There is nothing like
going to a theater, a communal
atmosphere, watching something
that is bigger than life.
It's dark...
You don't look at anybody...
And then the movie
started and it was really,
really magical.
I went to a movie at
10 in the morning, which to me
was so odd, right?
Who goes to a movie at 10?
But there was light, there was
drama, there was narrative and I
think what I most loved was the
way the filmmaker was present,
saying "Here, take a look at"
this, think about that."
We were all an
eight-year-old boy.
We were all a 10-year-old girl.
We were all sitting there in
that audience watching whatever
that movie was.
It became a
magical experience.
You go into the dark and you
learn something new and you come
out and it's almost like a
religious experience.
If you want a window into
what was going on in humankind
at a given point in time, you
look at movies.
It gave me the sense that I
was more than just this little
boy, and there was a lot of
other things out there
that I could do.
And if I just kept going in the
right direction, maybe the right
thing would happen.
Because that's what happened
in the movies.
It's heavy.
What is it?
The, uh...
Stuff that dreams are made of.
Huh?
Media giant
Ted Turner has upset a lot of
people because of what he's
doing to some of Hollywood's
greatest old films.
Turner recently bought the.
M.G.M. film library.
Now, he's adding color to the
black and white ones.
To colorize or not
to colorize, Ted Turner has said
is his choice.
Well, last time I checked,
they were my films.
You know, I'm working
on my films.
Let us just say that a very
rich man has purchased all the
films ever made in Hollywood.
He calls together his staff and
says, "take all the black and"
white ones and turn them into
"color, using our new computer."
It was kind of an artists'
rights issue involving material
alteration of film, such as
colorization, panning and
scanning, that sort of thing.
It was a big controversy between
directors who don't like to see
their films changed and studios
who were looking to take, say,
black and white films and
introduce them to a new
generation by, they thought,
colorizing them would make them
more appealing.
Colorization really was the
combustible issue because
a lot of film critics, as well
as the directors and the
cinematographers and the actors
were all so incensed at these
changes, especially the
possibility of changes to,
you know, classic films.
Because the films are a
part of our cultural history,
and like all accurate
representations of who and what
we were, I think they deserve
preservation in their
authentic form.
The committee rooms were
packed and when you get
Jimmy Stewart coming,
you know, Mr. Smith literally
coming to Washington, you know,
I was just sitting there, sort
of admiring the whole scene.
I feel that they're
being tampered with and I... I
want to speak out against this.
The Librarian of Congress got
the idea that if film was
honored in some way by the
national government, that it
would be recognized as having
cultural and artistic value.
Today, the congress is taking
up a bill called the National.
Film Preservation Act.
Congress finally
stepped in and we were kind of
the person brought in to referee
it if we could.
And that was essentially
the creation of the National.
Film Registry.
The National Film.
Registry is a list of films of
enduring cultural, historical
and aesthetic importance,
recommended to the Librarian
of Congress by a very
distinguished board.
25 films are announced each year
as being added to that registry.
1989, the first year
of the board meeting, was very
much focused on the artists'
rights issues.
And then after that, it seemed
very quickly to fade.
The issue became preservation,
and which films should be
awarded the seal of the national
film preservation board.
This process serves
as an invaluable means to
advance public awareness of the
richness and variety of the
American film heritage.
This is not simply just another
list of great films.
It is saying to America
and to the world,
"These films matter."
What the film registry
says is "Here are great"
works of art."
They were created in a
commercial context but we need
to preserve them the way
the metropolitan museum
preserves Leonardo da Vinci's.
One of the nice things about
the National Film Registry is
that it's not only preserving
our films, but it's also, to a
large extent, preserving our
cultural heritage, and all the
things that film capture.
If you look at the advent
of movies from the 1890s
forward, they were in many ways
the most important force for
shaping a common sense of
American culture.
There was a time when people
in Southern California didn't
have much in common with
the people in Maine and the
people in Florida had virtually
nothing in common with the
people in the Pacific Northwest,
and it's movies that came along
that began to create the sense
of nationhood.
The American film was a
particular way in which a young
nation learned to express
itself, express its exuberance,
expose its problems,
reflect its hopes.
It was living history,
audio-visual history
of the 20th century.
Movies have been the document
of our history and culture.
They tell us what we looked
like, what we wore, what we
aspired to, our dreams, the lies
we told to one another...
Because in those
movies are those little gestures
and those little images and
the styles and the ways of
speaking to each other, the way
men spoke to women and women to
women and men to men, and the
way they projected their own
dreams and desires into
narratives and fantasies.
That is what the movies does,
and it does it better than
anything else.
American film really tells us
so much about this country.
When it starts with
storytelling about individuals,
underdogs, immigrants, people
who don't have something.
I saw that film
when I was still in Hong Kong
when I was a teenager.
I think it gave me
a sense of America.
Life can be bright
in America
if you can fight
in America.
Life is all right
in America
if you're all white
in America...
The lyrics to that
song, they're really quite
sarcastic about being an
immigrant in America.
That movie was a huge influence
on me when I was a teenager.
I mean, I probably saw it five
or six times in a row.
I was also in love with
Natalie Wood.
That helped.
You never really understand a
person until you consider things
from his point of view.
Sir?
Till you climb inside of his
skin and walk around in it.
Gregory Peck was kind of what
I thought America was in many
kind of respects.
In this country, our courts
are the great levelers.
In our courts...
All men are created equal.
That's the America that my
father respected most... in that
kind of man that Gregory Peck
was always meant to play.
We identified so strongly with
those kids somehow.
Oh, it's just, like,
instant tears.
It still gets me,
still makes me cry now.
He really portrayed
a father who was just
so understanding and had
such a close relationship
with his kids.
A lot of people would love
to have a father like that.
I mean, who wouldn't?
I would love to have a father
like that.
Many of the characteristics
that my dad portrayed in that
film are really him.
Of all the films that he did,
it was a film that was
closest to his true character,
certainly the character he,
he would want to be.
It's a different form
of honor than getting
an academy award.
It's a more cumulative or
retrospective kind of honor.
It's saying your film has stood
the test of time.
There's never been
a day so sunny
it could not happen twice...
The Academy Awards preserve
the consensus within the
industry at the time.
Sometimes history proves them
right, but very often, history
proves them wrong.
["Also sprach Zarathustra"
Most lists exist nowadays for
pop culture reasons.
It's an excuse for a TV special.
It's to sell magazines.
It's to get people arguing,
and that's what lists do.
The congressional language
setting up the registry was done
by congressional staff back in
1988 and they used "culturally",
historically or aesthetically
"significant," which, we love
that phrase because it basically
means almost anything.
Whoever came up with it,
I forget the person's name,
the staffer, but I'm forever
thankful because it does allow
a lot of leverage in terms
of the sort of films we're able
to pick and put onto the
registry and preserve.
Because of the 10-year rule,
we look at only films that are
10 years old, and that gives us
some space and some time.
