HE is looking for a special Telluride friend or two or three. Last year’s Telluride friend won’t be attending so get in touch. For some reason I’m not feeling all that jacked about some of the films expected to play there. Jason Reitman‘s Up In The Air , which will make the trek, is feeling more and more like a fait accompli thing. The buzz on The Road has been on the “hmmm, yeah, ahem” side. Werner Herzog‘s hoot movie — Bad Lieutenant: New Orleans Port of Call — will, I’m told, play Telluride instead of My Son My Son, What Have Ye Done? Ditto Lone Scherfig‘s An Education. What else?

The air would be too thin to parachute at this height. Or jump out and free-fall for that matter. But if I could snap my fingers and make it happen I’d put on a bright-yellow fireproof jump suit and helmet plus an oxygen tank and mask and jump out and free-fall for I don’t how many miles. (20?) I’d take video on the way down, and I’d twitter about it too.

I’d savor the fall for as long as possible, and then pull the chute and angle myself so I land in Venice or Mar Vista. And then I’d write a story about it. Seriously — I wish I was around to smell that ashy burnt wood-and-sagebrush scent and see the billowing smoke clouds.

All the Luddites and dead-sea-scrollers who were arguing yesterday in favor of keeping the flying monkey and Scarecrow wires visible in Warner Home Video’s forthcoming The Wizard of Oz Blu-ray (or at least keeping some kind of visible-wires edition of the film in a vault somewhere) can fold up their tents and go home. I spoke yesterday with WHV senior vp George Feltenstein and he confirmed what Hitfix’s Drew McWeeny passed along yesterday in the HE comments section, which is that the wires have been digitally erased.

(l.) Warner Home Video senior vp George Feltenstein; witch-and-monkey castle scene from The Wizard of Oz‘s third act; (r.) restoration expert Robert Harris.

Before making the final call, Felstenstein said he went to resoration guru Robert Harris for advice, and that Harris’s basic mantra was that “if 1939 audiences didn’t see the wires when they saw the film in theatres, then present-day audiences shouldn’t see them on the Blu-ray.”

And 1939 audiences didn’t see the wires due to the state of projection technology and the three-strip Technicolor alignment process being what they were some 70 years ago, along with the general coarseness of 1939-era film stock.

“To be precise,” Harris explained this morning, “what matters is to recreate the look and texture of the original film, as seen by 1939 audiences. While by scanning original negatives we do get an image of slightly higher resolution, it’s important to make certain that the extra detail doesn’t expose things that were never meant to be seen.”

The Oz Blu-ray will be out on Tuesday, 9.29, following a series of special promotional screenings across the country including a special New York Film Festival showing on Saturday, 9.,26.

I asked Feltenstein why Warner Home Video’s “Murderer’s Row” trio — The Wizard of Oz, North by Northwest and Gone With the Wind (the last two of which will be available by mid November) — were scanned in 8K when 4K is considered to be as good if not better than 35mm film resolution-wise. “For the future,” Feltenstein said. “We want to be ready for the next expansion or upgrade in high-def viewing, so we won’t have to go back and re-scan them again.”

We both agreed that (a) it’s an essential thing for all large-format films to find their way onto Blu-ray sooner rather than later (a no-brainer), (b) it would be a welcome thing for Paramount Home Video to one day re-master Byron Haskin‘s War of the Worlds (1953) with the wires holding up the Martian space ships digitally erased (ditto), and (c) that it’ll be great when other Alfred Hitchcock films (like Vertigo especially, having been filmed in large-format VistaVision) get the Blu-ray treatment also.

Feltenstein — gracious, highly spirited, obviously super-bright– said he’s a daily HE reader, and that I should feel free to get in touch any time. Great!

It’s awfully nice to have a couple of real film guys — serious Catholics, I mean — back on the At The Movies beat. So who will be the Roger Ebert (i.e., the cerebral, highly knowledgable know-it-all) and who will be the Gene Siskel (the “yes but” guy who comes from a gut place as well as a head place and will sometimes say “naah, not buying it, this is bullshit”)?

My sense is that both A.O. Scott and Michael Philips are Genes at heart. They’re both trying to emphasize their Roger aspects right now, but it’ll eventually boil down to a Gene vs. Gene thing. Or maybe that’s just what I want to see. I know that gut skepticism is generally more fun to hang with than impassioned dweeby cinephile musings.

