You are now listening to the Someone's Favorite Productions podcast network.

Hey all, welcome back to Punk Vacation episode twenty eight.

This is an unofficial Vinegar Syndrome podcast.

Y'all know we use this time to find the joy in unfettered creativity.

We have been building a podcast here in a community dedicated to bringing awareness and context to movies of any budget, from anywhere and during any time.

And I'm really excited for the first time to be able to present this message to the founder, one of the founders of Vinegar Syndrome, Joe Rubin, who's joined with Oscar today co host, I mean podcast favorite.

So Joe, thanks so much for coming, and Oscar, thanks for setting this up.

Sure, thanks for I guess inviting me.

Please beat your handler today.

Of course we have.

We've been lucky enough to get Oscar on twice and he last time he made me promise that he would be the first third guest.

So Oscar, You're welcome.

Hell yeah.

I was gonna say fuck yeah, but I'm very much thank you very much.

Yeah, you can say either this is a Vinegar Syndrome a podcast, not a I don't even know what's a good alternative, but this is it.

We definitely can see that we are here today to talk talk about the releases for November, which is obviously huge month for Vinegar Syndrome every year.

Before we get into that, Joe, since you're here, I just thought i'd maybe talk a little bit about the journey here.

So it's been really fun to track along with you for a few years now and to grow with y'all in a couple different ways.

We had one of the other the third co hosts here is.

Her name is Celeste de la Cabra, and she coined the term that she sees Vinegar Syndrome as the Library of Congress for smut and exploitation, and I wanted to see how you feel about that, because I loved it as soon as I heard it.

Yeah, I mean, I think it's it's accurate.

I don't know if I would use Library of Congress as a one to one reference point, but yeah, I think that we've made a very conscious effort to as an archive really be like kind of the the final resting place in a good way of as much primarily American genre films, exploitation, horror, hardcore, weird regional stuff, as much as we can and but yeah, I guess that's a nice, nice comparison.

You know, I still see your name specifically when I'm looking through like a Severance set or a couple of Mando movies recently were released, where like you get scanning credits.

So I'm assuming that, just to what you were saying, you take joy in still doing that.

So do you still enjoy, like obviously scanning stuff and going through stuff?

Scanning I don't really do all that much of, but yeah, every time new film comes in, I love going through it until something is either incomplete or damaged or vinegard and then it becomes extremely depressing.

But conceptually, yeah, I mean there's there really is no greater joy than getting film.

Like nothing that arrived today was a mystery because we'd gone through it when we packed it up.

But the satisfaction of being able to go through it sort of see it again and know that it's safe and the case of this material, it was really sort of in peril.

Yeah, there's it's very rewarding.

There's it's it's it's not really something that I can more eloquently articulate, but there's I suppose in the same way that people get excited about you know, finding arts or first edition books, yeah.

Buried treasure.

Yeah, yeah, Well there is definitely an anthropological aspect to what Vinegar Syndrome is doing.

Right, That's not exactly the words you used, but I mean, I think we're even going to talk about it a little bit today on one of the new lines.

But there, y'all.

It just from day one, it just feels like one of the commitments you have as a company is to the rediscovery and restoration of films that would otherwise get lost.

I think for me, and I can only speak for myself.

I can't speak on behalf of any of my partners.

The purpose of Vinegar Syndrome to me is not to release studio films.

We release studio films and titles like that.

The means to it end, the means to the end or the end is that we have a massive film archive of thousands of films.

No, not thousands of films, are actually no, probably thousands of films that we are probably never going to release, and it's because we don't know whol owns them, or we can't get the rights to them, or they're just not commercial or marketable.

But you know, to me, everything we do, feeds should at least feedback to the film archive, and so every real lease the Keep was very successful.

The excitement of the success of the Keep means we have more money to spend it on things that are actually endangered.

And the Keep.

Sure it wasn't in circulation, but it wasn't endangered.

The negative was very well taken care of by Paramount.

There was never any chance that it would be lost or destroyed or stuff somewhere where it would be left or rot.

So, you know, putting releases like that out can be rewarding in terms of the success, but there's far greater again for me in a reward of getting material, and that even if I know that we're never going to be able to release any of it or a very small portion of it, it's still safe and it's not going to be in dangered or left to be mismanaged by someone who may not see its importance or its value or it's or it's pricelessness.

I think that shows up in a lot of ways, especially the people that you surround yourself with.

If you think even like if you take someone like Bleeding Skull that dedicates you know, reviews and writing about a lot of these movies, right, But I think it's a really critical role.

And you know, I was I've been thinking because I as I started this podcast a while ago and now you guys been kind enough to come on and as we're building this.

You know, the thing for me that's it's always drawn me to vinegar syndrome is I've always had a little bit of that personality of I like discovering things that are not yet popular, you know, like it's just kind of it's just kind of been a part of my personality.

I just want to I want to help discover something or draw attention to something that's not getting talked about otherwise.

And so it it just lines up so well with what you just said.

And as we talk to I don't know, if you know, there's a pretty active discord around vinegar syndrome.

There's a subreddit dedicated to this, and as you talk to peopleople on there, it draws a lot of that same personality type, right, like people like the discovery process and talking about Charles's pinion or talking about Scooter mccraye, people that otherwise just wouldn't get that same attention.

I don't think Joe knows what discord is.

I don't know what it is, but I've heard of it.

They are online communities talking about.

They're like, I mean, I don't know.

I don't want to age you, but if if you know what IRC was back in the day, it's like kind of an evolution of that.

It's just like a live chat thing, kind of like if Reddit could be constant in like a literal chat.

That's that's all it is.

But yeah, it's it's very active and for the most part it's uh, it's with people who are who are very hungry for that same kind of stuff.

Obviously, I think the downside to those kinds of things are that, you know, everybody when they see releases announced, a lot of them are like, well, why isn't it it's not catered exclusively to me.

But I think you addressed it already with saying like, getting the studio titles and stuff is a big help to getting the other thing.

I know that.

There was a post a while back that I believe it was you that did it that was like I want to say on maybe the Blu Ray forums, which is that's a fine place, but you know, in regards to like melusine and like kind of title upgrading titles and stuff.

If we can talk about like the Fireworks Woman for a second, was that because I know that people have been asking for that for a long long time.

I mean as far as I remember before I even got back into physical media collecting, like for the last five years, have since stuff written about it, And like, is that something that takes that's like a more costly thing to preserve, I guess, or is that something that you kind of just as the elements come along you you preserve them.

Well, okay, so with with material that's kind of a different subject.

So yeah, I guess with Fireworks Women specifically, I had some print material on it, and prints is always just a depressing thing to have.

But we had prints, and then we acquired the catalog that included Fireworks Women, and the guy we bought it from sent his storage facility inventory and had the sixteen A b rolls that have the blow up cri.

It had all of the materials that we could possibly wanted.

So then when we went to get the stuff, we discovered we kind of discovered a bit before the place that was storing it had lost a lot of it.

They had just lost random boxes.

So in some cases, well films that which were lost.

In other cases it was random reels of films which were lost.

In the case of Fireroks Woman, the sixteen A b rolls were lost and then reel one of the blow up was lost, so we had reels two through four of the blow up, and then I don't know, might have had the complete track, which is guess so very depressing.

Sorry, there's a it's an interview, Jims, so.

I'll be on to go.

Okay.

So we eventually acquired the company that had produced the film, or it acquired the film from the producers in the seventies, and the guy who bought it from had eleven into or a vault inventory that showed all the materials that he was supposed to have, and then when it became closer to getting the materials, the storage pail facility that he was using informed us that the inventory that he had sent us was wrong, and they sent us their accurate one, which showed that a bunch of material had gone missing because they had probably misplaced it, thrown, thrown it away, who knows what.

So in some cases it was entire films, in other cases it was parts of films.

So in the case of fireff Women, we ended up not getting the v reals which were supposed to be there, and then real one of the blow up was also not there, so we had reels two through four of the blow up and we just sat on it for the better part of a decade, because it's just it's depressing to not have a leats three print element on a film, especially when there's part of it and then the rest of it it may have to come from prints, but I've tried to become more lax on that in terms of mentally distinguishing between what makes me excited from what's in the archive perspective versus what's worth putting out regardless of the material we have on it.

So eventually it's like, you know, we have fires when we have enough material here to put it together looking at least better than it otherwise could and complete.

And so we put it together from the real one from a print, and then the other three reels from the blow up, and it's and again, this is maybe not the direction you're looking for, but it's still a very depressing thing to me, because you know, I know that maybe as recent as ten twenty years ago.

All of the material for that film was in one place, whether it was being well taken care of, it wasn't, but at least it was there.

And then this place because of their sloppiness and their just disinterest in what their actual business was, which was storing film, allowed the most valuable material for this movie, the original negative, to be lost.

And that's just dumbfounding to me.

