What's Happening at the 59th CINECON Classic Film Festival?

Esteemed guests, Stan Taffel, president of the Cinecon Classic Film Festival, and Bryan Cooper, the Festival's Co-Vice President, tell us just what to expect at this year's CINECON festival.   Some of the highlights they detail are the restoration of the 100-year-old Warner Bros "Gold Diggers" film, the excitement surrounding the John Wayne picture Adventure's End, and "Kinecon at Cinecon."  We discuss the multiple Special Presentations on "Soundies," highlights from Boris Karloff's Home movies, Abbott and Costello Rarities, and more.  And we celebrate special honorees Carol Lawrence, Peggy Webber, and Nancy Olson Livingston with some details about their careers. Whether you are familiar with CINECON or not, you'll enjoy the stories of classic Hollywood and classic films that are spotlighted at this year's festival. From ticket details to unique finds, this episode is a must-listen for anyone who plans to attend or just appreciates cinema and its history.

For tickets and more information, visit the Cinecon website:
CINECON CLASSIC FILM FESTIVAL 

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:38

Hello and welcome to the extras, where we take you behind the scenes of your favorite TV shows, movies and animation and their release on digital DVD, blue Rain 4K or your favorite streaming site. I'm Tim Lager. Host and joining me today are Stan Taffel, president of the Cinecon Classic Film Festival and Festival Co Vice President, brian Cooper. Hi guys, it's good to have you on the podcast.

Speaker 2: 1:03

Hi there, tim, it's good to see you. Pleasure to be here.

Speaker 1: 1:06

Well, stan, we might not too long go through some mutual friends, alan K Roddy and Stephen Smith, and both those guys have been on the podcast and I think that's at that dinner where I found out that you were a big Charlie Chaplin fan.

Speaker 2: 1:20

Oh yes, I am a tremendous fan of that wonderful, brilliant artist.

Speaker 1: 1:26

And is that how you kind of got into this interest of silent films and into all of the Cinecon?

Speaker 2: 1:32

Yes, as a matter of fact it was. I was at an age way too young to doubt when Charlie Chaplin was on television and I'd watch it with my mom, and I did not understand that he was old, I didn't know, the films were ancient, and I could understand him because he wasn't talking and I just followed the action. And then I remember seeing a photograph of him in the late 60s and I had to ask my mom who that was and she told me that's Charlie Chaplin. And all of a sudden I realized, wow, I mean, I'm laughing at something that was done in 1916. And that was how my love for silent film began.

Speaker 1: 2:17

Well, how about for you, brian?

Speaker 3: 2:19

Well, mine sort of started because my dad used to have old movies running around the house. He was into Earl Flynn and Humphrey Bokehart, stuff like that. And then I grew up in LA so there was every Sunday was Abedon Costello on KTLA and Family Film Festival. So I sort of got started that way. My great-uncle was an actor, a character actor, so we would always hope to see him in something. He was in Laurel and Hardy shorts and Little Rascals and things like that it's always exciting to see. His name was Billy Gilbert and he is probably best known as the voice of Sneezy in the original Snow White in the Seven Dwarfs, and he was in a ton of classic films, including the Great Dictator with Charlie Chaplin. So it was sort of that introduction like oh, that's your relative, and also sort of discovering what my dad grew up with, because he went to the movies in the 30s and 40s and 50s.

Speaker 2: 3:09

So very interesting story about Billy Gilbert and the Great Dictator. Charlie Chaplin gave Billy on the set a 16 millimeter print of a keystone film he made called Doe and Dynamite and that print was treasured by Billy and back in the 60s he traded it to Kent Easton, who was the founder of Black Hawk Films, and when Black Hawk Films was going to you know fold they put the print up for auction and it has traveled around some. It's in gorgeous shape and I'm proud to say that I owned that print of Billy Gilbert's print that Chaplin gave him of Doe and Dynamite.

Speaker 3: 3:46

And it's actually my print and he's gonna have to give it back to me. Okay it would have come to me because I got his film collection if he'd held on to it. Oh, it's in good hands.