My only concern (and I’m not trying to be an asshole) is that Scott’s hair is too closely clipped. He needs to exude a little more of that slightly frazzle-haired coffeehouse poet thing — more suede and jeans, less starch in his shirt, maybe a toke or two of pot.

So what happened to the video? It played when I first posted and now it’s saying it’s no longer available. No, wait…it’s back. What?

You have to get to those other things — ad pitches, Toronto details, Apple/iPhone crap — you’ve been meaning to get to for the last two or three weeks. So you get into this stuff while tapping out the usual column items and stories, only fewer than usual.

And before you know it it’s gotten to be 3:30 or 4 pm and the screening you were going to attend has been cancelled and you really need to take the garbage out and go to the hardware store and print out a document and stuff like that. Then a phone interview happens — good stuff, good fellow, lovely speaking.

But soon after that you turn around and all these things have happened in the online movie world that you haven’t noted or commented upon. So you try and get into this stuff and somehow…ahhh. Maybe because the ad/Toronto/iPhone stuff is still dangling and throwing off sparks like a loose power wire. The day settles down, HBO tries to do what it can and the good old nutso-anxiety currents are pulsing. And then sleep somehow slips in and takes over around 11 pm or so. At least I’m not an insomniac.

And then you have a nightmare about some video of you doing something foolish or intemperate going up on YouTube and your life imploding big-time, and then you wake up and realize it’s okay. You’re so relieved you’re almost weeping. And then you dream about seeing Mick Jagger on Broome Street with a gray overcoat and a thick head of gray hair. Then you start to really wake up at 5 am and the first thought of the day is “uh-oh…my bad.”

So you half sit up and check out the latest Twitters and then dawn begins to break and it’s back to square one. I feel like I’m in a Roman Polanski film. No, not The Tenant. The Pianist, I’m thinking. With maybe a little Repulsion thrown in.

I’ve been as anxious as the next guy to see Nowhere Boy, Sam Taylor Wood‘s biopic about the young John Lennon in Liverpool. I’ve written about it several times, praised Matt Greenhalgh‘s script (saying it “has the same concise, straight-from-the-shoulder British scruffiness that his Greenhalgh’s script for Control had”), expressed interest in Kristin Scott Thomas‘s portrayal of Aunt Mimi, etc. But I’m thinking the good vibes may be over.

(l.) Aaron Johnson as John Lennon in Nowhere Boy; (r.) ex-Beatle Pete Best sometimes around 1961 or ’62.

The reason is that after seeing the above still of Aaron Johnson playing Lennon (and presumably looking out upon Liverpool’s Mersey River), I experienced severe disappointment on three levels. Actually, make that four.

One, Lennon had light honey-brown hair and Johnson’s hair looks either dark brown or jet black. How many brain cells did it take for Wood to say to the movie’s hairdresser at the start of production, “Okay, Lennon’s hair was light brown so let’s make sure Aaron’s hair is as dark as Elvis Presley‘s was…perfect!” I warned Wood not to do this in a piece that ran last January (i.e., two months before Nowhere Boy began shooting), to wit: “They’d better get the hair color right — light honey-brown. If they screw this part up they’re dead.” And Wood screwed it up!

Two, this photo told me that Johnson doesn’t really resemble Lennon at all. You could sense Lennon’s impertinent and somewhat snippy personality in his features. Johnson looks like a doleful Italian longshoreman or short-order cook. If he resembles anyone, it’s ex-Beatle Pete Best — i.e., the drummer who got fired in 1962 to make way for Ringo Starr. Obviously Johnson’s performance could make all the difference. But I’m really steaming about the hair-color thing. You just don’t mess with hair when you’re trying to physically be someone as well as re-animate their spirit.

And three, Lennon had a somewhat large, distinctive and pointed British honker with a very pronounced bridge. Johnson’s nose looks nothing like this — it’s a thicker, rounded-off, slightly bent-to-the-right nose that isn’t the least bit Lennon-y. Wood could have told the makeup people to make it right, but she didn’t. Was the idea to make Johnson resemble Lennon as little as possible?

And look at the 19 year-old kid Wood chose to play Paul McCartney. His name is Thomas Sangster, and his hair color is wrong also — it’s too light. (Unless, of course, Wood had it darkened for the film.) Look at the picture below — does anyone think Sangster resembles McCartney even faintly? He doesn’t look like Macca — he looks like a chipmunk. Look at him! At best he could possibly play a 13 year-old version of George Harrison. Is Wood insane?

