F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre’s Alleged
Freak-wently Asked Questions(This page is a WORK IN PROGRESS. Its content is subject to change. Some FAQ which you might expect to find here may be posted on other pages of this site. Thanks!)
• I’m a fan of yours! Will you join me on Facebook/MySpace/Twitter?
I’ve moved this question to the top of my FAQ because I’ve received so many requests to link to people on various sites. I’m very flattered to receive so many requests from so many people.
I’m listed on LinkedIn as Fergus G. MacIntyre, and if you contact me there I’ll happily consider linking with you. LinkedIn is primarily a business-oriented site. As for Facebook, MySpace and all the other way-cool social and party sites: I’ve got nothing against these sites and the people who use them, but I choose not to join them. I’ve encountered too many real-world cases where somebody lost a job or a client or a scholarship because some busybody did a background check on him, and the first thing that popped up on the search engine was his Facebook or MySpace page . . . linking him to a whole bunch of people he actually knows, but linking them to a whole bunch of people he never actually met, and somewhere in there is a webpage or a photo that the busybody didn’t like, and it causes problems.
If I join a big Internet party like Facebook or MySpace, then everything going on at the party can be linked to me, even if I wasn’t there and I didn’t know anything about it. If someone wants to do a legitimate background check on me, based on actual research, I’m not worried about what might turn up. But if some nosy bastard wants to take short-cuts by plugging my name into search engines, I don’t want to make his job easier by joining a party network.
• Why is this website so crappy?
Because I’m doing all the work myself (when I’ve got writer’s block on the projects I get paid for), instead of hiring the services of some techno-geek cyber-wonk from a website such as MyKidCanDesignBetterWebPagesInHisSleep.com. Every single aspect of this website (such as the colour of the backgrounds, and whether to make a block of text ragged right or ragged centre) was my own decision. Also, this site is FREE . . . so what do you want, egg in your beer? Elsewhere on the Internet, I’ve another website that looks all twinkle-dinkle hotsy-totsy tickety-boo (not to mention hunky-dory), because I paid a professional web designer to set it up and maintain it for me. That site is for the work I do for a corporate entity, through a glutcorp (I invented that word!) where my name isn’t listed, and which has nothing to do with my by-lined writing.
• In your ‘Frequently Asked Questions’, why do you misspell it ‘Freak-wently’?
Because I’d already used the letter Q in the word ‘Questions’. I need to ration my small supply of Q’s because of the Great Q Famine. We’ve got to reduce our Q usage, or Qsage. Do you want your children to live in a world without Q’s?
• Is ‘F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre’ your real name?
Is it my legal name? Yes, it is. I have legally changed my name to F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre, filing a document known in Britain as a deed poll (this is not required under British law, but serves as an additional precaution). If this is your roundabout way of asking if that’s the name I was born with: no, it wasn’t, but why should any of us be forced to use a name we didn’t choose? After abandoning my birth name, I went through an interim period of writing and working under several other names before settling on ‘F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre’.
• Why did you change your name?
Two reasons. In Britain, all birth certificates are public documents: anyone can use the General Register Office’s database to search for any native Briton (by birth name) in order to learn that person’s date of birth . . . and can then lawfully obtain a copy of that person’s birth certificate (without even claiming to be that person). In the United States and in most other high-tech nations, birth data are supposedly ‘protected’ information, but not in Britain. By jettisoning my birth name, I protect myself against identity theft. And I’m estranged from my Scottish family; I no longer use the name they gave me, because I don’t want them to find out that the lad whom they mistreated and abandoned is now a successful author. The last thing I need is that lot of skiving bastards trying to cadge any money off me.
During the 1960s and early ’70s I tried out several different names for myself, not just as pseudonyms for my writing but as ‘real’ names for my day-to-day life. I briefly went through a phase in which I was very aggressively Christian (this is no longer the case). To honour my Scottish ancestry and in reference to Christ’s earthly profession, I called myself Feargus Mhic an-t’Saoír, which is Scots Gaelic for ‘He who chose to be a man, Son of the Carpenter’. After a while, sanity prevailed and I anglicised this to Fergus MacIntyre. Please don’t send me any e-mails about religion; I have no interest in discussing that topic with people I don’t know personally.