So a release like Fireworks Woman, while it's nice to have it out, it's a depressing thing to me because it showed it.

Basically, it's a perpetual reminder of what has.

Been lost, not what we have right, which I think also is worth worth addressing.

I'm glad you because even newer releases, some of them I'm sometimes surprised to see, like when a bigger when like I guess like Shout or something for example, like I'll see something with scan from it interpositive and it's like a movie from the nineties that I would have guessed there was a negative for.

But I think that that kind of at this specific level in terms of like anything from sex films to exploitation when I think sometimes people are wondering what a scan is because I'll see it sometimes not on the discord, but maybe on Reddit, where people think a thirty five millimeter print and then negative or the same thing.

And I know, Oscar, you've made those like videos, which I think are great.

They're like invaluable that you put on YouTube kind of explaining the differences in the different formats.

But no, I think that's really great to know.

I mean, you're right, it's depressing, but I think that also raises that awareness and hopefully, I mean, I know we don't have like Scorsese level platform here to talk about preservation in that way, but I think that it just for people who hunt this stuff out and they wonder why sometimes these things take a long time, or why the transfers are what they are, or you know, any anything like that, why they might vary from movie to movie.

But that said, I think even a lot of the DVDs, I was just I forget what I put on, but I was watching an old one of the old doubles that you guys put out on DVD, and even those like from the Negative, it looked fucking immaculate.

Like it's crazy that other companies that were doing that, that do transfers like this don't it doesn't even look that good, you know, So I think that's that's yeah.

Like I said, you answered the question kind of like it wouldn't even way better direction than I would have expected, because I think that kind of awareness is just so important.

So I think a good example of what you're just talking about, Joe and Eli, there's a I had.

You know, I've been talking to Ross over at Saturn's Core off and on over the years, both with this podcast and then another one I do called They Live by Film, and he introduced me to Richard Baylor and we had a chance to sit down and man, like I don't know if you've ever met Joe, if you ever met Richard Joe, but the joy in his voice when he was talking about the fact that there was the company and specifically Ross that had been like following him throughout his career and reached out to him for you know, an introspective and they actually had the material and he created a whole program for this guy who was just working in corporate for these movies that had been put out thirty years ago.

Like he you know, he had a second lease on life.

It was amazing to interview with this guy and just see like how critical this work was to him back in the nineties, and then the fact that it's getting rediscovered now is just amazing, Like it was just just raw joy and so, you know, I think that's the one of the many benefits of what y'all are doing, right, is these filmmakers that are putting their heart and soul into this work, they're getting recognition for it, and it's getting that nice release that's equal to the keep, and they're seeing their film on a physical disc with special features and in a nice slipcover, like it's just so wholesome.

I love it.

I think like another yeah, totally, I think I agree with that as well, and trying to give at least at the very least when you put something out, you know, regardless of whether it gets those very like much loved hard slip covers or cases or anything, you know, really lavish things, I think there is something to me which is like very special about the fact that we'll put something like Fireworks Woman or like you know, Mitchell Brothers stuff on given pretty much you know, slightly different but pretty much the same treatment as something which is like you know, a really enormously sought over catalog gem from a studio.

It's this very strange, surreal thing because when when I started here, we were doing much less of the studio things.

But I think even those in time have really grown in ambition and we're able to take on enormous projects now.

Like Joe's work.

With a Good Bar was pretty like extensive and incredible like work.

Yeah, like the amount of sheer amount of like it took years.

Yeah, yeah, the licensing every like all these things.

And I think it's very important to me because the fact that I think I said this very early on to Joe, where he would tell me a story about something that he did in like maybe twenty thirteen or something, and I'm like, that's a story, Like that's a really fascinating story that no one is going to hear unless they're in this building.

Now, how do we get your stories and your brain and the hopefully not the not too much of his brain, because yea, how do we get you guys' stories out to showcase that we're not just you know, kind of doing minimal work or you know, we just license things and just use the the one inch tape Master used and we get one hundred dollars to like transfer that one inch tape master.

But again, when we have the original negative here or a print or a couple of prints, don't don't start bringing prints like and the Joe hates Prince.

I love Prince because I love film exhibition.

But regardless of Prince, utilitarian, they serve a purpose, which is to watch them.

They are not archival, they are not preservation elements.

They and if the only thing or the best thing left for a movie is a print, even if it is a brand new print, that is still incredibly.

Sad, classic Joe derailment.

So going back to.

My no, this is good, This isn't getting into the brains.

Right, Yeah, the original The original thing which I think is just fascinating is that, like you know, when things come in here, it's a you know in me and Steven in some cases and Lindsay going through the material and treating it archivally first.

Then it's going to Brandon, who does these incredible is an incredible scanning tech.

Then a restoration team.

It's like a again I've done this many times before.

I apologize, Chris, but.

It's so many different people, each treating these films as if they're the most important thing on the planet, which I think they are.

Yeah, all I was going to interject when you brought up Brandon, is that I think it's important to look to just keep in mind that, you know, we're fortunate to be vertically integrated, but there are a lot of people here who work on every release.

You know, My my involvement generally stops at a certain point because the areas of the releases that I am the one in charge of we're best suited for and most knowledgeable about, ends when other people become the more knowledgeable or the more student.

So Ryan, who's my origin, my founding partner, I guess.

And when it comes to overseeing all of the digital stuff, that's his domain.

I have a basic understanding of it.

But he can talk circles around me when it comes to digital things, just as okay, top circles probably around pretty much anyone when it comes to film things.

So it's not you know, we each have our areas of expertise and where we become more so of the final say on how things should be done and what's correct and what's incorrect.

I love that.

And actually there's one more thing.

I don't know if this is a question or just a statement, But I my day job is in sales and marketing, and I work for a large tech company, and I've been trying to figure out how to do this because I use vinegar syndrome as I think it needs to be taught in business school.

So I don't know, maybe you're gonna tell me that's Ryan or the combination of y'all, but your ability to not only understand your customer, but serve your customer and produce new products like that.

You know, every every retailer if you want to think not.

I don't mean to put you on such a broad category, but they're always trying to figure out how to do new product introductions.

That's like a big thing for them.

And every single one that y'all have put out is like a slam dunk, and a lot of them sell out or at least sell well or a peer two from the outside, and I, like, I just think it's it's this incredible case study in sales and marketing and understanding the customer.

So I wanted to give you kudos for that.

And I guess if there's a question in this is how much of that is intentional when you set out and how much of it has kind of been organic as you've grown in different sub labels and different you know, different areas of the website and partner labels and just each of these decisions.

I think it's the opposite.

Nothing was intentional when we started out, and it's become more intentional as we've gone along.

Okay, that's and I'm just curious on the on the Melusine side, And I know that that has a lot to do with, like with credit card stuff, and that's that's the main thing there.

But you know, when you guys first started obviously and you probably noticed that I've been focusing more on stuff like fireworks, women and the reasons I was really drawn to vinegar syndrome originally was because of the work you guys put into restoring like sex films, everything from like Golden Age to like, you know, more kind of curiosities or obscurities.

And so how is.

That since you've switched to Melusine, since you've had to is that impact like in terms of how to reach out to people or kind of do you have to like be more conscious of raising awareness to that.

I guess like was last.

Tango and experiment in that when you guys put that there because I know there was like an exclusive slip there, and there's some stuff you can buy on Melo Scene that you can get at Vinegar Syndrome site.

Because it really breaks my heart that people can't, you know, we see, like I would have thought the Fireworks Woman would have been like a huge seller right out the gate.

And I'm not saying it isn't, just to be clear, but you know, I just know you guys have that counter on the site, and so I'm just wondering if that if you've had to rethink like how to approach the malusine side.

Well, okay, so there's a lot of different things in there.

So you know what, when we started, the kind of philosophy, to the degree that there was one, was finding lost films and releasing them, finding films which were otherwise unavailable or only available in really awful quality versions or cut versions in releasing them.

And sex films were kind of a natural part of that.

They weren't the focus, they weren't the impetus for starting the brand, but the obvious truth is that these were often films that had never had any kind of good release even in the vhs there they looked terrible or they were cutting.

So it was kind of a natural part of what the brand was, but it wasn't what the brand was.

So yeah, there was if you look at the kind of year over a year trajectory, we had a lot of them.

We had we had a fairly it was like a sixty forty non sex versus sex, a sixty percent non sex forty percent sex, and then it became kind of fifty to fifty and then went back down to about sixty forty and then probably about seventy thirty in favor of non sex.

And that was again, it was entirely dictated by the market.

You know, if sex films had dominated sales, which they did a lot more than we used to be able to sell a lot more of them ten years ago.

And I can actually directly pinpoints when that that bottom sort of falling out, and it was January of twenty seventeen.

So Amazon had never allowed them, but there was kind of an unwritten like you can put them up on Amazon, They're not going to do anything.