Speaker 1: 3:57

The jealousy, the envy is just oozing here across the radio waves. You know, you just mentioned something about acting and at Stan, I've been following you on your Facebook page and you had a very cool kind of acting part. I didn't even know you're an actor. Actually, tell us a little bit about that, because it sounded like it kind of ties into what we're talking about today.

Speaker 2: 4:17

Absolutely. I was an actor and a comedian from a very early age. I was on a series of television specials on PBS called the News in Review, and it was a musical parody of current news events. So I was playing every president, I was playing world leaders and it was all to music and I was very fortunate I won three consecutive Emmy awards for that and I was really excited. And then I moved out here because an agent encouraged me to get out of the east coast. I came out here, I started doing a little bit of work. I was on make me laugh on Comedy Central and I was doing some stand-up.

Speaker 2: 4:51

And then I fell in love and realized it's much better to be in love with someone and have a regular job that pays than have to constantly audition and wonder where the next paycheck's coming from. So I did put it on hold, but I do a lot of celebrity interviews out here with my film knowledge. But then several years ago a very close friend wrote a script, wanted to put the movie together and I said to him I'll come in for a day if you want and that's all it was going to be. But then lockdown happened and actors were not available and then you retooled the script and then, when he said it to me, saying we're gonna do this film, I looked at the script and said this is not a one-day part.

Speaker 2: 5:31

What have you done here? Well, actually, you know one of the larger roles in the film and I got to work with Mary Lou Henner and Joe Riddle Budo and Barry Pearl and I've become close friends with all of them, and we just saw the casting crew screening of it and it was weird to see my face that large on a big screen again. It's been a long time. But now, now that I'm, you know, fully gained again in the SAG-AFTRA, all of a sudden we're on strike. And now I have this new card.

Speaker 1: 5:59

I can't use it, yeah well, let's just hope they're back at the the table tomorrow, talking from from when we're recording this, and that we can get through this. It's painful for everybody when strikes happen, so it's speaking of interviews or other things.

Speaker 2: 6:16

I also noticed you did something with Mel Brooks recently well, yes, my friends at the LA Jewish Film Festival they call me almost every year and they asked me to do a celebrity interview of sorts. And Mel Brooks was going to be there to honor Gene Wilder with a brand new documentary that was being made. And although Mel Brooks firmly said, because he's still scared of COVID, he just wanted to come out, talk to the audience and then take off. So in the green room I happened to be there and we started talking a little bit about Sid Caesar, and Mel loved hearing that. So I told him that I'm a film archivist and I've actually rescued kinescopes of some of his work from the early days of television, and he was really intrigued. And then, before I had to go get ready, he said well, let's get a couple of photos, and so that's why I have those there. And, yes, I can actually say to all of your listeners I spoke to God.

Speaker 1: 7:16

I think you wrote that it was on your bucket list. So there you go. You checked one off, right, right. Yeah, I had to mention a couple of these things that get a little background on you guys, because I think it's more interesting to hear what you guys are bringing to the table and where your interest and love of, uh, of the films we're going to talk about today come from. So well, why don't we dive in and talk about Sinecon? Because I am not that familiar and I'm sure some of our listeners because some are not here in LA aren't as familiar. Maybe one of you can jump in and kind of give us a little background history about Sinecon.

Speaker 3: 7:49

So this is our 59th year. Obviously, stan and I have not been working on it that long, but it did start in 1965. And it's kind of balloon since then. It was originally just a bunch of film collectors came together with their 16-millimeter prints in a hotel room and set up some chairs and watched movies, which is great. So now you know, we're in a different kind of a situation. Now we have access to prints from different studios and archives and other collectors and we're in larger venues. But essentially the heart of Sinecon is just getting together and having some fun and watching some movies that you haven't seen before, hopefully movies that are not out there. We try to find films that are not on home video, that aren't streaming, that aren't on TCM or cable, so we dig around and ask for new restorations, what's rare, what's interesting, and that's how we put the schedule together.

Speaker 2: 8:51

We have a saying at Sinecon If it's rare, we'll show it.