I am delighted by the successful career of the very talented Scottish actress Saoirse Ronan. She and I are not (to my knowledge) related, but our names definitely are: the Scots Gaelic name Saoír is cognate to the English name Sawyer or ‘carpenter’. Saoirse (with or without that accent mark) is literally ‘sawyeress’ or ‘she-carpenter’. Due to the weird rules in Gaelic, the addition of the definite article to a noun that begins with ‘s’ followed by a broad vowel renders the ‘s’ silent . . . which is why you don’t hear the ess in my name MacIntyre. Whenever an Italian tells me to ‘Shut uppa you ess’, I’m way ahead of him.
• When and where were you born?
For the reason I’ve just stated (see previous question), it’s a bad idea for any native Briton to divulge his or her birthdate. I was born in the late 1940s, and that’s as specific as I care to get. If anyone actually cares: my birthplace was a small community in Perthshire where they still remember me very well after all these decades. It’s not vanity which prevents me from disclosing my age; I freely admit that, by the standards of most publishers and script editors, I’m already ‘too old’ to write anything they’d want to buy.
• What’s up with the ‘Gwynplaine’?
‘Gwynplaine’ is pronounced just the way you’ve likely guessed: ‘Gwyn’ as in Gwyneth Paltrow (no relation), and then just plain old ‘plaine’ as in Heathrow Airport. The stress for ‘Gwynplaine’ is on the first syllable of the word. The stress for me is on the first day of the month, when the bailiffs show up.
To save time, I sometimes tell people that ‘Gwynplaine’ is a Welsh name. It’s not, you know. The truth: at an impressionable age, I happened to read Victor Hugo’s novel The Man Who Laughs. This novel’s protagonist (not precisely the hero) is a swashbuckler named Gwynplaine. (Victor Hugo, writing in French, tried to make up a name that sounded British; he failed.) I very strongly identified with the main character in this novel, so I named myself Gwynplaine in honour of him.
I’ve been a professional author (anonymously or under pseudonyms) since the 1960s. I’ve used ‘F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre’ (or slight variations) as my professional by-line since the late 1970s.
Some people who spend more time watching movies than reading books have mistakenly assumed that I took this name from a 1928 movie, also titled The Man Who Laughs, based on the novel. They’re wrong. That film (which I first saw in 1987, at a screening for the Theodore Huff Memorial Film Society) is excellent, but I’d already read (and I was inspired by) Victor Hugo’s novel — and I’d already been using the name Gwynplaine — long before I was aware of a film adaptation, and certainly long before I’d seen the movie.
A few other people have also used the name Gwynplaine, possibly getting it from the same place where I found it. This sometimes causes trouble for me. Somebody posts a comment in a blog or on a discussion board and signs it ‘Gwynplaine’, and then somebody else blames me for whatever was written there. When I insist that this wasn’t me, I get comments such as: ‘Oh, sure. Like there’s somebody else named Gwynplaine’.
When I first went on-line and registered with an Internet Service Provider, I expected to be able to take ‘Gwynplaine’ as my screen name, because it surely wouldn’t have been taken already. Surprise! It was. My current e-mail screen name ‘Borroloola’ refers to a town in the Australian outback where I briefly misspent part of my formative years. Borroloola isn’t particularly significant to me . . . but it was the first screen name I’d tried that nobody else had already taken.
There’s at least one Gwynplaine who’s a fictional female: a dominatrix named Andrea Gwynplaine, one of the characters in Jerzy Kosinski’s novel Pinball, published in 1996 (long after I started publishing professionally as ‘F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre’). It’s now widely documented that several of Kosinski’s novels were ghost-written for him. CONFESSION TIME: I actually wrote a large portion of Pinball; I was one of at least two uncredited collaborators who ‘helped’ Kosinski write this novel. (I never met the other ghost-writer; Kosinski made sure we worked separately.) I put the name Gwynplaine into Kosinski’s text as a clue to my participation: later, some fans of my published writing noticed textual similarities between Pinball and some of my own fiction, and they figured out that I’d worked on Kosinski’s novel.
• What kind of writer are you?
Any kind of writer I want to be, including a former best-selling author (under two of my pseudonyms). A good writer, I hope. I’m an active dues-paying member of the Authors Guild, the Dramatists Guild, the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America, Britain’s National Union of Journalists and several other trade guilds for professional authors; I participate in those organisations to protect my own copyrights, to help other authors (and aspiring authors), and to network with other writers.