In January of twenty seventeen, they actually sort of take them down, and we went from in some cases like Taboo was selling the Taboo films we'd had the first three out.

I think that was actually the month that we put the fourth one out, and the first three had done tremendously well, and the fourth one was a big flop by comparison, in large part because we couldn't get it up onto Amazon, and with the decreasing sales, it was a choice of Okay, we're going to continue to invest our digital resources and our money into releasing lots and lots of more titles that are going to be increasingly poor sellers, or are we going to focus on what we're seeing as in at least based on how many units are selling.

And you know, we've never turned away from sex films, and then again it was with Melusine.

Ironically, it's actually allowed us to release more of them because now it is its own dedicated site, so there has to be two or three releases every single month in order to keep the site fresh and to keep it as a draw.

But yeah, there's absolutely a loss from not having them on the Veneer Syndrome homepaid because the customer base that's going to go specifically to a sub site is certainly much smaller than the one that's going to go to the Veneer syndrome site.

And does that mean that you know, if fire when we're on the Veneer syndrome normal site, that it would have necessarily sold better.

Not necessarily, I mean there's also still with these films, a pretty finite number of people who buy them, and I can generally get us within a margin of one hundred how many units each of these titles are going to sell in the first month.

That's crave why that's a skill.

Look at it like, if you want to do it yourself, you can just see, Okay, the new titles go up on the first they tend to sell in the first month, six to nine hundred.

That's the range you're you're talking about specifically for Malou Scene, right.

There are outliers.

I mean, I'm hoping that Green Door is going to be an outlier.

You know, we'll see thirty days from now, but it's not surprising when we don't sell out of a limited edition on Value Scene for many, many months.

And that's also why the early releases, we were doing three thousandth editions on blue ray only titles, and a number of those have done alright, but a lot of them are still sitting with over one thousand, if not two thousand units and stuck.

And that's why we reduced the Women Edition quantities to two thousand.

And I'd like to go less because I would rather them sell out quickly than just sort of languish around and then filter through sale after sale.

But it's again, just from a production perspective, the cost of doing two thousand versus one thousand is such a the two thousand price break is so much higher that it's just not worth it to manufacture less.

Oh, I see, Oh interesting, Okay, yeah, I.

Guess.

So I actually was talking to someone else about this, and I don't remember.

I think it was actually on here.

I think it might have been the last episode, only it's less on.

But like, so, I figured there was a ceiling with that audience because it you know, well, we don't have to really get into the specifics of that.

But does that ceiling grow even a little bit now, like incrementally with each with each kind of passing month, with people more discovering the stuff, Because I do find when people do discover this stuff, specifically on the on the adult side, it is kind of an exciting thing.

And I think a lot of that just has to do with the quality of stuff now too, because just for tuo of being shot on film, it looks better than ninety five percent of what's.

Put out the day, if not more.

But like that, does that ceiling grow even a little bit each each each passing year now?

Since Melo scene is kind of its own thing now.

So, I mean it definitely, it's definitely had hit some kind of leveling point.

Uh so.

The yeah, I mean, yeah, there's there's outliers like the SATSO release and Gretel that was a cross listed title as well, but that was a huge seller.

That was highest selling of all the sub label releases that month in September.

So is that because the sex film audience is growing?

Probably not.

It's probably because Sato is a increasingly known entity.

Pink films are increasingly known subgenre, and so the audience for that specific type of film is inherentbly larger.

Yeah, So what is.

The audience for Behind the Green Door going to be?

I'm hoping that it's larger than the audience for Sunner Spreading Girls, but we'll see it.

But that's probably a perfect segue into the Mitchell Brothers because we kind of brought them up and we're already on the Maleousine site, so let's just start there.

So, first of all, congrats on getting that catalog.

It's very exciting.

Is this going to be come out as a separate line or are y'all going to be putting them out as part of an existing line unreleasing.

No, it's going to be its own line.

It's going to be Mitchell Brothers Film Group.

So when we acquired the catalog, we all thought that it was kind of important to keep it as it's own thing because it always was they were.

They put their names ahead of their films, so it was something that just seemed natural to carry over.

And how vast is that catalog?

Uh, it was enormous.

Well, it's not really an answer, but there's about to thirty feature films, probably closer to thirty wo and over one hundred shortsh awesome.

That's that's fucking great.

A lot of special features in there too.

Then that's exciting.

I hope this sells really well for y'all.

There was there was discussion in the last episode about the possibility of y'all bringing Wakefield Pool into existence, So we're going to put that out there.

You don't have to answer for it, but now that you're here, there was a there was some discussion on being able to bring those films into existence too.

What do you oh, I guess yeah, because they're like out of print and there you know, it's like they're from previous DVD releases, So.

Those are going to be coming back, but from a from someone.

Else close collaborator.

Yeah, okay, cool, nice, that's good.

Nice, nice tip.

I appreciate that.

M I got it.

No no isshoes there.

And then beyond the Mitchell Brothers, that's an exciting release, there's another big release that you kind of tease that as well.

So can you talk at all about the rest storing Behind the Green Door and and just kind of your excitement around getting that out on disc?

Yeah, I mean Behind the Green Door was obviously the film that they are always going to be best remembered for.

With a number of their bigger films, sadly they did not have the camera originals.

They had intermediates, but they didn't have the everything in sixteen miter and then starting with Green Door, they started blowing everything up to thirty five milarator.

So for in a number of the bigger films, we don't have the sixteen originals, we only have the blow ups, so the quality is slightly capped.

Again, we're going to do it as much as we can to make them look as good as possible.

But with Green Door, thankfully we did actually have the Hemor original, so we were able to work from that and again get it looking as good as it could, considering that it was stored in the basement of the theater for about fifty years.

But yeah, I don't know, like, what else do you want me.

To that's awesome?

Was it a difficult restoration process or was it in a pretty good condition?

It was in all right condition.

It definitely there were complaints from the restoration.

There's complaints about everything.

Yeah, there was some.

So it was shot in sixteen reversal, and sixteen reversal is basically like a dust magnet.

So any movie that is shot in sixteen reversal is going to be dirty, dirtier than if it were shot in negative.

And you can see if you watch the old video DVD releases there's a lot of black dirt, single frame black dirt.

That's not because they transferred a print which was damaged.

It's because the sixteen original, which is what we scanned was dirty.

You know, even the best handled sixteen reversal materials are going to have more dirt on them than this than equally well handled thirty five negative or sixteen negative.

So there was definitely proportionally more dirt, lot harder to remove it.

But it's certainly going to look cleaner and better, and the color looks beautiful and the framing is appropriate.

It.

Yeah, it's gonna look the best as ever it ever has and the best it can.

That's great, that's really exciting.

I'm really happy to hear that.

And it's like a deluxe release, right, it's three discs.

It includes a four K.

On the four K, we have the feature, a commentary track with Jared Stearns, who wrote Marilyn chambers biography Pure, also a French duble track courtesy of Pulse, and French translation subtitles and German translation subtitles in case you want to watch it in English but with German or French subtitles.

Blu Ray has the feature and a forty minute sort of general over historical overview about the Bitch Brothers sort of their you know, their story, their filmography and their significance.

Piece about Maryland Chambers created by Jared her biographer.

Oh god, I'm definitely missing.

Yeah, I know exactly what you're forgetting.

You're forgetting your winding through episode, which is a Oscar forced me to do a video.

I have to I have to say those videos are the best, man.

I really love all those, like like that Against the Grain documentary you guys had on like the Last Picture Show was like if that's like crack man, it just whatever.

I see those ones.

On YouTube, the winding through ones, those are those are great?

So is the winding through specifically about like the obtaining the catalog and this exact process you just talked about it.

It's about something that probably only I care about, which is the nuances of effect based editing in sixteen A.

B Roles and how Mitchell Brothers used it quite differently than most would.

That's an incredible skill level.

But but Joe, I do want to call this out because you may be the like one of a few people that cares about that to that level of detail now.

But but people learn, like if you go through the Vinegar Syndrome catalog, it's essentially film school, like the special features that you'll put on these discs are historical, they're informative, like what you just said, I mean, like it's amazing to listen to the cinematographers and the writers and the production designers and like like they I think that it's this is what you know.

It's it's easy to say that there's a lot of special features on the discs, but I really love that you care about that, and I love that, like Oscar, the way that you promote the archive, like these are very important things that y'all are doing.

And I like to promote Joe's incredible knowledge, Like he's the most difficult person on the fucking planet, but he's so incredibly smart that it almost makes up for it.

Almost, So just to finish up what the package has the third day, which is also going to be available separately in case you decide you don't want to buy the film, which you want to buy the soundtrack, and it isn't a good soundtrack.

It's folky, non vocal, but folky early seventies, very San Francisco score, which I think is also beautifully used in the film.

Music is used sparingly and deliberately in the film, and it's a lovely score.

