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This podcast uses government documents to illuminate the workings of the American government, and offer context around the effects of government agencies in your everyday life.
Welcome to Civil Discourse. This podcast will use government documents to illuminate the workings of the American Government and offer contexts around the effects of government agencies in your everyday life. Now your hosts, Nia Rodgers, Public Affairs Librarian and Dr. John Aughenbaugh, Political Science Professor.
N. Rodgers: Hey, Aughie.
J. Aughenbaugh: Good morning, Nia. How are you?
N. Rodgers: I'm excellent. How are you?
J. Aughenbaugh: I'm good, because, and Nia knows this, our listeners don't yet. You and I get to talk about one of my favorite subjects in the whole wide world.
N. Rodgers: I film, you love film, you love all film. You like bad films. You like good films. You like films in various languages. You like films with no sound. You like all the films. I on the other hand, I want to mention that the entire reason that this episode exists or rather not this episode but what we're talking about exists is because I like the rest of the world recoiled when Ted Turner decided to colorize films.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Because some films were not meant to be in color, they're not. He just did that because audiences don't like black and white films. But I wasn't the only one, there were other people and then this came about. Isn't that basically why we have?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. What Nia is referring to listeners is during the 1980s, some very prominent filmmakers in Hollywood, if you will, personalities in the United States recoiled. I think is a really good verb. I think you just used it, recoiled at what the then owner of Turner Broadcasting, who owned Turner Classic Movies.
N. Rodgers: I'm not sure if he was married to Jane Fonda at the time.
J. Aughenbaugh: I think he married her later.
N. Rodgers: Gazillionaire.
J. Aughenbaugh: He owned Turner Broadcasting, which was TBS. He was the founder of CNN. At one point when CNN and Warner brothers were linked together he was the CEO of that.
N. Rodgers: When you look up mogul in the dictionary, there's a small picture of Ted Turner next to it.
J. Aughenbaugh: He had a mustache.
N. Rodgers: Very handsome, very charming, but he went around colorizing films. That he was wrong.
J. Aughenbaugh: Because on Turner Classic Movies, they crunched the numbers and they figured out that many Americans did not like to watch black and white movies. Well, black and white movies were basically the only movie you had well into the late 1940s or early 1950s. Ted Turner was this like, we're just going to go ahead and colorize classic movies.
N. Rodgers: Don't forget those early movies would have been cheaper for him to show on his network than more recent movies would have been. Because part of what he was after was Turner classics, but also part of what he was after was less expensive films to show. You could get the rights to share those films a lot cheaper than you could get the rights to show other films. But yes, he went around colorizing black and white films.
J. Aughenbaugh: Some really well-known filmmakers like Frank Capra, Martin Scorsese, and they went to Congress.
N. Rodgers: Then said, there ought to be a law.
J. Aughenbaugh: There ought to be a law in the infamous. I'm just a bill schoolhouse rock, there ought to be a law. What they asked Congress to do was to pass a film preservation bill to avoid commercial modifications of classic films. It wasn't just the colorizing of classic films. It was the use of pan and scan in changing the editing. Because many movies were designed or were made to fit the big screen in a movie house, in a movie theater.
N. Rodgers: This is where you get that thing that says this has been cut to fit your television screen. You get that black box on the top and the bottom.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: As they changed the perspective on it. Stood of that as well. You know what? I can see Capra, Scorsese and other people like that saying no. If I wanted the film to be filmed that way, I would have filmed it that way. I filmed it the way I filmed it intentionally as an artistic choice. We regularly don't cut the legs off of statutes.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
N. Rodgers: We don't just say, that David, he doesn't need that leg, chop, because he can just look like a flamingo standing there. You only do that because an artist made a choice.
J. Aughenbaugh: An art museum doesn't go and say, we only have two feet by three feet.
N. Rodgers: Let's cut down this colic, so it fits in this spot.
J. Aughenbaugh: Let's go ahead.
N. Rodgers: Nobody will notice.
J. Aughenbaugh: Let's crop that van Gogh. No, they don't do that.
N. Rodgers: I can see where they would be peeved by that. I think that people don't really think about it in terms of the director is an artist. They are making artist's choices about angles, about long shots, wide shot, they're making all of those choices all the time. Because they have a vision of what this is supposed to look like and what they want the audience to feel whenever they see what this is. I'm telling you what one of the most powerful moments in film for me is in Star Wars when that ship comes over your head, and it feels like you are in 3D. It's a new hope episode which is Number 4 turns out but was Number 1 when it came out when I was a kid, that was like, that was [inaudible] of choice.
