All language subtitles for Z Channel A Magnificent Obsession English

- The first Kurosawa
film I think I ever saw

was "Throne of Blood" on
the Z Channel.

- A Fellini film, "I Vitelloni."

- There was a picture
called "Spider's Stratagem."

- Sam Peckinpah, "Wild Bunch."

- The "Straw Dogs," "Bring Me
the Head of Alfredo Garcia."

- "The Story of Adele H."

[upbeat music]

- "Sunlights."

- "Rear Window."

- "Midnight Cowboy."

- "Ikiru."

- "Song Remains the Same."

- "Johnny Guitar."

- "The Onion Field."

- "Los Olvidados."

- "Man Who Fell to Earth."

- Every film that Marlon
Brando was ever in.

[upbeat music]

- Z Channel.

- Z Channel.

- Z Channel.

- Our salvation.

- Uncharted territory.

- Like tom toms in the jungle.

[upbeat music]

- Jerry Harvey.

- Jerry Harvey.

- Programmer.

- Obsessive programmer.

- Dark negative.

- Maverick.

- Nurturing.

- Skating that line between
insanity and genius.

- [Interviewer] What
do you think

the secret of the Z
Channel success is?

- I don't know.

If I told you, then it
wouldn't be a secret.

- My father says there's
only right and wrong,

good and evil,
nothing in between.

It isn't that simple, is it?

- No, it isn't, it
should be, but it isn't.

[theme song]

- [Narrator] Panic's
Newstime 606,

a Hollywood story with a
tragic ending this morning.

The bodies of Z Channel
programmer, Jerry Harvey,

and his wife, Deri Rudulph,

were discovered Saturday
night in their Westwood home.

Police report Harvey
shot and killed Rudulph,

his wife of two years,

before turning the
gun on himself.

The motive is unknown.

Harvey had been chief
programmer at Z Channel

which is known
throughout Los Angeles

for its eclectic and
innovative programming.

Both Harvey and Rudulph
were 39 years old.

[upbeat music]

- So it was back in 1974

and I just started
selling cable television

and the Z Channel had
just started

so we came up here to the
Hollywood Hills

and it was really great

because these people
had terrible reception,

they couldn't see anything
on their television,

and not only were we
offering the good reception,

we gave the movies
uncut and no commercials

in their bedroom, in
their living room,

wherever they wanted it.

They ate it up, it was
very, very successful.

- It was amazing.

I had friends over all the time

because they showed two
movies a night as I recall,

and they were uncut,
uninterrupted.

It was this phenomenon
no one had ever seen it.

- Theta and the Z Channel

was the only one in
the major cities

as New York did not have
it at the time,

Los Angeles was the first
one to do that.

- That this actually existed,
you could see this stuff

was incredible so I was
like, we've got to get this.

So I was living in El
Segundo at the time

and my mom called up and no,
Z Channel wasn't in our area.

- Not only was Theta in that
area along the foothills,

but it was who was in the
homes along the foothills

and those were the folks
that ran the movie industry.

- They were filmed for
the whole family,

but I thought slanted
to adults a little bit

and those are the films
I tried to get.

- "Chinatown" was on a
lot in those days,

they used to run it a lot.

And it was one of my
favorite movies

and I ended up seeing it

like three or four times
a week at certain points.

- I publicized the
shows that we were doing

in Hollywood trade papers,
"Variety" and "Reporter,"

and gradually word
began to spread.

- I think it's interesting
too to note that in that time,

it's hard to remember this,

I tell my kids about it
and they don't believe me,

but there was a time when there
was no Blockbuster stores,

there was no video cassettes,
none of that existed.

- You have to understand
this just before HBO,

before Showtime,
before any of that,

and it was really really
groundbreaking.

[upbeat music]

- When I left, Hal
Kaufman, he took my place.

I remember he had an
assistant who we hired,

the Jerry Harvey,

and that was my first
contact with Jerry Harvey.

- The Z Channel hired a person

that really made the Z Channel,

probably put the Z
Channel on the map

and that's Jerry Harvey.

- Jerry probably is one
of those students

that a teacher encounters
every so often and thinks,

I think the students
probably smarter than I am.

- I had just broken up
with my girlfriend

and so I was standing
at the Dixon Art Center

looking rather
forlorn apparently,

and he kind of
recognized the look

and walk up to me and
said, I recognize the look.

And so we started talking

and we spent the entire day

having lunch and talking about
movies and that's how we met.

- So many of my students,

when they're
interested in movies

are only interested in the
art movies, the Indies,

Jerry loved 'em all and hated
them all when they were bad.

- With Jerry, you always
talked about movies,

his entire frame of
reference was films.

- I started getting these
weekly telephone calls

towards the end of each week

from this obviously very
young, intense young man

asking me for a rundown

of what the good pictures
were going to be

that particular week.

- I think the first contact

or a memory I have of
Jerry Harvey

was when he was booking
the Beverly Cannon.

- I heard about Jerry's work
long before I heard about Jerry

because I heard about his
work for the Beverly Cannon.

I was going to Cal Arts,

an art school 30 miles
north of Los Angeles

and everybody was talking
about the Beverly Cannon,

especially when he ran
the uncut "Wild Bunch,"

I mean, that was like
missile blast,

everybody who loved film
knew about this.

- And on a rainy day in
Beverly Cannon theater,

2000 people

or however many people
showed up for the screening.

- I think a great coup
in his life happened

because Peckinpah arrived
with the print.

And it certainly was momentous

because his bond with Peckinpah
just extended from there.

- Jerry certainly was
one of the people

that looked up to Sam as I
guess kind of a father figure.

Jerry felt that way about
a number of creative people

that he admired and appreciated.

- He was always surprising me,

it was Sam this and
Bob that and I thought,

whoa, how did you get
to meet these people?

- That he arranged a screening

for "Some Call It Loving" there.

You can't help but
respect someone

who has taken all the time
and effort to educate himself,

become familiar with not
only my films,

which ones I did with Kubrick
of course weren't obscure

but "Some Call It Loving"
was kind of an obscure film.

- I met Jerry Harvey in
my mother's living room.

She worked with Jim Harris at
the time and they were friends

and I came bounding
into her house

and he was standing there,

it was kind of love at
first sight, I think.

We stayed on the phone

that night after he left
my house for 11 hours.

He came over the next
night after that

and I don't think he ever
left for three years.

- He had aspirations to
be a filmmaker,

or at least to start
out as a screenwriter.

- We wrote a script together

about two college kids who
were witness to a murder

and that's how we really
started writing together

and we ended up getting
the agency off of that,

meeting Monte Hellman.

- Jerry was also involved
in the making of a film,

a Western that he had
written I believe

and that he was able
to raise the financing

and went over to Italy to do it.

[upbeat music]

[gunshot]

- Are you satisfied now?

- You ain't going to last long,
son.

There ain't no
softhearted gunfighters.

- "China 9" was
really great fun.

I can always remember we flew
into Rome, landed in Rome,

was picked up by the limo
at the airport

and then went to hell Maria,
had a great group of people.

Warren Oates was there,
Fabio Testi,

Jenny Agutter, Sam
Peckinpah, and Monte Hellman.

We just had the best time, one
of the best times of my life.

[upbeat music]

- There was of course a
tremendous black period

when his sister, Ann,
committed suicide.

- Jerry spoke to his
sister all the time,

they were very, very close,
great friends and he adored her.

- Ann checked herself into a
hospital when Jerry was gone

and I believe that she was
waiting for him to come back.

She had left a suicide tape

that was her talking
to Jerry while she died

explaining everything that
had transpired in her life

that led to this decision.

She was really his anchor

and not only did she go
mad, but now she was gone.

And he came back to
have this happen,

and by the time I saw him,
he was crazy.

I'd never seen him so crazy.

- We got married pretty
quickly after that,

we got married in February 1978.

Part of what was really
attractive about it at the time

was we'd already been
having this affair,

but then he was just so
vulnerable and reaching out

and so I blamed the
things that I saw

that seemed dark and
scary to me,

I blamed on the fact that he
was in mourning over his sister

and assumed that my loving him

would make those things
go away and be better.

- We were still very
close friends,

but we weren't really
partners in activity,

we didn't write anything
together after that,

we never did.

- At the time, there was
only Select TV and ON TV

as cable sources in the
area that I lived,

we had gotten Select TV.

And in the middle of the night,

he would wake me up
yelling at the television

because the programming sucked.

And at some point in time,

I just said, if you
hate it so much,

they don't watch it or
write a letter.

And so he wrote a letter to them

telling them what was
wrong with the programming.

And they called him and said,

how do you know so much

and who are you and we
wanna talk to you.

- And Jerry had said he
had found these movies

that since we were
playing eclectic things,

you wanna show me something.

- [Narrator] Greece
withdraws from NATO.

The third guarantor power,
Britain,

with Air Force and
troops on the spot

sticks to her policy of
strict non-involvement.

- It was a documentary

about the invasion of
Greece by the Turks

and political content.

It was interesting movie,

it had just been this guy
had written in this letter,

I was reading the
reaction and was like,

okay, well, that didn't get
them so let me try one more

and I think it was like
a Laura Antonelli film

how I'd never seen before and
it was staggeringly gorgeous.

And I thought anybody who
could go to the kind of,

those poles to the utter
peer documentary,

political documentary to sex
is worth having so I hired him.

- And so that sort of
set Jerry on his path

which seemed really hopeful

because then there was something

that really was about
his passion,

something that he could
do that was positive

and that would give him
something to focus on

besides his own
struggle with himself.

- Hal Kaufman, the guy
running Z at the time,

called Jerry and approach
him about a job.

- [Jerry] I left Select
and weeks after I got to Z,

the head of programming

fell ill and left and
never came back.

- Everything that predated Z
and his own eminence over Z

was merely the prep, it was
the years in the desert.