Speaker 3: 8:56

It doesn't necessarily mean we've seen it or we know it's any good. It just means it's rare. Sometimes you know it's a real winner and sometimes it tanks.

Speaker 2: 9:05

But we try, you know the idea, Tim, is that if you want to see Gone with the Wind and the Wizard of Oz and Casablanca, you should, and there are some wonderful places that will show those films other festivals but if you want to see the other films that these actors and writers and directors and people made that weren't the big films, you come to Sinecon so you can actually, you know, fully flesh out your movie knowledge.

Speaker 1: 9:32

And I noticed in the title it says Sinecon Classic Film Festival. It doesn't say silent film festival or rare I mean. So it leaves you kind of open, I guess, to pick up rare films that could be a little bit newer they're not all silent films or from the early 1900s necessarily, is that right?

Speaker 2: 9:47

That's right. As a matter of fact, we don't just show silent films and sound films, we also show rare television kinescopes, because that is a big passion with us the films that were recorded by simply recording a television screen before the advent of videotape, and so we have something called Kinnecon at Sinecon, which is just about the most popular thing that we do now. As a matter of fact, we're doing a tribute of sorts to CBS and Television City this year, because this is the year that Television City is no longer CBS Television City. So we're running the rarest possible material. We're going to be showing the opening of Television City back in 1952.

Speaker 2: 10:27

We're going to be showing Edward Armuro a year earlier, showing the introduction of the coaxial cable that allowed broadcasting from east to west coast instantly, and we're also showing something that only arrived a few months ago, which is the rarest thing possible. It's a 1958 kinescope that was discovered in the collection of a man named Joe Casaris, who was an innovator in videotape development and also color videotape, and this is a 1958 kinescope that no one has seen. It was broadcast live and never seen again, and it was in his personal collection and I made sure that we nabbed this and once we announced that we're going to run this Sunny Fox, let's Take a Trip episode, of which very few episodes survive, we got a call from employees at CBS who have asked to come because they want to see it.

Speaker 1: 11:19

Wow, that's going to ask how do you connect with collectors? How do you do people reach out to you? You reach out to other people Because maybe some of the people who listen to this podcast would have an interest to check out your website, obviously, and connect with you guys as well.

Speaker 3: 11:31

I mean, a lot of collectors come to the festival. Course happen coming to the festival Our friends of ours. There's a lot of different Facebook groups where there's collectors on there and people reach out to us all the time through our website Let us know what they have, what they're interested in seeing, send requests, so we're always open to that. But basically the people who come to the festival are all fans, just like us. So it's a really fun weekend. It feels like you're among friends and we all just geek out for five days before we get back to real life again.

Speaker 2: 12:03

We also have celebrities that we honor. But we also have returning celebrities that we've honored in the past that just want to come to the festival, like Kora Sue Collins. This is going to be her fourth or fifth time at our festival because she just loves Sinecon and she autographs things and she charges $5 for the autographs but she gives Sinecon the money so we can use it for film preservation.

Speaker 3: 12:25

Yeah, korisu, who you might not know, was a child star in the 30s. She retired in 1945, and when she was a teenager she played significant roles in films including like A Young Greta Garvo and Queen Christina. And we're showing a new restoration of the Scarlet Letter, the 1934 version, and she plays Pearl in that. So it's pretty remarkable that she's still with us. She's in her late 90s and she's in great shape and she remembers making that movie, so of course we had to have her back. But we've also got three other wonderful honorees this year.

Speaker 3: 13:00

We've got actress Carol Lawrence, best known as, of course, originating the role of Maria in West Side Story, but she went on to a very long career in television. She made her film debut in 1962 and Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge. We've got a print coming from UCLA of that film which is again not out there. And then we've got the wonderful, legendary actress Nancy Olsen Livingston, who is best known as Betty Schaefer in Sunset Boulevard, played opposite. She's the young love interest of William Holden in Sunset Boulevard. Among her many films we're showing a rarity called Summary in Command. And we have another star from that film named Peggy Weber, who also has a humongous resume including Years on Radio. She started in radio in the mid 1940s and continues to work in radio. So three wonderful ladies were thrilled to have them for the weekend. So I hope people will come out and show them some love.

