#american movie classics

[rabid-dog-steve-horn]

[the-bomb-sammi-morse]

The Avengers is apparently old enough to be featured on tonight's' Spotlight movie slot on AMC.

[fredalan]

The Movie Masters! for American Movie Classics 1989

Albie Hecht (executive producer & co-creator): “My favorite!”

Christine Ecklund (producer/writer): “Wow. Bet I can still answer every question. (“Ucipital Mapilary”)“

Before Mad Men, before Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead, AMC was actually “American Movie Classics,” the Turner Classic Movies of its time, a cable channel exclusively focused on, duh, movies from the heyday of Hollywood. (In fact, the former head of AMC programming created TMC.)

Towards the end of the 80s, channels that relied on acquired, cost efficient stuff like AMC (or Nick-at-Night or USA or even MTV) were realizing that advertisers and cable operators were on the hunt for programming that could excite viewers.

The Movie Masters was one of AMC’s first jump into the pool, and obviously, it wasn’t the approach that worked like crazy for them. Fred/Alan’s primary Showtime client, Josh Sapan, had become AMC’s leader and thought that our Chauncey Street Productions had an idea for a network series.

Original television production, even when it’s done efficiently, is pretty expensive. And the explosion of cable TV had exploded in terms of dozens of channels, but it was still trying to figure out how to make enough money to thrive. The financial picture wouldn’t really come into it’s own until the end of the 1990′s. All the networks we worked with over the years approached originals very gingerly, and American Movie Classics was one of the most, um, fiscally careful.

Well, Chauncey Street was a perfect fit for a deliberate situation. We were still feeling our way in series production and we were well aware we weren’t yet booking the big gigs.

Chauncey Street majordomo Albie Hecht loved game shows (CSP went on to produce Turn It Up! for MTV, Kid’s Court and GUTS for Nickelodeon, and Albie oversaw many more as president of Nickelodeon production). He and Alan created the idea for The Movie Masters, with the notion that it would recreate the salad days of broadcast network quiz shows.

To that end we ran dozens of casting calls at our office, talking to everyone from Betty Comden and Margaret Whiting, before coming to the conclusion that we’d replicate a classic quiz show line up (American Movie Classics, right!). The production landed on The Match Game’s Gene Rayburn as host, and actress and veteran quiz panelist Peggy Cass, New York Times’ theater critic Clive Barnes, and actress and To Tell the Truth stalwart Kitty Carlisle as contestants.

The production came off with only a few hitches and delivered on time and on budget. It was a hoot working with such revered acting, writing and television royalty. AMC would eventually find their way to “prestige” TV, but as far as we were concerned, we did a wonderful job in the name of the greatest movies of all time.

.....

Chauncey Street Productions, New York Created by Albie Hecht & Alan Goodman Producer/writer: Christine Ecklund Executive Producers: Alan Goodman, Albie Hecht, Fred Seibert

Three of the original episodes of "The Movie Masters"

[countesspetofi]

The Internet Archive has the entire run of Remember WENN! I'm not sure how many years it's been since I've seen an episode, but I almost think I haven't seen the complete series since it aired in first run.

It takes me back to when my friends and I would read old radio plays for fun. I tried to get a group together to do it during lockdown, but not enough people were interested.

[skinkmi]

[lovezhype]

lolita (1997) film stills ୨୧

[k-i-l-l-e-r-b-e-e-6-9]

Saw (2004) directed by James Wan

[bigboppa01]

[horygory]

An American Werewolf in London (1981)

[velvet4510]

Note: this list references the 1961 version of West Side Story and the 1954 version of A Star Is Born.

[rabid-dog-steve-horn]

[krumpkin]

As a kid I always wanted a DeLorean 😎😁

[theafroamericaine]

Spike Lee as Shorty & Denzel Washington as Malcolm X in Malcolm X (1992).

Classic Black Cinema 📽️

Source

[exhaustedeyess]

[darkuniverseofmonsterandmen]

How do YOU take your werewolves?

[fibula-rasa]

At Land (1944) 

[letterboxd | imdb | kanopy]

Director: Maya Deren

Cinematographers: Alexander Hammid, Hella Heyman

“In my case I have found it necessary, each time, to ignore any of my previous statements. After the first film was completed, when someone asked me to define the principle which it embodied, I answered that the function of film, like that of other art forms, was to create experience—in this case a semi-psychological reality. But the actual creation of the second film caused me to subsequently answer a similar question with an entirely different emphasis. This time, that reality must exploit the capacity of film to manipulate Time and Space. By the end of the third film, I had again shifted the emphasis—insisting this time on a filmically visual integrity, which would create a dramatic necessity of itself, rather than be dependent upon or derive from an underlying dramatic development. Now, on the basis of the fourth, I feel that all the other elements must be retained, but that special attention must be given to the creative possibilities of Time, and that the form as a whole should be ritualistic…”

— An Anagram of Ideas on Art, Form and Film by Maya Deren, The Alicat Book Shop Press, chapbook, 1946