And then the limited edition includes a forty page book in the case, which reprints the short story that the film has adapted from, as well as a liner notes book in the disc itself, which has a number of essays, again one from Jared and one that I really want to kind of give special attention to because of the one that I pushed through.

So for whatever that's worth, which is about and now I'm about a yank Levine Lavigne, who's you know, a side character in the film, but one that was always really fascinating to me.

And I was just chatting with one of the researchers that we worked with regularly, Sean Langrick, and I said, you know what, what did you ever know you ever looked into him?

And she was like, oh yeah, absolutely, Here here's all the information about Like, oh, do you want to write an essay about his life?

And he's like he'd a fastening with So I think that Sean's essay to me is one of the kind of extras highlights because and I'll go on a little tangent here, I don't like critical extras.

By critical, I mean, like, you know, if someone wasn't alive or involved with the film and they or they didn't have like a direct relationship with the filmmakers or people who were involved in the film where they can tell the stories of people who are no longer alive.

I don't generally care what a critic or an academic or a historian has to say about a movie if they're providing me with information history, primary sources that they're distilling down to the ideas.

Great.

But and again this is not to you know, dismiss academic writing as a whole.

I think there's some fascinating academic writing on the film everything else, but that's not what excites me about extras on a disc.

I want to learn.

I want to learn from the people who actually made the film about how they made the film and why and what it was like, not someone who is giving their opinion on the film.

That's a good pot Okay, I'm glad you brought that up, because I'm just curious, Like you know, I know some features specifically when you get like Hong Kong films or and maybe I just want to make sure I'm not misreading this, but like I feel like sometimes we do get people who do who kind of provide more context for those Do you oversee that as well, or do you kind of let other people kind of handle that stuff since it's not as much in your in your it doesn't excite you as much.

Or are you able to kind of just objectively know that, like, Okay, this release needs you know, X, Y and z as like an essay, you know, anything for like a VSA release.

I guess it's just the one that's coming immediately to mind, because I know there were a few Hong Kong ones over the.

Last couple of months.

I mean, extras as a whole is not an error that I get much involved with.

We have a number of people who are specifically or primarily producing extras.

So of course, you know the Hong Kong stuff.

A lot of it has lately been produced by Claudia, and she is very good at trying to find people.

The problem agains a lot of Hong Kong movies and Asian films in general is it's hard to get in touch, and in many cases people are just not available, they're disinterested, they're dead.

So we're lucky in that respect to have a number of really really knowledgeable historians like Frank Jenning and John Charles who know the histories of these films and know the careers and lives of the people who made them, and can speak about how these movies were produced, how they were distributed, in some cases, how they were censored, and do so from a position of authority.

So there's a lot of really great historical information that I think comes up in the extras.

Even if the people involved with the film are no longer alive, unwilling to participators can be found.

But the extras as a whole, I'm not the one to speak about that.

That's the extras producers.

Claudia, you and Elijah, of course, are the ones who are actually spending their days chasing people down to convince them to do inner use about movies they might have made thirty, forty fifty years ago and not thought about since.

Yeah, and the people who made it, not just like the Big Stars, you know.

I think the Big Stars is interesting, but you've heard many of them say the same things about the same movies.

I love Claudia's pieces where she talks to a special effects designer or someone who makes masks or gore effects.

Absolutely, he's so.

Good at getting like really good stories out of them too, And because they're not oftentimes they're not the people who really are like, oh, they're just problem solvers, you know.

Well I think that also, and this is I'm gonna I talked to a director one of released one of their films, but she had a very dismissive thing when I asked about interviewing actors, and she said, you're going to interview an actor, what are you going to ask them?

Like?

What did the director tell you to tell.

You to do?

And then you did it?

What?

Wow?

I think that might be a bit too so, but you know, and there have been some you know, obviously many actors have great stories about working on the film.

But to me, I think the kind of to what Os was saying that the many of the best interviews come from crew people's secondary crew people because they were they were not the ones whose opinions were being asked when they were shooting or were not really being taken seriously.

They could sit back and observe, and they have less of an ego about you know, they can they're more apt to shit talk or kind of dish on what actually happened that an actor may not be wanting to talk about or may spin it away to not hurt their prime or the director may not be willing to acknowledge a problem on set because it doesn't look at on them.

So yeah, secondary crew people.

I mean, I love talking to cinematographers.

Yes, cinematographers can often tell you the best and most intricate stories because they have to be there every single moment.

Yeah, and actors come and go.

There are plenty of directors who are in name only directors where other people really made the film but they took the credit.

But sind them eat them.

Editors too, Yeah, Editors are also can be great storytellers.

So Joe, in addition to the amazing workout doing with the Mitchell brothers, the Sato said, I'm assuming is also going to be on Malu scene.

Right, the Sato said, is going to be on the Vinegar Syndrome and Maloscene site because anything that is non hardcore we can list on both sites.

This is the second volume of the Sato collection.

We have many more volumes to go.

This one.

The first one's three films set.

The second one is the two films set only, because that's how many films we were only get done in time deadline.

But there was going to be you know a lot more coming and yeah, I mean, what anything specially you want to go over with this second volume?

Well, so yeah, go ahead.

Oh my only question in regards to the Pink Line is, I know we've gotten two back to back Satos, So is the Pink Line gonna I'm assuming it's gonna expand beyond that at some point or are you are you trying to focus on because his filmography obviously it's huge, and a lot of Pink films, you know, they're usually short.

So is the idea usually to be like a volume of like kind of like a couple movies per volume or is that going to kind of vary.

It's going to be two or three films per release.

And then in terms of the focus, we started with Sato and we're really going to be focusing on Sato for the first few Pink Line releases because we got so many Sato films so early.

But we do have some additional non Sauto Pink films which will be coming out maybe next year or the following year.

But we have quite a few releases planned under Pink Line, and again, the majority of them we're going to be Sato, but there's a bunch of others that we're we're working on and also trying.

To require awesome.

No.

I think the thing I'm so excited about is that, you know, this is one thing I was trying to talk to about the Mexican cinema as well that you'll have put out.

I don't mean to detour into that, but just to bring it back to the pink line.

You know, other countries, just because they're not us, the cinema the film history in these countries is pretty deep and rich, and I think the pink line is very exciting for me because you're getting to see that these are not just castaway productions like these are high value, high budget productions, and you're getting these beautiful releases around that really bring attention to it.

So I think the I'm super excited about this line.

I'm glad to hear it's expanding, you know, and you have a lot planned well.

I think also, you know, looking at not just Sato's films, but the pink film industry in Japan in the seventies and eighties and into the nineties, it's incredible that the amount of just artistry that was put into these fifties so that where you're finding camera work and editing and just general creativity that is far more elaborate and thoughtful and meaningful than in a lot of big Hollywood blockbusters.

Yes, and they were given such freedom creatively, which is so exciting, I think, in something you don't always get in these larger productions, huge production design budgets, huge, you know, a lot of creative freedom in the storytelling.

It's it's just such an exciting line.

Maybe staying in Asia for a bit as we move away from Alius now to the main line, I know that everybody's very excited about the Shaw Brothers set, and so this is going y'all are going to be putting this out on vs.

The mainline?

Correct?

Correct, Yes, that's exciting.

So it's three films and what what How did these three films get chosen for the Shaw set?

Uh?

So?

I guess in terms of my personal taste when it comes to Hong Kong movies, I love the horror.

I think that a few countries have made weirder and more interesting horror movies.

Than Hong Kong.

Hell yeah, I don't know if countries the right way to describe any more, but at the time that they were making yeah, uh, you know, basically Italians and Hong Kong filmmakers are like, you will not find weirder movies.

And when when we first did our when we did our initial deal with the Show Catalog, we asked about a lot of horror titles that they said were not available, and we kind of persisted and then did a second deal.

So it was kind of like, you know, what, what did they allow us to take?

And often when doing box sets, the idea is the whole is greater than some of the parts, so we're going to take movies that maybe a tougher cell.

Not that the films themselves are not as good, but they're just you know, they're more obscure.

They're less likely to have specific, specific excitement around them as individual titles.

And I think something that's kind of ironic in these Shaw films is I feel like we could have released all of these titles as individual films and done or had had an equally enthusiastic response as in a box set.

But they also are really into box sets, so that's in part why we're doing branded Shaw lines now.

They really want the Shaw name out there.

So you know, for these first three, it just seemed like an interesting pairing because I always like putting together box sets that even if there isn't like a direct through line between the films, they speak to how a theme or an idea progressed in whatever the overarching point to the of the box is over either a period of time or you know, the same subject matter or type of film from the perspective of different filmmakers.

And I think in this case, if there's going to be an overarching theme, it's you know, what types of horror films?

It's like, this is the introduction, So what types of horror film were shovelers producing in the early mid eighties.

So we have an anthology Haunted Tales.