Boom, suddenly Jerry
arrives in the early 80s

and he's known all through town.

[upbeat music]

- He got me on the phone
and he said, Jerry, he said,

I've been hired

and I wanna do a new spin

on the pictures that
we're showing.

- I think I got a call
from somebody once,

picked up the phone and somebody
on the phone said to me,

this is Jerry Harvey, I buy
movies, do you have so and so.

I think so and so was
probably "Black Orpheus."

- When you first met him I
think he was cold and distant.

We had to generate a mutual
respect which came quickly

because we found out
that each of us

had an interest in old
movies, different movies,

movies that were unloved,
movies that had been unscreened.

- Telephone, Miss Gray.

- Thank you, excuse.

- You should take it here.

- No, nevermind, ask them to
call me at home later, please.

- Bring the phone.

- What was so brilliant
about Jerry was doing

was mixing the art film
with commercial fair.

- I had to see everything
on this crash course,

it was like the Schick
center for movie addiction,

and then I had to hear him
recite to me "Dr. Strangelove,"

there was a month when I heard
scenes from "Dr. Strangelove"

from the moment I woke up to
the moment I went to sleep.

- I agree with you, it's
great to be fine.

Now then, Dimitri,

you know how we've always
talked about the possibility

of something going wrong
with the bomb.

- Z was great for him.

Jerry sort of found
his place there

because he could come in.

I mean, Jerry's favorite
way of dressing

was a business shirt
not tucked in,

a nice jacket, baggy dirty
jeans, and Frye boots,

and he couldn't do that working
in a corporate situation.

So at Z Channel, he could
do what he liked to do best

which is sit cross
legged on the floor

and make his phone calls
that way smoking.

- [Interviewer] When did
you start looking at films?

- [Jerry] To be honest
with you, when I was four.

- [Interviewer] Yes.

- [Jerry] I remember
vividly a film I saw at four

and the impact it had on me.

For a great period of my life,

it had meant more to
me than anything else,

movies, the history
of the movies.

- This man, Jerry Harvey,
this very sweet, very odd man,

called me up and very
tentatively asked me,

would I like "A Safe
Place," my first film,

to be on television.

I was sure he made a mistake
because it was a film

that was so trashed by all
the critics when it opened

that nobody wanted to play it.

- Yes, yes, I have missed
you, do you wanna know why?

- [Actress] Yeah.

- Because you're very
simple-minded.

- [Actress] Screw you.

- I had a film called "Images"

that I had done and shot
in Ireland in '72

and he was particularly,
Jerry liked that film a lot.

He said, lets run that on
the Z Channel.

What we couldn't find who
owned the title,

he said, well, I'll run
it if you don't run it.

I said, well, I'll run
it if you don't run it

so here's the print.

- Katherine.

- What are you talking about,
Katherine.

I love you.

- Don't, you don't.

- These films get lost in a
hurry and I would get calls,

hey, they just played
your movie on Z Channel.

- I'm naked now.

- I mean, that was like
a big release for me.

- If you couldn't get a studio
to release your picture,

your picture did not get seen.

One of the big thing that
changed that was the Z Channel.

- The Z Channel to me

was the first time I could
speak French, Z Channel.

It was the first time you
could turn on your television

and see something

that you would have to
go to the cinema for.

- What he was doing was
coming up with films

that I had never heard of
or didn't know existed.

[soft music]

- People saw movies

that they wouldn't have
gone to see in a theater

if they were free.

And consequently,

I think it was both a
pleasurable experience

and an educational experience,

and I think it widened
everybody's horizons.

- It made I think even
the powers that be

realize that there was
this ultimate audience

that was much larger
than anybody know.

- Jerry found all these films

and was able to program
them on the Z Channel

and it's sort of built a
big following.

- I just think that he in
a sense had blinders on

in which all he could see
through his blinders was film.

- [Interviewer] And you
grew up where?

- [Jerry] I grew up
in Bakersfield.

- [Interviewer] How would
you describe Bakersfield?

- [Jerry] In how many words?

Kind of cross between
"American Graffiti"

and "Two-Lane Blacktop."

- [Interviewer] And was it easy

having an enjoyable childhood?

- [Jerry] No.

- When Jerry came aboard,

it was also the moment

when HBO, Showtime and
the Movie channel

all showed up in LA.

- He was a formidable competitor

and he didn't say nice things

about people he was
competing against

because he lived and
slept at his job.

- They thought they were
gonna carve up

the territory that
belonged to Z Channel.

Z Channel was the only
one in town at that time.

Well, the others thought,

well, we're gonna roll
over this guy.

And in fact, a lot of people
had told Jerry to his face,

you run a nice little
channel, it's too bad.

And he said, well, we'll see.

And what happened was,

of course that HBO
and those guys

really couldn't get a toehold,

Z Channel had what was
called a zero churn rate

which means that nobody
would cancel the service.

- Jerry loved Z Channel, he
loved everything it was about,

but he felt a lot of
pressure to perform.

- He would call you in
the middle of the night,

on a Saturday night,

on a Sunday morning at seven
o'clock in the morning,

he would call you and say,
you got to get me this,

the channel will go under,

it was always the sky is falling
if you don't get me this,

I got to get this.

- So he tried to take it all on

and what he would always
do to compensate

in those kinds of situations
is that he would self medicate.

So he would go around with,

he'd drink and then he'd
have no dose in his pocket.

- He was manic, but he was
an obsessive programmer.

I wanna say that that's not
a bad thing, by the way.

- Basically, he would come
back from work at Z Channel

and order pizza and
fall asleep on the floor

because he was taking a
lot of medication.

So he wasn't really
functioning at home

but nobody knew it at work

because he would function
in the morning.

- I met Jerry on the telephone.

He called me in London,

woke me up at 2:30
in the morning

'cause he got all the
times wrong.

His first words to me were,
how come I don't know you?

So I get this lunatic on the
phone at 2:30 in the morning

giving me this long monologue

about what other
films have I made,

he wants to see everything,

can I send everything
over to him,

what documentaries have
I made and all that?

- Will you have a dance with me,
please.

- I don't mind if I do.

- Come on then.

- In the case of "Overlord,"

you have a World War Two film

which actually incorporates
footage from World War Two,

but incorporates it so artfully

that you can't tell the
stage footage

from the actual footage.

- There began a process
of developing a screenplay

based on real material of
documented material and footage,

and I began to construct
a dramatized documentary

about a young English soldier.

He said we'll start by having
a month of Stuart Cooper,

we'll show all the features,

we'll do the
documentaries later,

we'll show all your feature work

during the month,
different times,

but the deal is you have
to come a month ahead

and do one on one screenings

with the four or
five key critics

and have lunch with them or
dinner and talk about the work.

- Gary Prebula called me up,

said they're showing two
films by Stuart Cooper

who I'd never heard of.

He said, nobody's ever
heard of him,

Z Channel is gonna
premiere them.

I said, there's still
a Z Channel.

He said, oh, yeah.

I was debating whether
or not to go.

When I got there, I was
glad I showed up

because I was the only
one there that I knew of.

There was this other
guy named Jerry Harvey

who I didn't know who I thought
might be a fellow critic.

I was fascinated by
this guy, Stuart Cooper,

'cause I had just seen
"Overlord" for the first time,

I was blown away by it.

But I'm sitting there with Jerry

and Jerry is the one
who's like talking to me

in this mild way

and I'm getting along with him

and I mean, we were laughing
at each other's jokes.

- It was really a great
kismet moment

because then he started
doing some reviews

for Z Channel for Jerry.

- It coincided with the period
that my mother was dying.

I got the news of my
mother's death

and within a half an hour,

the phone rings and
it's Jerry Harvey,

he's like the first
call I'm getting.

I don't know how he found out,

but he called me and he
was consoling me,

he said, look, I've been through
several deaths in my family

and you can make it, it
doesn't have to kill you.

And I said, it won't kill me,

I was like feeling super strong,

I was not hearing what
he was saying.

Now, it's like
unbearably poignant.

- And that was the beginning
of their relationship.

And to the day Jerry died,

I mean, F. X. and he
were very close.

- When Jerry brought me aboard,

my concern was as a critic,

I didn't wanna be paid

to say good things about
a movie I hated.

And Jerry liked my
style of reviewing

because I wouldn't so
much punish the movie

for not succeeding,

I would come from a place
of, well, I tried to like it.

- If I read Z
Magazine religiously,

I used to write nasty
letters to F. X. Feeney.

- I used to get the
angriest letters,

the angriest letters of my life

I got from Z Channel
subscribers.

- Yes, I think I did
write letters to the Z mag

which I'd forgotten

until contacted to participate
in this documentary.

I wrote I think complaining
about the letter boxing bars

weren't big enough for
cortisol was high and low,

and that's how I got
this t-shirt.

- I remember I couldn't wait

when my Z Channel
magazine would every month

because I wanted to read
all the reviews

which weren't always good.

- The people that wrote it

knew that their audience
was keenly interested

in what they had to say.

And what they had to say was
a whole series of original

and highly
controversial observations

about the films that
were being shown.

It wasn't the usual pap that
you get in fan magazines.

- My belief, and I know that
this is Jerry's belief too,

is that if you appeal

to the most intelligent
member of the audience,

everybody else follows along.

There's this feeling

that you have to appeal
to the common denominator.

Jerry and I hit on the phrase,
the uncommon denominator,

that's what we want

because we wanna go for
the smart folks

because everybody is smart.

- Shit, that's my man,
that's my man.

I don't think we'll make
it past the cop.

- We'll make it past the cops,

I just hope we don't
see no Muslims.

- Listen, you owe Ben
Angelelli $4,000.

- You tell Ben Angelelli
to suck my cock.

- Now, wait a minute, you
lost that money,

you should pay your debts.

- A double suck.

