Completely agree, Rich. The American "dealer" who arrived in Australia with these things had a sales pitch to dealers to buy these things wholesale, and cheap. I wasn't interested for the obvious reason that they were simply not original and no amount of BS would convince me otherwise. One of life's irritations is that I cannot remember the name of this guy, and we only had two telephone conversations. The second a little heated because by this time it had really sunk in what he was trying to perpetrate.
Other dealers here did buy them and sold them as originals for around $200-$300AUD and comic/SF shops kept on selling them for years because they used to order them at the same time and from the same wholesalers who they purchased their advance order imports and fantasy/SF media from. And it was no skinny-arse cheap backdoor outfit. It was the major wholesalers at the time. I bought out a couple of indie distributors here over the last few years when they were changing hands or closing up shop, and among all the stuff were a couple of sets of films for posters. When I was working for Palace in Sydney in the 1980s and we did the design and printing of posters out of Sydney, once the poster run was done the films came back to my office for shipping back to head office in Melbourne for filing. Phil ----- Original Message ----- From: Richard Halegua Comic Art To: Phil Edwards ; [email protected] Sent: Thursday, July 29, 2010 10:35 AM Subject: Re: [MOPO] The plot thickens! Adams heirs skeptical about lost negatives claim As the story was spun at the time by whoever was behind it, the infamous hairy belt STAR WARS one sheet was "made from the original plates".... therefor making them "er, original". I always wonder what people mean, including my friend Dave, when they refer to this statement do they mean to imply that the copper plates were - unlike any other title and unlike any other printing business operation - kept in storage for later use? well there are problems with this belief 1) plates like those were routinely destroyed for the metal to be recycled for other projects, plus getting such plates made in most cases entails a contract (or purchase order) whereby there is a credit for returning the plates that is usually a little on the high side 2) plates wear down during use. The first poster printed has greater detail than the last poster printed. for this reason, printers do not see a use in "old plates" seeing as new plates can be easily made from the "films" 3) and here is the rub - what printers would keep would be the "films" aka the color separations, because these are what is needed to make new plates, and they fit inside a simple folder in a filing cabinet along with thousands of others, whereas to keep the plates would require a warehouse storage solely for keeping printing plates my opinion and said from someone with a detailed knowledge and experience in the printing field: I think that most bootlegs are copies made from a new set of plates made from the original films, or high quality reproductions made from the posters In the case of the hairy belt poster, I think they had access to the films, a hair got on the films during the process from film to plate in the case of the Style-C, I think that's a copy, which is why the printing quality is not nearly as good as an original Visit the MoPo Mailing List Web Site at www.filmfan.com ___________________________________________________________________ How to UNSUBSCRIBE from the MoPo Mailing List Send a message addressed to: [email protected] In the BODY of your message type: SIGNOFF MOPO-L The author of this message is solely responsible for its content.