We have one of their kind of goofier horror fantasy, just sort of throwing everything and see what works films in the form of Sex Beyond the Grave, which is also kind of a Poltergeiser buff And then we have their just dead serious, mean approach Hell Has No Boundary, which to me is by far the best in the sentiment.

It's one of the yeah in the eighties period.

So I think like this is going to give a good sense of Okay, here's volume one, here's what you can look forward to maybe in more specifically focused volumes going forward.

But yeah, it's it's Shaw horror in the early eighties, and I think three really strong examples of the different types of horror films that they were making.

That's amazing.

Then the speaking of the eighties, one of the most iconic and time piece kind of movies that came out was these goofy, little ugly characters called garbage Pail Kids.

Can you talk it all about?

Where who had the idea to acquire this wonderful movie and put it out as part of the VSU line?

Because I'm excited about this.

This is extremely nostalgic for me.

It was it was entirely Oscars.

I thought you were gonna we were doing an MGM deal, and Oscar said, here's a few films, uh, And I didn't bother putting them into the list.

And then he cried and pleted, oh yeah, right about putting painful of films.

And the one that he was most enthusiastic about what his kid.

Let the record state, Yeah, Dirty Work was the second most exciting thing.

It was actually that he actually did cry and pleat about were Dirty Work?

Mac and Me and Last Time in Paris?

But no garbage Biel kids.

I don't remember who suggested it was just Justin wants to No.

I think it was Ryan.

No, it was Justin wanted that one.

And then you were like, I think it'll do well.

I it'll do I have no problem, Okay, Oscar is a problem with garbage Frail kids.

I do not because I managed the video store for about eight years and that thing rented like crazy our DVDR like fly off the shelves.

So I have no concerns about that thing doing well.

And I think, you know, and we had this conversation with like garbage trail kids, why are we putting that out?

And I like also that it was directed by a seventy year old British guy.

I mean, look, you're right, you're you're You're completely right.

That thing when it plays out in a repertory capacity here in La it fucking kills every time.

It's always packed, and it always gets a great response.

I mean, there's there's there's definitely that's like the textbook definition.

Of a cult movie.

You know, I know that word kind of what does that even fucking mean anymore?

But like, I.

Think that's awesome that you guys are putting it out as it and it's getting Yeah.

It's the type of thing that really does very literally beg the question of who thought this was a good idea?

Who did who?

Who was it intended to be entertaining to.

And I'm not saying this in a negative way, like I think that the film.

I've watched it once in like two thousand and six, But you know, the one time I watched it in two thousand and six, I enjoyed.

I was very snobbish about it before I watched it, and it's actually fine.

Like it's a it's a creaky set dound British children's comedy that is also tying into forbidden to discuss product placement.

It's it's fascinating.

What I'm excited for is Claudie is doing the extras on that one, So I'm gonna get to hear about why the fuck would anybody make this thing that I don't like it.

It's not that that's not the problem, it's just.

It is the problem.

That's the only problem you have with it.

But we've called out Claudia.

I meant to say this earlier, you know, when when I had a on here, we talked about the fact that I think the the special features sometimes take on the personality of the producer.

And I love the discs that she puts out because she's got that artist mindset right Like I love her background and in kind of a museum art like high art, because she brings that credibility like y'all said, you're you know, you talk about the behind the scenes people, but she comes at it from a very like curious perspective because she's learning.

But she's also got that that tint of being like a creative, like an artist.

So I I love her special features.

Actually, yeah, and just from a you know, I look at everything from how much stress do they cause me when they arrive?

Good?

Good top gladdy cool.

Well, I'm I cannot wait to hear the reaction about garbage pel kids, but I'm going to defend it because I like it.

Then the last, oh, I guess there's there's two were to discuss quickly than I want to make sure we end on the new exciting sub label, but we missed the other VS line.

So this is an interesting one because this is not from the eighties, but this is actually from two thousand and seven.

Correct time crimes.

Not so Bigelando.

Yeah, so yeah, time Crimes and since yeah, since you brought out this is something that again we have to give Justin credit for.

This is a movie.

So Magnolia, which is one of our partner labels, Yeah, has mostly contemporary catalogs, so contemporary being two thousands and on, and this is the title that came up, and Justin came to Ryan and I was like, Magnolia doesn't really know what to do with Time Crime, Like, well, obviously we want it.

So it was it's I think the most modern movie that Vinegar Syndrome has ever released.

That was exactly my question.

You know that.

Yeah, Oh go ahead, Chris, Sorry, no, no, no, I'm curious about that.

That was exactly my question.

I can't imagine anything on the VS main line that's older than two thousand, this past two thousand, maybe I'm off.

What am I thinking?

Yeah, well, the fastened movies, that's it.

That's the only thing I could true, and the Prophecy movies.

Other than that, nothing else is really mines.

I was gonna say exit stuff, but that's also nineties.

It just feels more modern.

Uh yeah, you know what, when we started again, you can see the trajectory kind of change.

It was sixties and seventies with a little bit of eighties, then become then it became seventies and eighties with a little bit of nineties.

Now it's eighties and nineties with a little bit of seventies and two thousands.

And now I think that the inevitable shift that I'm not particularly happy about, but it's the way things go.

Is it's going to become necessary to do more early two thousands.

Movies Ted Bundy as well.

That was a vis Or VSL no VSA VSA.

Yeah, yeah, so yeah.

I was a snob when I was younger.

I still have a snob.

When I was a kid in the nineties, I didn't watch movies from the nineties.

I saw a few, but I was watching movies from the sixties and seventies when I was a young adult in the two thousands, I didn't watch movies from the two thousands.

So I'm kind of on this like twenty year back.

Okay, then it becomes acceptable.

So time crimes is on that cusp, and it does make me squeamish to think that there could become a day where Vininger syndrome releases a movie from like twenty fifteen.

I hope that okay, but you know, as long as it still adheres to the shot on film factor, which Time Crimes does, and it's still genre or ideally horror.

I don't want a film elements, yeah, from a film element.

Yeah.

I don't want to rule out any possibility.

And again, I think the Time Crimes is, you know, if it was a film those ten years earlier that we wouldn't there wouldn't have been any kind of trepidation about it because it is a you know, a pure genre film and I I mean, I'm excited for it.

Actually, this is actually a film that I am excited for the first time that we became aware that was available.

Like it was like you know, right and I both like absolutely.

It wasn't even the sense of, oh, well does this really fit?

Does this make sense?

What are the problems?

What are the repercussions going to be?

Will people be upset?

It was No.

This is obviously a film that we want, And this is.

A film that I think, you know, it was at the time that people who saw it they loved it.

A fun metric for me.

And I'll just say this really quick because I know we're a little short on time.

But like, one of my favorite things about when I finally got back into physical media that VS did was that you guys did a lot of Dogs of the Week, which you know, the Ciskel and Ebert thing.

A lot of those got preserved through through VS, like The Children and among others.

That's just the one that hit me.

But you know, this was like a movie where it was critically well received, and I think most people you talk to like it, and I think that it's just a lot of people missed it or a lot of people have been waiting for something like this to come along.

And I think it's awesome that it goes through both ends of the equation.

And to be clear about that, I just mean, like when something was a Dog of the Week, I think they got it wrong.

I think it's great that you guys preserved something like that because it was something that deserved the second life.

But I just liked that it goes both ways, that it's something that if people who saw it, they knew about it, but they're like actually genuinely excited either to discover it or to.

Finally, you know, have it in this form.

So we've brought up Justin a few times here, and I don't know from my perspective, cinematograph is very closely linked to Justin in terms of curation, just out of curiosity.

Then we'll get right into the title.

But is that generally true?

I think it's you know, Justin is definitely the voice of cinematograph.

We will frequently he and I disagree on sometimes what titles belong on cinematograph, and his rubric is in large part this is not a negative comment.

If he likes the film, he wants it on cinematograph.

If he doesn't like the film, he doesn't want a cinematograph.

Then a point of contention where there are films that I feel are best suited for cinematograph, and Justin is just not a fan of them, so he very strongly objects.

And then there are other instances where I have strongly objected myself to films that I don't think are appropriate to the brand identity, where he makes in a passion case to Ryan and then Ryan and I was like, oh, let's just do this, so we did.

So.

I think that by and large, though we are all in agreement that the films I come out understand a matagraph belong on that brand because they are correctly themed to that brand.

And I think that's a perfect segue into a close range because that feels like right in the sweet spot for the for the label.

Yeah, and that was a film that you know, when I was initially thinking about, like I could this be a VSU?

And then I have remember talking to you.

Ryan was like, when's the last time you watched it?

And I said I don't know, and twenty years ago and he's like, yeah, you should watch it again.

That's not a VSU.

It went to Cinematagraph.

Nice.

Well, Joe, thank thank you so much for making this time today and for giving us insights into the company and kind of what motivates you.