- The first couple of years
of Jerry's stewardship of Z

are marked by just the
ability to do the unexpected.

So he was able to make simple

but effective use of his
position there,

and suddenly his reputation
started to take care of itself.

I have this fantasy

that in the year 2050 or
the year 2075,

they're going to read
about the fear

that attacked "Heaven's Gate,"

the fear of that came
down upon "Heaven's Gate,"

and they're not
gonna believe it,

it's gonna seem like
science fiction.

- Stockbird's Association

has the names of some of
you people on the list.

125 names.

[speaking in foreign language]

- The then current UA management

decided to make the film
at a budget of 12 million.

The 12 million turned out to
be 40 before they were through,

the picture was a
commercial disaster.

- Jerry would get very angry

about what had
happened to a movie,

what had happened to a director,

or how a film had kind
of gotten off track,

or how somebody's been slighted

when they shouldn't
have been slighted

or beaten up when they
shouldn't have been beaten up.

- "Heaven's Gate" was not
only clobbered,

it was basically burned
at the stake.

I mean, the critics
ganged up on it,

it became this huge set
of headlines,

it was in every paper,

the "Herald Examiner" ran
a story about it

every day for three months,
every day.

- I was depressed for a
year after that movie.

I was depressed about it.

I mean, really, it was just,

I mean, you do your work
and you think it's good

and then nobody likes it, no
critics like and it goes down

and then after two weeks,

they pull it off of the
theaters and it disappears.

I mean, it was just.

- It was cut immediately

and lay there until such time
as Jerry approached Cimino

and talked about reconstructing
his long version.

Without Jerry's prompting,

it would never have
occurred to me

to try to find an intact print

of the original "Heaven's Gate."

It was his question that set
the whole process in motion.

- It became a four hour special.

We had the first screening
of "Heaven's Gate,"

I mean, which was
really an event

and everybody tuned into it,

they wanted to know what
all the fuss was about.

- And in a different atmosphere,

a different cultural climate,

the reassembled "Heaven's
Gate" got marvelous reviews.

[upbeat music]

- It was a big event,

and it was the beginning
of sort of big events

happening on cable.

It was really the first time

anything like that had happened.

- You got to see the director's
vision of what the movie was

even after the fact it
was very hard to get out

but in some ways, that put him
20 years ahead of his time.

[violin music]

- I mean, he had a great
relationship with Michael Cimino

because of that,

because he really gave
life to a film

that had been so unfairly,

whether in the end you
liked the movie or not,

it had been so unfairly treated.

- The effort to do
something like that

was a gargantuan effort,

it'd be like saving a
great edifice

that was designed by Frank
Lloyd Wright or something.

- Jerry took great risks
in the films that he bought

and that's why he was
so respected.

- Suddenly had this position

where he was being
interviewed and quoted

and it was nice 'cause he
had this moment

of feeling like people
were acknowledging him

for what he wanted to be
acknowledged for.

- He would have liked to
I think be making movies,

instead, he had such great
respect for great filmmakers

that he provided a place
to showcase their work.

- I remember walking
behind him one day

as we were just taking a break,

I'd turned in a bunch of stuff

and he just made a bunch of buys

and just done a
bunch of business

and he wanted to go
and get some ice cream.

So, we file out of this
little garden spot office

that we had,

which is the first
office that I knew,

and we're hiking up along Bundy,

and I'm walking behind him,

it's just very hot
California day,

he's wearing a tweed jacket,

he's got that cigarette
lighter around his neck,

and he's just bopping along.

And I'm looking at him
and I'm walking behind him

and I'm thinking,

we've just come off several
months of really happy work

and I'm thinking,

this is actually one of the
happiest times of my life.

- [Interviewer] What were
your mother and father doing

when you were growing up.

- [Jerry] My father was a judge,

my mother was a personnel
director for a hospital.

- [Interviewer] Were you able
to see your parents very often,

they sound as though they
were very busy people.

- [Jerry] Yeah, they were
around, maybe too much.

- I was at Select TV
and Jerry called

and said that he would
like to talk to me,

would I be interested

and what I meet him for dinner

to discuss working at
the Z Channel.

We talked about what
the duties would entail

and most of all, he talked
about his personality.

And he said to me, I'm crazy,
you know?

And I said, oh, yeah, sure.

- Jerry would be very honest
with you about his own needs.

He'd say, I gotta go
to my shrink.

And he would just say it
in that plain way

like gotta go see my doctor,
got a doctor's appointment,

but it would happen to be
a shrink's appointment.

And he would go often,

I mean, you knew that
he was devoting

maybe a couple of afternoons
a week to go on over there.

- One day, everything
would be fine,

we'd be having a conversation,

maybe he'd go to the bathroom
or go get a glass of water

and he'd come back and he
would be incredibly depressed

because he looked at
the corner of the room

and realize that the
workmanship was shoddy

and start getting depressed

about how people don't care
about anything anymore.

And somehow in those moments

that he would have had
that revelation,

it would sink him into
this depression

about how the planet was doomed

and nobody gave a shit
about anything anymore.

- And he said, in a very
serious, intense way,

I'm really crazy, I'm paranoid.

- He wrote letters to
me at the time

talking about what eventually
would happen to him,

that one day he would
lose the struggle,

not in a threatening way,
not in a,

but he talked about it.

In rare moments of lucidity,

what frightened him was
something inside of him

that he didn't know how
to deal with.

- I don't know how I got around

the I'm crazy or and
I'm paranoid line

but I went to work there and
found that to be pretty true.

- It's Black Flag.

[punk music]

- I made the movie,

the guys that paid for it

were a couple of independent
businessmen from the Valley

who wanted to make a
porno movie.

And I went in to talk to them

and they didn't know

I was gonna come in and
pitch a punk rock movie,

but I told them that punk rock

was the next best thing to porno
so hey, let's sign a check,

and they did.

[punk music]

We showed the film one
night midnight,

they had to shut down
Hollywood Boulevard

and 300 motorcycle cops came.

We had a letter afterwards
from Daryl Gates,

the chief of police saying,

please don't ever show that
movie in Los Angeles again.

- When I go to concerts,

it's like my friends get
beat up on my friends.

Then it's like fucked.

It's 'cause like they're not
beating up the right people,

they're not beating up the
fucking posers,

they're beating up just my
friends, it's fucked, you know.

- The cops recognized Eugene
from having been in the decline

and arrested him.

- [Interviewer] Because
they saw on Z.

- Yeah, because they saw
it on Z Channel, yeah.

- Took you a little longer
than I thought.

- I'm afraid it's gonna take
a little longer than that,

I'm leaving now.

- Road's wet.

- It wasn't raining
when I got here.

- No?

Too bad.

- People really did not
understand that film,

they didn't get it, and
the critics didn't get it.

- You could have a fucker,
I hate you.

[speaking in foreign language]

- Stop that.

- Fuck you, fuck you.

- I was up for an audition to
go do Star Wars of all things

and so I was reading Star
Wars and my agent was like,

push pressuring me like
go read for Star Wars,

this is gonna be this thing.

And I'm going, I don't know,
man,

I'd always said as my
little actress prayer,

if anybody just gave me the
chance, I could just show 'em,

I know it, I could please,
God, give me this chance.

And then bad timing fell
on my lap and I was like,

holy shit, can I do this.

- Alex, you want me?

Come on, come on, do it
now, Alex, do it now.

Here it is, Alex, here
it is, look at it, Alex.

That's what you wanted,
there it is, Alex.

Come here, come here,

come here, take it,
that's what you want.

Here it is, come on.

- In terms of the Z
Channel showing it so much,

I mean, because it had such
a small release theatrically,

I mean, especially in
this country,

that was really where everybody
had a chance to see it.

And I mean, I swear,
even to this day,

I'll have people come up to me

and tell me how much did
that movie affected them.

- [Interviewer] How did you
go about finding those films

because I mean, obviously
it took some effort

and no one else was doing it.

- [Jerry] You look at a
lot of things

that you think might be
interesting based on somebody,

not everybody that
was involved in

or what it's about or
what it's based on

or where it was filmed or
there's a million reasons.

Just like anything like,

you say, gee, that
sounds interesting.

- HBO, Showtime, the
Movie channel,

all of us are at this big
convention in some hotel,

big table desk, pitchers
of water, nameplates.

Jerry's down at the other end.

And everybody's like
going down the list

talking about how many
committees they've got,

how many market research,

we hire this firm from New York,

we've got this firm from
Chicago, bah, bah, bah, bah.

Jerry, how many firms
do you draw on

to choose your programs?

He says, I don't consult
anybody, I just see movies,

I just show good movies.

Yeah, but your decision
making process,

who's your committee?

I don't have a committee,
just me,

I mean, we have people in the
office we talk, we like movies

but basically it's just
whatever we wanna see.

[speaking in foreign language]

- Jerry was an early
and passionate admirer

of a film called "The
Important Thing is to Love"

directed by Andrezej Zulawski.

That film had a huge cult
in Europe in the mid 70s.

I would sometimes seeing
European films see clips from it

because other European directors

were so in awe of "The
Important Thing is to Love"

that they would run little
clips in their movies,

lovers in French films
would often be going to see

"The Important Thing
is to Love."

It became this
immediate touchstone

that automatically was
being quoted in other films.

[speaking in foreign language]

But it only opened briefly,
it only opened for a week

and it just was misunderstood

by the first critics who
dealt with it.

And so it didn't go anywhere,

it didn't form the cult
that it could have

here in the United States.

[speaking in foreign language]

- I mean, the thing
about the Z Channel

is that the sensibility was
offbeat and a little bit,

I don't know, I mean,
they showed everything.

- It was really appropriate
that it was in LA in a way

because in New York, we did
have a lot of like venues

to find those kind of movies.

- When I started working
at this video store

in Manhattan Beach Club
video archives,

and the guy who owned
the store, Lance Lawson,

I would ask, hey, do you
have this movie,

do you have that movie,
and he'd pull 'em out.