And I tell ya what.
From his footprint, he looks
like a big fella.
You see something
down there, chief?
No, I just think
I'm gonna barf.
Why the 10 years?
Why not 50?
Why not five?
Why not one that just opened?
But I suppose it's to have
a little bit of a distance,
which is proper.
Does the film have
a lasting benefit?
Does it stand to history?
The idea is that here is
an arm of the U.S. government
saying that, hey, some films
are important.
They're part of the picture.
So you immediately confer
upon them a certain status
and dignity.
Each year we do try to
fashion an eclectic list,
one that is also stand-alone
on its own merits.
If we pick 25 famous films
one year or 25 films no one
had ever heard of each year,
then the list, to us, would be
a lot less useful.
The way we pick the national
film registry each year is a
multi-stage process.
We start off by soliciting
public balloting.
So we take very seriously
what the public recommends.
They often recommend things that
nobody's even heard of.
We tabulate those results and
send them to the members of the
film preservation board.
Each year a group of
people, representing all areas
of the industry and education
come together and recommend
to the Librarian of Congress
the films of enduring
cultural, historical,
aesthetic importance.
People have their personal
campaigns, their pet films,
their pet causes, and that's
as it should be.
Having gone through the
obvious choices "Citizen Kane",
citizen Kane, citizen Kane...
Rosebud.
Then the less obvious films
come up for discussion,
and that's where the discussions
get interesting.
This was really a good
meeting, and I've been on this
board since its inception.
In the early years, you knew
there were certain kinds of
movies that were the
sprocket-worn classics, the
great films, they would be on
the list, and then you'd put in
a couple more that you hoped
you would expand people's
consciousness about.
It's great to be on the board
because there are so many people
from different aspects of film
and scholarship and everything
related to film, and they bring
up films, you know, that...
I always write them down because
I go, "Oh, I haven't seen this."
I'll have to go see it."
I'm a fairly new
board member.
In the beginning,
it is overwhelming.
There are hundreds of films
that are talked about.
The discussions can range
from being very lighthearted
to very serious.
They have people talking
about home movies, people
talking about newsreels,
people talking about short
films of various kinds.
And it's always one of the
most interesting moments to see
what has been chosen.
And as you go through, you
think, "Well, of course that."
I can't believe it wasn't
"chosen before."
And then you'll come to
something and say, "What?"
'cause this is
thriller
thriller night,
and no one's gonna save you...
Now it really is
American history.
Michael Jackson's iconic video
thriller was named today to the.
National Film Registry at the.
Library of Congress,
the first music video ever
to receive that honor.
Thriller,
thriller...
The nice thing about the list
is it's all over the place.
It's democratic.
You're tearing me apart!
I vote for films that I think
are culturally significant, and
sometimes I vote for films that
I think... even films that I
don't particularly like, I will
vote for it because I think
they have a special place
in film history.
I certainly felt,
as a cultural historian myself,
that this was an important part
of American culture and that it
had to be preserved not simply
so that our grandkids could
enjoy the same films that
we did, but also so that
they could understand
what America was like
at an earlier stage.
Dr. Billington, the.
Librarian, said something very
profound a little while ago.
He said that stories
unite people.
Theories divide them.
So that in itself is a wonderful
reason to preserve stories.
Stories are profoundly important
to human beings.
500 years from now, people
will look back and they'll say,
"This was the beginning."
This was the first 100 years.
These were the origins.
Why didn't they take better
"care of them?"
And the "they" they're
talking about is us.
Film is the art form
of the 20th century, and we
have let it go.
The studios stored the films
badly and they deteriorated,
they burned.
They didn't think of them
as an art form.
Half of the movies
made before 1950 no longer exist
in any form whatsoever.
Maybe 80% or so of the
silent era is gone.
So much of film
history has already been lost,
but there's still a very great
deal which can be saved if we're
willing to do it.
It's really amazing to pick
up a roll of film and just to
see this and realize the age of
this film and all the people who
went into making it and just to
look at the images on it.
All these people who worked
on these things who are all
gone now, but they've left
behind these amazing shadows
for us to enjoy.
I always keep a little memento
of my beginning here at my desk.
This is a Castle Films headline
edition, California bound.
It's actually a three-minute
clip from the W.C. Fields film,
it's a gift, where they go to
this rich man's estate and the
family basically has a picnic on
the lawn and makes a mess.
Look out where
you're going!
Oh! Look what you've done!
She ran right in front
of the car!
When I first saw W.C. Fields
in this film, his humor, his
sort of laconic behavior
and kind of slovenliness,
it spoke to me as a man
and as a human being.
Stop it!
Oh, you idiot.
Those were my mother's feathers.
Stop it.
Never knew your mother
had feathers.
Probably the most amazing and
unique thing about the Packard
campus is that it is part of the.
Library of Congress.
We are fortunate in that we get
a part of a budget from Congress
every year and part of that
budget, and a fairly good-sized
chunk, goes to preservation.
In the late 1890s,
the nitrocellulose film
was developed.
The... sort of uniqueness
of the nitrate film is why they
actually have a manager for just
the nitrate film collection.
So much of the nitrate film
collection is unknown, so we are
constantly working on the
collection to try and identify
those little bits of film that
might be something really
important, but we have no idea
what they are.
The major problem with nitrate
is that it is very flammable.
And when I say "very flammable",
I mean it is very flammable.
It is like setting a fuse on a
piece of dynamite.
We continued using nitrate up
until the 1950s, when the
triacetate safety came out
and was deemed just or almost
as good as the nitrate film
that preceded it.
Well, this is my little
world here.
We call this "nitrate land."
These are the nitrate vaults of
the Library of Congress.
We have 124 climate-controlled
vaults.
They're maintained at about
39 degrees fahrenheit, about
30% relative humidity.
Within these vaults, we have
130,000, approximately, rolls of
nitrate motion picture film
dating from about 1894
to about 1952.
It is a truly amazing collection
and one of a kind.
See what else we got here.
Nah...
P-eww!
This is our triage area of
films that the other staff find
that are questionable, and
they're brought to me to do
inspection on.
This is a can of
small fragments.
Normally, with a film you should
be able to, like, it should
give somewhat and be somewhat
loosely wound.
This one is solid as a rock.
This is what we refer to
as a hockey puck.
It has been wet.
It is probably very stuck
together, so I'm going to see if
I can at least peel something
off to tell what it was... ah!
Oh... darn.
Look at that... wow.
Through a variety of reasons,
through basic neglect or
deterioration especially,
many of our early films, and
actually some more recent ones,
are lost forever.
I mean, there's nothing left.
I know of one Academy Award-
winning film called The Patriot
and all that survives on it are
a few trailers and stills.
The other reason a lot of them
don't survive, of course, is
just because the studios didn't
really care about 'em.
They were just product, and once
they were done and made their
money, they went on the shelf.
One studio destroyed all their
silent negatives in the '40s
because they didn't think
anyone was ever going to
want to see them again.
