In this month's [read August 2007] issue of Sight and Sound, there is a major article on "75 Hidden Gems" of the cinema. Nothing strange in that. Nothing strange in the fact that one critic/fimaker - David Thompson chooses Jerzy Skolimowski's DEEP END as his "hidden gem". Thompson concludes his short piece with the sentence "The film seems lost in rights problems - rescue it, please." It's probably rubbing shoulders with FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET.

This is where it gets interesting: at the end of the article there is a chance to win 15 of the 75 critics' choices on DVD. You guessed it! One of them is DEEP END. You can even see the spine of the disc and a little bit of the front cover. Sight and Sound bracket this disc as originating from Paramont. However, the spine of the DVD has no studio/distributor's logos. What's going on here? Are they giving away a bootleg? Have they managed to wrangle some sort of one-off copy? Is it a pre-release?

Calling Sight and Sound contributor Tim Lucas! Can you shed any light on this?

I'm afraid I can't. I was personally surprised to find LE ROMAN DE RENARD (which I wrote about) also included in this DVD giveaway, since it was only briefly once released as a French DVD. Seeing some of those prizes made me want to participate, though I'm not sure if this would be kosher.

I don't know about England but in the USA the rights are most definitely owned by Paramount Pictures. A number of theaters, including ours, are trying to convince Paramount to strike a new 35mm print. However, they are concerned that they won't make their money back. We are currently waiting for an answer.

Cinema Arts Centre

Good luck with Paramount. They are not the easiest company with which to deal. I believe that the LA Cinematheque is screening a print of BLOOD AND ROSES in August, and I assume that the source for that is the Paramount Classics Division, which has a mint widescreen 35mm print. However, their video division seems to have no interest in the title at all. I have heard that the current head of Paramount Home Video does not favor vintage films, which implies that DEEP END wouldn't be considered for a DVD release, even if the Classics Division does strike a new 35mm print.

We are working with Paramount Pictures, not Paramount Classics.

The trick is getting enough theaters to commit ahead of time to showing the film, so that Paramount feels that they have sufficient guaranteed bookings to cover all or most of the cost of the print.

The DEEP END effort is a duplicate of an earlier successful campaign, spearheaded by Eastman House, to convince Paramount to make a new 35mm print of Jacques Demy's THE PIED PIPER.

This attempt to get a new print of DEEP END, which is spearheaded by the Anthology Film Archives, has been tougher, mostly because both the film and the director are (sadly) considerably more obscure at this time.

This looks like a BFI cock-up. There is another film called Deep End which is available on DVD and I think they've got confused.

from a friend of mine at the BFI:

Good news! Paramount Pictures is making a new 35mm print of DEEP END. It will probably be ready in late November. If there are any repertory theater programmers on this list who are interested in showing the film, they should contact their local Paramount rep.

Cinema Arts Centre

A heads-up that co-star Jane Asher has a sizable supporting role in Frank Oz's funny DEATH AT A FUNERAL, the first time I've seen her in ages. (She's spent much of her career in British TV shows that may or may not have crossed the pond.) She looks terrific at age 61.