I have to be honest. The hair cock-ups suggest that all kinds of other things may be wrong with Nowhere Boy. If you get the hair-color wrong (something that’s easy to get right), the odds are you’re going to screw up in other ways. People tend to be consistent, I mean. If you have dishes stacked two feet high in your kitchen sink, you probably don’t brush your teeth or pay your bills on time. I’m feeling a little queasy about it now. This is a blade of grass that may tell the tale. I still like the script but all bets are off until further notice. I smell trouble.

The key sentence in Katrina Onstad‘s profile of director Atom Egoyan in yesterday’s N.Y. Times reads as follows: “A complex, Egoyan-esque meta-narrative has been imposed on the film that was supposed to be [Egoyan’s] most direct” — i.e, Chloe, an emotionally-intimate drama that will play at the Toronto Film Festival. “It’s now the tragic movie about marriage during which one very famous marriage ended so tragically.

Liam Neeson, Julianne Moore in Atom Egoyan’s Chloe.

Onstad refers, of course, to Chloe star Liam Neeson having lost his actress wife, Natasha Richardson, last March when she died from a head injury caused by a bizarre skiiing accident. The tragedy occured as Chloe was nearing completion of shooting in Toronto. Neeson left the shoot for a brief period, saw to his family and his wife’s burial, and returned for a final couple of days of filming.

Egoyan tells Onstad about how Neeson “pulled him aside on the set and told him of Ms. Richardson’s fall. ‘He’d just talked with her, and everything seemed to be okay. But there was a feeling of: ‘You should go.’ And it just changed the course of everything.'”

“First you think, ‘Oh my God’…the human side takes over, and you try to proceed in a way that’s respectful and honorable,” Chloe producer Ivan Reitman tells Onstad. “But there are always one’s financial obligations. Films involve hundreds of lives.” A flood of insurers and completion bonders came on the set, and everyone went over the script, altering sequences for to give Neeson time to attend Richardson’s funeral and whatnot.

“But within days he quietly returned to Toronto in a private plane, undetected by the news media,” Onstad writes. “‘He conducted himself in an extraordinary manner,’ Mr. Reitman recalled. ‘He was under pressure from the sadness of what had happened, and he channeled it into the performance of those two days.'”

“Over the summer Mr. Egoyan attended test screenings of Chloe with audiences in Los Angeles and Toronto, reviewing the feedback with Mr. Reitman. The response has been extremely positive, Mr. Egoyan said; no clarity issues.”

Chloe director Atom Egoyan, costar Amanda Seyfried

I’ve read the Chloe script. It’s an intriguing, mildly erotic, better-than-half-decent thing about a middle-aged wife (Julianne Moore) hiring a young prostitute (Amanda Seyfried) to try and get her middle-aged husband (Neeson) to cheat on her. It’s actually rather good. Written by a pro. The story takes some interesting turns, but it’s on the restrained and earnest side. I don’t recall any hot madness in it, but maybe I read it too quickly.

But I wouldn’t be honest if I didn’t admit to having I have a little man inside telling me that Chloe may underwhelm on some level. Part guess, part intuition. Haven’t Egoyan’s films been generally seen as underwhelming in this and that way for the last several years? (I’m not trying to be an asshole but for me The Sweet Hereafter was his last truly stirring film.) Why wasn’t Chloe chosen to open TIFF? Why are distributors being stand-offish? I’m just asking. I have no dog in this fight, although — honestly? — I want to see Chloe because I suspect it may contain certain oblique echoes. Okay, so I’m a tabloid-reading lowlife.

“It will have interesting overtones because it is about how precious a marriage is,” Egoyan tells Onstad. “Maybe it will always be known as the film Liam was working on when that happened. But ultimately we finished the film, and Liam is magnificent in it. Now all we can do is wait and see.”

Disney’s decision to buy Marvel (i.e., hundreds upon hundreds of Marvel-created characters and storylines) for $4 billion is such glorious news that I can’t stand it. The identity of the corporate entity that will henceforth be free to exploit the Marvel elements is a huge thing for me personally. Well, not really, but I’m sure it’s a big deal for millions of Marvel fans worldwide. Okay, maybe not.

The only angle of any interest is whether or not this will serve to bland down the Marvel brand and take things in a kind of corporate Mickey Mouse direction. Wouldn’t this give Disney the force to veto any edge-pushing content from future Marvel character and creations? What’s the last genuinely cool and edgy film to come out of Disney culture? Would Iron Man have been the same film if Disney had been pulling the strings?