Speaker 1: 13:59

Just to kind of give you a little background on those honorees, when I was looking at your schedule and your website, it looks like you have. I mean, this is a multiple day. We didn't explain that, but this is what a four day festival, five day over the labor day weekend. So it's what August 31 through the fourth.

Speaker 3: 14:15

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 14:16

It looks like you have maybe one honoree on each day.

Speaker 3: 14:20

We try to do one each day, but just scheduling wise it didn't kind of play out that way. Saturday we have Carol Lawrence, and then Sunday we have Peggy Weber and Nancy Olson, and then Corisou will be there on Friday, so we have somebody almost every day.

Speaker 2: 14:35

Opening night is packed with some rarities which Dan can tell you about Well, I'm really excited about the fact that this year we have moved the festival to the Old Town Music Hall, which is in El Segundo. Our festival has been based in Hollywood for the last 30 plus years but due to circumstances beyond our control, we had to make a decision to make a move and because we're personal friends with the caretakers of Old Town, they offered the theater to us to keep Cinecon going and in the theater, which was built in 1921, so it really is a silent movie palace, to say anything more, we are going to be utilizing the mighty Warlets of Oregon for some of our silent programs and if viewers or listeners have never heard of Warlets of Oregon playing in a theater, it is one of the great experiences that you're likely to have. So the two bills who put the theater together back in the 60s, who are no longer living, they found a theater that was being torn down and they were able to acquire the Warlets of Oregon. So we are taking full advantage of that, especially on opening night. After our opening night gala, where we're having drinks and cocktails and food, we're going into the theater, we're going to get a quick demonstration of what this Warlets of Oregon does and then a magnificent musician named Scott Laskey is going to play his brand new original score for a film that is celebrating its 100th anniversary and that film was lost to us for many decades, and the film is from 1923. It is a Warner Brothers film and it's called the Gold Diggers, so it's the first Gold Diggers picture that started the whole trend that Warner Brothers would do, especially in the sound era.

Speaker 2: 16:28

The film is founded by a man named Josh Catamoul who had contacted me when he discovered it because he didn't know what he had, and several of us were chiming in and telling him you have a piece of gold there. You have a film. That was made the first year that Warner Brothers was really going to town and he contacted me and said do you think Warner Brothers would be interested in doing the restoration on this? Because, literally, he found a box filled with nitrate film. It was as simple as that, and so he contacted me, and I contacted my friends at Warner's, who was very excited about it, and sadly, five days later he called me and said I have such terrible news. I'm so sorry to even bring this up to you, but they're not interested because it's public domain. And I was shattered but undaunted, josh found the funding and put it together, and then I contacted him and said Josh, I would love to run this.

Speaker 2: 17:29

Since Warner Brothers is celebrating their 100th anniversary, I really would love to run this, and now I've heard that some people at Warner Brothers understand that we are running it with the restoration and no harm, no foul. We're not doing it to spite anybody. We are about a little preservation and Warner Brothers, or whatever studio it is, we're going to have it opening night with the mighty world to Oregon and I can hardly wait. It's a really good picture, by the way, and after the Gold Diggers, we're going to be running another film that was thought to be lost and, ironically, it's a film that has been in the catalogs forever but no one knew there was a print, and it's a John Wayne film, of all things, that was lost and the Library of Congress located the print.

Speaker 2: 18:14

And back in 2019, when I was down there in Culpeper for one of their festivals, they ran this film called Adventures End, and as soon as we announced that we were going to run this at Cinecon, I was getting phone calls from and I know Brian was getting interested people.

Speaker 2: 18:31

They said I can't believe you're running this movie. I cannot believe it, but thanks to my buddy, brian, he had to do due diligence and we had to make sure that we had the proper clearance because, while it's a universal film, universal doesn't own the rights to it, so we had to try to track down who owns the rights. How are we going to do this? We had to fill separate paperwork just to run this little 60-minute movie. But that is some of the links that we will go to in order to exhibit these films for our fans. I mean, if they want to go see True Grit or the Searchers, go right ahead. There are other great festivals. But if you want to see John Wayne in a film that no one has seen, you come to Cinecon. And after that we're going to run why Worry, which is the Harold Lloyd film, also celebrating its 100th anniversary, and Sue Lloyd, harold's granddaughter, is going to come and introduce the movie.