Some of my writing is uncredited, written for-hire or under a pseudonym: I get paid, but somebody else takes the bows. (I get paid enough not to mind this.)
Under my own name, I’ve been paid to write science fiction, fantasy fiction, horror fiction, mysteries, erotica, children’s and Young Adult fiction, plus a large amount of journalism, reportage and other non-fiction. I’ve written articles about the writing process, which have been published in Writer’s Digest and elsewhere. I’ve even created word puzzles and numbers puzzles which have been published in Games magazine and World of Puzzles. I occasionally publish romance fiction under a female pseudonym, since all romance readers expect all romance authors to be female. I don’t confine myself to any particular corner of literature. On the other hand, I know a certain novelist who makes loadsadosh by writing the same rubbishy novel over and over and over, and she gets rich because her fans keep buying the stuff. I could tell you her name, but that would be (Clever Hint coming) a drag on her reputation.• I’m a writer too! Will you read my stuff/help me get published/help me get an agent?
Maybe. I sometimes teach at writing seminars, giving authors and wanna-be authors some solid advice on how and where to sell their work, how to get writing ideas and publishing assignments, how to get an agent and what to expect (and what not to expect) an agent to do for you. Check the What’s New? section of my website (under ongoing construction) for a list of my forthcoming seminars. I SOMETIMES offer free writing advice (and market news) to starting-out authors who contact me via e-mail, but I’m less likely to do so. Send me an e-mail inquiry that does NOT include any of your literary samples, and I’ll definitely respond, but my response will depend on a holbuncha factors. I sometimes introduce new authors to established agents, but only in very specific situations.
•Why would one writer help another writer? Isn’t that like helping your competitors?
Not at all. One of the most persistent misconceptions is that there’s only a finite amount of success to go round for everyone, so your project must fail in order for mine to succeed, or vice versa. That’s rubbish, that is. If I help you get your novel published and it becomes a best-seller, the publisher will use some of those profits to increase their budget for acquisitions, buying more novels and paying bigger advances for them . . . and maybe one of those books which rides the tails of your success will be mine. If your book is a flop and the publisher loses money, the publishing house will tighten its budget: acquiring fewer titles and paying less money for them, thus diminishing the market value of my next book. A rising tide lifts all boats, and one author’s failed project makes every author’s next project less marketable.
Every author who’s remotely worth a damn loves to read. The pleasure I get from reading my own writing is always compromised by the fact that I know how the story ends. (Because I wrote it.) In order for me to get the full pleasure of reading good writing, other people (besides me) must write. It’s very much in my own interest to help other writers develop their craft, and to get published. As a member of several professional authors’ organisations, I know plenty of other writers — many of them quite successful — who feel precisely the same way that I do on this subject, and who also help aspiring writers as much as I do, or far more than I do. In the movies, authors are often depicted as snobbish egomaniacs who resent each other’s success. But here’s a news flash: real life ain’t like the movies.
• Where can I read some of your writing, Mister Big-Deal Author?
Free samples of some of my published fiction and non-fiction are posted on this website as I continue to build it, as well as links to some of my work that’s posted on other people’s websites. Check the Fiction and Non-Fiction pages of this site for what’s there . . . and please visit them again later, because the site will be updated at intervals. I don’t sell any of my own books or stories on this site (I don’t want to get involved with PayPal and so forth), but the site will eventually include links (if it hasn’t got them already) to Amazon and other sites where you can purchase my books. Some of my work-for-hire writings (such as text for prospectuses and I.P.O.s, which I write for corporate clients; and press releases for private clients) are not available for public distribution. The puzzles I’ve created for Games magazine and World of Puzzles are not here; I no longer own the rights to those. Also, some of my earliest writing (such as articles I wrote for the Fleet Street newspapers in the early 1970s, under a previous name) is so crap-awful that I don’t want anyone to know I wrote it.
• How do you get your writing ideas?