A lot of the ideas I had about who you were seemed to really be true.

And please please keep doing it for the right reasons because it shows and we're gonna be here kind of championing the company from from what we can do for our pedestal.

Well, thanks for having me, and I do need to go have your love five years.

It's in your order, all taped down.

You don't do anything to a beautiful easy yep ogain.

Thanks again, Joe.

Uh Oscar, let's talk about your baby.

Yeah, so congratulations on having a first child.

Yes, thank you very much.

Technically that would go to my cat Jigsaw, who does tricks and ship.

She's very lovely.

But yes, my first like a pet project instead of just a pet.

Good, thank you very much.

Since I came here, I I I don't come from like I did buy physical media, but I was very sparing.

I always wanted to reward projects that I thought were really ambitious, and you know, bringing something out that I knew kind of took a lot of work.

And that's kind of how I came into it and came into archiving.

I come from an archival background.

I try, you know, I think they When I was training to be an archivist, I had a weird perspective because I was really interested in film history.

But I really wanted the I wanted to hear the stories about why films got lost or became missing or were not more mentioned.

And I think that really drew me to Vinegar Syndrome.

When I first heard about Herschel Gordon Lewis like the lost film, this is exactly what I'm about.

And then Massage Parlor Murders just knocked it up a punch, and you know, now we've put out maybe like I don't know, a couple dozen like lost films, which is just kind of mind blowing over the course of our entire history.

And just did the ten Lost Films last year, and I was so incredibly excited.

And then I came right up against our lovely guest who just left, Je Rubans, our programmer, and if I don't know if any of it made it in, but we but had all the time on what we think is cool, what we think is interesting, and I really respect his opinion even if it's always wrong.

And no, no, I really respect his opinion.

But I remember we would have these long, lengthy discussions about films that each of us really liked, the other person didn't like.

Ryan didn't like it, like Brandon saw some of it and was like kind of iffy on it.

But Reviver, which is our new sub label, is kind of like a something that I came to everybody about, mainly because of the fact that we run one of the largest archives in the United States, almost purely by pulling from the same pool of money that goes towards you know, special features and making T shirts and random stuff that you'd think it was a different like money pool or something, but we're not that big, So I would always have to really sporadically reach out.

I apologize for the rmbly answer, but the I would always have to reach out very and very key pivotal times, like normally after a sale if something did well or something that I was involved with, just because I was like, look how good this did.

Also I want I need twenty thousand dollars worth of Tuscan cans because we're getting a new collection and in two weeks.

And so I guess the initiator of reviv is just you know, trying to bring back the that amazing aspect of vinegar syndrome that I've always loved, while also keeping the mystery and the actual branding of being an archivist and looking through things that you don't know what you're gonna find.

Digging through a box or a container that is disgusting and you don't want to touch it, but you have to in order to get what's inside.

And then you have to put it on a rewind bench or throw it on a scanner if it's actually prepped for being put on a viewer and actually just find out what this fucking thing is.

So the entire idea of the release is we're not telling you what you're getting.

So it's very much similar to like, I love surprises, and I love like having some creative freedom with like April Fool's Day releases and kind of like that, but in this case it's much less for like a a jokey like end result is something which you're either going to be like why the fuck, it's going to be something which serves a very speci purpose, which is film access is the most key aspect of being a film archive and being a film preservation company.

After I'd argue the conservation and maintenance of our materials, keeping them safe, and the preservation making sure that they survive long after I'm gone and dead and everybody else is dead.

And so yeah, that's what Revivor is.

The first release is really exciting.

I'll give you a hint because I thought about a really good one.

Okay, I should have written more about this in the copy, but I'm glad I didn't.

But if you look at the very first release of Vineger Syndrome ever Lost films of hers to Gordon Lewis, there is a bit of a connection, I'll say that, and I think it was one of the initiating ideas of why I wanted to choose this film.

And it's a really exciting film, so exciting that we even pull from the dreaded thirty five millimeters release print instead of.

It instead of as much as everybody hates it, humanity exactly.

And yeah, it's a really fun movie.

I really enjoyed it.

And we threw in a bunch of it's a grab bag, so basically we you know, we even spent too.

It's four K on everything on this release.

Future releases may vvery just depending on source material.

Like one.

The second release has a film which I've always wanted to put out and I finally can put it out, which has a real so incredibly badly water damaged that you barely can make out what's happening of it.

That took its technically took eight months of treatment and least twelve rewinds very careful.

It took.

It's taken years to kind of get it to the state where we can actually scan it.

But yeah, the first one is really exciting.

It has a bunch of a couple of weird shorts.

It has an extended ELI.

Thank you for what you said earlier about the winding through videos.

I really love getting to do them and share my unbridled excitement about film preservation and the elements that we use and the stories behind them.

And this is an extended version of a winding through that is going to be released.

It's released with the sale, So yeah, I'm really excited about it.

And the shorts are really fucking weird.

It'll be a random if you like anything something weird, the clap.

You know, the days of Vrainy and Pertrucci still echo onward still to this day with her amazing work, but it definitely echoes in this first release, and I think it's something that really serves as the backbone of what at least I wanted to do it.

This release.

Well, I just want to say thank you for thank you again for doing those videos because what I had talked about, I think I bought this up when I was still just guesting on the show before I came on as a co host, was you know, a big thing from the DVD era that you guys really keep alive, and mileage really varies from company to company.

But I think you guys really keep the spirit alive is DVDs were the first time that features could really fucking pack in and the big blow.

One of the big things was, especially for film students back then myself included was you know those like Robert Rodriguez woul do those ten minute film schools and stuff like that.

And I think that that's the most exciting part of and I think it really can make people appreciate because sometimes people will watch these movies without the context.

They'll just jump into the movie and be like, what the fuck did I just watch?

Why did I watch that?

And then they'll be completely turned off by it.

And I think that like watching something like what you did for the Nick Millard collection for the vsays or you know, or for the for the original when you guys put out that double feature for that, I think knowing that before watching that stuff, it's a weird thing where like you actually do have to put the cart before the horse, because usually it would be the other way around.

You'd watch a.

DVD of a big studio movie, you'd go through all the special features after me like that's so cool, and you'd appreciate the movie more and you could do that now, but I don't think people are as adventurous that way with these kinds of movies unless that's that's your bag.

And so I think watching these features first and then jumping into the movie really can pay off in spades sometimes, you know.

But I don't think that's obviously for everybody.

Their mileage varies.

But I think that's why.

I think that a lot of that stuff's important.

And it's like why the archival stuff and like what you're talking about, I kind of both minds.

By the way.

I know this is a bit of a rant as well, but.

Like you know, I love the exhibition side because I think, at the end of the day, why are we doing this is so people can see it, and especially if we can preserve it theatrically.

I think the microcinema has been a big, big, big boom in that lately.

But also I get that, like, you know, wanting to get the best elements possible to have that presentation so people on their o ED can get their money's worth or whatever, you know.

I think that I think that goes both ways.

So yeah, that's that's all I wanted to kind of add to what you were saying with the work, and I think revivor that sounds like such a great way of giving people who were with VS from the beginning kind of a taste of that again, or people who were late to the party actually, because I couldn't start collecting physical media again probably until like post COVID, and so it's been a constant search sometimes to make sure I can get a hold of the pickup or something, you know, at like a somewhat reasonable price or something along those lines.

So I think that's really cool because I think that's for a lot of people, they still love that discovery and they can kind of get that while still getting you know, an urgento in four K or whatever.

No, I think that the the title that always comes to mind for me is like, imagine if Barbara had a separate release, Like what y'all could have done with that, because that's just such a fucking like you watch Barbara and you're just like what in the world and it's so captivating, right, Yeah.

Barbara is a great example.

I think, like it's the kind of thing where you want to know this reason, yeah, why it's lost and why it looks the way it does, and like who made it?

Because like Barbara's really brilliantly written and really beautifully photographed, even though we didn't we have the best element ever that well, not ever, but with the best element that exists, and it's never gonna look any better, and you know, it is what it is.

We get to actually put out this incredibly controversial, weird, weird ass movie and for the first time ever, I did.

I know I've said this before, but I love getting people's reactions to lost films because even if I did slap the name on the film, it could sell on its own really easily.

Where it's like if we could slap the name on it, I was like, everyone here at the very end.

Was like, can we maybe not do a secret?

And I'm like no, because this is the you know, the fun of this is treating the film as an object much like you know, obviously, we can always release it in another someone could pick it up and do something later with it.

But I really wanted to capture that really beautiful experience and that passion when we find something.

I mean, technically speaking, this film.

It's so difficult to talk about a film.