Transferring ownership of a major brand from corporate entity A to corporate entity B is a meaningless thing. All 21st Century entertainment corporations are invested in selling the same basic heroin. And make no mistake — Marvel mythology is in the business of pushing opiates to the masses. No clear light can come of this, and I will not go “hoo! hoo!” about this deal like all the other fansite monkeys out there. I will not wave and shout as Jack Hawkins‘ Quintus Arrius walks up the steps to greet George Relph‘s Tiberius Ceasar.

Four years ago I ran a transcript of an odd Terrence Malick phoner that I suddenly found myself doing on a fall morning in 1995. I was unprepared, winging it, trying to keep the chit-chat going and getting nowhere. It was nonetheless historic for the rareness. I’m re-posting it in recognition of Malick’s Tree of Life (Penn, Pitt, dinosaurs) opening later this year. I’ve heard from a money guy that it’s definitely opening before 12.31. I guess I should call Apparition’s Bob Berney and see what’s really what.

Terrence Malick around the time of the shooting of The Thin Red Line.

I’m one of the only journalists to have any kind of conversation with Malick since he went into his Thomas Pynchon-like withdrawal about 20 or 21 years ago (not long after the release of Days of Heaven) and became this gentle phantom-like figure whom journalists couldn’t get to under any circumstance.

In this context speaking to Malick on the phone — which I managed to do on October 25, 1995, around 11:35 am — was like snapping a photo of Bigfoot. It was a half-pleasant, half-awkward, pretty much meaningless conversation, but at least he picked up the phone.

Malick had been staying with producer Mike Medavoy, who wound up producing The Thin Red Line, but Medavoy was leaving for Shanghai and Malick would be staying elsewhere, so I called to get a forwarding number.

A cleaning woman answered and said Medavoy was out, but that Malick was nearby. She asked me to hold…

Malick: Hi.

Me: Hi, Terry. This is Jeffrey Wells speaking…

Malick: Hi.

Me: And uhh…I was just talking to Mike last night and he said, uh, you might be leaving today and I wanted to see if I could speak with you about an article I’m researching. It’s for Los Angeles magazine and my editor…he worked on that piece about ten years ago with David Handleman for California magazine. It was called “Absence of Malick.”

Malick: Yeah.

Me: I don’t know if…did you happen to read it?

Malick: No, I…I…uhnn…

Me: Anyway, I’m doing this piece and trying to sort things through here. About what’s going on with…well, to start with, The Thin Red Line and that rumored BAM stage production of “Sansho the Bailiff” and…I’ve wanted to speak with you about it, and now that I’m speaking with you I feel…well, I feel nervous.

Malick: Don’t be, Jeffrey. It’s not that. I just don’t feel comfortable talking about it yet.

Me: About Red Line, you mean?

Malick: Yeah and…it’s something that has no date, really. It may happen sometime in the indefinite future.

Me: The indefinite future? Uh-huh. So there’s no approximate, long-range…it’s not even on a low flame?

Malick: I…I’m…uhmm.

Me: I was only thinking, you know…heh-heh… ‘indefinite future.’ You could say the same thing about the sun collapsing and the end of the solar system, heh-heh.

Malick: Uhhmm…

Me: I’m only mentioning this because…well, you may have seen that item in Premiere that you said you had this reading of the script with Costner and Lucas Haas and Ethan Hawke.

Malick: We did it just to get a sense of how it flowed.

Me: How did it flow?

Malick: I just don’t feel comfortable talking about it. I appreciate your interest but…

Locust arrival scene in Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven

Malick: Mike says you’re on the second or third draft, something…it’s a work that’s been through some development and progression, and…

Malick: I….

Malick: I dont want to grill you, Terry. Mike explained the rules and said that grilling you…’that’s the one thing we don’t do’…and I understand that. I had a hope, though, of just discussing movies in general…ones you’ve seen and been impressed by in recent years.

Malick: Well, I appreciate your interest. I guess I do feel uncomfortable talking right now.

Me: I’m just one of…who knows, hundreds of film journalists around the country who regard you as one of the best ever and have watched your films over and over.

Malick: You’re very kind, Jeffrey. I appreciate it and I feel it and it comes to me as very encouraging. But I feel uncomfortable talking about it. I spoke to my brother Chris and he said that you’re just trying to help. And of course I know you’re just trying to do your job.

Me: I was actually just reading about a new laser disc of Days of Heaven that’s coming out, and it’s really something I’m looking forward to because I’ve never seen a print of that film that equalled the first viewing at the Cinema 1 in New York when they showed a 70mm print with six-channel sound, and having a…are you a laser-disc aficionado?

