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Hey, folks, welcome to a special episode of The Projection Booth. I'm your host, Mike White. On this episode, I'm talking with Jackson Cooper. He is the executive director of AGFA and is the American Genre Film Archive. If you are a film fan, I am sure you are very familiar with a lot of their titles. They had quite a few playing at the Fantastic Fest in Austin this year. Sat down with Jackson while he was down at the festival. Talked a little bit about AGFA, what they've done, and
what they're going to do. Got some exciting news ahead. Thank you so much for listening, and I hope you enjoyed the interview. Jackson Cooper, tell me a little bit more about yourself before you mentioned that you were a theater kid, and it looks like you've been involved in the theater for a long time, quite a while.
I would say film specifically, genre cinema, horror movies and such. I was a kid discovering musicals with watching The Nightmare before Christmas when I was four years old, and just completely falling in love with this gothic imagery and this sort of really scary but lovable characters and having some pretty kick ass songs by Danny Elfman. So that's truly
where it started. And so throughout my entire career it was always like working in the arts in specifically nonprofit spaces, while also being a huge film buff, film programmer, film writer. And when I came to this role as executive director of AGMA, it felt like such a perfect fit. It's an incredible organization and I'm just really honored to be in this position.
For people who might not be familiar with it, what is AGFA and what's your mission?
So AGUA stands for the American Genre Film Archive. We're founded fifteen years ago this year by Tim Leek, who is the founder of Almo Drafthouse Cinemas and a sort of merry band of genre film lovers in Almo Drafthouse. The mission is to promote and protect the legacies of the greatest genre films and their filmmakers. So we preserve physical film thirty five sixteen and VHS and svhs in
our archive which is located in Austin, Texas. We do in house restorations and protect the legacies of these films through restoration efforts and then putting those out on our Blu Ray label which is distributed by Ocean Vinegar Syndrome.
And then we promote the greatest genre film through theatrical distribution arm so we gain a lot of theatrical rights from our partner labels that Arrow, Severin Vinegar Syndrome, and we work directly with art houses and film festivals all across the globe to just bring genre and repertory cinema
to a whole new generation. So it's really cool. We're very unique because we're nonprofit, so all of our work is really rooted within mission and sort of the mission of using how genre has been used by specifically underrepresented filmmakers of bipoc Asian, feminist queer filmmakers to express themselves, and our work is there to make sure that their legacies are protected and that more people know about them.
How do you choose which films you're going to restore and put out on Blu Ray.
We have an incredible, small but mighty team that between all of us we have such an insane amount of film knowledge and film history, and not just those of us who know the name of the Ford's gaffer from the right in a paramount film, but also why Poverty Row horror films are as important to the history of film as Jaws.
Right.
That's how our team operates, So we can name the fourth gaffer from the left, but we also can go on and on about the impact of a movie like Mom and Dad, for instance, or Batpussy or Zodiac Killer. We have acquired over the years quite a number of films and their respected licensing and rights that we just have in our archive that has not been scanned or
restored quite yet. So we usually go from that list of what is available, and then we all have a conversation over the course of probably two to three months at the beginning of the year planned for the following year,
of what our home video schedule is. And we've take into account everybody's opinion in every department, so Restoration has to say what is available our creative scheme, you know, we go in and say what could appeal to audiences theatrical or incredible head of theatrical Brett always knows what art houses and audiences are looking for and trying to
get ahead of it. So we spend a lot of time just puzzle piecing these and based on all of those different factors, and then we emerge with a full calendar of what we're going to restore, which is about I would say we used to do about twelve to fifteen if I'm not mistaken, and now we do pretty much one a month now, so about ten to twelve.
Yeah, that's pretty remarkable. That's got to be quite a pipeline of work you have going.
It is, and I think it's very fulfilling because we all work together on curating the lineup. I should also mention it's all through our mission lens. We all do get it and say is this reflecting our mission and
is it also something we want to work on. I think there's a significant personal investment from the team in the work, because yes, while it is a lot, it's also exciting after that because we've curated a lineup that all of the departments would go, oh this gets me excited, or this title is exciting, and so we get to do that, and it's really unique and also really exciting.
Now, I don't want to ask you what some of your favorite restorations are, because I'm sure that, like, you know, who are your favorite children, but all my children equally, Yeah, but what are some of the ones where you're just like, Oh, my gosh, I'm so glad we brought this out. I'm so glad more people have access to this.
