To say that James Katz and Robert Harris restore films is like saying Babe Ruth hit home runs -- you're right, but you're seriously understating the case.
When it comes to film restoration, these guys mean business. They take the time (in 13 years, they've restored only five films), spend the money (Alfred Hitchcock's "Rear Window" cost about $650,000 to revamp, his "Vertigo" about $1.2 million) and do the research to ensure the films are as close as possible to what the director originally had in mind."Our main concern is that we save these films," Katz said during a telephone interview from his Los Angeles office.
That doesn't mean simply cleaning up an existing print or giving the existing negative a once-over, as most studios do before releasing a new videotape or DVD of a film, often with an accompanying label saying the movie has been remixed, remastered, restored or otherwise retooled. Long-term restoration and preservation, they say, is rarely the ultimate goal.
"What really happens," Harris said from New York, where he lives and works, "is that someone in home video will call over to someone in the (film studio) vaults and eke out just enough information to put out a usable DVD. Ten years from now, they figure, it'll be someone else's problem."
But by the time Katz and Harris are finished with a film, they've created an entirely new negative, featuring brightened colors, a heightened soundtrack and nary a scratch in sight. Frequently, their projects go beyond that.
For "My Fair Lady," they digitally reconstructed the opening credits. In the case of "Spartacus," they revived footage that had been trimmed by the studio, and even hired Anthony Hopkins to supply the voice of the late Laurence Olivier.
"We asked Joan Plowright, Olivier's widow, for permission to revoice," Katz said. "She never exactly said yes, but she said, 'Get Tony Hopkins, but he won't do it. He used to do Larry at cocktail parties, and he did him very well.' "
Age and deterioration will eventually destroy any film, the two men said, but the real problem is what Harris described as "penny-pinching and greed" at the studio level. Although the technology exists to preserve films, studios have not been willing to invest the time and money.
"We need to find socially conscious executives who realize this is an art form that needs to be protected, as well as a business where you need to make a buck," Harris said.
Fortunately, such awareness is starting to take hold.
"These executives realize they are the guardians of these (film) libraries during their tenures," Harris says. "They are the curators. And you wouldn't want to be running the Louvre the day the Mona Lisa falls off the wall."