When I am not able to talk about the film, I really fucked myself over here, but I need to give credit to the great Elizabeth Purchell, who is the one who tipped us off about it this print under an alternate title, and I'm like, it's because of the fact that people trust us that we're able to put this kind of stuff out, And frankly, at the since the very beginning, I once again with what you said, Eli, I'm very I'm very happy, like very proud of like the amount of work that we've done to kind of like showcase, like literally explained to people how much I really like come at this as the point of view of even on my worst days, I'm working at a really cool company, and I work with the coolest people, the smartest people ever, experts in their field who I respect the shit of their opinions of Steven Morwitz brilliant, Brandon Upson incredible, Joe Rubin real weirdo but brilliant, No Brian great, but in all these incredible, really brilliant, smart people, and I get to learn from them and geek out and frankly the fact that sometimes they were not patting themselves on the back for the fact that we were going through this Sissifian like never ending process of trying to restore anything that we thought was cool and never telling the story about it, and like it kind of meant that even though the film was being shown oftentimes like you didn't know how much work Brandon put into it.

I know how much how difficult it was to restore something from the Nick Millard collection, which is it took me three months to go through the thing because of the fact that he was really messy, Like he was incredibly messy.

But his films are so incredibly beautiful.

They're like really really well put together, and they're tiny little gems of like not just I like things when they are multiple birds being hit by a sing stone and that beautiful home movie aesthetic while also making really interesting outsider art.

And I'm a really big proponent of just trying to, you know, highlight the things which are difficult.

And Nick Millard's films difficult.

A lot of the films that I want to put that are because somewhat backburnt, because we have like eight totally planned out that I want to do.

The more difficult ones, which are going to be going to be like the passion projects for this are going to be like really difficult, like reversal nightmares that we're going to have to really piece it back together because it's you know, what we have is such a nightmare.

But but yeah, thank you, thank you again.

It's a very kind thing to say.

And yeah, I'm glad we're going to keep doing that, and all of the revival releases will have a winding through and will have very in depth extras.

So I'm glad to hear that, because I also think it's just it's I would imagine working at a company like that that has a fan base that's very passionate, which also means they're also extremely online.

And I don't know personally, you know, I think I know Justin's pretty active, but it can be you know, if I was in your shoes or Joe's shoes or anybody for the most part, a lot of people there.

I would be so offline because I you know, you do all that work.

So it's it's just worth, like Chris says, you know, it's worth calling out because I think a lot of times people can take that for granted because and I understand, look, people are spending money and things aren't getting cheaper these days, but like at.

The same time, it's not like you guys exclusively.

Save that kind of hard work for these things.

That's just the stuff that's worth calling out the most, because hey, like when you guys do studio stuff, I've really banged the drum on this too, even if it's something that like is a movie that I don't care for or or like, or a movie that I'm like kind of medium on at best, Like you know, Jade, I kind of find myself weirdly hypnotized by it.

But while I'm watching it, I'm like, why the fuck am I watching this again?

Some you know what I mean, Like it's a weird yeah, and so but you know, you guys put all this work into giving this other version too, and it's not like you're just putting features to put features on there, or like, you know, just to get the movie out because that's the one that's going to move the most units, like it's still getting or you know, like you did with Dirty Work, like you got the R rated cut of that in there as well, and I know that was a passion project for you, But that's like these are also projects that like if they're getting four k's, they're gonna move.

But the fact is you guys still put.

That work equally into something like that or Sleepless or Ruby or you know, or you know anything else that's come out in the last few months.

And I think that's that's really an incredible thing to do.

We'd try, and I think it's a lot of balls to juggle and I but you're right.

I'm chronically I use I'm on Facebook almost exclusively to speak to my best friend and collaborator who does who edits the winding through videos and has to and make sends me clips of me stuttering and looking like an idiot.

And that's basically why I use Facebook, and I try not to because there's just so many projects which I just want them to kind of like have this miraculous takeoff.

But we know.

The good news is when I and the other people who are doing the actual film preservation work, I think every one of us is like, not really, we do the exact same thing where we put our blinders on and we just don't.

It's not even that we don't want to see the positive things that I think people say and think, which there's a lot of.

Really, I think like people who are like, oh yeah, dirty work should have been put out are rated caught it from the beginning.

Technically I should say dirty or cud because I'm not but the but like, so there's a lot of positive.

But I think the people who are in the reads, it's such a physical job what we do, we're like I always like to consider myself like I'm a custodian of film history, where like I just as much as I want to dig into the response, whether positive or negative, I can't do it.

Justin's much more on the front end where I think he really is like excels at that kind of thing, and so I'm very much glad that he does that instead of instead of me or Joe for that matter, or whatever his fake name is on Facebook when he chimes in on things.

Yeah, I mean, hey, you know he did that on the Blu Ray forum where he talked about the maluscene sales and stuff.

And I think that's that's important to jump in once in a while, you know, I get it.

I think that's the right way to do it, is just pose as a lurker until it's time to uh, until it's time to go in the phone booth and change into the Superman outfit or whatever.

But like I think that's Uh, that's the right way.

To do it.

Lions, is it John Lyons?

It's his fake name, I believe, so, I believe that's it.

I actual couldn't remember it until you said it.

I know all the Ruben lare I know all the Ruben Laard mules, all my insults to him.

Uh no, no, but yeah, yeah, but that's that's basically it.

But yeah, yeah, those are the releases.

There's a pretty good ones and then there's uh garbage pail kids.

Uh uh look, I think Oscar we Uh there's a lot of discussion this year.

I don't know how close you are to it, but there's a lot been a lot of discussion online of like is the spirit of VS still around?

Right?

Just because as you get up market, naturally, people are gonna start talking about those kind of things, right like, oh there's another Hollywood release or whatever.

And I think that the fun thing for me is and I think Eline I talk about this a lot.

You know, there's every month there's usually something that feels like old school Villas, but then you just have months like September, October, November boom boom.

It's just like holy shit, Like I don't know there's been so just like banger after banger after banger coming out, it just feels right in the sweet spot.

And I think the revivor line for me is exciting because it gives people a chance to kind of put their money where their mouth is and that if they want to, if they really really just want the old stuff, like that's what they want, Like, here's the chance, right, Like it's gonna be exactly like if that's what they care about, Like, here's the chance, Like go support it to make sure.

You can do it more right, Absolutely, And I thank you for telling me.

I can't believe they didn't fucking say this too.

Part of my entire We all sign on tracks and stuff like that when when an employee is going to be taken over, like doing a kind of like what like a managing a sub label or something like that, because a lot of people just pitch into VSA or VSU or you know, everybody just kind of like helps a tiny bit.

But with this one, it was written into the contract like like every after the cost of manufacturing, everything goes to the film market.

So that means that when people by a revival release, not only are they supporting that classic spirit of vinegar syndrome that I fell in love with and that I think many people complain about when we release Dirty Work, a lost version of Dirty Work.

But like, we're literally putting the money back into this.

And I think it came about because we're moving to another location and we have to move one of the largest film collections archivally stored film collections each gone through Entius and cans.

I think around five thousand cans have been done from two thousand twelve through twenty twenty about that was around five thousand reels that have been canned.

I believe that's correct, and in the last five years we've done thirty five thousand.

In terms of fully inventorying and getting new collections.

Continues to grow in terms of being able to do that in terms of Lindsay who helps me in the like manages the database, but it's it's Brandon who's able to kind of like jump in and scan these things which are new releases.

And it's Joe who purchases a little bit too much film Okay, I'll say that, but like Joe who kind of like is a really great acquisitions person and brand curator in terms of his tastes which are really fucking weird.

Doesn't like dirty work, or didn't for a while.

But I'm not going to keep talking about But yes, so, like long story short of it, if you are supporting that, like you know from the ground up idea of Vinegar Syndrome should be a place for discovering new things and literally supporting the one thing.

I think that makes us the coolest and most unique company.

And I'm saying that as a person who's not cool, not unique.

I think this is a cool and unique company because of the fact that we have a film ark type.

It's built into our entire brand, built into our name in Vinegar Syndrome.

If we're not doing this, then we are part of the problem and we are just another distributor.

I think for me it's really important and will be continue continue to be important as we literally just release lost films or things that are looked so terrible on the last commonly available version.

Each each release is going to have a lost film you've never seen any anything like what you're going to see.

I think the second one is going to blow people's fucking mind.

The third one, I'll say this, They're going to be a bunch of bunch of things, and they're not going to be necessarily like features made.

I'm pretty okay, I can lock it down, but the uh and you know, and so all of them are going to have different themes and they're going to have this just basic vibe where you get a press play and the moment you press play, you're you're either going to love what you see or hate what you see.

But you know without a doubt that after you see it, you're going to be one of the first people in the world to have seen it.

And to me, that's something really special to be able to share with people.

I think.

I think that's a perfect way to end the episode as well, Oscar, because I think that's a very nice way to sum up a lot of what Vinegar Syndrome is in general.