And as I'd watch 'em,

I'd realize that these were
the old Z Channel tapes.

- And I still have
probably hundreds of hours

of films that I recorded
off the Z Channel.

- I saw "Dead Pigeon on
Beethoven Street"

from Z Channel,

I had a whole,

and he just lent me the film

and then I watch it and then
it just makes me go like this

'cause the beginning of it,

our tribute to Sam Fuller,
all right?

And you see all the other
movies that like they also show

but Lance only taped
"Dead Pigeon," all right?

Like damn, I wanna see
"Fixed Bayonets," "Park Row,"

God damn it.

Tape park fucking row.

- In those days, that was
the only game in town.

I mean, there's only
cable channel

that you can watch
real good movies

which totally disappeared
from the screen.

And some of them
viewed my movies

and of course, I always
like to see my movie

just to see what's
on television.

♪ Stay alive until the
night is over ♪

♪ And just the station
on your way ♪

- When "McCabe & Mrs. Miller"
first came out, it was a flop.

It made less money, grossed
less money, I think,

than "O.C. and Stiggs"

or some of these films in
mind that were really flops.

And it's become a little
kind of a mini classic.

You do a film and it's so,

it's just different from
what the standard thing is.

They just don't succeed

until the audiences have time

to let themselves
catch up with it.

It's hard to keep the
audience's attention

when you show them everything.

And the problem with most
films is that you hear it,

you see exactly what it is.

If you're talking, there's
a big close up of your face

so we know that you're
talking and we hear it.

So I think the mandate in
the film is to hide that,

to make the audience,
well, what's going on,

I don't quite see that,
and oh, you think that,

so that the goosebumps
can come out.

Otherwise, you're sitting
there drinking Coca Cola

and eating a hot dog.

♪ You chose your journey

♪ Long before you came
upon this highway ♪

- I knew Jerry
personally so well.

He would say, hey, I wanna
sneak your film on my channel.

I said, oh, that's good

'cause otherwise they
didn't play anywhere.

They just didn't play anywhere.

[upbeat music]

- The Z Channel did great
film festivals,

we'd put on Truffaut
film festivals

and Curacao film festivals
and Australian film festivals,

French film festivals,
English film festivals,

anything that we can
sort of highlight

maybe a lesser known
movie around.

- Yeah, I mean, the cool
thing about Z Channel

was like investigating
somebody's work.

Jacqueline Bisset seemed
like a fetish in a way,

which I thought was pretty cool.

- Jacqueline Bisset is so
much a figure of Z Channel

I think because her
great beauty,

her great beauty led itself to
"Day for Night" by Truffaut,

it lent itself to a wonderful
film called "Le Magnifique"

which was the
quintessential Z movie,

that is to say,

a European movie that few
people knew about stateside,

but which had a great deal

of American style entertainment
value built into it.

[upbeat music]

[speaking in foreign language]

- You got Jean-Paul
Belmondo as a poor writer

who's fantasizing himself

the superhero of his
own pulp novel,

and the girl downstairs,
Jackie Bisset,

is like the the iconic
star of this pulp novel

in this guy's head.

[soft music]

[speaking in foreign language]

- When I did "Le Magnifique,"

Philippe de Broca asked
me to play this part

which was one part was a student

and one part was this sort
of Bond type character.

[singing in foreign language]

[speaking in foreign language]

Doing "Le Magnifique"
was interesting,

but interesting for me was
to watch Jean-Paul Belmondo

because he was the most
coordinated actor

I've ever worked with

and he could do three
or four things,

comb his hair, machine
gun somebody,

jump from rock to rock
like a light footed leper,

not a leper, leopard,

like an animal, like a
beautiful animal.

♪ Hallelujah

♪ Hallelujah

♪ Hallelujah, Hallelujah,
Hallelujah ♪

♪ Hallelujah, Hallelujah

- It was like having a
film festival in your house

every single night, a
film festival,

but you wouldn't have to
go to Rotterdam

and you wouldn't have
to go to Berlin

and you wouldn't have
to go to Cannes

and you wouldn't have
to go to Venice.

It was just like your own
private film festival.

And the programming was
eccentric and odd and mixed.

I was angry at it many times,

I thought, why are you
playing that?

You're the only voice
on television,

play only the kind of
art films that I like,

but it was very good enough
and not catering just to me,

it really gave you a kind
of smorgasbord,

it gave you a kind of open ended
view of all kinds of cinema

and it gave you a sense

of the size and scope
that cinema has.

- Antonioni is not necessarily

about the logical structure
of a dramatic story,

but about atmosphere and nuance

and the kind of
emotional tension

that exists more like weather.

One of the most striking
things for me in my memory

is Monica Vitti walking
across a piazza.

And then you see above

like about 25 guys just
watching her move,

and it says so much about
Italian culture,

about visual imagery, about
femininity, about sex,

about the just being a human

and then being in a place in a
like kind of classical piazza

somewhere very, very
Italian and Mediterranean.

I don't know, it's just
kind of haunting.

- Jeanne Moreau walking down
the street in "La Notte"

did it for me,

I said, this is a woman,

this is a job, whatever
this woman is doing,

I've no idea why she's
so depressed.

She is obviously
totally depressed

and this man is not
treating her well.

I don't care about him,
she is fascinating.

I don't know what that
all that means,

it's just unknown material.

- For someone to sit and think,

okay, I wanna show the final
break in a relationship,

I wanna see that actual,
the crack.

Now, how?

What about they attend an
all night party

and somehow it's the
attending of that party

that makes them finally realize

that their relationship is dead,

and that's the film you
set out to write.

[speaking in foreign language]

- [Interviewer] Have
you been married?

- [Jerry] Yeah, I think so.

- By the fall of 1983,

it was really clear to me

that I couldn't stay in
this relationship anymore,

the psychiatry that I'd
had so much hope for

wasn't gonna solve the problem,

Jerry wasn't ready to
solve the problem,

or perhaps capable, but
I didn't care anymore.

- I went into work one
day and Jerry wasn't there

and he was gone as it would
prove for three weeks.

I had understood that it
was a contract dispute

and he was holding a firm line.

Well, he served for
three weeks later

and then in that time,
he had divorced Vera.

- He continued to be in
touch with me,

we saw one another a few times.

A couple of times when
they were really ill fated

because we sort of had
a little moment together

and then that would
just make it worse

because it would give him hope.

- Jerry spoke bitterly
of that period.

Not bitterly of Vera

but just of being married
and being in that zone

and it was just somehow that
was something we didn't discuss

except to acknowledge
that love was hell.

In that three weeks

in which he had disappeared
from the face of the earth,

he had dissolved his
marriage to Vera

and started dating the
landlady at his new apartment,

it was Deri Rudulph,

who I eventually met
a couple months later.

- Jerry Harvey loved the movie

that Henry Fonda did with his
ex wife, Margaret Sullavan,

it was called "The
Moon's Our Home,"

and it's basically the
New Year's Eve picture

and Jerry wanted to play it

as his New Year's Eve
movie one year.

Very hard to get ahold of.

- Do you Sera Brown--

- I suppose you'd want me
to wait around doing nothing

while you're making
up your mind?

- I certainly do.

- To have and to hold
from this day forward--

- If that's what you
feel about it,

you might have called the
whole thing off.

- I certainly do.

- Do you promise to love,
honor and obey him--

- You really mean that?

- I most certainly do.

I'm sick of being made
a fool, I'm through.

I never wanna see you
again as long as I live,

I wouldn't marry you...

- Now all you got to do is
kiss the bride and it's $3.

- It was a favorite
picture of his

and the audience got to see it.

- [Interviewer] I can see

that you're definitely in
love with films,

I mean, suddenly it's your life,

but it seems to be
totally your life,

do you do anything outside
of film, for instance.

- [Jerry] What do you mean?

- Jerry was a creature of habit

and he had his watering holes

and I think the favorite
of all his watering holes

was Guido's.

And he very often went
there with Michael Cimino.

When I was introduced to
Cimino for the first time,

it was at Guido's.

Jerry knew all the waiters,
they all knew Jerry,

the waiters all knew Cimino.

In fact, when Cimino
walked through the door,

two waiters at once reached
out with cigarette lighters.

- I remember going to
Guido's one afternoon for,

it's kind of a late, late,
late lunch.

And Jerry was there and
pretty wound up.

And the thing I remember
the most about it

is he was perspiring kind of
profusely in the restaurant.

And I can remember exactly
what he was wound up about,

but he's wound up
about something,

it was something was going on

or something was bothering him,

but we had a few drinks

and I remember the waiter or
one of the guys came around

and adjusted his neck for him
right there at the restaurant,

kind of got behind him and said,

Jerry you're way
overstressed here,

and kind of cracked his neck
and I was like, oh, my God.

- He's really moody guy,

the days that he would
walk into his office,

sort of skulk into his
office and shut the door,

we knew not to approach him.

- I know he fought with
his demons an awful lot.

At the same time,

those demons were kind
of which drove him on

because he was insistent
and persistent

and he refused to take
no for an answer

and he was constantly
trying to make things right.

- I remember when Jerry brought
"1900," Bertolucci's film

and played the entire film not
cut, and it was so exciting.

- I got the six hour
"1900" all right from Lance

when he taped it off
of Z Channel.

- I still have 'cause it
took me two 120 tapes,

I still have the full
"1900" recorded off of Z.

[speaking in foreign language]

- "1900" was very jinxed film

in the sense that Bertolucci
had spent too much money on it,

the Grimaldis were
unhappy with him

for spending too
much money on it

and so his version was under
lock and key for many years,

almost in a fit of peak.

- Jerry insisted to the
Grimaldis for five years

that they had an uncut "1900,"

a five hour version of "1900."

