I realize this is starting to sound old but restoration guru Robert Harris and a handful of impassioned journalist/columnists (myself among them) are still trying to persuade MGM honchos to agree to an independently funded restoration of the 70mm, 202-minute roadshow version of John Wayne‘s The Alamo (’60). I wrote about this situation twice in late May. The second piece (posted on 5.31) included a statement from MGM senior vp for library rights management Trish Francis that indicated she and her colleagues don’t understand what’s going on. Francis said “the film is not in danger of being lost,” but she was referring to the 35mm elements that went into MGM’s 2000 DVD. The 70mm elements, trust me, are in grave peril. 70mm is the format that Wayne shot the film in and which needs to be preserved. I saw some fragments of these elements at a special screening in Burbank last week, and they reiterated the obvious. 70mm delivers exceptional clarity and detail that’s above and beyond what you can get from 35mm. But MGM doesn’t give a damn, it seems. To them a 35mm rendering is just fine. Why get your knickers in a twist?, leave well enough alone, etc.

MGM chairman and CEO Gary Barber

John Wayne, who would stride into MGM offices, break down Barber’s office door and slap some sense into him if he wasn’t dead and gone. Wayne, I mean.

A few weeks ago Harris had nearly persuaded MGM to allow an outside source to pay for the restoration, which will cost something like $1.3 million. MGM was planning to donate $5 grand to the effort (they haven’t much capital these days) but then they suddenly turned around and said no. They can’t and won’t fund a restoration on their own (okay, fine, we understand) but they won’t allow an outsider to pay for it either, apparently because they feel it’ll make MGM look like pikers. So MGM has the film in a double bind, and their position seems to be “let it rot.”