It's incredible the work we do because with our work, we are carving out this sort of new film history of sorts, saving these films, and we are but a microcosm among other great labels like Severin and Arrow and Vinegar Syndrome, which are also doing the great work. I will say the things personally I'm most proud of are our collaboration with Something Weird Video, which has been a long time partnership with Mike Rainey and now Mike's widow,
a Lisa Patrucky. That's been such a fulfilling partnership and something that every single year, every time we work on Something Weird release it is one of the most fruitful and fulfilling partnerships because Lisa is just a wonderful partner and the films are just so great because most of those films are why we all got into what we got into, and so we just put out restoration and mixtape of the Hey Folks Intermission Time VHS that many people were big fans of and it did Gangbusters and
we got to the team did a mixtape of it, namely our creative director Josie Emba and Brett Berg are head of theatrical. It just that was such a really incredible release because of the reaction to it. It sold out within the first two hours. Two thousand copies just gone. We love stuff like that because it's a fulfilling partnership and then also we get to be surprised. I'll also say personally, I'm really proud of the box sets we've done. A filmmaker's word, so the Doris Wishman box sets are
pretty remarkable. Our work with John Mowort Sugo and putting out his box set, including one of my favorite movies that we have, Terminal USA, the greatest film no one's ever seen or people haven't seen yet. I should say I think our filmmaker box sets are ones I'm really proud of. And I can talk about this because it's going to happen. But we're about to restore the films of George and Mike Kuchar and we're working directly with the Kuchar Trust to restore those. So I'm very excited
and looking forward to to that work. Yeah.
Is everything that you restore, is that all part of your archive already or do you actually reach out and bring in other prints.
There's a combination of both. It's primarily things that we already own. But in the sense of like the Coup Chars or if I remember correctly, the Wishmen too, it was that we work directly whether either the filmmakers themselves or whoever owns the materials and the rights to send us the elements to scan to restore. So in the case of the Coup Chars, will be loaning those elements
from them to work on the restoration. But primarily things like the Something Weird collaborations, some of our vhs and other restorations, those are things that we own in the archive already.
And then not only do you do both the Blu ray releases also theatrical runs of things. But then from what I understand, people can hire you to do restorations themselves.
Yeah, we just paid off for a four K scanner, So we now own a great, beautiful, wonderful scanner which is here in the act Ball offices where I'm at. And yes, we do lap work for folks. Yeah, if they need a print scanned or just like a two K scan or four K scan, we can do that. We work closely with people like draft House Films and other Kino and a few other partners to scan prints and things like that, which has been great.
If you're talking about this being your fifteenth anniversary and the screenings that you're doing a Fantastic Fest and must be a little bit of like a homecoming with the ties between Alamo and Fantastic and then Eggfa.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, Alamo and Fantastic Best have always been partners, still are incredible partners and talk about to filling partnerships and relationships. We all have some connection to Draft House, whether we worked for them. I used to program a monthly film series with them when I was in Raleigh, North Carolina. I like to say that all of us were all on the same team, right, and so it's been really great.
Yeah.
I think for Fantastic Fest this year, it was very fun to curate because not only is there this circus carnival theme which brings out the weirdest and wildest movies. Often if anything said in a carnival that if there's a fucking clown, it's just like a crazy film already. And we also use this as a way of showcasing
our new restorations. And so we just acquired a film and restored it which will be premiering called Saint War, which is this very diy Amityville satanic panic spin off by Bart LaRue, and it's going to be a lot
of fun screening these things. And yeah, for our fifteenth we wanted to showcase sort of the breath of what we do, so working with partners like Severn that's the Ray Dentis Steckler film and their beautiful restoration Carnival Blood, which was our own restoration Gorgeous that premiered a fantastic best few years ago, and archival thirty five of Johnny Toas's The Mission, a largely underseen but highly incredible and underrated action film like that showcases our archive work and
then you see upcoming restoration and Sain War. So it was really fun to be very thoughtful with how he curated this year's lineup.
Yeah, do you have a wish list of things that you wish you could get your hands on restore? Oh?
My god, so many. But the beauty of what we do and working with people like Benniger, Syndrome and Severn is if we don't get it, then someone else gets it. So either way, we're all on the same team. It's not of competition. We're all communicating and it's a beautiful community that way. For me personally, I would love us to put out Michael mants to keep the uncut version,
the lost version. It's not particularly genre, but I think I could convince Elain May to give us her three hour cut of a new lead to at least scan. I would love I shot Ady Warhol a lost film. There's quite a bit of lost fifties films as well that I'd like to get and Janis did a beautiful restoration many years ago of my favorite films of all time, Equinox, so I would love for us to put out a
four K of that at some point. And there's quite a few something weird titles that we have that I'm excited about when we get the opportunity to put those out. It'll be a good day to do. And I will say, like the Kupchar project is going to be huge, and that that's been a dream come true, especially as the queer person, a queer weirdo myself. George and Mike were very formidable in my early days of learning about genre and the history of experimental film, the history of outsider art.
So that's the dream come true doing that box set.
Yeah, early queer films like Jack Smith and some of those, even like getting your hands on like a Scarecrow in a Garden of Cucumbers or something that would be such a huge coup. We're putting out Scarecrowner Garden of Cucumbers. Fantastic.
Yeah, we're putting out Scarecrown Garden Cucumbers on Blu.
Ray next year. Oh that's wonderful. I'm so glad to hear that.