They said, no, no, it no
longer exists,

maybe it existed once,
but it no longer exists.

And he pressed them
and pressed them

and eventually he managed
to get it released

and so we showed it
on Z Channel.

And there you could
see in all its splendor

what Bertolucci had intended.

- So another amazing thing
about the Z Channel to me,

like I don't even know

how you could get the
rights to show these things

with all those
politics involved,

but to just have access to
the the vision of the director

is amazing, invaluable.

- You just never know when
you're living in a golden age.

- I saw Berlin Alexanderplatz.

Now, that was the most
extraordinary revelation,

where else are you gonna
see this 12 or 14 hours

of his magnificent novel

turned into this
extraordinarily brilliant film

which nobody in commercial
filmmaking to this day

will ever put on television.

It was like some enormous
meal that kept coming

and you saw the whole
thing, it was breathtaking.

[speaking in foreign language]

- One day he walked into
the office and said,

come into my office, please.

And I went into his
office and he said,

he sat back in his
chair and he said,

I don't like the air
that you breathe,

I don't like the ground
that you walk on,

I can't stand to be in
the same room as you are,

you are a horse unrestrained.

And I looked at him

and I was completely
flabbergasted and shocked.

I mean, I think I even laughed

because it was so
out of nowhere.

And I remember laughing,

I remember at one point
laughing and saying,

well, I guess there's no room

for me to grow in this
organization.

And he told me

he'd write a letter of
recommendation or something.

- The day Peckinpah died,
Jerry had to leave work early.

Jerry got the phone call
that Peckinpah had died

and as someone who
knew Jerry well,

just came over to the office

and took him out for the
rest of the day.

It was just understood
that that was just gonna be

something Jerry couldn't
work past for a bit.

- He was like family,
Sam and Jerry,

and Jerry had a very
strong sense of family

and that you don't see
that much anymore.

Really if you felt

that you were part of this
undefinable idea of a family,

you could turn your
back and he'd cover it.

We were all quite
devastated over Sam passing

and the fact that he
wasn't able to get work.

There was nobody in this town

that would finance him
at all for anything,

I think the last thing you
did was a Julian Lennon video.

- Well, Peckinpah's recent
years had been so difficult

that one could see,
one could sense

that he was moving toward
that one way or another.

Yeah, yeah.

[soft music]

- As a receptionist,

I was literally sitting
right outside Jerry's door,

so quietly sat there

and occasionally would bring
up some film talk with him

and he began to realize that I
knew a little bit about film.

Then he brought me into
the programming department.

- And he usually had
Tim Ryerson in with him

and they'd be like two guys

baling hay on an
intellectual level.

They'd just be, why don't we
do this, why don't we do that,

and they'd be moving
their way down the board

trying ideas out on each other.

- We stood at that board

and move those magnetic
stripes around

that represented the
different films.

I can remember many times

just it was like standing
there and looking at it

and it's just dreaming

about all the wonderful
possibilities that you could do.

- Claude Chabrol,

in fact, that was one of the
other directors, all right,

that Lance gave me.

I'd never seen "This Man
Must Die," all right,

and they showed it on Z
Channel and I got it from him,

you still can't see that
goddamn movie.

- It was the great thing
about Z right from the get go

that they were running
European films.

That was how they got
the reputation

that they programmed them well

and they were making a
hit with it, who knew?

[upbeat music]

One interesting aspect
of "Das Boot,"

it had a career as a
film in theaters

where it really wowed
audiences around the country.

But then, we discovered

that it had been a mini
series in Germany,

that it was actually
six hours long

and that there were
six hour long episodes.

Makes sense, we showed it.

[speaking indistinctly]

There's this tragic irony
under "Das Boot"

that these guys who are
just hard working guys

who don't think politically

who just love the sea and
are under it and in it

and involved with their work

and whose reality is
one another,

they have no idea

that there in a sense like
the Monty Python character

is about to be crushed by
a big foot from the sky.

And in a way, it's because
it's played in slow motion,

we can feel the tragic
melancholy behind that.

[upbeat music]

- HBO was a thorn in the side

of everyone that
worked at Z Channel

'cause they feared that HBO
would muscle them off the dial.

HBO had buying power so they
could give monies to studios

which were very alluring.

- The Z Channel had
budgets that restricted

and you couldn't just pay
for everything

that you really wanted to do.

- There was always
somebody saying to him,

do we have to spend money
on this program guide?

Gee, if we didn't have
the program guide,

then we could be
more profitable.

Do you have to spend so
much money on the movies?

Do we have to spend so much
in marketing the Z Channel?

There were all these
pressures on him.

Sometimes they would
take money away from him

that he couldn't spend
the next year.

- He had to figure out
what his limitations were.

And Jerry was very good
about doing that,

he had a very strong
business sense

so he knew what he could
do and what he couldn't do.

But he realized that what
he could do was a lot

based on simply his own
knowledge of movies.

[soft music]

- Not only did Jerry champion

the full version of
"Heaven's Gate,"

but he also felt the same way

about Leone's "Once
Upon a Time in America."

- Because you still think

like some schmuck
from the streets.

Now, if we'd listened to you,

we'd still be rolling
drunks for a living.

- It was a famous day,
you broke?

- Don't bust my balls, Noodles,

I am talking about real money.

- This is real money to me.

It's a lot of money, you
want any of it?

- You'll carry that stink
of the streets with you

the rest of your life.

- Well, when we did "Once
Upon a Time in America,"

it was clearly from a
personal point of view,

an extraordinary opportunity.

I think this is potentially
one of the greatest movies,

one of the great
epics ever made.

I mean, it was, Bob De Niro was
at the height of his career,

I mean, he still is,
he's always great,

but I mean, he had just
come off "Raging Bull."

Sergio Leone was a genius.

It was a 12 year
project for him.

We shot for 11 months,

and because of one
test screening,

Warner Brothers and
The Lead Company

decided to take the three
hour and 43 minute version

of "Once Upon a Time in America"

and cut it down to two
hours and something,

and they used the
assistant editor

of "Police Academy 2"
or something to cut it.

- It broke the director's heart.

He was cut by a group of people

who should never have been
allowed in the cutting room

and they massacred it,
they ruined it.

They made a test showing of
it in Chicago or Illinois,

something on a cold night,

they didn't get the
results they wanted.

- Any problem.

- No trouble, good stuff.

- It was a really grueling,
miserable experience,

it was hugely frustrating and
disappointing, discouraging.

- The full version was
a masterpiece

as compared to like a
routine film

in a butchered
shortened version.

- Come here, look at this,
come here.

Sudden death, fucking tragedy.

26 years old.

- 26?

What a shame.

- Great stiff, she died
of an overdose.

- And I'm ready for another.

- Jerry actually showed
both versions side by side

on the Z Channel.

And I mean, there was no doubt,

no doubt how stunning it is

to allow your creation
when you're an artist

to be manhandled by other people
who are maybe not as adept

at understanding the vision
as you the filmmaker is.

[soft music]

- Your brother's a real friend.

- He's a romantic.

- When it came out in
it's aborted version,

Sheila Benson, who was then
also a critic for "The Times,"

called it the worst
movie of the year,

and then it was restored
to the director's cut

which was also shown,

and eight years later,

she picked it as either the best

or one of the five or 10
best pictures of the decade,

which goes to show you what
a little editing can do.

[soft music]

- In a way, what Z Channel
was and what Jerry did

is it became an
alternative voice,

a voice which said, not
only you're wrong,

but here's why you're wrong,

here's how it should play and
here's how they played it.

And then they shut up

because a picture's worth
a million words.

- [Interviewer] And do you feel
you've arrived where you are

by accident or by design.

- [Jerry] Initially by accident

and then subsequently by design.

- Deri was so warm, she
was so bright,

and I met her at her house,

she had a party for
Jerry at her house.

And that in itself was a
very welcoming gesture.

It was a birthday party
at the end of 1985.

- She was a lovely woman,

both in spirit and
physical beauty actually.

- And I immediately felt glad

that if Jerry had to
leave Vera for anybody,

that at least he'd found
his way to Deri

because she seemed to be
such a positive spirit.

- Deri grew up with a mother
who had been an iron lung

and needed an awful
lot from Deri.

As I recall her mother
been in a wheelchair a lot.

So Deri grew up taking
care of people.

That's what she tried to
do with Jerry.

- To know her was to
just have a crush on her,

she was just so amazing.

And she was becoming a
stand up comedian,

she was starting a
newspaper in Westwood,

she owned a lot of
property in Westwood,

she'd inherited a lot
of property.

And she felt a great
loyalty to the community.

- She's very optimistic,
open, outgoing person

and wanted sincerely to
support Jerry

and give him what he
needed emotionally.

- [Interviewer] Are there
any points in your life

where you can look back and see

that you might have done
something else

at that particular point?

- [Jerry] Many, many times.

- [Interviewer] Really?

- [Jerry] Yeah.

I think there are myriads
of crossroads in one's life

where one stops, says, do I go
this way or do I go that way?

- I was very happy when I'd
heard that he had remarried.

I thought, well,

since it finally
didn't work out with Vera

after a substantial
number of years together,

I thought, well, this is nice
that he's met somebody else.

- Their marriage was
a very colorful affair

held at the Westwood Marquis,

and Jerry, in his
contribution to the ceremony

was to add lines from
"Ride the High Country."

He had the the minister say,
I am not a man of a cloth.

- And this is not a
religious ceremony,

it's a civil marriage

which is not to be
entered into unadvisedly

with reverence and soberly.

A good marriage is a kind
of simple glory of mind,

a good marriage is like a rare
animal, it's hard to find,

it's almost impossible to keep.

You see people change

and that's important for you
to know at the beginning,

people change.

- It was a occasion at which
Jerry's circle of friends

was small but very
potent and in attendance.

There was me, Michael Cimino
was best man at the wedding,

and let's see, there was
James B. Harris.

