additions
Speaker 1: that were selling pretty well. Evangelian hadn't been available on
Speaker 1: a commercial DVD at that point, and probably fifteen twenty
Speaker 1: years since the platinum sets, I still have a lot
Speaker 1: of build brinds who are very possessive of their platinum
Speaker 1: DVD sets of HUT series. But there's a whole new generation,
Speaker 1: speaking of Linda, Linda, Linda, there's a whole new generation
Speaker 1: of people who like really appreciate the ability to access
Speaker 1: these things or to own them, as opposed to just
Speaker 1: having them on streaming. Evangelian obviously maybe a huge splash
Speaker 1: when it went direct to Netflix, and that's like how
Speaker 1: I'd say the broader public has encountered it these days.
Speaker 1: But the Blue Rays sets are nice.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's amazing that you've got the theatrical, you've got
Speaker 2: the Blue Ray, you've got the streaming. I mean that
Speaker 2: just to have the e commerce, to be able to
Speaker 2: have that reach, especially in a market like this these
Speaker 2: days where everything is so fragmented.
Speaker 1: Personally, I'm a big collector. I'm not as big as
Speaker 1: other people in the industry. I think about like vinegar
Speaker 1: syndrome or something like that, where people are just buying
Speaker 1: everything that they possibly can't number whatever, But personally, like
Speaker 1: I do feel a lot of pride when I am
Speaker 1: able to line up all the spines of the Blu
Speaker 1: Rays or whatever in such a way that they match.
Speaker 1: For when I think about the Ghibili collection, like the
Speaker 1: way that it's nice that there's like uniformity across them,
Speaker 1: or however you see it. And then my colleague Allison Cosberg,
Speaker 1: who oversees home media, is put together some really amazing
Speaker 1: products over the years, follow our stuff like the Misaki
Speaker 1: Yuasa five film box set, the aforementioned Evangelian box sets,
Speaker 1: and then We've also been working on Arcane, which is
Speaker 1: the fourtiesh television show for Netflix, and Riot, the being
Speaker 1: developer for League of Legends, and we have some really
Speaker 1: awesome products there as well. So I say that because
Speaker 1: I can't take credit for I can take credit for
Speaker 1: purchasing them myself. So there you go.
Speaker 2: So, besides the upcoming we release of Linda Linda Linda,
Speaker 2: what kind of stuff are you looking forward to seeing
Speaker 2: coming out from G Kids this year?
Speaker 1: So I'm thinking a lot about Toronto because I'm headed
Speaker 1: there tomorrow. But we have a really amazing film out
Speaker 1: of France that's like a genuine discovery called Little Amili
Speaker 1: or The Character of Rain. And this is an adaptation
Speaker 1: of a Belgian novel from Amalin Notom that's sent me
Speaker 1: out a biographical but it imagines the inner life of
Speaker 1: I guess, a three year old. You could think of
Speaker 1: it as a coming of age film in a kind
Speaker 1: of weird way. She's a Belgian girl growing up in
Speaker 1: Japan and basically reconciling with this idea that she doesn't
Speaker 1: really belong there or is otherwise, you know, a foreign presence,
Speaker 1: I guess, in a weird way. It does tie in
Speaker 1: a little bit to Linda Linda Linda in the sense
Speaker 1: of overcoming a language barrier or a cultural divide and
Speaker 1: finding out who you are. But it's a really tremendous
Speaker 1: film from the studio that did Calamity and Long Way North,
Speaker 1: and so it's got this really cool, flat graphic style,
Speaker 1: but it's got a surprising amount of depth and shine
Speaker 1: to it for something like that, it's very different from
Speaker 1: like the graphic style people associated with quote Unook cartoons.
Speaker 1: And because of the literary source material, it's got a
Speaker 1: lot of like screenplay depth that I think is really
Speaker 1: uncommon among animated films generally speaking. That's our big kind
Speaker 1: of prestige full title. And then, like I said, we
Speaker 1: have a lot going on in the anime space as well.
Speaker 1: We're working on the fortieth anniversary re release of Angels
Speaker 1: Egg from Amroshi and Yoshtaka Amano, and we released the
Speaker 1: poster and trailer for that a few weeks ago and
Speaker 1: not got just amazing traction. That's a film similar to
Speaker 1: Linda Linda Linda in terms of a long, long cult status,
Speaker 1: a long period of on a availability, and it's a
Speaker 1: lifelong gamer. I've always loved Yaka Amano's arts for Final Fantasy,
Speaker 1: and so it's a great privilege to be working on
Speaker 1: the film, and I think it'll have surprising traction, probably
Speaker 1: in theaters for a seventy two minute film from forty
Speaker 1: years ago. I think younger viewers today really want to
Speaker 1: be challenged by films. I feel like Angels Egg is
Speaker 1: like a real proving ground for that. Our big November
Speaker 1: released this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's another one I'm really excited to see. So
Speaker 2: I'm stoked for that one too. Is there a good
Speaker 2: place for people to keep up with what you guys
Speaker 2: are doing out online?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Our Instagram account is my favorite place to keep
Speaker 1: up with the stuff. But I guess that reveals me
Speaker 1: to be a peak millennial. But our Instagram handles gee
Speaker 1: kids films, and I feel like it's my favorite place
Speaker 1: to engage with our like the stills from the films, posters, trailers,
Speaker 1: just because so much of what we handle so visual.
Speaker 1: I guess that's true for any film company, but especially
Speaker 1: like the types of films that we're handling have this
Speaker 1: like strong aesthetic pool to them that people just really
Speaker 1: love to get into the replies on and I love
Speaker 1: our social team. I think they do a really great
Speaker 1: job of curating looks from the wide variety of films
Speaker 1: that we're handling, both I guess animated and live action
Speaker 1: films as we start to incorporate those as well.
Speaker 2: Chance, thank you so much for your time. This is
Speaker 2: great talking with you, sir.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, anytime. It's been really nice.
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Speaker 3: me thank you Dory your name on yours.
Speaker 1: Don't let me me.
Speaker 2: Nanny yourn emo.
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Speaker 3: Oh he's donna to them or GB or.
Speaker 1: Can't shoot them up?
Speaker 3: Can I.
Speaker 1: E g.
Speaker 3: Bot You don't him to that? Is that?
Speaker 1: The bad?
Speaker 3: Is that.
Speaker 1: In the me that that Inda?
Speaker 2: No, that is that is that