When I started writing professionally, I often got stuck for ideas. Now I have so many ideas for stories, novels and non-fiction articles, I’ll never have time to write them all! I’ve developed a method which can be learnt and used by any disciplined person who wants to be a writer (discipline is more important than talent): a method which enables anyone to get a steady supply of ideas for stories and non-fiction articles. I share this method, free of charge, with anyone who promises to make a serious commitment to trying it. In order for this system to work for you — and it most definitely does work — you must make a permanent change in your thought processes. You still keep all of your existing beliefs (or disbeliefs) on politics, religion, and so forth — I’m not seeking any converts — but you must make an underlying change in the thought processes beneath those beliefs. However, my method is not a magic word or a catchphrase which I can reveal to you in an e-mail: it’s a technique which must be practised and developed over time (like any other skill). I teach this method to groups of people by working one-on-one with them in a (one-hour minimum) seminar which I sometimes conduct, usually as part of a larger event such as the EasterCon in Britain or the World Science Fiction Convention. I never charge a tuition for this seminar, although sometimes entry to the class requires the purchase of admission to a larger event which I don’t control, such as a science-fiction convention. Check the What’s New? section of my website (under ongoing construction) to see when and where my next seminar is scheduled.
• I once heard you speak at a (science-fiction convention/book-signing/public appearance), and that’s a really weird accent you’ve got. What is it?
If you think I sound weird now, you should have heard me back in the Sixties. I originally had a working-class Scottish accent. I was one of the so-called ‘child migrants’ of post-war Britain who were shipped to Australia and used as slave labour. (Yes, slave labour: The child-migrant scandal is a human-rights disgrace which the British government don’t want the rest of the world to know about.) In Australia, I got sent to a work farm along with older working-class boys from England (mostly Birmingham, Manchester and the Midlands) who disliked my Scots accent; they put a lot of pressure on me to speak like they did with a ‘proper’ Brum accent. (No comment.) Later, when I lived in Sydney, I was intrigued by the American actors’ accents in Hollywood movies: when I tried to imitate them, I discovered that I could pick up more girls if I talked like a Yank. (Because Sydneysider girls think all American males have got lots of money.) I’ve intentionally developed a mongrelised Mockney accent which sounds equally weird on both sides of the Atlantic. This is now the way I ‘really’ talk; if you wake me up suddenly (after a Hillary Clinton speech, for instance), I sound the same as I do when I’m at a book-signing.
• I saw you at a (science-fiction convention/book-signing/public appearance), and you look really weird. What’s that about?
Some of this weirdness is not by choice; either I got stuck with it at birth or it showed up later. During my early family life in Scotland, I developed rickets which were never treated properly; I became severely bow-legged, and the condition got worse because of the malnutrition and abuse I experienced in Australia. Later, a surgeon carefully broke my leg bones and reset them in an attempt to straighten them. For many years, I wore boots with steel struts in them to support my legs and keep the bones straight. I still wear these sometimes, usually when riding (I’m an equestrian, a show jumper and a dressage competitor) or when I expect to spend long periods standing. I also have some medical conditions affecting my hands and feet.
• Hey, MacIntyre! I’ve read your Wikipedia entry, and I’ve got some questions about it.
Join the club; I’ve got some questions about it too. I didn’t nominate myself for inclusion in Wikipedia. I no longer monitor my Wikipedia entry, and I take no responsibility for its contents. On the subject of Wikipedia, let me step aside in deference to the sage counsel of author, engineer and rocket scientist Jerry Pournelle, PhD:
“My own [Wikipedia] entry is often wildly incorrect. I used to correct that, but I no longer bother; in fact I don’t even look at it.”— Jerry Pournelle, SFWA Bulletin
Those are Dr Pournelle’s words, but they precisely reflect my own stance towards ‘my’ Wikipedia entry, by which I mean the entry that somebody else wrote about me and posted without my approval.
At science-fiction conventions and other public events, I sometimes teach a free course in how to become a published writer; one young fan (whom I shall code-name “Eager Beaver”) took my course at 2Kon (Glasgow, 2000) and he was very impressed by everything I taught him (if he wasn’t impressed, he gave a very convincing imitation). He asked me for a bibliography of all my writing credits; I gave him a partial list. He also asked me some questions which I thought were rather more personal than necessary, but I reluctantly answered them because I wanted to encourage his skills as an interviewer. I met him again a few years later at Archon (Collinsville, IL); he was very keen to take my course again. He claimed that the lessons I’d taught him about writing and journalism had helped him make his first professional sale. (You’re welcome.) He also told me he’d posted my bio to the Wikipedia site. During Archon, I went on-line to vet the item, and then I asked him to delete most of it — information about me which I considered too trivial or too personal — and to change some other bits that I felt were irrelevant, misleading or just bang flat wrong. On the last day of Archon, I verified that the changes had been made. A week later, the previous inaccuracies had come back . . . and they’d brought some friends.