J. Aughenbaugh: You think about it Nia, the first time you watch Jaws and you heard the music.
N. Rodgers: Oh, John Williams. We should do an episode on John Williams at some point.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, because you want to think about, chances are if it's a classic movie, it was scored by John Williams.
N. Rodgers: Right. Within a certain set of years. Absolutely. [inaudible].
J. Aughenbaugh: But the Dunk Dunk. It was pulling you there. But that was a choice made by John Williams, but also the director Steven Spielberg. Or for instance, if you're talking about Spielberg, the fact that he directed the choices that he made, the Holocaust movies.
N. Rodgers: Schindler's list.
J. Aughenbaugh: Schindler's List.
N. Rodgers: Where the only person in color is the little girl in red.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right. He was making a conscious choice. He wanted you to react to it a certain way.
N. Rodgers: Or Saving Private Ryan. When you see that first battle scene, if your heart is not racing, there's something wrong with you.
J. Aughenbaugh: He wanted to bring you into what those service men felt as they were coming onto the beaches of Omaha Beach. But again, these are conscious choices. Yes, I understand if some of you guys are just like, hey, when I watch a movie I don't get into it.
N. Rodgers: Oh my gosh. We had a film librarian who has retired, Nelshnot. One night I said to her, why are these films on the top 100 list? She went through everyone and told me why it was on the top 100 list. Citizen Kane, because it introduced ceilings and blah, blah, blah, because of the perspective and
blah, blah, blah because that's the first time you see this or that's the first time. I really appreciate that level of knowledge, but I don't watch films that way. I watch films and walk out saying I really liked that or I really didn't like that or that left me mad. But I don't have any of that film background. I'm grateful that there is this group that does have that background, that does think about those things and how we preserve them.
J. Aughenbaugh: Two members of the House, Robert Mrazek and Sidney Yates introduced in 1988 the Film Preservation Act. It established the National Film Registry, which is the focus of today's podcast episode. This is a law that's been reauthorized five times since. Its mission, the Act created the National Film Preservation Board, the NFPB. Again, sorry listeners, but Nia and I like a good acronym. The NFPB, its purpose is to ensure the survival, conservation, and increased public availability of America's film heritage. I think this is one of the reasons why you and I like this Nia, is that we're all about preserving the country's heritage.
N. Rodgers: And access.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, and access.
N. Rodgers: This idea that there should be perpetual access to certain things. It must be noted millions of films have been made in the history of film, which is what? The 1880, '70s or so.
J. Aughenbaugh: 1880s.
N. Rodgers: Where you start to get film. Millions of films have been made. How do we decide what to preserve and how to preserve it? Because we've seen disasters at studios where entire rooms of films have burned up or have been destroyed by mold.
J. Aughenbaugh: They've been housed terribly.
N. Rodgers: They're not in what we think of as preservation.
J. Aughenbaugh: Quality.
N. Rodgers: Exactly.
J. Aughenbaugh: When the law was reauthorized in 1996, it created a non-profit, the National Film Preservation Foundation. The foundation raises money from the private sector so next to no taxpayer dollars goes to this effort.
N. Rodgers: Does it mostly come from the film industry or does it come from the film industry and from people who support the arts kind of? If you've listen to NPR in any of those people who give foundation, a foundation and then this foundation indefinite, all of those kinds, is stuff like that?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. Are you ready to talk about the selection criteria?
N. Rodgers: 200 films a year?
J. Aughenbaugh: No. It's limited to 25,'' culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant films each year, ''25.
N. Rodgers: That's not very many.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's not very many.
N. Rodgers: Man. You think about how many films come out each year?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. Again, because of the pandemic. More movies are now being produced and released on streaming services.
N. Rodgers: I was about to ask you, can a Netflix film be considered for this?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, it can be.
N. Rodgers: There you've draw the line at formal what we think of as Hollywood, but it has to be an American film.
J. Aughenbaugh: It has to be American films.
N. Rodgers: So even though Remains of the Day, which is one of my favorite films ever.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: It's a British film and therefore would not qualify for this. It has to be an American made film.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. Remains of the day made by the Infamous Production team Ivory Merchant, two different people. But nevertheless, now that's a British film. Many of my beloved, no war movies were made in France by French directors and there's no qualifying. By the way, here's an important selection criteria that 10 years has to pass after the original release. For instance, if a movie got released last December, it will not be considered by the NFPB until 2032 if the movie is released in December of 2022.
