Thanks for the article Bill.
When DuArt was closing they were charging an arm and a leg to release
negatives, supposedly years of "storage fees" that had accrued over
the years.
In 2011 Jeff Kreines alerted me that I had a can there, and Standish
Lawder's negative of "Catfilm for Ursula" was there as well. I
contacted Steve Blakely at that time, mentioned in this article. His
reply:
There will be storage and labor to retrieve costs due for the accounts
left here for over 32 years. The recent normal rate was
$40.00 per month minimum, but I can reduce that to $5.00 a month, making the
total $1,920.00 (32 years) plus labor $350.00 making the total due including
tax $2,471.46.
For the Standish Lawder film from 1970 (over 40 years) the costs (also
reduced rates) are similar coming to $2,400 plus $250.00 labor coming to
$2673.50 tax included.
Standish's reply was: "That is outrageous, and for me utterly
unacceptable. I am not going to pay this for my 'Catfilm...' They can
stuff it you-know-where."
I bet many filmmakers felt the same way.
Six months later I was able to negotiate with Steve and retrieve the
materials for free, but many probably just got angry. So it's funny
to hear that three years later they actually got a $200,000 grant to
try and give these things away to the right people. I should have
waited!
-Pip
At 2:49 -0400 23/08/14, Bill Seery wrote:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/24/movies/at-duart-thousands-of-unclaimed-films.html?_r=1
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