I got involved in film
archiving 'cause I saw Gone with
the Wind when I was 12.
And to think that I might have a
part in somebody, some other
12-year-old girl seeing a
movie that changes their life is
really exciting to me.
I volunteered at the library
for a month before I applied
for a job and while I was
volunteering, Warner Brothers
was doing a restoration of Gone
with the Wind, and sure enough,
I walked into one of the back
rooms one day to find a stack of
negatives and I got really
excited and I remember running
into a couple people's offices,
I mean, like, "Look at this!"
"Look at this!" And they knew
exactly why I was excited 'cause
they'd found their favorite
movies and had the same feeling.
My favorite part of the job is
spending a whole day saving a
film, you know, a film that
comes in that's torn and no one
can watch and it's up to me to
make sure that it gets to a
point where it can be rescued.
It's kind of like a lost
puppy... That needs
to be taken care of.
Ah, nice.
Nice splice job... oh...
Is it a piece of...?
Oh, that's great.
So we have a piece of scotch
tape that someone just stuck on
the film to repair a rip.
That's my job and to know
that because of me spending
hours staring at tiny frames and
working with, you know, small
pieces of tape, that future
generations are gonna see it,
is very exciting.
A friend of mine had a
16-millimeter print.
He said, "you have to"
see this film.
I want you to see this film.
"It's, like, this amazing film."
There were no DVDs in those
days, no videotapes, nothing.
I had a Bell & Howell
projector, I put the film on,
I watched it and I went.
"Oh, my God!"
Yay!
Hello, Bedford Falls!
Merry Christmas!
Merry Christmas, George!
Merry Christmas,
George!
What struck me more than
anything was the emotion of it.
I cried.
Is this the ear
you can't hear on?
George Bailey, I'll
love you till the day I die.
I'm going out exploring
someday... you watch.
I cried when Jimmy Stewart
grabbed her and they were
listening to the phone together
and he grabbed her and it was
one take.
No cutaways, one take,
and said...
Now, you listen to me.
I don't want any plastics and I
don't want any ground floors and
I don't want to get married ever
to anyone... you understand that?
I wanna do what I wanna do,
and you're... and you're...
Oh, Mary... Mary...
George, George, George...
It is my favorite film
because it's a film that
celebrates the value of life,
and there is nothing greater
than us all appreciating
the value of our lives
and other lives.
Auld Lang Syne.
We'll drink a cup
of kindness yet
for Auld Lang Syne.
Film should be an experience.
Reality outside the frame is
your everyday life.
The reality inside the frame
is whatever you want to create
it to be.
Some films definitely give
you access to a dream world.
I think musicals probably do
that better than most.
Follow the yellow brick road.
Follow the
yellow brick road,
follow the yellow brick road
follow, follow...
It immediately
takes you out of reality.
It's something that could only
happen in your dreams, but that
doesn't make it less worthwhile.
In fact, for me it frequently
makes it more worthwhile.
It's not a place you can get
to by a boat or a train.
It's far, far away.
I would watch Wizard of Oz
every day when I was two.
I had a really hard time
understanding that I couldn't
go into the film, 'cause it felt
so real to me.
Somewhere
over the rainbow...
It's a wonderful
universal story.
I mean, if you look at
the Wizard of Oz, it takes a
reality which is the beginning
of the movie and it turns it
into a mythology.
Dreams that you dare
to dream really do come true.
You know, all great
storytelling is a form of myth.
Tap your heels together
three times...
And think to yourself,
"“There's no place like home."
The Wizard of Oz is still
my all-time favorite movie...
probably for the wrong reasons.
I never got why Dorothy
wanted to go home.
Why would she want to go home
when she could live with winged
monkeys and witches and...
I don't know, I never understood
it... I was sobbing when she went
home to that dreary farm.
This was a real,
truly live place.
And I remember that some of it
wasn't very nice, but most of it
was beautiful.
I've always been an
aficionado of science fiction,
fantasy and horror.
The truth is, speculative
fiction has always informed us
about who we are.
If you go back to Invasion of
the Body Snatchers, it was
a parable about McCarthyism
and the Red Scare.
They have to be
destroyed... all of them!
They will be,
every one of them.
Listen, we're gonna have to
search every building,
every house in town.
Men, women and children are
gonna have to be examined.
We've got some phoning to do.
Filmmakers were able to
make that film and send a
message without having it be
a message movie.
It's a malignant disease
spreading through the
whole country.
Initially those films
were relegated to B-movies
or even Z-movies.
They weren't given any kind
of critical acclaim.
They generally weren't big
commercial successes.
Are you crazy?!
Ya big idiot!
They're here already!
You're next!
I think I'm not so much
a fan of science fiction per se
as I am a fan of cinema
that creates worlds, that
creates an entire alternate
universe that you can escape
into for a couple of hours.
The first time that I.
A Space Odyssey,
I was completely blown away.
It made me think about mankind,
the future of mankind...
Where we came
from, where are we going?
And the special effects were
absolutely magnificent, and it
was a film to take seriously,
not a film that was disposable.
Open the pod bay doors, Hal.
I'm sorry, Dave.
I'm afraid I can't do that.
You could truly lose yourself
in that cinematic experience,
really opening up a way
of looking at reality
completely differently.
I've always enjoyed films
that reward multiple viewings,
films that if you chose to come
back and look at them again,
you might see something else
in them.
It does transport you
to an entirely different
time and space, and to me,
it does it so well that I
lose myself entirely.
I'm in a dream world when I'm
watching Blade Runner.
Each frame, each shot
is full of the most
extraordinary detail.
It's really too much to take in
on a first viewing, and it
requires subsequent viewings to
sort of orient yourself in the
world of that film and see all
of the different layers that
went into the fulfillment of
that grand design.
I think for my generation,
there isn't a filmmaker...
working in Hollywood,
certainly... who can deny
the influence of the.
Star Wars films.
The first experience that I
had with Star Wars was the
summer that it came out.
We went to the Coronet theater
in San Francisco and there was
a line... the biggest line I'd
ever seen as a kid...
around the block.
The lights go down and I
didn't really know what to
expect whatsoever.
Huge musical hit and the Star.
Wars logo goes back and then
the scrolling of the text
happens and... and I began to
sort of just become mesmerized.
And then the moment that Star.
Destroyer comes overhead,
that just seemed like
a forever moment.
I just kept watching and
watching and watching, thinking,
“this is the biggest spaceship.
"I've ever seen."
To top it all off, by the time.
Darth Vader makes his
appearance, people started to
boo and started to hiss at Darth.
Vader, and I just thought, "This"
is... what is going on here?"
There's something more
that this movie in particular
has to offer.
It simply opened up
a feeling of reality
in science fiction.
The feeling of a completely
thought-through world that
existed outside the frame.
I think when you look at the
history of movies, I don't
believe there's been as dominant
a cultural milestone in cinema
as that first Star Wars film.