Malick: I’m, uh…not..uhm…

Me: Are you…you don’t watch TV? Videos? Do you ever catch movies on tape?

Malick: I’d be happy to talk to you at some later point, Jeffrey.

Me: I know. I understand know what the rules are.

Malick: And someone actually is here, Jeffrey, and I do have to keep an appointment. I would love to, later on…we could talk.

Me: I’ll look forward to it. I understand you’re in town for a few more days.

Malick: Yes, but I really do have to go now.

Me: Because if you have a moment later on, I’d like to run some basic points by you and just go over them one by one, for accuracy’s sake.

Me: I can’t really talk about this. I know what you’re trying to do and it’s not…if you’d try to understand. Chris told me you’d written and that you were trying to help.

Me: Well, I hope you have a good stay. I look forward to chatting again on a more…uhm, relaxed basis.

Malick: Okay, thank you.

Toronto Int’ Film Festival staffer Jen Bell has responded to yesterday’s rant (“Toronto Wifi Jail“) about there not being enough free wifi at the festival with an announcement that TIFF will be hosting a media lounge on the sundeck of the Sutton Plaza this year, complete with complimentary wifi access.

I’m not the first one to say this, but scan the lineup for the 47th New York Film Festival and tell me where the big-jolt films are. Because all I see are a lot of Cannes and Toronto re-runs along with a few marginals and oddities.

The old Alice Tully Hall (i.e., before the big renovation).

I’m sorry but I’ve been visiting this festival off and on for a bit more than 30 years now — I remember what a charge it was in the Richard Roud days of late ’70s and early ’80s — and it’s hard to look at what’s happening today and go, “What happened?” Because the NYFF really used to matter.

I wasn’t around in the glory days of the ’60s and early ’70s, but even in my early New York days (i.e., mid-to-late Jimmy Carter era) it used to be a routine thing for at least four or five must-see major-director films to have their big debut there. You pretty much had to see the whole NYFF lineup back then. Anything that showed acquired a certain associative pedigree.

I can almost reach back and taste the excitement I got from catching first-anywhere screenings of Benardo Bertoclucci‘s 1900, Phillip Noyce‘s Newsfront, Robert Altman‘s A Wedding, Wim Wenders‘ The American Friend, Jerzy Skolimowski‘s Moonlighting, Peter Weir‘s Picnic at Hanging Rock, Werner Herzog‘s Fitzcarraldo and Nosferatu, Pier Paolo Pasolini‘s Salo and Francois Truffaut‘s The Woman Next Door.

Nobody could afford to miss the NYFF in those days. It was vital and mesmerizing. I used to sit in the old Alice Tully Hall and get high from the wonderful projection and sound, and the stimulating q & a’s. By accident I met Truffaut at an early ’80s NYFF, and spoke to him for a few minutes — I’ll never forget that. I used to tell myself “this is it, the center of the cool-movie universe, the time of your life, doesn’t get any better,” etc. The black-tie parties were amazing. The non-black-tie parties were amazing. I met the greatest women at these parties and even got lucky once or twice. I remember how fascinating it seemed to watch Roud smoke those unfiltered cigarettes, one after another.

I guess I’m paying closer attention to the NYFF because I’m living here now and feeling closer to the action as it were. I know what’s been happening at the Film Society of Lincoln Center and I’m not trying to throw any stones at anyone. I’m just sorry that the NYFF current isn’t the same as it once was. I miss that special air. I would breathe that air again.

Warner Home Video’s Blu-ray restoration of The Wizard of Oz will be out less than a month from now, debuting Tuesday, 9.29. The restored classic will also have a one-day showing on screens nationwide on 9.23, and a special 11 am screening at Manhattan’s Alice Tully Hall (a program presented by the New York Film Festival) on Saturday, 9.26.

But no one has yet spoken about the key qualitative aspect regarding this upgrade of America’s most beloved family film. In a phrase, the question every videophile across the nation will be asking as he/she opens up the Blu-ray package (or as they attend the Oz theatrical screenings) will be “what about the damn wires?”

Presumably the Blu-ray upgrade will look measurably sharper and more distinct than any video version seen before. But does this mean the wires that hold up Ray Bolger’s Scarecrow (to assist in the illusion that he’s hanging from a wooden post among the cornstalks) will look even more vivid than they did in the last Wizard of Oz upgrade, which came out in 2005? Ditto the wires that hold up those flying monkeys serving Margaret Hamilton‘s Wicked Witch of the West?