Not that you know, it's the first time people have ever seen Playroom or Schizo, but it might be the first time that a lot of people have seen it, and it might be the first time that it's been on disc in this format, and it might be the first time that you're getting to dig into this movie, right, So I think there's something in that that range true for y'all and the reason I'm excited to do this and the reason why I'm so excited Eli and Celesti on this journey, and we're all kind of trying to build this community here because I'm going I'm only gonna say this once because I know it's kind of a y'all are better than them, but building this.

People talk about Criterion as if it's like this gold standard, and the thing that I love about Vinegar Syndrome is that the community that's found y'all is treating it in the exact same way of like this is the gold standards of exploitation of genre movies.

And yeah, anyways, I just want to keep celebrating it.

So thank you for being so involved with us too.

Yeah, of course, And celestis fucking awesome.

I think there's no person that I'd rather give very frank takes on sex films like I think so us takes her really like really always well put together, and yeah, I really respect her voice, and yeah, yeah, I'm yeah, thank you again for having me.

I think, like, you guys are awesome.

It was nice meeting you.

Eli.

I'm like, I wish I wish Joe had fucking taken up less with his No, No, I'm just kidding, but this is lovely.

I think I'm very excited.

If you can't tell, I'm really nervous the thing.

The thing launches soon, so I'm like, I'm like in like a fight or flight mode and there are a few more things that I have to do, but go take care of business.

Yeah, well we'll let you go.

It's great meeting you too, And and yeah, we're just a few hours.

I mean, I guess we'll give people a peek behind the curtain, but it's like a few hours before Reviver goes live.

So yeah, I think I think it's gonna be great.

I think this is exactly what he was talking about.

I know it's an overused term, but you're right, like to hear when people hear it, they're always gonna say it's getting the criterion treatment or whatever.

But I think that's a great thing to take from what they started, because now it's like considered this thing that where.

It's like the you know, the ship kind of left port a long time ago on whatever it is that people want it because it's not really about discovery there as much anymore.

And I think Revivers specifically, it's like you know, it brings back that old thing of like when you were part of a fan club of something and you would get these surprise packages every month, and so I know that might be a little I hope that doesn't come off as reductive, but it's.

No.

I think I wanted to be kind of like something where I wanted to be very intimate.

Like I think there are certain decisions that I kind of made, which are I think Chris mentioned something like, you know, we're able to do this.

This is a label that could only kind of come up here where basically it's because we're we have skilled scanning technicians in house, like we don't.

We're not gonna Actually two is going to have we have to get the really water damagetry scanned externally from a really great guy to metropost Jack Rizzo.

But the yeah, the entire goal of this is to feel really intimate.

And one of the main things that I don't think I talked about, but they're going to be scanned from the best surviving element.

But I also in order to make sure that I know this is counterintuitive, but I wanted people to experience the film element as it is with this little digital manipulation is humanly possible, and I like, obviously put just straight on the on like the barrel I didn't want to use.

This is very controversial and I feel like I could get lambasted, but it's fine.

I didn't want to really do much dust busting.

Like I wanted to color correct.

I wanted to like change it to how we think it should look, basically by reading the film and making sure we follow the actual color that is inherent within the film moment.

But no, you know, it's a piece of film, it's material, and you're getting to see it exactly as it would have been shown.

That's I'm so glad you said that, because I've said this on the show before, But I love that.

You know, I can watch a Radley Metzker movie in four K, like see it in a way on an old ed TV that just you're like, this, fucking this probably hasn't looked this good since nineteen seventy five or you know, whenever the image was released, or any of his other films.

But also sometimes when you're watching something I kind of like when it's in like, for lack of a better term, grindhouse mode.

You know, where you're like watching something as if the as if the whatever you guys scanned in was just literally dragged because it fell out of someone's backpack and they didn't know it was like they were dragging it along for half a mile or whatever.

I think there's a lot of fun in that.

And like I love when you guys do those releases where there's this you know, like the Carpenter where it just has this great scan for the most part, but then suddenly there's this jump in soov Yeah, or like with Bloodbeat where the last frame is like a VHS thing and it like it's stabilizing in a great way.

Yeah, totally, And I think, yeah, it's gonna be interesting.

There are a few like interesting hurdles that I'll mean, which is basically it all just comes.

It's good because it puts it back in my hands where it means literally that I have weird scanning pre scanning techniques that I only I know how to do pretty much here, where basically it means that I can limit the dust a little bit and stuff like that.

But something which is like this, which this initial release one Revivor one is essentially it's a played print.

It's a played release print.

It was meant for one purpose.

As Joe said, it's a utilitarian thing.

It's not a preservation thing.

And we have the only copy of it in existence.

And to me, there's something special, not just in restoring it to how we think it would look.

Even to me my perspective on it is even at the first screening, which is what restoration is meant to be.

You're meant to bring it back to that first screening.

There are pre screenings that are not open to the public, and film is going to be unspoiled onto the ground.

You're going to get dust on the very first when the film is first screened, and if it's from a print, and it's going to look different after the first screening, it's going to look different between the queuing up of the actual you know what is it called the setting up, the countdown, just putting it on the actual film projector to when the film is done, like it's it's going to be dusty.

It's going to be dirty.

And I've always really loved, you know, the DVD R era where you can see things.

We just have better technology and we have better expertise.

Now we can see a tiny bit of dust.

It's not going to bother us.

We know what we're looking at, and if we give a little bit of context like we do on the little video which is included on it, people will kind of know why it looks the way.

Yeah, I'm just thinking of it if this label, when this label takes off and becomes a huge seller.

Foreal, you can do a label where you don't even see the print.

You just nobody sees it except for the scanner.

Yeah.

Yeah, so this is this is a label where you're basically buying a hotware.

We swear this movie is really good, and you can give us a good just pocket.

Sixty bucks for a limited edition.

No one's seen it ever.

Yeah, Actually, I guess that's the last question.

Well, people will know, so I it's not like this is an advance when we release this.

But is is the Reviver thing?

Is it a finite amount where because I know, you know, you guys do standards and you do limited Is Reviv just a one like a one shot where it's just going to be like three thousand copies and that's it.

Or is it going to be like a standard and a limited?

Oh thank you for asking me that.

So it's there's going to be Uh, so the the limited is going to be, yeah, a specific amountain things like it's a small amount, smaller amounts like close to like what the Malu scenes are like two thousands what we're going to start on and and you know, we're keeping these accessible afterwards.

But their aspects of the first, you know, limited edition that I think will incentivize, for instance, the one in ten of the the inside the wrap one in ten of them are going to have holographic variants.

I am an enormous collector of things, and I like playing cards and this kind of stuff that always played with that extra collectibility.

To me, it's kind of like finding an AIRCN And to me, when I was designing this whole thing, I was like, I want these things to be able to be put back into circular, but I want the people who supported it first to have the chance of getting something really cool and special that actually fed back into this treasure hunt aspect of archiving and preservation that you know, makes me really happy at the end of the day when I have a good day of going through films and finding cool stuff and finding weird stuff that I don't know if it's cool, I think it's weird.

It's weird that it exists.

But yeah, so it's we're going to keep them in circulation hopefully, you know, and hopefully people buy them.

But the limited edition is pretty limited, like it's very We're keeping them very like small, just because of the fact that, to be perfectly honest, this is something which is going to change the way the archive functions, where essentially what it means is we get to automatically provide access to things which we wouldn't really be able to put on the main label.

But it also means that we are going to you know, largely be on a quarterly, quarterly budget, where essentially that means we're gonna have to keep putting out more and more stuff so you know, hopefully it doesn't get stale.

Hopefully it stays.

It's not gonna get stale.

It's gonna be a lost fucking film every single time.

But yeah, I was gonna say, there's that that's almost that's almost stale proof.

Man's right.

That's pretty pretty tough to get bored of it.

Yeah, And I think we've been trying to kind of like make sure that we know exactly we have an insane amount of lost films.

I think I was talking to Chris and you were basically just like you guys could probably do that for years, and I'm like, yeah.

Yeah, well we look forward to years more.

Oscar.

It's a joy every time you come on.

I we need to get you on one time we have every once in a while we'll do like a panel where people are pretty open and some know some talk ship and some some love on.

Of yes, but it'll be fun to get you on one of these panels.

So you may be hearing from me here pretty soon.

Have I ever talked shit or I don't think I've talked ship to you?

I think, but you know it'll come out one day.

That's that's how we're gonna get You're gonna.

Petty, petty people of all time.

We're so petty and we love we love talking ship.

I think as like a general occupation.

You say petty, some people say detail oriented.

We'll give you.

We'll give you a segment archive talks where ship talk arrow and no, no, that's awesome.

I love to do great work, but I just I don't know why they came up.

First ship factory.

Anyways.

Anyways, all right, thank you so much, Oskar.

Have a good Halloween and I hope the sales amazing.

Feel Yeah, we'll do.

I'll be in my moth costumes talking to.

Thank you for listening.

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