Kirby what a great history. and Channing also steller dealers that are
so well rooted...
What a great asset your are to the Movie poster industry
BRAVO-Tom
Kirby McDaniel wrote:
OK. I'll do it.
For MOPO members who do not know me -- I am Kirby McDaniel and I own
MovieArt in Austin, TX. I've lived in Austin since 1966 when I moved
here to attend UT Austin. I graduated from UT Austin in 1971 with a
degree in Radio-TV-Film. That was pretty unusual at the time, but today
RTF studies are common. I worked in Public Radio for KUT-FM for
several years and in the high-end audio business before starting
MovieArt in 1979. MovieArt had humble beginnings to be sure. I
hauled about 28000 film posters to Austin from New Orleans, where they
had been housed at Loyola University. Getting all this organized was
a nightmare. One of my first customers was Walter Reuben! Walter is
a real scholar, in case you don't know.
MovieArt started selling film posters on college campuses in the early
eighties. At that time students thought they were cool. I'm sure we
sold more than
a few for stupid prices. I remember I sold a SOME LIKE IT HOT one
sheet for $100. Oh, well. We did the college thing for a few years
until we get
our first Mac. Then we really started to organize things. We
developed a relational database for our holdings. Soon after this I
met Jose Carpio and
Channing at Cinemonde and they wanted to use the database as well. So
we were, I think, arguably the first film poster dealers that had an
inventory on computer. Jose served as a mentor, and soon we were
buying and selling together. I was at most of the Camden House
auctions and the
Odyssey auctions. I was not at the first Christie's auction, which
wasorganized by Bruce Hershenson in 1990, but I was at the second one
in 1991. Soon Jose Carpio was serving as the consultant for
Sothebys. Later MovieArt was an Associate Dealer at Sothebys.com
<http://Sothebys.com> . Unfortunately Sothebys shut down their online
auction website after spending almost fifty million dollars on it. I
attended most of the New York and L.A. auctions in the early
nineties and an auction at Christies in London in 1995. MovieArt is a
service-oriented mail order dealer. I work with two employees, David
Sobey and Stephen Goodwin.
We launched a new website in December 2009. We add to the website
every day. I know most of the other dealers in this hobby, but not
all I'm sure.
Clients may call us in Austin at 512 479 6680 or e-mail us at
[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> .
Kirby McDaniel
On Apr 15, 2010, at 3:23 PM, channinglylethomson wrote:
4/15/2010
Dear Mopo Members --
I've had several discussion with people in MOPO about the various
members here. One thing that always comes up is that with some of
the anonymity of a group like this, we don't always find out a lot
about the other members and how they came to the hobby. I thought
I'd do a quick introduction (or reintroduction) here in case some of
the MOPO members don't know anything about me. I would like to hear
from others in the group as well if they are so inclined.
My name is Channing Thomson. I have lived in in San Francisco since
1979 and first got involved with the movie poster scene in 1983. At
that time, there was a cafe on Russian Hill (where I still live)
called Cafe Cinemonde. It was run by a Filipino man named Jose Ma.
Carpio. The theme of the cafe was Hollywood movies and the walls
were decorated with posters and lobby cards. At the time, VCRs
weren't prevalent in people's homes so he had a nightly schedule
where you could eat dinner, have a glass of wine or a beer, and watch
a movie on the cafe's Betamax! Jose also ran a movie poster shop in
San Francisco called Cinemonde Posters. In 1984 I quit my job with
Bank of America and started working with Jose as his store manager.
I was there from 1984 till 1994. It was an exciting time, hiring on
a few employees, having a sort of gallery on Polk Street, converting
to a computer inventory program on Mac (much of this with the
tremendous assistance of Kirby McDaniel of Movie Art/Austin). We
also were heavily involved with several of the first auctions of
movie posters at Camden House in LA, Sotheby's in New York, Odyssey
in Southern California, and Butterfields. Those were heady times as
posters for everything from Frankenstein to Metropolis to The Mummy
inevitably came through the doors. We also created about ten
catalogs over the years, fully illustrated and in color that were
collected all over the world. Some time I'll jot down some of the
prices we were asking and let you all salivate!
As with all great things, it inevitably came to an end. Jose tried
to expand the business with a separate site in Nashville, TN that
never really took off. For personal reasons, he moved to Camden,
Maine and basically dropped out of the business entirely passing away
prematurely last year. I left Cinemonde in 1994 and started my own
business online and have had an EBAY presence since 1997. It's been
a long interesting journey and I'm not quite sure were it will end. . .
Thanks for reading, Channing
P.S. Other people's "stories" & introductions would interest me
immensely.
Visit the MoPo Mailing List Web Site at www.filmfan.com
<http://www.filmfan.com>
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