Bitchy Widows of Famous Directors Syndrome

[zedz]

I know someone who works for a DVD company that's been struggling to get the rights to the Terayama films, but he said the main problem is coming from Toho.

This is an interesting nugget of info. Absolutely no basis for this, but I've been wondering whether one of the problems is that having the rights to something is not the same as having the elements, and it's unlikely that all of those individual filmmakers are sitting around with the original negatives, or good first generation prints, in their basements. If Toho still controls the elements but not the rights, they probably don't have a huge incentive to cooperate with third parties. All completely speculative, so take with a teaspoon of soy sauce.

[The Elegant Dandy Fop]

I know someone who works for a DVD company that's been struggling to get the rights to the Terayama films, but he said the main problem is coming from Toho.

This is an interesting nugget of info. Absolutely no basis for this, but I've been wondering whether one of the problems is that having the rights to something is not the same as having the elements, and it's unlikely that all of those individual filmmakers are sitting around with the original negatives, or good first generation prints, in their basements. If Toho still controls the elements but not the rights, they probably don't have a huge incentive to cooperate with third parties. All completely speculative, so take with a teaspoon of soy sauce.

He mentioned specifically that they own an excellent print of "Throw Away Your Books and Riot in the Streets" that they want to use but that Toho is very difficult to deal with. It's definitely not about the print.

[zedz]

Curiouser and curiouser. I wonder what kind of hold Toho has over these films, then, at this late stage.