N. Rodgers: Hockey says December because there's a cycle to movies being released. December is a big month for movies being released. The summer is a big month. Then there are months where hardly any movies come out or those movies are coming out because they want to be in Oscar contention or they want to be something else, but they're not expected to draw a large audience.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: Some movies are deliberately not made to make money. They are made to showcase a story or acting talent so there's not a high pressure we're going to make a zillion dollars making this movie.
J. Aughenbaugh: If you think about the calendar here, the first part of the year, you get a lot of movies that get released that are under the radar. Then late spring and summer is when you get the blockbusters. Because that is when many Americans, again, pre-pandemic, would rush to the movie theaters to escape the heat in one summer escapist entertainment.
N. Rodgers: Like kids around the school.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, it's like a beach read in the books. But then when you move into the fall, particularly late fall, you will see movies get limited release, so they qualify for consideration for Oscars. But then thanksgiving to Christmas is when you get the next, if you will, set a blockbuster movies. Because that's again when a lot of Americans used to go to the movie theaters pre-pandemic because they would be home visiting family and after spending all afternoon with your family eating, you might want to get out of the house and at least have two, two and a half hours of imposed silence.[LAUGHTER].
N. Rodgers: Turn your brain off. That's when you get some bubblegum entertainment, you get [inaudible] movies. The first year that this started, 1989.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
N. Rodgers: You said the public nominates films.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's a three-step process for a film to get on the registry. The first step in the process is the public can actually submit to the NFPB recommendations for movie to be on the registry.
N. Rodgers: So putting that on the research guide in case people want to go in and put in?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. Second step in the process, members of the NFPB votes on those recommended films from the public for inclusion. That's step 2. Once the members of the NFPB vote, then the ballots are tabulated and modified, third step by the Librarian of Congress and the staff at the library for final selection. Now, since 1997, members of the public had been able to nominate up to 50 films a year for the NFPB and the Librarian of Congress to consider.
N. Rodgers: Being cynical, there is a part of when you publicize the film, somebody's job is to go put this on that list.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: That's like that's part of their job?
J. Aughenbaugh: Now, it's funny, the first time it happened was in '89. The public nominated almost 1,000 films that the NFPB had to wade through.
N. Rodgers: That is a big ballot. That is a multi-page ballot.
J. Aughenbaugh: But since 97. The public has been able to nominate up to 50 films.
N. Rodgers: Wait.
J. Aughenbaugh: When you go to the site you can nominate as many films as you want, but the NFPB,
N. Rodgers: Only takes the top 50.
J. Aughenbaugh: Fifty, yes.
N. Rodgers: I see.
J. Aughenbaugh: Because after that first experience where they have to wade through 1,000 [inaudible]
N. Rodgers: They were like, we're not doing this again. Basically what they do is they take the top 50. Everybody gets their input in the first level, and in the second level, they take the top 50, and the board votes on the top 50.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Then those that come to the Librarian of Congress, and they take into account those ballots, but also other things in choosing 25 from those 50.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
N. Rodgers: Side note, by the way, the Librarian of Congress is not always a librarian. In fact, most of the time it's not trained as a librarian, they're almost always trained as a historian or an archivist.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: For this reason. Because as I was saying to Aughie earlier, librarians are avaricious. We acquire as much as we possibly can. We would say, let's have the best 5,000 films of the year. Because we are that group of people we'll just index all of them. It'll be great. This person is trying to figure out films that are as you quoted, culturally significant right there. They say something about the time, or they say something about the country, or they say something about the psychology of Americans. About something, it's not just because, I'm going to tell you what, there are some films that I love that probably will never make this list. But I love that because I just love them and they would be on here because if it was up to me to pick, I would just put them on there.
J. Aughenbaugh: Or as you mentioned, your former colleague, a movie might be on the film registry because it was filmed a different way.
N. Rodgers: Right, or some technique was used in it.
J. Aughenbaugh: One of the reasons why Orson Welles's movie, Citizen Kane is considered, if not the most influential American movie ever made, one of the top five is because, as your colleague pointed out, all of a sudden, we had a movie that actually showed ceilings. Because prior to Citizen Kane, they frequently had cameras and mics hanging down into a room from the ceiling.