One item particularly deeved me. I’d told Eager Beaver about a letter I’d written to The New York Times, and I’d told him the date when the Times published it. The New York Times refuse to publish letters that can’t be verified: each letter must include its author’s name, street address and phone number. If the Times editors decide to publish a letter, they will often have an editorial assistant contact the letter-writer to request more information. I mentioned to Eager Beaver that someone at the Times had seen fit to ring me up and ask me questions for 27 minutes, augmenting what I’d written in the letter. Without telling me his intentions, Eager Beaver then stated in my Wikipedia entry — rather, in his Wikipedia entry purportedly about me — that I’d been interviewed by the New York Times on that date. In fact, the date I’d cited was the date when they published my letter . . . roughly two weeks after the phone interview.
Now, I put it to you, M’Lud, that I was indeed ‘interviewed’ by The New York Times in the sense that someone from the Times’s editorial department rang me up and asked me questions for 27 minutes to clarify some details of a letter I’d written. The Times then published a slightly altered version of my original letter. They did not publish the interview which the letter provoked, and I had told this to Eager Beaver, my self-appointed Boswell. Eager Beaver’s article about me in Wikipedia was crudely worded; accidentally or intentionally, it implied that the Times have published an interview they conducted with me. No; I wrote them a letter, they interviewed me (on the record) about the letter, and then they published the letter.
No, I did not write the Wikipedia article. Yes, I was interviewed by someone at the New York Times (I saved the phone logs, and I verified that the phone call came from the Times editorial department), strictly in reference to a letter I’d written. The Times have interviewed people who are even less important than I am. (A few such people really do exist.) No, the interview was never published. If someone has claimed otherwise, that claim is either mistaken or intentionally false. But I never made such a claim, and I never instigated such a claim by anyone else on my behalf.
As I’ve no control over the Wikipedia site, I choose not to contribute to it. If people with too much free time on their hands see fit to write about me on that site (or any site other than my own website), I have no control over the content nor accuracy of such comments. I make no claims for any Internet statements made about me by other people. However, I DO take responsibility for Internet statements made by ME (such as my IMDb.com movie reviews) on websites that I do not control. IMDb (and other websites) have occasionally edited my postings without my consent, usually in very slight ways. I shall cease posting to any website that edits my writing so drastically that it no longer reflects my original intent.
• You’ve reviewed a lot of movies for IMDb.com. Have you really seen all those movies?
Almost all, but not all of them. In a very few instances, I’ve reviewed a movie which I haven’t seen, such as Convention City or George M. Cohan’s movie Gambling. (Both of these movies were deliberately destroyed, and they likely no longer exist.) Whenever I’ve reviewed a movie without seeing it, I SAY SO in the review, and I explain what sources my review is based upon. If there’s no disclaimer in the review, then I’ve seen at least one version of the movie, or at least a partial version. The dates on my reviews ONLY indicate when I posted the review, not when I saw the film. In some cases, even if I’ve posted a review recently, I may have seen the movie as much as 40 years ago . . . and it might no longer be available in the condition it was when I viewed it.
Even though I’ve watched thousands of movies, I actually spend more time reading books than viewing films. For one thing, I can speed-read a book without losing comprehension or pleasure: it’s difficult to enjoy a movie while Fast-Forwarding it, especially if the movie has a soundtrack. But if I watch a silent movie through a Steenbeck viewer and I crank it faster than projection speed, I can still read all the intertitles and enjoy the full story in only half the running time!
• I’ve seen (or read about) a movie you’ve reviewed for IMDb.com, but your review doesn’t match what I saw. How’d that happen?
Sometimes there are radically different versions of the same movie, released in different international markets. This is especially the case for silent movies (I’ve reviewed a lot of silents) released in two or more languages. During the silent-film era, Hollywood studios often shot a movie with two separate cameras, side by side: one for domestic prints, one for foreign prints. The print I saw (in Britain, Europe or Australia) may contain different footage (filmed at a slightly different angle) from the version you saw in a Stateside print. Also, when silent films were exhibited outside their nation of origin, they were often given entirely new intertitles . . . which often differed radically from the originals, sometimes even changing the names of the characters, or changing details of the plot to be more acceptable to the local culture. To choose only two such movies out of thousands: in the original French release prints of René Clair’s film The Phantom of the Moulin Rouge, the hero is a prominent politician, and the character named Jacqueline is romantically interested in him. But in the British Film Institute’s English-language print of this movie, the hero is a businessman and Jacqueline is his cousin. And the Danish Film Institute possess a Danish circus film, Klovnen, with title cards printed in Danish and English . . . but the English translations are radically different from the Danish text throughout the film: for instance, a medical clinic in this movie has one name and address in the Danish titles and a different name and address in the English titles. These examples are absolutely typical.