There were a whole group of
really terrific people there.

And Deri's very large family,

they all were in love with
Deri, and who wouldn't be,

I mean, it was just a
really terrific gathering.

[upbeat music]

The market had been created
after "Heaven's Gate"

for director's cuts,

and "The Leopard" had
been in a botched cut,

and even the studio knew
to be a botched cut.

And so "The Leopard" was
restored to its full strength

when I toured the video market.

And Jerry was there

the night they screened
it for the first time

and he made sure there
was an offer on the table

and that when we showed it on
Z Channel, we highlighted it.

- I have seen the uncut
version of it, all right?

And they restored it

to more or less it's
IB Technicolor stature.

It's fantastic.

- "The Leopard" is
about one night

in the life of a
Sicilian prince.

And this prince may be dying,

there's a feeling of
mortality that's plaguing him,

he's got a bad heart it seems

and he's just sort of

moving through the
chambers of his life

in a kind of melancholy way.

But really what's happening

is that an era is
ending around him.

Because of the length that
Visconti gave to that story,

that prince in this
single night of his life,

we actually feel the world
moving through this man

and we feel that when he
goes, a world goes with him.

- I met Jerry in 1986 or '87,

I was working at a video
store in Westwood

called Videotec

and I was going to
college here at UCLA

and I was a clerk there

and Jerry was one of the
many industry customers

who used to come in.

He made me a bit uncomfortable,
he just seemed very strange,

he gave off an
uncomfortable vibe.

His wife on the other hand
was a sweet charming woman

and she gave off a great vibe.

- Jerry would go in there
and rent videos

and they would get into
conversations,

and Jerry realized,

hey, this guy knows
what he's talking about.

- Then he asked me if I'd be
interested in working at Z

as a programming assistant.

And at that point, my
attitude changed greatly,

and I was very happy to see him

- I think one reason Jerry
was such a great programmer

was the knowledge and the taste,

the showmanship, the creativity,

and then the passion to do it
or the commitment to do it.

- HBO and Showtime each
launched a second channel

that was more movie-focused
more film buff-focused.

Showtime did The Movie
channel, HBO did Cinemax

and they certainly were
aware of Z Channel

and tried to steal some
of our thunder,

we didn't think they were
doing a very good job of it.

- I mean, if we ran it,

even certain foreign films

would end up running on
the other places,

they would have to
pretty sexy usually,

our night owl films
tended to show up a lot

on Movie Channel and
Showtime and HBO

just because that's
like, well, tits and ass.

[speaking in foreign language]

- Much to my surprise
when I asked Jerry

what was the most successful
aspect of our programming,

he said, the night owl series.

I said, you've gotta be kidding.

He said no, we're
killing night line,

we're killing the 11
o'clock news.

- Night owl programs

where our late night
kind of soft core things,

movies with sex TNA,
stuff like that.

- My objectivity breaks
right the fuck down

when I think of those
night owl films

because those girls,

the women in those films
were so pretty.

I mean, they always found

even in the lamest of
the night owls,

even the one that has
like no plot

or it's just like why am
I watching this?

I know I'm only watching
this till the next nude scene

but I'm gonna stay in there.

"The Lady on the Bus,"
I remember.

Someone like Laura
Antonelli or Sonia Braga

would hit a big with a
respectable film,

but their backlog

was full of all kinds of
early nudie kind of films

and we would get them all

so basically we would have
Laura Antonelli festivals

that had every last
movie she'd made

with all the nude scenes.

- Laura Antonelli, it's like,
whatever happened to her?

I think she was like
the first actress

that I ever like fell
in love with in a movie

that I went into like
see her films

and they were genuinely sexy.

I mean, I don't think I knew
what sexy was before then,

I had crushes on actresses

and I thought I was in
love with them, all right?

But I'm watching
"Life Mistress,"

there's a scene that she's
with this actor

who's trying to get
into his room

and they're making out
on the stairs.

And he reaches out and
grabs her in her crotch.

And it was really
sexy to see that.

And when he did it, she went,
oh,

and she almost like
collapsed in his arm.

- Please take me to bed, please.

- And then they didn't go into
the room and I was pissed.

- The great divergence
between European cinema

and American cinema
really is about sex.

- If you want to do
nudity in a movie,

you have to do it in
a certain way,

it's interesting because
it's so natural

because you see things that
people do with each other

that you were not aware
of that could be done.

I get many many calls after
"Turkish Delight" say,

you enriched our sex life so.

[singing in foreign language]

"Turkish Delight" was
a great book, you know,

I loved the book.

It was like in Holland

was going with the wind
in the United States,

everybody was interested
and it was having an opinion

if it should be Vivian
Lee or not, isn't it,

and who should be her lover,
Clay Cable or anybody else.

And this was like,
this is our book,

it was so phenomenally
important that book

in Holland at that time.

[soft music]

I had worked with Rutger Hauer

on the television series
was called "Floris."

Because he was a
television person,

I didn't even think about
him strangely enough.

My producer of ours said,

well, what about this nice
guy that you used in "Floris."

He's a nice guy and he
seemed sympathetic,

why don't you test him?

I said, he's more a farmer.

He goes like, bum bum,
bum, he was like that.

And he said, yeah, but you never
know, you have to test him.

And so I tested everybody
and at the end,

I tested Rutger Hauer too,

and then I realized that
Rutger Hauer is phenomenal.

That there was absolutely,

that I couldn't have
been more wrong

in thinking that he
couldn't do it.

Because that was Rutger Hauer,

and that was of course for
everybody that knew the book

was like, are you an idiot,

how can you do this
wonderful character of Eric

that is so beautiful

and has all these
feelings versus woman?

[soft music]

So, I was right, I was right.

I've been right a
couple of times,

I've been wrong many times.

The fact that I immigrated
to the United States in '85

had to do not only with the
fact that I got a job here,

but with the fact that
people got me the job

because they knew my work,

and they knew it
because of Z Channel.

- [Interviewer] Is
there anything else

you would like to have
done with your life

than what you're doing
at the moment?

- [Jerry] Oh, there's
many things.

Be president, run a
major studio,

more than anything though,

I think I would like to
have been able

to play professional football.

Throw passes, be a quarterback,
buy things like that.

- Jerry felt excited
about what he was doing,

he'd be excited
about a new deal,

he'd be excited about being
able to announce a Warner's deal

or something along those lines,

but at the same time, I always
felt that Jerry felt beaten.

I think he felt he was
fighting that uphill battle.

- [Interviewer] The whole
time or just later though.

- I think the whole time, I
always felt that way of Jerry.

- When you were a
friend of Jerry's,

you were kind of immersed in
his whole being, his whole life

and that was quite a
lot of stuff.

- When Deri suggested marriage,

Jerry said, I have got
to be honest with you,

I don't want children.

I mean, if you're okay with
that, then we can talk,

but you just need to know that
before you get your hopes up.

- Jerry was so hurt
by his family,

it was difficult for him
to get married.

And when he did get married,

initially inconceivable
to have children,

so much so that he had
had a vasectomy.

- He certainly did give
me the outlines

of a very, very
dysfunctional family life.

Very tormented.

- His father was a judge who
at some point in his career

had sent more people to death

in the county of whatever
Bakersfield county is

than any other judge.

I mean, this was a family

full of pain and darkness
and strangeness.

- Jerry's father was a
fundamentalist Catholic,

someone who was so much a
traditionalist,

so hidebound that he wasn't
even close to his family.

When his own daughter was coming
to him in a suicidal state,

he slammed the door in her face.

- For what Jerry said,
Jerry's father was a drunk,

rather sadistic
towards his kids.

Jerry didn't really have a
lot of nice things to say,

would tell stories about
his father coming in

and throwing water on him to
wake him up in the morning

and there were no
specific references

to specific abuse or
anything else,

but it was something he really
didn't talk about that much.

- He expressed
actually more active,

active anger toward his mother.

- She was a extremely
monotone person.

I never saw her angry,
I never saw her cry,

I never saw her really
laugh that much.

It was like she was
almost in a drugged state.

- Maybe she was shut
off emotionally

because she had done things

and not been there for them

or allowed abuse to
happen to them.

We'll never know.

- He told me that he had
another sister

that the family really did
not know what had happened to,

but had come to the feeling
that she had committed suicide.

- Jerry never really made
that big of a point about it,

except that Mary had
disappeared,

and he kind of just said
that as a toss away line

and that's all he
would refer to it,

it's the only way he
would refer to it.

- He had told me stories of
struggling with depression

and what he sort of
identified as evil thoughts

and dark thoughts when he
was growing up.

- Jerry was always volatile,

he always had a very bad temper.

But he didn't drink until
in the late 70s

when he started drinking.

When Jerry drank, he
was dangerous.

I can remember once in Rome,

we were all having a great
time, we were drinking,

and I made the comment,

God created whiskey to keep the
Irish from ruling the world.

And Jerry took a cigarette

and flicked it right at my
face from across the table,

hit me in the eye,
fortunately I wear glasses.

- We both looked for him
for therapists

and found this doctor
that he went to

that we were really
excited about.

He was smart, he was as
smart as Jerry,

he could challenge him,

and it started out to
be a really good thing

and Jerry really looked
forward to it

because he could talk
to somebody,

he found somebody that
could really challenge him

and talk to him.

Unfortunately along the way,
it fell into other traps

and I don't think in the end,
it was such a good thing.

I didn't live in fear,

I mean, the day I was
afraid it was over,

the day I got afraid

and something happened to
make me afraid,

we weren't together anymore.

I just had this
really bad feeling

and I tried to call the house

because he should
have been there,

and he didn't answer the phone

and I just had a bad feeling

so I got in my car and I
drove back to the house.

And I came in and he
had taken a lot of pills

and he was waving a gun

that was the gun that Sam
Peckinpah had given him.