N. Rodgers: Right.
J. Aughenbaugh: We couldn't show that.
N. Rodgers: Citizen Kane also does a lot of stuff with perspective.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Which is unknown in the film until [inaudible] I wish there was a way we can do this.
J. Aughenbaugh: He would zoom in and then zoom back out and then zoom back in because Orson Welles wanted the camera to reflect how a human being will frequently,
N. Rodgers: Will pay attention to something.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's right. Look for a field but then come back into focus on something nearby.
N. Rodgers: He was fascinated by whether he could make the camera act like the human eye.
J. Aughenbaugh: The human eye.
N. Rodgers: But there are lots of films I'm sure that do that thing. What stuff is in the registry? Is it always film-film? What I think of is a story.
J. Aughenbaugh: No.
N. Rodgers: Maybe just a side note, I am aware that I have the linguistic habit of repeating a word to make it stronger, and that's because I'm not cursing. When I would have used a word unexpletive to make a film stand out more, I'm using film-film as a way to do that without cursing.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Are there another stuff?
J. Aughenbaugh: No.
N. Rodgers: Feature length, that's the word I'm looking for.
J. Aughenbaugh: There are feature-length films, and these can be Hollywood classics or in the language of the industry, even Orphan films. An Orphan film is a film that was abandoned by the filmmaker or by the copyright owner.
N. Rodgers: Really?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Meaning that there were films like that?
J. Aughenbaugh: You see this with some movies made in the late 1800s or early 1900s. Because you didn't have these big studios that thought that they could continuously make money by recording films.
N. Rodgers: Okay.
J. Aughenbaugh: You just see like, hey, this is a new technology. I'm going to go ahead and try it out and they would do something cool. But then they would just abandon the film. Or a company would go out of business and not be bought by another company so their entire film library could just be hanging out in a college library or some collector's garage or storage units.
N. Rodgers: But it's not copyrighted because nobody owns it anymore.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right, and that could be considered Orphan films. Now, they don't have to be virtualized. It doesn't have to be released in a theater in the traditional sense, which is why many movies that you've now seen are released on streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, etc HBO Max, within 10 years, it can be considered. Because the registry does have newsreels, cyber films, student films. Nia we have a whole bunch of undergraduate and graduate programs in motion picture-making in the United States. Some of them are some of our better-known universities like UCLA, for instance. Experimental films, short films, and music videos. For instance, Michael Jackson's Thriller is on the National Film Registry.
N. Rodgers: It should be.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: Whenever you think about Michael Jackson, then that's an entirely different subject. That video changed. Choreography videos, it changed. It's amazing, the makeup, the orchestra done with it, that those people danced weren't all that crap.
J. Aughenbaugh: Films out of copyright protection or the public domain, film cereals. You see this a lot with documentaries.
N. Rodgers: Okay.
J. Aughenbaugh: Where you do,
N. Rodgers: The blue planet except that it's finished.
J. Aughenbaugh: For instance, 28 Up which was made by Michael Apted. He took a look at a series of breadths and he chronicle them at various points in their life.
N. Rodgers: Not to be ugly, but to correct, Seven Up.
J. Aughenbaugh: Seven Up, yes.
N. Rodgers: Seven Up, and he sees them every seven years. He goes back and finds those people.
J. Aughenbaugh: I remember when he did it when they were in 28 Up.
N. Rodgers: Right.
J. Aughenbaugh: Home movies. Documentaries, animation, which by the way was a huge debate point with the NFPB for a number of years, because historically animation would receive no recognition by Oscar for the Oscars or the BAFTAs which is the British.
N. Rodgers: The equivalent of the Oscars. Because for years and years, Disney won for best soundtrack.
J. Aughenbaugh: Editing, stuff like that. But they were never.
N. Rodgers: For there to be an animation category.
J. Aughenbaugh: Worry and then have animated movies be considered for best picture.
N. Rodgers: Then for a long time, they were Best Animated Feature.
J. Aughenbaugh: They were relegated to that section, but they couldn't be considered for the overall big prize. Again, for our younger listeners, some of you are just like, but animated movies are so cool and so great. But understand that it's taking years to go ahead and get that acceptance. But then also independent films. Films made by smaller, in some cases, non-Hollywood companies, or are also on the National Film Registry.
N. Rodgers: Indies, they're called.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, they are Indies. Again, listeners, I apologize. But I remember watching in the 1880s blaxploitation movies, which were made only by independent filmmakers, and they were written, directed, and starring African-Americans, because they couldn't get financing and support from the Hollywood companies, right?