Now, as opposed to being
on the outside watching,
now I sort of feel like I'm
part of that now.
Remember,
the Force will be with you...
Always.
The world that he
created is something you had
never seen before and you just
wanted to be with those
characters in that world.
I was so blown away, but I
always felt like, I wanna do
that in animation.
Halt, who goes there?
Don't shoot! It's O.K.
Friends.
Do you know these life forms?
Yes!
They're Andy's toys.
All right, everyone.
You're clear to come up.
I am Buzz Lightyear.
I come in peace.
Oh, I'm so glad you're not
a dinosaur!
It's all I ever wanted
to do, you know?
My true love was cartoons, even
when it was uncool, right?
When you're supposed to be into
girls or cars or sports or
things like that, I would run
home after school to watch.
Bugs Bunny cartoons and always
pray that it would be a
Chuck Jones cartoon.
Kill the wabbit?
The films that have been the
most influential on my career
are the films of Walt Disney...
Snow White...
Pinocchio...
I can walk!
Fantasia...
["Waltz of the Flowers"
I think that Fantasia
does represent sort of
the pinnacle of animation
of its time.
["Night on Bald Mountain"
And I was actually just
looking at "Night on Bald".
"Mountain" the other day because
there's beautiful, beautiful
fire animation.
Animating fire is not easy, and
I don't even know how the
animators did it.
So, yeah, in animation, you
can do anything... and then the
first time you see something
that you drew come to life,
you are addicted because
it's like magic.
When you see something
that you drew move, that is a
mind-blowing experience.
I remember when I was 12 or 13,
and I saw my first super-8
animation move and it was like...
I wanna say it's better than sex
but I'd never had sex when I
was 12, right?
But it was just incredible.
We knew we were
making the first
computer-animated feature film,
but the main focus was the story
and the characters.
Walt Disney always said for
every laugh, there should be a
tear, and it's something that
is so important to me in my
filmmaking, is that heart,
'cause I believe that's
something that stays with an
audience much longer than the
jokes have gotten old, but that
heart will always stay there.
You know how you feel when you
first watched these movies and
it brings a tear to your eye.
Absolutely, animation
belongs on any list of
culturally significant works.
Animation... is art.
When one looks through the
list of films that have been
selected over time, what one is
struck by most of all is the
extraordinary diversity of the
kinds of movies.
It isn't just
Hollywood films.
It's films that document.
America's life and.
America's heritage.
There's a wonderful film that
was named to the Registry
a few years ago.
It's a piece of amateur
filmmaking made by the wife
of a doctor in a sort of
agricultural town in Minnesota
in the '30s, and she went
around photographing what the
place looked like.
Well, this is wonderful.
It's like watching a bunch of
live Edward Hopper and Charles.
Sheeler canvases come
to life, you know?
Who knew?
So there's a film that very
specifically preserves a niche
in a corner of American life.
There is some sense of
sadness and poignancy.
It's part of our history, it's
part of our family history.
It's the history of a people,
history of our country.
One of the most tragic, yet
fascinating moments in our
country's history was the mass
internment of 120,000
Japanese-Americans.
Overnight, American citizens
of Japanese ancestry were looked
at with fear and suspicion,
simply because we looked like
the people who bombed.
Pearl Harbor.
Mass hysteria took over the
country, and President Roosevelt
ordered 120,000 people taken
from their homes, moved within
three days and put in internment
camps throughout the country.
I still remember that day
when two American soldiers with
bayonets on their rifles came
stomping up to the front door of
that house and ordered
our family out.
And I remember my mother had
tears streaming down her cheek
as we moved out.
It became normal for me to
begin the school day in a black
tar paper barrack with a Pledge
of Allegiance to the flag.
I could see the barbed wire
fence and the sentry towers
right outside my schoolhouse
window as I recited the words
"with liberty and justice
for all."
I have a nine-year-old
daughter and I want her to be
able to experience and see what
these camps looked like.
I think when you talk about the
history of an experience, you
can't really feel it unless you
can see it and visualize it.
My father is
Dave Masaharu Tatsuno and he
was responsible for the
film Topaz, which documents
life in an internment camp
during World War II.
That's my mother holding me
in the desert.
It wasn't meant to be
a documentary.
He was just trying to do
a family film for us.
What has come to be
known as his film was really
just a portrayal of life in the
camps, of the daily struggles
that people experienced and
it captured for all time
something that America didn't
want anyone to see.
Home movies are so important.
They show our history... of our
family, of our community,
of our country.
That's important,
that's very important.
The addition of the Zapruder
film, the home movie that
captured the assassination of
John Kennedy, demonstrates, I
think, at its farthest extent
that America's film heritage,
its movie heritage embraces
much, much more than just a
Hollywood feature film.
I think, "This film is real"
and it happened during
"my lifetime."
I saw it, it's ugly, it's
sudden, it's shocking and it's
inexplicable, and the only way
that you can recreate the
experience of it is showing it.
Hey you, come on
out of there.
Come on!
Well, I'm a... too many of you
dames gettin' away with it
these days.
The cops in the yards'll
take care of you!
Oh, wait a minute.
You wouldn't throw us off
the train, would you?
Yeah, and you're gonna get
30 days for it.
In jail?
Yes, in jail!
Now why don't we sit down
and talk this thing over?
Almost always, the things
that people wanted to cut out of
movies were ideas.
And so you have ideas being cut
out of the original Baby Face by
the New York censors.
That man
of mine...
Baby face was really
interesting 'cause I'd known the
film for a long time and
actually, I had a copy of it
on laserdisc... for those who
remember what laserdiscs were.
They asked me to go and check
the negative to see what
condition it was in, and that's
when I noticed that we actually
had two negatives.
So I get 'em out, and I start
looking at the two reel ones and
I notice that there's something
strange about them, so I
put the two reel ones down on a
table and set one of top of the
other one and that's when I
noticed that, you know, like the
one reel one was this big...
And the other reel one was like
this big, and I'm like, “There's
"something going on here."
Say, I like it here.
How about a job?
Oh, we don't...
Oh, now don't tell me in this
great big building there ain't
some place for me.
Have you had any experience?
Plenty.
And I started going
through the two negatives
and also listening to the
soundtracks and began finding
these differences, these
great differences between
the two films.
And then he has the Eureka
moment and he realizes that what
he has is the film before
it was edited!
That the five minutes with
Barbara Stanwyck going to the
city to use what she has,
you know, to get what she
wants is in there, and they
thought it was lost.
The boss won't be back
for an hour.
Well then, why don't we go in
and talk this over?
The original
negative was cut to the
censorship version.
The duplicate negative was the
original pre-censored version
that had all the naughty bits
still in it, and that was
just... I mean that was just
the find of a lifetime.
Look, here.
Nietzsche says "All life",
no matter how we idealize it,
is nothing more nor less
"than exploitation."
That's what I'm telling you.
Exploit yourself!