And I just went to look for
his doctor's phone number

because I just thought

this is like something
terrible's happening here.

And when I came back,
he held the gun on me.

And basically, in one
form or another

had the gun at my head
and in my mouth

and up against my head for
the next three or four hours.

He had called the doctor before

and left him a message
that he was in trouble.

So he had reached out already,

the doctor had arranged

to come and take him to
the hospital.

And it was basically
from that moment,

we were never together.

- I didn't see Jerry
for seven years

while he was married to Vera.

When Vera and Jerry
started to break up,

I guess I was the
first phone call.

And Jerry showed back
up in my life

and it was like the thing
I had dreamed of

for all of those years.

One night, we were having
dinner somewhere in Westwood

and I remember Jerry starting
to get angry for no reason.

I mean, we were having a
very pedestrian conversation

about something and
out of nowhere,

he started to become infuriated.

So he got to the point
where he stood up

and he walked out of
the restaurant.

So I went trailing after him
and when I got up behind him,

I remember grabbing
him by the shirt going,

what's a matter, what
did I say, what happened,

and he turned around and
all of a sudden

I found like his fist
was in the air

and he was about to
pull me with it.

And he looked up at his hand
and he looked down at me

and he looked up at his hand

and he kind of caught it and
he pulled it back to himself

and it was as if it was
somebody else's hand.

Jerry and I

changed the nature of our
relationship after that.

I think on some level,
he was trying to back off

and protect me from
being subjected to that.

But the subtext to
all of that also

is that he had moved out
from his place with Vera

into another apartment

and the landlady was Deri.

- What the fuck is this?

- Maize.

- Maize for what?

- Wild dogs.

- Yeah, wild dogs, that's
bullshit, Boyle,

you've lied to me
straight through.

- You want me to be
honest with you?

- No.

- "Salvador" was not the kind
of picture you would expect,

it wasn't a studio picture,

it didn't have any studio
juggernaut behind it,

there was no money
to promote it,

it show for two weeks as
I said in two theaters

in February 10 months
ago so it was forgotten.

[speaking in foreign language]

- Holy shit, they're gonna
fucking kill us now, Boyle,

God damn it, I thought you knew
your way around here, Boyle,

they're gonna fucking kill
us, Boyle, God damn it.

- Stop it, shut the fuck up,
just be cool.

- It was clear that both
Jerry and Chuck Champlin

thought it was just a
terrific picture

and the kind of picture

that should have gotten
attention, but didn't.

Charles Champlin wrote a front
page article in the LA Times,

it was a two page article

about this great
forgotten classic.

And then Jerry Harvey
called up and said,

hey, that was great that
Chuck did that.

He said, I really
believe in this film,

and he said,

I believe Z Channel can have
a little bit of influence.

[speaking in foreign language]

He said I'm gonna give
this film a shot,

he said I'm gonna show it
during December.

So he said while all the studios
are screening their movies

at every private screening
room on the ballot,

what's called the Bel Air
of Beverly Hills circuit,

and while they're showing
them at theaters and so on,

this film, which is not
being shown anywhere

is gonna be shown on
the Z Channel.

So there was the
cover of Z Channel

which everybody in
the business got

and everybody's now saw
"Salvador" this month, right?

And the next thing you know.

- Paul Newman in "The
Color of Money,"

James Woods in "Salvador."

- I get nominated for an
Academy Award for Best Actor

and Oliver and Richard Boyle
who co-wrote the screenplay

got nominated for
Best Screenplay.

- [Interviewer] What's
the most exciting thing

for you about movie making?

- Tonight, tonight is
the most exciting thing

about movie making, believe me.

It was an amazing year

and had Jerry not sort of pushed

to have Chuck do the
interview at the right time,

put Z Channel magazine out
with the "Salvador" picture

on the cover with the
whole cover,

shown it during that month,

that picture would have
been completely forgotten

and the kind of work that I'm
most proud of just personally

would never have been seen.

[speaking in foreign language]

- Are you kidding.

- So I think personally,

I've always felt at that
particular day

with Chuck Champlin and
with Jerry Harvey

and what came of it

was really the turning point
in my career without a doubt.

[soft music]

- HBO and the other competitors,
they had been wanting,

they had been wanting Z
Channel gone for a long time,

many people were taking bets

on when Z Channel would
finally slide off the cliff.

And it was Jerry's tenacity

and the stubborn
reputation of Z Channel,

the fact that it was really
beloved in the community,

those things work
together to keep Z

kind of like floating
like a castle in the air

beyond its normal mortality.

- Z Channel had at its peak

I think about 100,000
paying subscribers,

there were others who I
think were stealing it.

- We had people
calling up to say,

would it be possible to
subscribe to the magazine

without subscribing
to the channel.

And I was like why would
you like to do that?

- I remember we had
some new owners come in,

the CEO ordered Z
Channel for his home.

The cable man drove
up to the home

and said to the CEO's wife
not knowing who she was,

give me 20 bucks or whatever

and I'll give you Z
Channel for free.

- Jerry was very
stressed at that time

and unhappy at that time

and I guess that
somewhere in there

is where the salute to Z

became something we
intended to do.

- The AFI tribute in January
of 1987 was a real highlight

in I think Jerry's life

and I think in the life
of Z Channel.

We were about to be sold,

this was a moment of
marshaling the troops.

Everybody who had benefited

because of Z Channel's
existence was invited

to come take part in a
day long series of panels.

One person that Jerry
became very close to

in the last couple of
months of his life

was film director
Richard Brooks,

who directed "Elmer
Gantry," "In Cold Blood,"

"Looking for Mr. Goodbar."

Jerry located certain
films of Richard Brooks

that had been forgotten

such as "Something of Value"

with Rock Hudson and
Sidney Poitier.

- When it comes time to
kill the lion,

I want to shoot the gun too.

- It's just Shaw and how he
feels about Africans and guns.

- I want to shoot the gun too.

- I'm sorry, Mathyla.

- Always when we
hunted is the same,

you have all the fun, I
do all the work.

- But when we were little
and played together.

- But we're big now and
things are not the same.

- Hit him.

Hit him, hit him hard.

Do what he says now and
better hurry.

- "Something of Value" is
a movie from the early 50s

which deals with apartheid,

it deals with the Mau Mau
uprisings of the 1950s in Africa

which is a topic so relevant
to contemporary history,

it was painfully relevant

to the situation that was in
South Africa in the late 1980s.

Nelson Mandela was
still in prison

when we played "Something
of Value" on Z Channel.

- Remember me?

- Kimani.

What do you want?

- I've come home.

- When Richard Brooks
did "Something of Value,"

he managed to get
Winston Churchill

to do a short prologue.

Winston Churchill said, the
situation in South Africa

is the most important thing in
the world today, blah, blah,

turning a globe or
something very important.

- The problem of East Africa
are the problems of the world.

This was true in 1907
and it is true today.

- But the studio had said,

get rid of the old fat guy,
right?

It's like get really old fat
guy, it's Winston Churchill.

So Winston Churchill got cut
out of the picture, right?

It's a small bit but Churchill
had done them a huge favor.

So it did Richard Brooks's
heart a lot of good

to see that put back
in the picture.

- There was a cause for
hope in about September 1987

when the Rock Group
bought the Z Channel,

and it had very ambitious plans,

they came to all the
studios and said,

we're gonna take it national,
we need your support,

we're going to really
grow the subscriber base.

- The vision was to do a sort
of national satellite channel

that would compete with
HBO and Showtime.

- Jerry was happy,

he felt like he'd found the
right kind of wildcatters,

the right kind of cowboys

that would understand
his temperament

and just the future
looked golden.

- What do they call this place?

- Just over the rise be a
big town called Tombstone.

Fine town.

- Tombstone?

Yeah, I heard of it.

Well, me and your brothers
might ride in there tonight,

get ourselves a shave
maybe, a glass of beer.

- Yeah, you would
enjoy yourself.

Wide awake, wide open
town Tombstone,

get anything you want there.

- Thank you.

- [Interviewer] You want
to get any children?

- [Jerry] No.

- They had agreed not
to have kids,

they were both content with it.

And there was a point

when Jerry made an ironic
remark late in '87,

he said, well, I could have
predicted this would happen.

And I said, what do you mean?

He said, well, I'm
gonna have to go in

and have my vasectomy undone.

I said, really, what's up?

And well, Deri wants kids?

- And reverse vasectomies
usually don't work

and so there was some
frustration going on there

between Deri and Jerry.

- Jerry had told the doctors,
look, I have a problem,

I used to have a
drinking problem,

please don't give me
any painkillers

after the surgery is over,

that way I can recover faster.

And they agreed, he had
the topical anesthetic,

but after that, he
was cold turkey

just surviving it with
gritted teeth,

the pain of what followed,

unfortunately, an
infection followed.

And this time, the
doctors told him,

look, we have to perform
the entire operation

all over again.

And he said,

all right, this time you
use painkillers though.

He had the bins that
he predicted,

but he was able to manage
it 'cause he saw it coming

and he and Deri went
off to Bora Bora

and within a week and a
half, he was back up on top

and he arrived from Bora Bora

pretty much in time for
the stock market crash.

- Sadly, just after the Rock
Group bought the Z Channel,

the stock market went south
in a big way in October 1987.

And all those ambitious
plans were backburnered

and unfortunately, they were
ultimately never realized.

- I could see the stress
but he really did,

he was more concerned
about his staff

and that they not be worried
or afraid or what have you

than he seemed to be
about himself.

- One night in October of '87,

I go to the movies with
Jerry and Deri

and we watch "The Sicilian"
directed by Michael Cimino.

It's about to come out
the next week,

it's a preview screening.

We're watching this film,
it's got very witty dialogue,

it's got tremendous
energy to it,

but the official
opinion on Cimino

was he's a downer or something.