N. Rodgers: In many of those films, the lead is an action hero.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Up until then, in most Hollywood Oscar films, black actors were serious.
J. Aughenbaugh: They were not the leading men or women.
N. Rodgers: They were not actioning.
J. Aughenbaugh: They would not save the day, they would not save the country, they would not save the civilization. They were in supporting roles.
N. Rodgers: Very serious. We get one early on, we get Gone With the Wind. We get [inaudible] in Gone With the Wind where she gets as a supporting actress.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: Much to the Shame of Hollywood, she had to come in through a different entrance into the auditorium to get her Oscar. It just says so much about her.
J. Aughenbaugh: The Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.
N. Rodgers: But those films, when you talk about a lead action hero, they had to be made independently because they weren't going to get Hollywood support until Hollywood realize they were making money, and now you do get African-Americans in Leads like that. Denzel Washington's almost entire career is a leading director of action, not necessarily thriller, but action film.
J. Aughenbaugh: Nia, you want to guess how many films there are on the registry as of December of last year, which was one we are recording. It's the last time the registry added movies. You want to guess how many?
N. Rodgers: Ten thousand.
J. Aughenbaugh: No. That's a little too many.
N. Rodgers: It's only it should be there.
J. Aughenbaugh: You're a library. At least 10,000. Remember they've only been doing this since the late '80s. Again, it's 25 movies per year.
N. Rodgers: Hang on. It's got to be somewhere around seven or eight hundred.
J. Aughenbaugh: Eight hundred and fifty. The oldest film currently in the registry was a movie called the Newark Athlete, which was released in 1891. It was a short film it was a documentary about the then new phenomenon of athletes in Newark, New Jersey.
N. Rodgers: We had junior athletes before that?
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, there was, but in regards to professional and amateur teams this was relatively new. The most recently released movie was the movie Pariah, which was released in 2011.
N. Rodgers: That's okay. But you said there's a 10-year waiting period?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Is that to make sure that the film actually has impact?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, you don't go out just off on box office receipts. You give it 10 years to go ahead and allow for a little time to go ahead and consider. Even if this was a movie that nobody saw, did it portray a particular phenomenon in a different way? Did they use different camera angles? Was their new sound editing, was there a new film that was used to actually record the motion? Because remember, we are talking about motion pictures. The longest span between when a movie was released and when it was actually selected for the Film Registry, was a movie released in 1898 it was not selected until last December, December 2022. The Mardi Gras Carnival, that's a span of 124 years. Again, this was documentary that filmed what goes on at Mardi Gras in Louisiana.
N. Rodgers: That's fabulous.
J. Aughenbaugh: That is fabulous.
N. Rodgers: Mardi Gras is a very American cultural.
J. Aughenbaugh: Oh, my goodness, yes.
N. Rodgers: Even though there's Carnival in Rio.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: But Mardi Gras in New Orleans is an entirely different kettle of fish, as they say, what's the shortest?
J. Aughenbaugh: The shortest was slightly under 10 years and it's one of my favorite movies of all time.
N. Rodgers: They break that rule sometimes.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, they did break it. Because this was the second class of movies that made the Film Registry and with somewhat controversial. The movie is raging bull. It was directed by Martin Scorsese, and Scorsese was one of the leading proponents of creating the Film Registry. Some critics were just like, hey, wait a minute here.
N. Rodgers: You gave him a guinea form.
J. Aughenbaugh: Is this how the Film Registry is going to work? Though, insiders are going to go ahead and have the rule broken.
N. Rodgers: That's one of the controversies of this idea that you can insider your film.
J. Aughenbaugh: There have been only six films inducted at the 10-year mark.
N. Rodgers: What the registry said was, no that's not how this.
J. Aughenbaugh: This is not going to be the norm.
N. Rodgers: Because out of 856 is not even.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's a minuscule percentage. But these are movies that I think many film lovers would go ahead and say, 10 years that was long enough. Because they are, Do the Right Thing, Spike Lee's epic movie. I showed, Do the Right Thing pretty regularly in my politics in film class. Goodfellas, which is another Martin Scorsese movie about the mob.
N. Rodgers: Am I funny to you? I'm I funny to you Scorsese?
J. Aughenbaugh: That the infamous Joe Pesci line. Am I ha-ha funny?
N. Rodgers: Oh, my goodness.
J. Aughenbaugh: Before he just beat the living crap out of this guy at the bar. Toy Story, the classic Pixar animated movie.