Go to some big city where you
will find opportunities.
Use men!
Be strong! Defiant!
Use men to get the things
you want!
The version that was
discovered puts some of the
sex back, but it puts a lot
of the philosophy back.
Yeah.
The New York censors
altered the sharpness of the
philosophical thrust for the
release version because they
were afraid that it would
offend people.
What chance has a woman got?
More chance than men.
A woman... young, beautiful like
you are... could get anything
she wants in the world...
But there is a right
and a wrong way.
Remember the price of the wrong
way is too great.
Go to some big city where you
will find opportunities.
Don't let people mislead you.
You must be a master,
not a slave.
Be clean, be strong, defiant.
And you will be a success.
You always hear
about these things but they
never survive.
Yeah.
And to this day, I don't
think we've found out exactly
why this negative survives and
why on this particular film,
they actually made this
duplicate negative before
they cut the film.
You can make a movie,
by the way, that endorses
conventional morality,
that's not the problem.
The problem is that it was
not sincere, it's not real.
And in the case of Baby Face,
when it really said what it
wanted to say, of course,
it's better.
That is why censorship
is so horrible.
Because censorship blocks the
free expression of an era
talking to another era.
For the most part, most films
that are made are entertainment
and that's all they're meant to
be and I think there's a, an
unfortunate sense people have
that all films are just films.
Well, I think the shining
example of something that is
a folk fantasy and commercial
and art is probably Godfather.
I used to live in.
Bayside, Queens, and there's a
local theater there, R.K.O.
Keith's, which was an old, kind
of ornate theater that had the
skylights and the stars and had
the balcony and that's where I
had first seen The Godfather
played in that theater.
And it played great, it sounded
great, it looked great.
Eh... now you come to me and
you say, "Don Corleone",
give me justice."
But you don't ask with respect.
You don't offer friendship.
You don't even think
to call me Godfather.
Somehow, with the
performances of all the actors,
especially Brando, hit that
neural cord that we all have and
there was a visceral reaction
from almost anyone who saw it.
The cinematographer on The.
Godfather, Gordon Willis... one
of the great cinematographers of
our time... did a very, very
daring thing when he
photographed those pictures.
Gordon decided that he didn't
want people messing about with
his image and he shot it in a
way that you couldn't print it
in any other way than the way
that he shot it.
You can get the color wrong,
you can make skin green
if you want to, but it's
gotta be printed dark.
I'm glad you came, Mike.
I hope we can straighten
everything out.
The original
negatives of Godfather I and.
Godfather II were not in good
condition, were not capable of
making new copies, and they
really needed a restoration.
The negative of that film
was in tatters.
And this is The Godfather, this
is... this is The Godfather.
This is a film, you know, I
think people consider... if not
maybe the greatest film of
all time, one of them.
A lot of prints were made
from that original negative,
more so than probably should
have been made.
The negative sustained some
injury, as any negative that
gets overused will.
The more popular the film,
the worse condition the original
negative is going to be in.
It's been loved to death.
It's not until the past
15, maybe as far as 20 years,
that the studios have realized
what they have stacked away
in their vaults.
They really didn't realize that
these golden treasures that they
had in their vaults and hence,
they weren't looked after
very well.
The beauty of this job is that
once you start working on these
films and you start getting to
explore them scene by scene,
shot by shot, frame by frame,
you get to see little things,
little nuances, little pieces
of the puzzle... and your
appreciation for the film
just explodes.
We're not
creating anything.
What we're doing is to try
and take what people made
and just preserve it and make
it look like what it was
supposed to look like.
The trick is not to change it.
Don Corleone.
The thing about
movies, it's about storytelling.
And the story that it tells
still today stands up
very strong.
At first, you think,
"Oh, God, this is gonna be the"
same 20 movies.
We're gonna have on here
Casablanca, we're gonna
"have the obvious ones, right'?"
You do have them.
But then you have some
that are surprising.
I said...
"Relax and don't say anything,"
I just want to talk about a film
which I'm sure has never been
"brought up at the board."
How do you do-ah?
See you've met my
faithful handyman...
People are gonna say,
"You must be, you must be crazy."
The film's lacking in taste,
"it's this, it's that."
But at the same time, here's a
film that's played at midnight
in theaters across the country
for 30 years.
There's a reason why The Rocky.
Horror Show is a popular film.
Well, if it's that popular,
it must be speaking somehow
to this country.
There must be something woven
into what makes that film work.
One hell of a lover
I'm just a sweet transvestite
from...
And I have to
sympathize with Dr. Billington
because he has to go to the
halls of Congress and tell
everyone one of the 25 films
is The Rocky Horror Show.
"It's this great film!"
It's about transvestites
and men from Mars and
"dancing hunchbacks."
I don't know how he does it.
Well, it, it, it...
Certainly widened my horizon.
With your hands
on your hips.
Bring your knees
in tight...
Honestly,
when you're dealing with
a wide variety, you have to
be open to a wide variety.
Rocky Horror Picture.
Show is the, the most
successful midnight movie ever,
way more than Pink Flamingos
ever was.
Let's do the time warp
again.
I'll tell you a story
about it.
A woman came up to me and she
said, "I saw you sitting here",
and I just had to tell you that.
"Spinal Tap... saved my life."
Coming live, direct from
hell, Spinal Tap!
You're hot,
you take all we've got.
Not a dry seat
in the house...
No, I'm not gonna tell
that story.
No, it was The Princess Bride
that saved her life,
so Spinal Tap didn't save
her life at all.
It was Princess Bride that
saved her life... and I don't
think that's on the registry,
but it should be.
On our way, but tonight
we're gonna rock ya.
Tonight I'm gonna rock ya.
Yeah, tonight we're gonna
rock ya...
When we first showed it in a
preview in Dallas, the people
came up to me and said, "Why"
would you make a movie about a
band that nobody's heard of and
a band that's so bad?
Why don't you make a movie about
"the Rolling Stones?"
So it took a while for people to
catch up to it, but once they
did, it became this kind of
iconic representation of the
world of rock and roll.
What we do is if we need that
extra push over the cliff,
you know what we do?
Put it up to 11.
11, exactly.
I love This Is.
Spinal Tap.
It takes the things that are
naturally humorous about that
lifestyle and exaggerates them.
One louder.
Why don't you just make
10 louder, and make 10 be
the top... number and make that
a little louder?
These go to 11.
Oh, Ma.
Oh...
I never would have heard of
this... a very early sound film
demonstration which is a
quacking duck.
Oh, Ma!
One can look at Gus.
Visser and you can think, "Hmm",
what is the aesthetic value?
"That might be hard to justify."
It's there because it
demonstrates an important
breakthrough in the
technology of the history
of motion pictures.
It was brought to our
attention and we watched it and
said, "We have to have this",
it's a sound film demonstration.
"And it's hysterical."
It's a film you can't really
describe...
How he makes the duck quack.
He's kissing me.