Speaker 1: 19:56

So I mean there's great stories behind probably most of the stuff that you're showing. Do you have a little Q&A that you do to let people know what it is they're seeing?

Speaker 2: 20:05

Well, we do. We generally have certain introductions for certain films. For instance, the Gold Diggers will be introduced to give people a context of how it was restored. And in our program notes we have a beautiful full-color program that also puts in detail how the thing was discovered. And I asked Josh to do the notes for the Gold Diggers so people at least when they have our program they get the context, they get the behind the scenes and any little tidbit that we can do.

Speaker 3: 20:35

Because we don't have time to introduce every single film. It's a very tight schedule. We try to pack it full of rarities. So some of the movies are just going to you read about it in the program and if it sounds interesting to you you like the stars, the director, whatever you'll give it a try.

Speaker 3: 20:51

But we'll have a special guest coming in to introduce other films. We have a friend of ours named Jeremy Arnold who has been doing commentary for TCME. He's written several books for them. He's going to come in and introduce a rare republic film called the man Trap. A good friend of ours who is a dancer it's a specialty dancer named Rusty Frank is going to introduce our B musical, which is what's Cooking with the Andrew Sisters. So everybody gets to come in and talk about what they're excited about and they're passionate about. Like Stan always says, we're family. So people contact us and say what can I do? Oh, I'm excited about this movie and I have some really interesting factoids and I share them with your audience and of course we want that information to be shared.

Speaker 2: 21:35

There's also a really cool quick story about the fact that someone that we're very closely associated with, eric Grayson. He's a film archivist. He has been restoring Boris Karloff's home movies which no one has seen. So he contacted me and said I would love to run those movies. He sent me the home movies to watch and it was a long afternoon and I said we can't run all that stuff. I don't need to see potty training and things that were none of my business. But there were 15 minutes of gold in there with character actors, friends and to see Frank McHugh and all these wonderful character stars. Then I asked him after you do that, can you get Sarah Karloff to narrate them? And she's already laid down the track. So that's how we roll at Cinecon we have friends and they have friends. We have these great premiers like Sarah Karloff showing her dad's home movies.

Speaker 1: 22:37

That's so great and that was kind of under what I think was called a special program, and you have kind of some special programs where you're doing that.

Speaker 3: 22:45

Well, we have several special programs, including what Stan was just talking about. We have a guest programmer named Julian Stone, who did an event at Hollywood Heritage Museum, which is one of our partners, and it was called the man Behind the Monsters and it was about Junior Lemley, who was the son of Carl Lemley, a senior, and he basically was this boy genius who was at Universal in the early 30s and one of his brainchild was to take Dracula, the original book, and make it into a film, which of course is the classic 1931 film with Bel Lugosi. But that started a whole franchise at Universal which you know. They're just legendary in that field. So he's going to be talking about this sort of little known champion, junior Lemley, and he wrote a book as well which he'll be signing after the presentation. And then we have a good friend of ours named Mark Cantor, who has a jazz on film archive. He's incredibly knowledgeable about anything relating to jazz and swing and you know whatever on film, and he has a new book out on the soundies and hopefully maybe you know what soundies are, but if you don't, I can certainly share that with you. Yeah, please do so.

Speaker 3: 24:02

Soundies are sort of like the music video of the 1940s. They're three minute shorts that were produced. Actually, they were originally shot on 35 millimeter but they were released on 16 and eight millimeter and they played on what was called a panoram. And so if you went to a movie theater or a nightclub or bar or something like that, there would be a machine that looked like a jukebox and you put your money in and it would actually play this film short for you. So you got to actually see the band or singer or dancer performing and hear the music, and so it was a sort of a precursor to MTV.