N. Rodgers: That's light-year.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right. Fargo from the Coen brothers.
N. Rodgers: Who is your friend in a wood chipper? Frances McDormand.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, Frances McDormand. 13 Lakes and Freedom Riders. I've not seen 13 Lakes, I have seen Freedom Riders and that was a powerful movie
N. Rodgers: I haven't seen 13 Lakes either, but all of those films are culturally significant.
J. Aughenbaugh: Oh, my goodness, yes.
N. Rodgers: They talk either about a time or a part of the culture that's important to you I think that's part of the culture. Goodfellas is another part of the culture. It's important for us as Americans defining who we are.
J. Aughenbaugh: When you think about Toy Story. There's an entire generation of children in the United States who's exposure to animated movie.
N. Rodgers: It's Pixar.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: It's Toy Story and of course, Fargo, the Coen brothers. That's probably, I think most people would argue that's either their best film or that O Brother, Where Art Thou. Anyway, but I'm fascinated by what's on the list and what's not on the list. This year, you have the list. I want to bring up a couple of things because I know you probably don't want to read out 25 that are on the list. Unless you want to in which case, I'm going to stop you. But I did want to bring out Carrie on this.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Carrie the original Carrie 1976 Sissy Spacek.
J. Aughenbaugh: Directed by Brian De Palma.
N. Rodgers: It's a Stephen King, and it's one of the few Stephen King books where the movie is actually very good because usually, Stephen King is pretty hard to translate to film.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, it is.
N. Rodgers: It doesn't seem to be a thing that does well.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: That film scared the ever-living snot out of me when I was a kid. I'm just saying. It totally belongs on this list.
J. Aughenbaugh: I saw it in a movie theater and I was just like, I don't want it to go to high school.
N. Rodgers: So natural.
J. Aughenbaugh: But some of the other movies that recently got in, in December of 2022, Attica, which is a movie about an infamous prison revolt in Attica, New York. I've not seeing all of these movies. Some of them I have.
N. Rodgers: Hairspray.
J. Aughenbaugh: Hairspray?
N. Rodgers: Where you get Divine.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: That's a John Waters film where you get Divine playing the mother. This whole gender-bending, but that film opened the door for Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. It opened the door for other films. Divine opened a lot of doors for folks making films.
J. Aughenbaugh: Super Fly, which is one of those blaxploitation movies that I mentioned earlier. Nia and I were just shocked by this Charade which was made in 1963, which is Cary Grant, Audrey Hepburn movie. We were shocked that it took so long to actually make this list. But for years it was viewed as a lightweight movie. I was fascinated that the Cab Calloway home movies from 1948-1951.
N. Rodgers: Yeah, how cool is that?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, because again, it's somebody who likes jazz music and pop music from that era. I was just like they got home movies of this dude, Cool.
N. Rodgers: Then a couple of fan favorites on my part. Little Mermaid is the start of the modern era of Disney.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: It's the break after Disney had a difficulty with the company and then came back to start making films that were wildly popular and said Little Mermaid. When Harry met Sally, which has a cameo by Rob Reiner's mother, Rob Reiner is the director. When they are in the restaurant, there's a restaurant scene where one of the characters acts out an orgasm at the table. Think so.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. Played by Meg Ryan.
N. Rodgers: This is how you would fake it. She does this in front of Billy Crystal, because he doesn't believe her.
J. Aughenbaugh: Because Billy Crystal says, as a guy, I wouldn't know if a woman is faking it. Sally, played by Meg Ryan goes really. Then without telling him, she proceeds to go ahead and fake an orgasm right there in a Deli in New York City and sitting right beside them.
N. Rodgers: Is this older woman goes to her because it's Rob Reiner's mother and she says, I'll have what she's. Show me one of the best moments on film, but that film is hilarious.
J. Aughenbaugh: The movie is hilarious. Again, it captured urban professionals trying to make a relationship work. They start off as friends.
N. Rodgers: It's a Rom com, but it's not a Rom com from the old style. It's a Rom com from the '80s style of Rom com.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. We really does statue that.
N. Rodgers: I disagree with one of the choices which is on here.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. You have the potential Nia when you expressed your disagreement of perhaps offending [inaudible] some of our younger listeners.
N. Rodgers: Yes. I'm sorry for that, but I'm going to be honest, I don't know that Iron Man belongs on this list.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, the first Iron Man made in 2008 was chosen for the Film Registry. I got to admit I enjoyed Iron Man. I don't know if it's a culturally significant movie, but nevertheless.