I will say that when I was
looking at the movies that are
on the National Film Registry,
I was pleasantly surprised that.
Blazing Saddles was on there.
Blazing Saddles was basically
nominated by a reporter who has
done a lot of articles on the.
Registry and preservation.
Blazing Saddles has a
special place in my heart.
I love the myth of the
American West.
I like cowboys, I like cowboy
stories, I like cowboy poetry.
I like Roy Rogers, I like dances
with wolves.
Two...
Three!
That myth of
the American West is the
myth of America.
But Blazing Saddles takes that
myth and twists it and turns it
on its head.
It also takes the moviemaking
myth and twists it and turns it
on its head.
Raisinets!
And finally, the Board said,
"Well, he may have a point."
And the rest is history.
To see Blazing Saddles on
there was a little bit of
vindication for me, that I
didn't waste my time in
college watching that movie
so many times.
I wasn't wasting my time.
I was enriching myself with film
history.
Why don't you let him go by?
Well, he wants the
whole road.
Now, look, all I'm trying to say
is there are lots of things that
a man can do and in society's
eyes it's all hunky dory.
A woman does the same thing...
the same, mind you... and she's
an outcast.
Finished?
No.
One of the most important
things that I can do with my
role on the Board is to keep the
contribution of women to film
history in the center of our
discussions.
We had to write reports
on what we wanted to be and
the boy next to me wrote a
composition on how he was gonna
be a movie director.
And I got so angry at him,
because movies seemed too good
for us, like they came from
magical people in Hollywood and
here he was, the guy that
cheated off of me during
the tests and how could he
be a movie director?
And then I thought,
"Well, I must be this angry"
because that's what really,
"what I want to do."
Awesome!
Totally awesome!
Fast Times at Ridgemont.
High is one of my
favorite films.
Not the favorite, you know, but
when Sean Penn ordered the pizza
into the classroom...
Who ordered the double cheese
and sausage?
Right here, dude.
I thought, "This is the"
best moment in American film
"history," actually.
Very few people know
about the extent of the
involvement of women
in early film culture
in the United States.
Half of all films in the silent
era were written by women.
All of the top screenwriters
were women.
The highest paid screenwriters
were all women.
And many of the top directors
were women.
It was a growing industry.
It was the popular mass medium.
People were going to the film
every single day.
So, there were incredible
opportunities for women
in Hollywood.
Lois Weber is an extraordinary
figure in American film history
and she's somebody who very few
people know about.
Everybody's heard of D.W.
Griffith, everybody's heard of
Cecil B. Demille and in the
1910s, Weber was often mentioned
alongside Griffith and Demille
as the three great minds of
filmmaking.
She was Universal's top
director.
And she was a top director who
made socially engaged films
about the key problems
of the day.
The film that's in the film
registry, Where Are My.
Children?, is a film about
birth control and abortion
and it was Universal's
top moneymaker of 1916.
It traveled all around
the world.
Not only did she make these
films about really difficult...
issues that we're still
grappling with as a culture,
she made popular, box office
successes.
When you start looking at the
studio era, the '30s and '40s
and beyond, then you really do
see gender bias.
Then it really becomes nearly
impossible for women to direct.
When I was in
graduate school at U.S.C.
Cinema, a group of us organized
a small screening series called.
Films by Great Women Directors
and somebody wrote across the
sign "There are none."
Often when you're working
with the studios, they'll give
you a list of pre-approved
directors and you'll find that
there are very few, if, in many
cases, no women directors
on the list.
Dorothy Arzner is
the only woman to work as a
director in the studio era
in the '30s and '40s.
That's an extraordinary
accomplishment.
She would also joke that
she was one of the guys.
She used to dress like a man,
she used to hang about with the
guys, she used to behave like
the guys, and she always said,
"that's how I got on in the"
industry, 'cause I was just
one of the guys.
They didn't think about me as
being a woman, I was just a guy
"directing films."
Dance, Girl, Dance is
a film that takes on, in an
allegorical way, Hollywood's
representation of women.
It's about a dancer who aspires
to be a serious ballet dancer.
She's sort of stuck as the comic
act amidst all this sexual
exploitation of women.
And the climax of the film
occurs when she stops in the
middle of her performance...
and looks straight at the
audience, which means she looks
straight at the camera
and she says...
I know you want me to tear my
clothes off so you can look
your 50 cents' worth.
50 cents for the privilege
of staring at a girl the way
your wives won't let you.
I'm sure they see through you
just like we do.
It's an extraordinary moment,
in which we, as the audience,
are confronted and asked to
think about what we routinely
see in movies, which is the
sexual objectification of women.
Weber and Arzner were
very different women who made
very different kinds of films in
very different contexts, but if
I think about it, what maybe
unites them is that they had a
unique and singular vision of
what they could do that just
allowed them to persevere.
It's really important to have
female filmmakers because women
have a different perspective
on the world, on our culture,
on life.
Women filmmakers, we have
an awful lot to bring
to the screen.
There are not a whole lot of us
and we have this nurturing
quality and we have often a
different point of view, a way
of seeing the world, a different
way of placing characters
or placing the camera,
so let's play around with that,
let's experiment and that's...
And I did that with Daughters
of the Dust.
And for a lot of people, it
worked and for a lot of people,
they said, "Whoa, what is this?"
"What are you doing?"
And it was like, "I'm exploring"
and I'm telling a story my way."
I was involved
in getting Back to the Future
put on the Film Registry.
What did I tell you'?!
88 Miles per hour!
I went to the fans.
Back to the future is one of
my favorite movies.
I had used a wonderful website,
BTTF.com, that was hosted by a
man named Stephen Clark and I
wrote to him and said, "Look",
fan response is an incredible
factor in getting something on
the Registry and make your fans
"write in."
And the response was amazing.
Steve Leggett, who works with
the Film Registry, said that he
had so many e-mails every day,
hundreds of e-mails coming in,
and it was the first time
that there had been such an
overwhelming response to getting
one film on from people outside
of the Library of Congress.
It's found its way into the
popular culture so much, and the
fact that you can now buy a flux
capacitor online... and people
will buy them... is saying
something about the impact of
the movie.
My moment of
triumph as far as the National.
Film Registry is concerned...
I had a couple of different ones
that I put on there.
The one film that I actually
got chosen is a little
film called...
Let's all go
to the lobby,
let's all go to the lobby
to get ourselves a treat...
A little film made by the.
Filmack company up in Chicago.
And it's a bumper that goes
in between the movies to get you
to go to the candy counter.
The sparkling drinks
are just dandy.
The chocolate bars
and the candy.
So let's all go to the...
lobby,
duh, duh, duddiluh, duh, duh.
But I looked at it and was like,
"This is such an important
little piece of film."
Everybody knows it,
everybody's seen it.
It's the perfect example of this
kind of cinematic advertising
that they were doing.
And it's fun.
So I put it in and sure enough,
it got chosen that year.