And Jerry said, the two
hour 25 minute cut

is actually opening next
week in Paris.

I said, it is?

He said, yeah, Deri and I
just made plans to go over.

And I said, oh, well,
I'm there too.

Oh, it was such a wonderful
time that we spent there

in terms of getting to
know them both.

It was again to be in
Deri's company.

I mean, she just loved
being in Paris

and it was just all positive

and there was a special
screening for us

'cause we'd come all this way.

And my feeling was

that it was one of the three
best films of the year,

but films getting clobbered
back in the United States.

- And when he came back,

he called me to tell me
that he was back

and relayed to me how
upset he was.

I mean, it almost went
beyond like you had to say,

Jerry, Jerry, relax, calm down,

you're making yourself sick

over someone else's
trials and tribulations,

one has to worry about
themselves a little more,

stop killing yourself

worrying about other filmmakers'
problems.

[speaking in foreign language]

- Jerry had been receiving
these inquiries from Joe Cohen

who was an executive with
Spectre Core which owned Prism

which had had some
success back East

showing sports and movies,
combining them in one channel.

And it was Joe's idea

that the same could be
done for Z Channel.

Given the conditions of
that month of October,

it made a lot of sense.

- The way to salvage all of this

was to add sports programming.

And that was it.

- And thus was born Z Plus,

which was everything you
love about Z Channel,

plus the Dodgers and Angels.

[upbeat music]

- [Jerry] The movie,
"The Wild Bunch"

had a pretty profound
effect upon my life.

It was about men in a
changing world

where the values were changing

and they had kind of
outlived a different world.

[soft music]

- March 17th of 1988,
we all went to Guido's.

And that was another
great evening,

that was like the Parisian
trip all over again.

This time, Michael
Cimino was there

and because I had sort of
gone to the war

for "The Sicilian,"

he and I are now very
comfortable with each other

and so we were all of us there

and there was a cake

that Deri had ordered from like
this really special bakery.

I mean, it's the most amazing
chocolate cake I've ever had.

And Michael had chosen
the inscription

which comes from John Ford from
"She Wore a Yellow Ribbon,"

which is lest we forget.

So that was on the cake.

And it was Michael's way of
thanking me and Jerry both.

And boy, it's so amazing
how the fates work

because this was the last
time we were all together

and they could not have been
more luminous as a pair,

we could not have all
been happier.

I mean, that night

is now surrounded by a
strange aura for me

because it was so happy
and we were also together.

And the cake says,
lest we forget.

- One of the risks of
taking on a partnership

with a sports channel

is that sporting events
often run commercials.

- Because there was
this precedent

in premium or paid television

was defined as not
having commercials,

we got into a battle with HBO

which escalated
unfortunately into a lawsuit.

- Z Channel felt that HBO

had teamed up with four
other studios

to prevent Z Channel from
getting access to their films,

and Z Channel instituted

a restraint of trade type
lawsuit against them.

Jerry was going to be the
star witness in this lawsuit

and was preparing to testify.

- When I tried to understand
what Jerry's state of mind was

in the last couple of
weeks of his life,

I think that it had a
lot to do with the fact

that he was going up
against his friends

and old collaborators, old
business partners in court.

- I was quite worried about
him the last time I saw him

and express concern
to my partner

and anyone else that would
listen about it

and didn't know what to do,

but he's seem that he
was imploding.

- The night that we
inaugurated the sports channel,

I mean, they had all
these baseball players

up at the building

and Jerry and I took a
long kind of Socratic walk

around the block, we circled
the block several times

just talking it through.

And I was full of dread
and apprehension

about how things were gonna work

and Jerry was being
very positive.

- Jerry was very at
ease at the party

and he had to say a few words

and a lot of us all showed
up in support of Jerry.

- Up to the end, he was
telling me and other people,

it's going to be all right,

I know we're going to prevail,
it's good.

And he had the flu.

And basically, that was it.

He had the flu, he stayed home

and then we did not
see him again.

- My college girlfriend,
the day of Jerry's death,

saw him kind of wandering
through the sculpture gardens

here at UCLA.

Didn't talk to him or anything,

but she knew him

and she saw him

just kind of walking through
the sculpture gardens

in a melancholy way
the day he died.

I'm sure when she saw him,

he didn't know it was
gonna be the day he died.

- We got a call to come
into the office on Sunday.

- Somebody called me at
home and said,

you need to come into
the office right now.

- 10:00am on a Sunday,
yeah, okay, I can be there.

- Jerry didn't kill
himself for an hour

after he killed Deri.

And I know during that time,

the lucid part of him
probably resurfaced.

I know he called his
psychiatrist,

I know in a really sort
of eerily calm way,

he described what he had
done to his psychiatrist.

And it's interesting, I
know Jerry so well

that I didn't even need
to read the police report

to corroborate the vision
that I had in my head,

but I knew he would
go to his bed

and I knew he would sit
down in that spot

in a sort of slumped
position that he sat in.

And I know that he must
have spent an hour

contemplating what it
was that he had done,

and that he had come to
the conclusion

that there was just no
way that what he had done

was acceptable enough
to go on living.

And he put the gun to his temple

and he self executed himself.

- I think one of the more
painful events in my life

was sitting at the
breakfast table,

cup of tea in front of me,
picking up the LA Times,

and that's how I learned
what happened to Jerry.

- People are always asking why

when something dreadful happens.

Truth is, it doesn't
matter why, it happened.

- I was angry at him, I was
angry at him for doing that,

and I think many other
people have felt the same way

and that may be one
of the reasons

the story hasn't been
told for so many years.

Maybe people need to go through
a healing process for that.

But did I see it coming?

- When Jerry died, his
mother called me that day,

a few months after that,

I started to see her on a
regular basis.

Maybe I just wanted to
know the answer,

maybe there was a reason why
everyone at a certain age

came to this realization that
they'd come from a bad seed,

we don't know.

And maybe part of my
association with her

was sort of because I was
really curious to know as well

because as much as I
pushed Jerry away,

I wanted to
understand the story.

- After Jerry died,

it was right at the time
within a week or two

of when Z Channel started
broadcasting sports.

And I guess you could say Z
Channel died when Jerry died,

Z Channel died when
sports came on.

- Well, there was a year
between Jerry's death

and the end of Z Channel.

So while those events

were certainly clearly
linked in people's minds,

they weren't directly
linked perhaps.

- We were showing "The
Silence" by Ingmar Bergman,

the end very climactic scene,

it's all about the
quest for God,

is there God or is
there just silence.

And here we reach the
climax of the movie

then comes on at the
bottom of the frame

a yellow chiron that says,

don't miss the Dodgers game
coming up next at seven o'clock

on Z Channel.

- The Z Channel was
really about content,

here's what we love,
we love movies,

and here's a whole bunch of them

and here's some really
interesting people

talking about them.

- To be included within
all these great filmmakers

and to hopefully have opened
somebody else's eyes out there,

I mean, 'cause that's
what Z Channel did do,

just show the ordinary film goer

that there was a whole
other world out there.

And so I feel very privileged
to be a part of that.

- There's been no place
since in my mind

that has done quite what
Z Channel's done

in sort of bringing all
different kinds of film together

in a way that really brings
out the best in films

by showing it in a context
of everything that is movies.

- The Z Channel
being what it was

and being a
remarkable achievement,

if you compare that with
what Jerry eventually did

and how he died and what
he did prior to his death,

there's this sense of
creating a hero

where perhaps one is
inappropriate.

And I had problems with that.

- Whatever I think sort
of positive feelings

that were about Jerry
at that point,

and it's sort of
trumped everything,

you weren't gonna get
around the fact

that he murdered his wife.

- I had a feeling in my mind
that Jerry had other options,

that there was other
options for him.

That doesn't make it right,

I'm not saying anything

about how you leave this earth
or don't leave this earth,

I just always had in the
back of my mind and still do

that he had other options.

- They can't be diminished

when we all stand up and
have to say our names

about who's responsible
for this piece of shit

or this masterpiece,
who's responsible.

Everybody wants to take credit,

but he was an intricate part

of all of those films
that he touched.

Even though he had nothing
to do with them

when they were made,

there was still a living

nurturing that brought
those films

that otherwise I think
would been lost forever.

I like him.

- Louise Brooks, one of
Jerry's favorite actresses

and one of mine, always
like to quote Gerter,

Gerter would say, a human
life remains of consequence,

not because of what we
leave behind,

but because we act and
inspire and rouse others.

Damn it.

Sorry, a human life
remains of consequence,

not because of what we
leave behind,

but because we act and
inspire and rouse others

to action and inspiration,

we act and inspire and rouse
others to action and enjoyment.

And so, when I think of the
legacy of Jerry Harvey's life,

I think of it in those terms,

I think, he's not a guy
who left much behind,

what he left behind was
in a lot of way wreckage

and very tragic and
costly wreckage.

The films that got left
behind that he midwifed

are part of the action and
inspiration of his life.

He acted and inspired others

to value these things of beauty.

- [John] You're listening
to Castaway's Choice,

I'm John McNally.

Our castaway this week
is Jerry Harvey,

who is the program director
of Group W's Z Channel.

Why did you choose what letter?

- [Jerry] For me it's
the greatest love song.

- [John] It's that simple?

- [Jerry] Yeah.

[soft music]

♪ Gone is the romance that
was so divine ♪

♪ 'Tis broken and
cannot be mended ♪

♪ You must go your way
and I must go mine ♪

♪ But now that our love
dreams have ended ♪

♪ What'll I do when you are
far away and I am blue ♪

♪ What'll I do?

♪ What'll I do when I am
wond'ring who is kissing you ♪

♪ What'll I do?

♪ What'll I do

♪ With just a photograph
to tell my troubles to ♪

♪ When I'm alone

♪ With only dreams of you
what won't come true ♪

♪ What'll I do?

[upbeat music]