N. Rodgers: One could argue that it's the first in the series. That may be why it's considered culturally significant, because the first in the Adventure Series. I'm willing to give that a little bit. But man, there's a part of me that's like, seriously, if you're going to talk about super blockbuster films like that, I'm not sure that's the one I would choose. However, that's the joy of these lists. There's going to be stuff on there, you're going to go, yeah. Like you have on here. The Grapes of Wrath is on?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: The old John Ford film?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: That film is fabulous. There's a reason that it's on there. Then there's other things where I might go, really that's on there?
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, and what's fascinating me is one of the criticisms so far of the Film Registry is that some film makers.
N. Rodgers: Appear more than others?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: I was going to ask you who's most on here?
J. Aughenbaugh: Those who are on the list or who have the most films on the list are all white men. This is one of the criticisms of the Film Registry. I think the Film Registry over the last 4-5 years is doing a better job at including films made by women, people of color, non, if you will, Hollywood sources. Yeah.
N. Rodgers: Aughie and I will be honest with you listeners at this point, and say one of the reasons that white men dominate this list is because for the longest time, they were the people who got money to make films in Hollywood.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: They were the people who got to experiment. Other people they either didn't get the money or if they did get money, we're told not to experiment.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's why.
N. Rodgers: They needed to do something that was a known thing that they knew would make money. Those guys got to do things a little more experimental or a little more interesting or a little darker or whatever, because they.
J. Aughenbaugh: They were put into boxes.
N. Rodgers: Supported in [inaudible].
J. Aughenbaugh: They were put into boxes because once they were successful, they were frequently given latitude and millions of dollars to make movies.
N. Rodgers: Exactly go make a movie. We don't even care what it is, because it's your movie.
J. Aughenbaugh: But the filmmakers with the most entries, John Ford has the most. He has 11.
N. Rodgers: Surprising. He did make a lot of films.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, he made a lot of films.
N. Rodgers: Did really a lot of good films.
J. Aughenbaugh: In many of these, if you will, defined the Western genre, which is probably one of the dominant American contributions to motion pictures around the world is the Western.
N. Rodgers: The structures.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. He's got Stage Coach, How Green Was My Valley, My Darling Clementine, The Quiet man. A lot of these by the way, starred John Wayne. The Searchers, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Howard Hawks. Again, very prominent filmmaker in the 1930s and '40s. Scarface, the original one, Bringing Up Baby, which was a classic comedy.
N. Rodgers: It's my favorite movie of all time.
J. Aughenbaugh: His Girl Friday. He worked a lot with Cary Grant, Sergeant York, The Big Sleep, which for me as a film in the War buff. William Wyler also has 10 movies.
N. Rodgers: He's a mixture. He has some really funky stuff, doesn't he?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. You go from Dodds Worth to Jezebel to Weathering Heights, Mrs Minover, The best years of our lives, which is just a great post-World War II movie that probably for the first time in Hollywood showed the difficulty soldiers have when they return to civilian life.
N. Rodgers: But he also gave Roman Holiday.
J. Aughenbaugh: He directed Funny Girl with Barbra Streisand. Then he also did Ben Hur.
N. Rodgers: Those are not in order by the way.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, Roman Holiday [inaudible] then Funny Girl. But nevertheless.
N. Rodgers: Yeah, might talk about a mixture of films.
J. Aughenbaugh: Alfred Hitchcock's on here nine times.
N. Rodgers: Can I just pin out George Kugler, Gone With the Wind had to be on there.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Gone With the Wind had to be in this registry. Because of its sheer size, like.
J. Aughenbaugh: Scope, yes.
N. Rodgers: Scope, thank you, exactly.
J. Aughenbaugh: Which was one of the reasons why when Margaret Mitchell's book came out and it was purchased by a Hollywood studio.
N. Rodgers: People thought you can never film that.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, it's too sprawling. You can't go ahead and fit this in 2 hours or 2 hours and 15 minutes.
N. Rodgers: It's not surprising Hitchcock is on here nine times. Hitchcock is a well-known autour.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. He was not born in America, he was British. But he had his greatest success when he came to the United States.
N. Rodgers: The ones that are on this registry are all-star American.
J. Aughenbaugh: Oh my goodness. You got your readers on a train Rear Window, Vertigo.
N. Rodgers: North by Northwest where Greg gets chased by a plane.
J. Aughenbaugh: The Crob duster. What a great scene.
N. Rodgers: Psyco, which has the first murder on film.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, and The Birds.