I was totally blown away.
Let's all go to the lobby
to get ourselves a treat...
Thank you, thank you.
When I was younger, I was
interested in films about power.
People with invincible skills.
They could shoot a gun out of
someone's hand, they could snap
a bullwhip around your neck.
This will remind you that
I have been here once
and can return.
And so from around six to 10,
those were the staple of my
imagination and you'd leave the
movie and you'd be acting out
all the parts with your friends.
And as a matter of fact, on the
first Western I ever did, I
ruined my first take on
horseback where I'm shooting
somebody with my pistol because
on the finished film, you can
see me looking at the guy
steely-eyed and pulling the
trigger and going...
Really stupid.
But, you know, it shows you
the grip that these things
have on you.
When I was young,
when I was little, that was all
I used to think about...
the N.B.A.
There's nothing more
powerful than a true story,
because it makes you feel
like you don't have that escape
valve that I have when I
watch fiction.
When it gets too tough or too
close or too emotional, I can
always kind of back out of it
just a little bit by saying,
"Eh, this isn't true."
And when you're seeing a
powerful documentary, and you
believe what you're seeing,
you don't have that and
that's a good thing.
My mother, she's
like mother and father to me.
She don't want me really hanging
around over here that much,
'cause of the gangs.
I always wanted to make
stories.
This was a chance, an
opportunity, to hopefully tell a
great story, but a story that
was true and a story that, in
focusing on these two kids and
their families, what their lives
had to say about the American
dream, about race in America,
about poverty in America.
It's something I think that
needed to be said, and
needs to always be said,
and unfortunately continues
to need to be said.
Arthur agee.
I would say an influence
for me early on was Barbara.
Kopple's work, in particular,
Harlan County.
Come,
all you young fellers,
so brave and so fine...
Seek not your fortune
way down in the mine...
The beauty of
documentaries is that it
only happens once.
It can't happen another time.
I remember when I was with the
widows from the Farmington Mine
disaster in Harlan County.
They had never gotten together
to speak about what it meant
to lose their husbands.
This was the first time and they
sat in a circle and they talked
about the most intimate details
of their husbands, of their
lives, of what it meant to be
a coal miner, what it meant
to work in one of the most
dangerous industries
in this country.
And one or two of them just
burst into tears.
Another one got really angry.
I live right almost on the
seat of the main explosion,
right there, and they said,
"You get out of your house!"
And the police told me
to get out.
Do you know why?
Because they didn't want me
to see what was going on up
that damn, dirty, filthy mines!
It's about
communication.
It's about connection.
It's about stepping in to
somebody's world that you would
never be privy to...
And being able to be there and
understand what's going on with
them and who they are and what
they're about.
I mean, nothing could be finer
than that.
And nothing else will do that.
And if we don't save those films
and preserve those films,
we won't have a history.
Film reconnects us
to the world and to our
experience of our lives in this
space, in this time.
1929's H20.
It is a short film about water,
where the filmmaker starts from
a distance and looks at water.
Little trickles of water,
little waterfalls,
streams with the rocks visible.
And he moves ever closer to the
water and the light playing on
water to the degree that you no
longer recognize it as water.
Then I guarantee, once you see
this film, you never look
at water the same way again.
It's not meant to make sense.
It's not meant to tell a story.
But in many ways, it's meant
to touch us the way poetry does.
It is not always easy to engage
the experimental film.
And one has to simply open one's
self to the language of film.
That's where the beauty lies.
We, through the medium,
we see the world anew.
You know, the great thing
about the Registry is that it's
grown to be pretty diverse.
It's gotten a lot more
inclusive, you know.
There's a lot of experimental,
avant-garde and independent
films.
There's lots of
documentary films.
There's home movies.
There even are a few industrial
and educational films.
There was a turtle
by the name of Bert.
And Bert the turtle
was very alert.
When danger threatened him
he never got hurt.
He knew just what to do.
He'd duck
and cover...
This country has always been
about persuasion.
Really most societies are.
And these films really
illuminate that, kind of the
changing history of what
we were told.
We must be ready
every day, all the time, to do
the right thing if the atomic
bomb explodes.
Duck and cover!
This family knows what to do,
just as your own family should.
The House in the Middle is a
goofy and rather marvelous film
made in about 1953, '54 by...
let me see if I can get it
right... the National Clean Up-
Paint Up-Fix Up Committee, in
association with the Federal.
CML Defense Administration.
And it puts forth a really,
really odd message.
Three identical
miniature frame houses.
The house on the right,
an eyesore.
But you've seen these same
conditions in your own hometown.
This house is the product
of years of neglect.
It has not been painted
regularly.
The house in the middle,
in good condition, with a clean,
unlittered yard.
If your
house is freshly painted and
clean and doesn't have a lot
of crap sitting around in
the front yard, you're a lot
more likely to survive
a nuclear attack.
So it really makes kind of
a moral argument, a behavioral
argument for surviving
nuclear attack.
Two houses are
a total loss, but the well-kept
and the painted house
in the middle still stands.
Of course it's funded by
the paint industry, so they're
trying to sell house paint and
saying, "Hey, it's gonna help"
you survive nuclear attack."
I mean, this is, you know...
This is a little weird.
The dingy house on the left,
the dirty and littered house
on the right, or the clean white
house in the middle.
It is your choice.
The reward may be survival.
Every movie that is popular,
every movie that is popular
captures something of the ideas
that were alive at the time.
And very often, the ideas that
they capture and that make them
so acceptable to the public
are lies.
This is D.W. Griffith's film.
Essentially, Griffith, right
then and there, invented a lot
of the grammar of film.
Its aesthetic and historical
significance from the point of
view of film is beyond debate.
Its value as a portrayal
of American history is not
at all beyond debate.
It is basically a pro Ku Klux.
Klan view of what happened
in the South.
I think The Birth of a Nation
really legitimized the motion
picture industry.
It was the first film to be
shown at legitimate Broadway
theaters.
I think for the first time,
people realized almost not only
the power of the motion picture,
but also almost the danger
of the motion picture.
What it could accomplish.
Unfortunately, all these
innovative ideas were used
to advance the notion of
segregation, Jim Crow, racism,
racial bias.
It was a dangerous film and it
caused a lot of personal harm
to people after it came out
during that time.
Birth of a Nation was
propaganda, you know, and it
was slander, but it's important
to recognize.
I think by ignoring it or by
denying, you know, the existence
of Birth of a Nation, you're
almost losing a piece
of cinema history.
So we'll find them
in the end, I promise you,
we'll find them.
Just as sure as the turning
of the earth.
I know the generation of
people that saw The Searchers
when they were young will never
forget it.
It was essentially about a man,
played by John Wayne, who comes
to save a little girl
who has been kidnapped
by an Indian tribe.
It's always the menacing
music, the menacing war paint
that was assigned
to these characters.
[Shouting in
Growing up, if you look back
at all the cowboy and Indian
stuff I watched as a kid,
why were we the heroes?
