86 This 66: The TV Classic Route 66 Hits a Dead End on the Hi-Def Highway

[Omaha Steve]

If there is a classic TV group I missed it. The second 1/2 of season 1 Route 66 has been butchered on DVD. I'm so pissed about this. We did buy the first half of season 1.


About 1/2 way down the page. Just under the Twilight Zone (classic) story.

http://classictvhistory.wordpress.com/category/uncategorized/

86 This 66: The TV Classic Route 66 Hits a Dead End on the Hi-Def Highway
February 14, 2008

Thus far I’ve refrained from turning this blog into a report on home video issues, even though I do keep tabs on them, because there are many other sites which perform that function ably. I’m also not fond of people who use their blogs as bully pulpits to harangue others less civilly than they would in person. But I’m suspending precedent and decorum today because I’m outraged by the offense that’s been committed against one of my favorite TV shows of the ’60s, Route 66.

Last week, a new collection of Route 66 episodes was released on DVD. This time, unlike in the preceding batch, every episode was shown in an incorrect aspect ratio that deletes a large swath of picture in a brutal effort to make the image conform to the dimensions of high definition TV sets. This has been tried by the studios before, when Warner Bros. released the first season of Kung Fu in faux widescreen. Outraged fans shamed the studio into correcting its mistake in subsequent volumes. But now it’s happening all over again, and to a TV classic far more important than Kung Fu.

Last October, Route 66 made its DVD debut in a package consisting of the series’ first fifteen episodes. I was overjoyed, because Route 66’s combination of powerful writing (Stirling Silliphant’s beat-styled dialogue and existential, wanderlust-driven narratives introduced the counterculture into mainstream television), exceptional guest stars (New York-based casting gave unknown actors like Gene Hackman and Alan Alda key early roles), and location shooting in cities all over the U.S. made it a unique treasure. I’d seen all 116 episodes already, but I was delighted that a new, younger audience would have the opportunity to become conversant with this offbeat masterpiece.

Then reality set in. The first fifteen episodes were transferred to DVD mostly from sixteen-millimeter prints, rather than the far better looking tape masters that were broadcast on the Nick at Nite network in the late ’80s. The image quality wasn’t abysmal, but it was fuzzy and flat-looking enough to turn off many viewers who might be discovering the show for the first time; and there was the further problem that one of the first season’s strongest episodes, “A Fury Slinging Flame” (about nuclear paranoia), was cut by five minutes. All of this was especially frustrating that Route 66’s “sister show,” Naked City, had received a partial DVD release on the Image label a few years earlier, and those transfers were jaw-droppingly gorgeous.

The problems seemed to stem from the fact that Sony, which owns Route 66 (along with the rest of the old Screen Gems TV library), had licensed the show out to an entity called Roxbury Entertainment which is, to put it kindly, inexperienced in the arena of home video. Roxbury is the operation of one Kirk Hallam, a producer of hack movies who optioned the property’s film rights and is currently trying to leverage a Route 66 remake out of development hell (which is exactly where it belongs). I guess DVD rights to the original series were part of the deal - the best part, some might say, but so far they’re being treated more like that piece of toilet paper that sticks to your shoe when you leave the bathroom.

Then, last week, Infinity Entertainment Group (Roxbury’s distribution partner) released Season 1, Volume 2, in a form that had many fans longing for the battered 16mm transfers from the first batch. Mr. Hallam had kept his promise to begin transferring the episodes from superior elements (what he referred to as “fine grain masters of film” in an interview), and indeed the level of clarity and detail was beautiful. But someone made a catastrophically wrong-headed decision: to “enhance” the image for widescreen televisions by cropping the shows from their original 1.33:1 (4:3) compositions to a 1.78:1 (16:9) framing. If you don’t understand the technical jargon, it means simply that 25% of the original image has been lopped off the top and bottom of the frame.

FULL article at link. Marta and I have done consultation work for Image. I wish they had this release. More on this later. I was headed out the door 20 minutes ago. :-)