N. Rodgers: The Birds, which is an awesome and terrible movie.
J. Aughenbaugh: But there's others who are on here quite a bit. You've got Frank Capra for instance. It happened one night. Mr. Smith goes to Washington. It's a Wonderful Life.
N. Rodgers: Which you see every Christmas?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Whether you want to or not?
J. Aughenbaugh: Buster Keaton, the ultimate comedic director.
N. Rodgers: The General.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, The General. [inaudible] Not a big shock. He's on here seven times. Billy Wilder, again, you want to talk about a director with range. Just look at the seven Billy Wilder films, The Lost Weekend, which is about a guy who's a drunk, Double Indemnity, one of the classic noir movies, Sunset Boulevard.
N. Rodgers: I'm ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille.
J. Aughenbaugh: Right. Ace in the Hole, which is about advertising, and it's a dark, cynical take about advertising. Sabrina, lighthearted comedy.
N. Rodgers: Romcom.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. Okay. Some like it Hot.
N. Rodgers: Marilyn Monroe.
J. Aughenbaugh: In cross-dressing with Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis. Then you've got The Apartment, which is a movie about a functionary in a corporation who's bosses use his apartment for their affairs.
N. Rodgers: It's quite the mix.
J. Aughenbaugh: But Charlie Chaplin's on here six times, John Houston, one of my favorite directors.
N. Rodgers: D. W. Griffith, Birth of a Nation. Whether you liked that film or not?
J. Aughenbaugh: It captured the United States. You got Stanley Kubrick is on here.
N. Rodgers: Dr. Strangelove. That's a weird movie, but it makes sense that it's on there. It completely defines that Cold War fear.
J. Aughenbaugh: Oh, my goodness. Yeah.
N. Rodgers: That film does a really good job of that. Vincent Minnelli, Liza's dad.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. Liza's dad is on here. Let me see. Oh, one of my favorite directors, Sydney Lumet, 12 Angry Men, The Pawnbroker, King, which is a filmed record of Martin Luther King's, if you will, march from Montgomery to Memphis. Dog Day Afternoon and Network. I showed Network pretty much every year with my politics and film class. Martin Scorsese's on here five times. Francis Ford Coppola, interestingly enough is on here four times. He's not made a lot of movies.
N. Rodgers: Godfather.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Apocalypse Now.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. Spike Lee, I think is the director of color with the most movies on the registry.
N. Rodgers: Malcolm X.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Do the Right Thing.
J. Aughenbaugh: She's Got to Have it, which was his first movie. Which as a debut movie, oh my goodness, you're just like, whoa, dude.
N. Rodgers: Kaboom.
J. Aughenbaugh: Orson Welles, by the way, is only on the list four times.
N. Rodgers: Orson Welles didn't make that many movies either, did he?
J. Aughenbaugh: No, because he proved to be so.
N. Rodgers: Difficult.
J. Aughenbaugh: Difficult that Hollywood after a while was just like, "Yeah, we ain't giving you anymore movie."
N. Rodgers: It's not worth it.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: To me, what's interesting is the number of times that these folks appear, it really shows up the lack of diversity in Hollywood.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: I like that you mentioned earlier that they are fixing that, they are now broadening. Part of what will help fix that is using those other categories. Using documentary, using music video, using newsreel, using films that people made that are independent and that are outside the Hollywood standard.
J. Aughenbaugh: The Hollywood system because there is a lot of good stuff being done with film that doesn't need $75 million with two bankable stars and a well-known director and a well-known screenwriter. No. Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing was made on a shoestring for less than I think eight million dollars. Even Do the Right Thing didn't have a huge budget. Cab Calloway home movies. Because we record everything and now we have phones that do that stuff.
N. Rodgers: Yeah, it'll be interesting to see when they expand to TikTok and YouTube or other formats like that, where people are doing things that are interesting or different and need to be maintained and archived for the future, and for people to be able to look across the breadth of American culture. This is cool, Aughie, it's cool. I'm going to link the list of all of their films in the registry from the research guide.
J. Aughenbaugh: Nia, thank you very much for doing this episode about the Film Registry because I very impatiently wait for every December for the Film Registry list to come out because I am such a huge film fan. It's a cool little story about how we ended up with the Film Registry. Thanks.
N. Rodgers: Thank you, Aughie.
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