Even in sound movies, there are often multiple versions of the same movie. British prints of the Marx Brothers movie Horse Feathers contain a scene between Harpo Marx and Thelma Todd that isn’t in any of the American prints. Some British movies featuring busty heroines were filmed in two different versions so they could be released in America, because Yank audiences didn’t want to see as much cleavage! (Times have changed, aye?) Some big-budget musicals, such as Carousel and The Music Man, were filmed twice (in two different screen ratios), and there are slight changes in dialogue and other details between the different versions.
One movie review which has caused me a lot of aggro is my review for the 1925 comedy Her Sister from Paris. In this movie (remade in 1941 with Greta Garbo as Two-Faced Woman), Constance Talmadge plays a bored housewife who pretends to be her own twin sister in order to test her husband’s fidelity. Although this silent film was made in Hollywood, the print which I viewed was released in France and had French intertitles. In the French print, the housewife has no sister, and her ‘twin’ is the same woman in disguise. However, a lot of Americans have seen a print of this film distributed by Raymond Rohauer, in which it turns out that the twins really are two separate women (the same actress in a dual role and double exposure). Since this version varies so drastically from the version which I saw and reviewed, there is some understandable confusion. (Why would any studio release two different edits of the same movie? Well, in this case the remake — the Garbo version — flopped on its original release, so the studio recalled all the prints and then re-released them with an additional sequence to imply that the husband was aware of the masquerade. Something similar may well have happened with the silent version Her Sister from Paris.) In silent days, movie-making was much less expensive, so variant prints of the same story were much more commonplace.
If I’m reviewing an extremely obscure movie, I often (not always) state in my review where I saw it — at what film festival, or in which archive — so that anyone who saw a different print of the same film will know the reason for any discrepancies. If some people want to claim that I never actually saw a film which I state that indeed I have seen . . . well, they’re entitled to their mistaken opinions.
For those who claim that nobody can possibly have time to see all the movies I’ve reviewed: from 2002 to the present, I’ve posted roughly 250 movies per year to the IMDb site. That’s far short of one movie every day . . . and in many cases, I’m reviewing a movie that I saw before 2002, basing the review on my memory and on notes I took when I saw the film.• How do you get to see so many obscure movies?
Unlike those idiots who see Star Wars or Rocky Horror Picture Show 28,000 times and then think this is something to brag about, I almost never watch a movie twice. This gives me more time to see movies I’ve never seen before.
I make a point of seeking out (and tracking down) movies which hardly anyone has seen, or at least which hardly anyone has seen lately. The world doesn’t need one more poncy critique of It’s a Wonderful Life or Citizen Kane. (Yank readers: for ‘poncy’, please substitute ‘fancy-shmancy’.)
I’m fortunate to possess the time and resources to be able to travel. I’m willing and able to travel thousands of miles to view a scratchy print at a local film festival or in a private collector’s archive (in a time and place of the collector’s convenience, not my own convenience) if that’s what it takes to see the movie. Because I’m a journalist, I can offset some of my travel expenses by writing an article about something I encountered on the same journey, then selling the article to a publisher and defraying my travel costs as a business expense. (Thank you, Inland Revenue.)
Because the rare and obscure movies that I want to see seldom show up at my neighbourhood Rank Odious megaplex, I have to travel to where the movies are. In this photo (that’s me on the left, seen through a wide-angle lens), I look like I’m dressed for the Henley Regatta (among other things), but I’m actually attending Le Giornate de Cinema Muto, the annual October silent-film festival in northern Italy (recently returned to the beautiful town of Pordenone after several years in nearby Sacile). The gent in the necktie is one of my idols: film-maker, author and historian Kevin Brownlow, who has done more than any other living person to renew public interest in the early days of film in general and silent-film comedy in particular. There are usually two or three other local film festivals running near Pordenone the week before Le Giornate, so I can see dozens of rare films in a single trip . . . and the annual Times/BFI Festival is in London the following week! Because I’m willing to go where the films are, I’m able to see movies that aren’t on DVD at your local Crockbuster Video.