Speaker 3: 24:39

Anyway, hundreds of these shorts were made throughout the 1940s up through 1947. So he has meticulously put together a massive two volume guide to soundies in conjunction with a wonderful new Blu-ray set which Kino put out on soundies, which has about 200 of those shorts that are restored, many of them from the Library of Congress. So Mark has been with us almost every year and he's going to come back with some rarities from his collection. So those are just two of the special programs. There's a couple of other special things you want to talk about Evan Costello and Robert Culp and all that other stuff.

Speaker 2: 25:16

We have a few friends who wrote books in the past year. One is Rick Green. He wrote a book about advertising anarchy, selling Abed and Costello to you know war torn America, and the book is almost 700 pages and it's filled with color photos and lobby cards and press books and so much ephemera. If you were never a collector of this kind of stuff, you buy his book and you have everything. So I wanted to run some rare Abed and Costello material and we're going to run that. He'll introduce it and then he'll sell his book afterwards.

Speaker 2: 25:51

We're doing the same thing with Josh Mills, who is Edie Adams' son and he is also the curator and caretaker of the Ernie Kovacs and Edie Adams' estate and he is going to be selling his brand new book called Ernie in Kovacs Land and we're going to run some Ernie Kovacs to wet the appetites of our attendees. And in addition to that we are also going to be showing three of the Laurel and Hardy shorts from 1927. Now the Laurel and Hardy shorts are available in the world but these have been restored from 35 millimeter nitrate material and no one has ever seen this kind of quality before. And because Serge Brumberg and I have been film collectors and friends for decades. I helped, I provided four films which he used, some elements of and several other people and archives provided film footage and we're going to run Laurel and Hardy Silence like no one has ever seen in clarity.

Speaker 2: 26:50

That has just, it's going to defy description, as well as an hour gang short also celebrating its 100th anniversary called Derby Day, which is coming from 35 millimeter nitrate material and that's from our friends at Classic Flix. So there's just. It's like the weather in Florida. If you don't like something you know, just wait till the next one.

Speaker 1: 27:09

Right, well, it's an amazing lineup. It's an amazing lineup and you just gone through, you know, some of the highlights that I want to be sure we did talk about. Maybe let's get a little into nuts and bolts of like how do people attend and and where did they go to find out more.

Speaker 3: 27:24

Sure. So tickets are available on Eventbrite and they can just search Cinecon on Eventbrite. We are selling full festival passes right now up and through the 15th, so you can get them at the early bird price of $249. It's quite a deal. So for $249, you get five days of classic film, plus that gets you into the opening night reception.

Speaker 2: 27:45

So we also want to mention that at Cinecon you don't have to pick and choose, meaning other festivals you know they'll have different films running at the same time and other venues, and you end up paying $1300 for that. Ours is $249 and you, if you have the stamina, you can see everything we show. Right, yeah.

Speaker 3: 28:07

Because we started 10 o'clock in the morning, we go to 11 o'clock at night, so it's a long day but it's worth it. And then we'll be selling day passes starting the 15th and those start at $75 for the full day. Monday, Labor Day is 65. It's a little bit shorter day but basically you get your money's worth with these passes. Let me tell you and we highly recommend that people buy the full festival pass because you don't want to miss anything and it's really the best deal. It will go up to $299 after the 15th. So hopefully your listeners will hear this before Tuesday. They can also visit our website, Cineconorg. We have our full schedule up there. We have all the honorees, all of our sponsors, any updates about the hotel, our shuttles we will be shuttling from our host hotel to the theater All those details about restaurants nearby. Everything you need to know about Cinecon is on our website.

Speaker 1: 29:04

Well, that's terrific. It's usually blazing hot here in LA that weekend. It's my daughter's birthday weekend, so we're usually in the pool, so if you want to escape the heat, this is a great opportunity to do so as well you would want to stay in the hotel, let me tell you it's like 10 degrees cooler, maybe 20 degrees cooler than the valley.

Speaker 3: 29:23

So we're usually in Hollywood, but now we're going to be on the west side of LA, so it is perfect weather out there. Let me tell you.