I didn't quite get that.
Took me a long time to realize
that, even when you played
cowboys and Indians
with your friends.
Today, I'd want to be
the Indian, they're the rebels.
And I would be for the Indians
against the cowboys.
I saw The Searchers with
an American Indian and I was
unaware of the racism in the
film until I was sitting next
to her and she just stormed out
at a certain scene in the movie.
And I went out to follow her,
I said, "What's going on'?"
She said, "Did you see"
the movie'?"
I said, "Yeah, I saw it."
"Well, did you see
what happened?"
These are my people...
Go!
Go, Martin, please!
Stand aside, Martin.
So he was searching for her
so he could kill her, so she
wouldn't have to live with them.
Because she was living a fate
worse than death.
It was very disturbing.
Ethan, no, you don't!
Stand aside.
I thought that was really
something that I really wouldn't
want my daughter to look at.
It really helped create
a persona about Indian people
that continues to this day.
The exiles was made about.
Native Americans living in
Los Angeles in the 1950s,
in other words, Native Americans
not out in the desert or
in the mountains, in the kind
of environment that most people
in cliched terms think of,
but trying to survive in
a brutal urban environment.
The Exiles really put kind
of a face on Indian people
at the time.
During that time period, it was
either relocation or maybe
serving in the armed services.
A lot of Indian people left the
reservations and came to cities
and met other Indian people.
It showed kind of the truth
of living in an urban area
as far as the isolation,
depicted in the young woman.
She's always seen to be alone
and longing for a better life.
Film very much is important
in depiction of a people.
Yo, what's your problem, man?
Y'all are brothers, you ain't
supposed to be fighting
each other.
Little punk.
Get off my porch, mama's boy.
When Boyz in the Hood as
a document of its time, it's
a document of what was going on
in that time period.
You have to think, young
brother, about your future.
It gave a voice
to the voiceless.
Listen, I want to do
something with my life,
all right?
I want to be somebody.
The film, for me,
it's like my diary.
Ricky!
It was a cathartic thing for
me to show where I was from and
what I'd gone through.
Film is a reflection of the
times of which we live in,
good or bad.
I was responsible for pushing
forward Birth of a Nation into
the Film Preservation Board.
That movie led to the deaths of
many, many black people through
lynching, through enacting laws,
segregation, through Jim Crow
and everything.
But it really shows the power
of film for evil as well
as good.
When you watch a movie
from the past, you're involved
in a dialogue.
A dialogue between past
and present.
There's what's up on the screen
and then there's the person
looking at it and every person
who looks at it brings their own
history and finds their own
value in it.
You look at every war that
we've been through and whether
it's a war that we won, like the
good war, World War II, or a war
we lost, like Vietnam, a war
like what's going on now in Iraq
and Afghanistan where we don't
know what the result is going
to be, the result is the same
on the people who fought it.
And I think that's important
for people to understand.
The best years of our
lives is about three G.L.S
returning from service to their
hometown.
I enlisted in the Army Air.
Corps, I was a bombardier
in a B-17.
I was no hero, but I was there,
I did the job.
Naturally, it hit me
particularly hard when Dana
Andrews playing the bombardier
goes out to a field where
they're cocooning old b-17
bombers, and he approaches one
and climbs back up into it.
And the sound comes up and
the filmmaking makes him
experience a bombing raid.
And the sound is extraordinary.
That had a particular meaning
for anybody who was in a bomber.
Hey, you!
What're you doing
in that airplane?
It had a great effect on me.
The movies create order out of
the chaos of our lives and
that's what this was.
I was the last person that
I ever would have thought would
have gone to war.
War scared me when I was young.
After I came back from Vietnam,
I gave away my uniforms,
I really put the whole thing
behind me.
I just thought I could shut the
door and move on with my life.
I don't guess I spoke with
another veteran or about
my experience for eight
or nine years.
By chance I was put in touch
with a guy who worked with
veterans and he invited me to
a screening of The Deer Hunter.
[Chopin nocturne playing
Really discovered that the
issues that they were dealing
with in that film, how
frightened those guys were once
they got over there.
They went over there with such
enthusiasm and such honest,
just sincere patriotism and
discovered themselves just
in this chaotic world.
[Explosions, machine gun fire,
It really, to me, emotionally
hit home.
How that stays with you.
Once you've been through that.
Mike?
It's... it's like something
that, um...
A human shouldn't
have to experience.
That... that loss of control.
That having, really having to
give up on life, because you
don't know that you're gonna be
alive in an hour... in a day...
And that's, it's just something
that doesn't...
That doesn't go away.
It's a good thing that films
like Deer Hunter were made,
because it's an honest
representation of the emotion
of war, and I think people need
to know that.
We should not go to war easily
because the impact on people's
lives is permanent.
Film captured me,
as it does so many people,
when I was a kid.
As a child, there were no good
movies or bad movies.
There were just movies.
I grew up in a very poor
family and I think going to the
movie theater, the old walk-in
theater that cost maybe
20 cents...
It was the window to the world.
It largely took me, I think,
took me out of my own life.
So for a dime, I could
go and stay there all day and
watch three pictures and Pathé.
News and Mickey Mouse.
So my outlook was to watch film,
any film, and I did.
I loved them all
and I still do today.
I just loved the glamour of
life in film from the '30s and
'40s, like I wanted to have all
those glittering costumes and
I wanted Cary Grant to take me
out to dinner, but the closest
thing I have is film.
This is an art.
It's not just how to make money,
it's not just what we can sell
it as, but it's something
valuable that we should save.
This is part of who we are
as a culture and we need
to preserve it.
It's not a matter of, like,
"Should we?"
It's "How are we going to?"
We've got a job to preserve
the aspirations and the images
and the ideals and dreams of
millions and millions of people.
I think one thing we can say
is that 500 or a thousand years
from now, when people want to
know what life was like,
they will go to movies.
They will go to the moving image
materials that we created first,
because those are the time
capsules of our era.
They are now being preserved
and restored so that when we're
all long gone, as long as
there's something to watch films
with, they'll be able to see
these things.
The beauty of film is that
it's everybody's.
It's not just the socially
elite, it's everybody's.
Somebody says, "Why would you"
save movies?"
Well, I'd ask those people back,
"Why do you save
your family pictures?"
As a society, we want to do
the same thing.
We want to say who were we,
where are we now and what do we
want people in the future
to think about us?
It's our family album.
It is absolutely
imperative that we save the art
form of the 20th century.
I mean, how can we not?
Here's looking at you, kid.
Elaine!
Let's all go
to the lobby,
let's all go to the lobby.
Let's all go to the lobby
to get ourselves a treat.
Delicious things
to eat.
The popcorn can't
be beat.
The sparkling
drinks are just dandy.
The chocolate bars
and the candy.
So, let's all go to the lobby
to get ourselves a treat.
Let's all go to the lobby
to get ourselves a treat...