The photo above was taken by Hugh Munro Neely, who is a brilliant documentary film-maker despite the fact that he’s also a friend of mine. Hugh shot this photo with my rubbishy camera, but most people bring their own equipment when attempting to shoot me.
• You reviewed a movie or a t.v. programme that I want to see. Can you give/sell/trade me a copy?
Send me an e-mail, and I’ll definitely respond. My response depends on what you’re looking for. I DO NOT sell or trade movies (except just occasionally as a for-hire intermediary on behalf of a few private collectors and estates), because I don’t want to get involved in the copyright aggro, but I’ll gladly tell you whatever information I can offer that will help you see the same film or television programme. I never charge any fee for this.
I keep track of the requests I’ve received, and I compile a ‘wants to see’ list which grows steadily larger. If I know where that movie is available for you to view/buy/rent/swap, I’ll happily tell you. If you contacted me five years ago about a film that was unavailable at the time, but I now learn that it has become available . . . yes, I will spot your old inquiry on my list, and I will contact you (at the most recent e-mail address I’ve got for you) to give you the good news. Nice bloke, me.
Nowadays, most movie fans seem to expect every movie to be shipped to them on-line, in DVD with perfect visuals and plenty of ‘extras’. I’m willing to view a film in any condition available. Sometimes I’ve watched a movie by cranking it through a hand-held Steenbeck viewer in some private collector’s basement because that’s the only way I’ll get access to a print of this particular film. If you insist on perfect clarity of image and audio, with digitally remastered photography, then some movies I’ve enjoyed might not be available in a format that meets with your approval.
Very often, after I’ve reviewed an obscure film, I get an e-mail (or a lot of e-mails!) from somebody asking me: ‘Where can I get my hands on that movie you saw?’. It well and truly depresses me that, over and over, this same phrase shows up in these people’s e-mails: they want to ‘get their hands on’ some movie . . . meaning they’re probably more interested in acquiring it than actually viewing it. Sometimes, after I review an obscure television programme which I’ve viewed in the BBC Creative Archive (in London) or at the Paley Centre for Media (in New York City and Los Angeles), I’ll get e-mails from people who want to obtain a copy of the same t.v. show. When I tell them that the video recordings at the Paley Centre are available to anyone, but for on-site viewing only, these people often get genuinely abusive with me: Can’t I understand that they want to get their hands on this show? That they want to own it? Frankly, the single biggest reason why I’ve been able to see so many obscure movies and television recordings is because I’m willing and able to go to where they are . . . and to view them at the archivist’s convenience or the collector’s convenience, rather than on my own terms. People who expect every movie to be available at their personal convenience and in top-quality format will never be able to see many of the movies I’ve seen; it’s that simple.
I’ve cultivated the friendships of several private collectors who have kindly given me some degree of access to their collections of rare films. They know I’m only interested in viewing these movies, not ‘getting my hands on’ them to make copies for myself. Also, these collectors know that I can be trusted to respect their privacy . . . and they know that their continued trust and friendship is more important to me than satisfying the curiosity of random film-fans I’ve never met. I never enjoy telling a film-fan that a movie they want to see is out there someplace BUT I’m not at liberty to tell them who has it, nor where. Sometimes, though, that’s the cold truth of the situation.
• Some of the old movies you claim you’ve seen are lost. What’s going on?
I would well and truly love to meet this
bloody wankerso-called ‘expert’ who gets to decide which movies are ‘lost’. On his day off, he probably visits the parents of missing children to tell them their kids are dead and never coming back.For one thing, a gratifyingly large number of so-called ‘lost’ movies have been found again, often in a nation other than where they originated. Unfortunately, this can’t carry on indefinitely: almost all movie prints before the mid-1950s were developed on nitrate stock, which is inherently unstable. Sometimes, even a reel of film which has been gently put into an airtight canister and carefully stored on a shelf might still spontaneously deteriorate into nitrate vinegar soup.