Speaker 1: 29:31

Well, guys, it's been a lot of fun. I appreciate you coming on. We pulled this together kind of fast, but I didn't want to get this out there. There's a lot of overlap on people who listen to this podcast because they buy a lot of Warner Archive titles and that includes a lot of classics that I want to mention that Warner Archive has always been a big supporter of the festival.

Speaker 3: 29:51

George Feltonstein is a great friend and they're going to be sending some Blu-rays our way. So if you get something special in your welcoming packet it might be from Warner Archive and there'll be an ad in our program with some of their upcoming releases. So we absolutely love Warner Archive because they keep it going and they're still doing physical media and a lot of our attendees, our collectors, like we said, and they like to have those Blu-rays on their shelf because you never know when something, a streaming title, is going to disappear. So if you have it on a Blu-ray or DVD, you know you can watch it anytime you want.

Speaker 1: 30:29

Yeah, exactly because these films. I mean you go to all the work of restoring them and finding them and everything, and it's great that you guys get to show them. But when the Warner Archive can do theirs on Blu-ray, then the fans can buy them and that's a terrific thing to have your own kind of home cataloger library of these films, because I don't think that the studios are going to be supporting physical media the way they used to, and we're already seeing signs of that as we go forward here from some of the studios.

Speaker 2: 30:55

So Tim, if you saw my archive, I have over 4,016 millimeter prints and I am never giving them up. When it's time for me to go, they will be going to either UCLA or the Library of Congress, because I'm just a temporary custodian and I love the Blu-ray idea and I love streaming, but I'm very tangible and I want to be able to physically, you know, hold something, and film has always been it for me, and that's as close as you get to the original source really Absolutely, unless you have the original negative. And this year, by the way, is the 100th anniversary of the introduction of 16 millimeter film. So in honor of that, we will be running some 16 millimeter archival prints of things that you can't see in any other format.

Speaker 3: 31:42

So if there's a 100th anniversary to be celebrated, we will celebrate it. Dagnabbit.

Speaker 1: 31:47

It seems to be the year right, More brothers in Disney and the 16 millimeter stuff. I know that people in LA can more easily get to this, but do you have people coming from other parts outside of LA?

Speaker 2: 32:02

As a matter of fact, we booked the hotel. There are no more hotel rooms to be got because people are traveling from New York and Connecticut. Yeah, and we got a great deal on the hotel and we were providing a shuttle, so they don't even have to drive. And since we're in, El Segundo.

Speaker 3: 32:18

We're right next to LAX, so it's really easy this year for people to fly in, and if they can't stay at the Cambria LAX hotel, there are many other hotels nearby. Some of your listeners are remote and they want to come in. We don't want to discourage them because there's lots of hotels in the area that are near the theater, so we would love to have them join us. It's a really special weekend, so please let them know.

Speaker 2: 32:42

I did have a friend who actually booked an Airbnb, oh great. So there are plenty of places to go. There you go.

Speaker 1: 32:48

Yeah, I mean it's LA. There's hotels everywhere. You just might have to go a little further than the one that you had. There's no shortage of hotels Exactly Well, this has been a lot of fun and hopefully I'll see you guys down there and we can meet in person, Brian.

Speaker 2: 33:04

Thank you, Tim. Tim will be great to see you there.

Speaker 1: 33:12

For those of you interested in learning more about the Cinecon Classic Film Festival, there's a link to their website in the podcast show notes. It's a great lineup, so if you're in the LA area, you may want to check it out. And, of course, if you want to fly in, you can find all the information there on the website on housing, transportation et cetera, as well as their schedule, so be sure and check that out. If you're on social media, be sure and follow the show to stay up to date on our upcoming guests and be part of our community. And if you're a fan of Warner Brothers or the Warner Archive, you're invited to a Facebook group called the Warner Archive and Warner Brothers Catalog Group. So look for that link and our other social media links in the show notes as well. And for our long-term listeners, don't forget to follow and leave us a reviewed iTunes, spotify or your favorite podcast provider Until next time you've been listening to Tim Mallard. Stay slightly obsessed.