Nobody spotted the wires when The Wizard of Oz opened in 1939. They couldn’t have with the coarseness of film stock and 1939-era projection technology and the process of three-strip Technicolor alignment being what it was. And nobody ever spotted the wires on any of those TV showings in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s, or on VHS or laser discs or even on early DVDs. But they were easily detectable on WHV’s 2005 Special Edition, and one can only guess how much clearer they’ll be on the new Blu-ray. Unless wiser heads have prevailed, of course.

One way to deal with the wires would be for the Wizard of Oz images to be slightly softened so as to bury them in a kind of simulated 1939 haze. But the smarter way — hello? — would be for the wires to be digitally erased. I would ask Warner Home Video’s George Feltenstein for a comment, but my experience is that WHV publicity always blows me off on questions like this. Today is Sunday — I’ll try them tomorrow morning.

Obviously the Blu-ray upgrade will be fighting itself if WHV technicians decide to soften the image. This would negate the improved clarity and improved three-strip alignment and the extra-sharp focus that could and should be a dividend of the new Blu-ray version, and is what people will certainly be looking for when they buy it.

You can see the wires in the above photo (taken off my old 36″ West Hollywood TV) but if you have any kind of recently-manufactured big-ass flat screen, they look much more vivid than indicated here

Let’s hope and pray that WHV went with digital erasure on Oz. It’s been used by other video distributors in the remastering of older films with wire issues (including Mary Poppins and North by Northwest), and is clearly the only enlightened way to go. [Update: HE reader Drew McWeeny informs below that “the restoration work on Oz this time is nothing short of revelatory. There are about four places in the film where they removed wires, but otherwise their efforts were focused on making sure that this is the single best version of a three-strip Technicolor film that I’ve ever laid eyes on.”]

Digital wire removal infamously wasn’t used for the 2005 Paramount Home Video upgrade of the 1953 War of the Worlds.

Byron Haskin‘s sci-fi classic provides one of the lushest color-baths in Hollywood history and has always looked sumptuous. But the 2005 DVD pretty much ruined the suspension-of-disbelief element because of the way-too-visible cords holding up the Martian spaceships. You can see them plain as day during scenes of the initial assault against the military…a thicket of blue-tinted wires holding up each one.

Their presence makes it absurd when Clayton Forrester (Gene Barry) explains to General Mann (Les Tremayne) how the Martians keep their bright green ships aloft by using “some form of electro magnetic force” and “balancing the two poles” and so on. The illusion is shot.

The obvious solution was for Paramount Home Video to digitally erase the wires, but they didn’t ask for it (i.e., didn’t want to pay for it) and the pooch was screwed. It would have made perfect symmetrical sense to have done so. Just as digital technology had made this 1953 film look sharper than ever before, it followed that digital technology was needed to recreate the original illusion. The wires weren’t that visible 56 years ago, and they weren’t as visible in Paramount Home Video’s 1999 DVD. Obviously the 2005 War of the Worlds DVD was the provider of “detrimental revisionism” — it showed an image that wasn’t meant to be seen.

Four years ago I spoke about this issue with John Lowry, the head of Lowry Digital who’s done some great clean-up and/or digital restoration work on loads of classic films. He was the one hired by Paramount Home Video to clean up War of the Worlds .

“Our job is always to serve the wishes of the client…we do what the client says …and we didn’t have orders to clean up the wires,” he said. “Plus we were working on a very tight budget.”

Lowry faced a similar issue when he was doing the digital remastering of Alfred Hitchcock‘s North by Northwest. “We were working on the scene when the crop duster plane crashes into the gas truck,” he recalls, “and there were 25 or 30 frames of that particular shot in which you could see three wires holding up the rather large model of the airplane.

“And I said to myself, my God, too obvious…it spoils the illusion. And I asked myself, what would Hitchcock do? I knew what he would do. Take the wires out of there. So I did, and the Warner Bros. people approved.

“But ever since then we’ve been very attuned to original artistic intent. And with today’s technology, anything that interferes with the story-telling process or which degrades that process, is dead wrong. We got rid of the wires on the Mary Poppins DVD, for the Disney people. We asked and they said ‘get rid of them’ but they had the money to do it.

“When we were working on the snake-pit scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark you could see all kinds of reflections in the glass separating Ford from the snakes, and there was a very conscious decision made by Spielberg to take the reflections out.”

The North by Northwest plane crash scene