Very often, a so-called ‘lost’ film turns out merely to have been mislaid. For decades, archivists at the Library of Congress hoped to discover a print of the 1926 film You Never Know Women. They finally discovered one . . . in a storage room at the Library of Congress. For many years, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences (the people who give out those lovely statuettes) have tried to get film-lovers involved in tracking down lost films. I wonder if ‘Oscar’ remembered to thank the Academy when somebody found a pristine print (with the last reel missing) of the 1927 movie Sorrell and Son . . . in a filing cabinet at the Academy, where it had apparently been sitting since 1927! A print of the earliest known Lon Chaney film (Poor Jake’s Demise) turned up in England in 2006: it was ‘lost’ for so long because somebody had misidentified it as a movie starring Charley Bowers, an actor who didn’t look like Chaney and wasn’t even in the film!
I’m aware of a trove of old German and Hungarian films which were stolen by the Red Army during World War Two and brought to the Soviet Union, where they were simply left to rot in the cellar of a church near Uzkoe until fairly recently: films which were certainly mislaid, but which still exist because they were (mostly) found before they deteriorated altogether. Those films are now in safe hands, and are undergoing restoration.
One reason I’m able to see so-called ‘lost’ films is because film archivists don’t always share their information with each other. I had the privilege of befriending the late William K. Everson, a major film scholar and owner of an extensive private collection of rare films. In 1988, I attended a screening for the Theodore Huff Memorial Film Society at which Mr Everson screened his personal print of the 1928 film The First Born; he told everyone present that this was the last existing print of the film. During the screening, one reel of his nitrate print caught fire and two other reels were damaged by the projector’s sprockets. In 1999, after Bill Everson’s death, I learnt that the British Film Institute possess an excellent intact print of The First Born: apparently they were unaware of William K. Everson’s print and he was unaware of BFI’s. Now, if major film scholars and archivists aren’t aware of each other’s respective holdings, how can anyone state with certainty that a particular movie no longer exists?
At several public screenings which I attended (along with hundreds of other people), Mr Everson screened movies that were so rare and obscure that they aren’t even listed on IMDb’s website. I can name these films and describe them, but anyone who uses IMDb as their authority will claim that these movies are so ‘lost’ they never existed in the first place!
For several decades, when a release print of a movie reached the end of its original exhibition circuit, and its producers no longer expected to make more money from it, they often (not always, but often) no longer cared what happened to the release print. When this happened, sometimes those reels of film were acquired by private individuals who eventually sold them to collectors.
At least two major film studios (M.G.M. and Paramount) have usually been quite vigilant in tracking the movements of all legitimate prints of their films, and retrieving these at the end of their exhibition circuits. If MGM or Paramount no longer possess a vault copy of one of their own films, the chances are that nobody else has a copy either. But there are exceptions.
Occasionally a release print was ‘bicycled’. During the movie’s original release, after a cinema finished its last late-night screening one night during its exhibition run, an unscrupulous exhibitor arranged to courier the reels of film to a nearby processing lab, where an unauthorised duplicate print was made without the consent of the movie’s copyright holders. The authorised release print was then rushed back to the cinema in time for the next day’s matinee screening. In recent years, I’ve had occasional dealings with a private individual whose grandfather — during the 1930s and earlier — obtained illegal duplicate prints of a significant number of movies, during their original release dates, by precisely this method. Because those ‘bicycled’ prints were (imperfectly) stored and preserved, they have survived even if the release prints from which they were duplicated are no longer preserved by the film companies that originally released them. Experience has taught me that an intelligent search for a specific ‘lost’ film will often either locate the film itself, or will locate clear evidence of its eventual fate.
• How can I get to see some ‘lost’ films?
Send a tax-deductible donation to Eastman House in Rochester, New York. Their film archive contains literally thousands of reels of old movies which nobody has been able to identify, simply because Eastman House (a non-profit organisation) lack the budget and the staff to give every reel the attention it deserves, and they lack the time to copy every reel of unstable nitrate-stock film onto stable acetate film. (Eastman House also need volunteer staffers; click here to volunteer.) Nobody can say for certain what long-lost treasures might be at Eastman House, or in other archives: right there on the shelf but deteriorating because time ran out . . . and this is one more reason why nobody should state with utter certainty that any movie (with a few exceptions) is absolutely gone forever. Please help Eastman House rescue a film, and with your help maybe one ‘lost’ movie will find its way home. (Please note: Neither I nor my website is in any way affiliated with Eastman House.)
• Why do all the pages on your website have the word ‘Alleged’ in them?
They only do that allegedly.