Yeah. We actually we worked directly with the Academy Film Archive on that restoration. We have it in our theatrical now we're putting it out on Blu Ray next year.
It's going to be tough for you guys. I mean, you talked about how you have a new four K scanner, but it's like technology is constantly evolving. I mean, what's going to be next after that.
We've chatted a little bit about this as a staff, more so as a board, and I've been to conferences and on panels talking about restoration preservation, where the very obvious question everybody is asking us like how is AI going to integrate in restoration and the thing that we really are proud of. And I won't speak for our partner labels, but I know we all probably share this sentiment and value, which is that for restoration and preservation work,
it is all personal. So a machine will not be able to replace a person physically going in and restoring. I think AI and there will be tools that will help streamline the process. One of my board members, who is an archivist, did talk about that it's not going to be for a while, and at any rate, we do see it being beneficial for things like dirt and scratch removal, things that do take up quite a bit of time before you actually get to the meati work
of color grading and sound and things like that. There could be some tools with that, but nothing has been on the market or the vault fleet yet. Everything's still up in the air. And just thought an idea at this point, but it'll be interesting to see how things evolve.
Tell me a little bit more about the theatrical arm. I'm very curious how people are able to rent the prints and actually get these things out there.
Yeah, so we have ant and Digital available. If he's not available, we have Blu Ray of course for theatrical. We have quite a bit of prints in our archives. We have a lot of prints that were donated to us over the years, are deposited from film libraries and from collectors and such, so there are opportunities for people to book those prints. I will say that it goes without saying that thirty five millimeter sadly is becoming less
and less prominent in the exhibition world. We're starting to do some work on the back end as a nonprofit just encourage a bit more thirty five, including increasing our thirty five millimeter traffic and striking new prints and doing things like that to just encourage venues to show it more because it is part of the experience. I was a projectionist when I was in high school of thirty
five right before the digital turnover. There's still nothing like seeing a movie on film, and then we have our theatrical We have a bunch of prints that people can book and rent, and if they want to, they have to reach out to us directly because we have a whole super list. Then on our website you can find our catalog which is AGVA plus many other film libraries, including our partner labels sever and Arrow Benniker Syndrome Factory.
We do theatrical distribution on their behalf, which is why AGVA maintains the theatrical distribution of Arrows Beautiful Restoration of Donnie Darko. So anytime Donnie Darko wants the screen, it goes through us. And I think our unique positioning as a nonprofit allows us creating so many partnerships, not just with libraries and collections, but also the art houses themselves.
We have an incredible head of theatrical distribution, Brett Burke, who is literally the person booking all of the films and communicating with the venues and Brett's programmer as well of film programmers, so he not only books it and processes the rental, but he also is managing all of these relationships and working with microcinemas who are just emerging or very established organizations with big membership bases like American Cinema at the Academy Museum and not just saying here's
the film that we have, but hey, you showed this film, check out this other film in our archives, so really helping to curate it and that's very important to us also as a nonprofit being that sort of connector and the partner for theaters that are reaching a moment now where repertory is coming back and theaters are trying to figure out how to bring audiences back off their couch and into the movie theater. And I think it does a really good job helping to provide films that are
unique and interesting to get people into the theaters. How many people are part of eg vote staff is there's six of us right now and we're growing for literally everything for restoration, marketing, fundraising, theatrical finance. There's six of us, so we are a small but mighty team and it's great but we're growing, so it's exciting. And also we're never without something to do. I like to say, yeah, we have our nonprofit board of directors, which oversees the
strategy and the financial health of the organization. So they're my boss as the executive director, and yeah, we're in a growth period, so we'll be growing and adding more people over the next few years, which is exciting and also I think is good for us sustainability wise for the long term. I got to tell you, I'm looking
forward to all things ACTA coming out. This is great hearing about some of these new titles and just the work that you guys have been doing is just so mind blowing and such an important part of our community. Thank you.
We're really grateful.
And we have so many things in our collection and archive that have yet to be restored, have yet to be put out. So we joked the other day in a staff media we'll have enough stuff to get us through this lifetime and many others afterwards. So the act But will continue from now to the end of eternity, and that's something that's really incredible. I pinch myself when I think about that. Yeah, you mentioned that you're also
a writer. Do you have any writing projects coming up? Yeah, I'm working on a book on the history of midnight movies and this idea of outsider art and how merry bands of misfits and outsiders created the midnight movie craze, and then working on a book on Rocky Horror Picture Show, and on our fiftieth anniversary next year, and then in early stages of a book on Danny Elfman. So yeah, again, I like to stay busy, So we're busy at AGVA, and then I go home and busy with my own projects.
So it's great, that's fun.
We mentioned Scarecrow in a Garden of Cucumbers, and there's that whole Middler tie in, and that Ben Miller Tomlin too, and then with being married to one of the Pipper kids and then them being in the Forbidden Zone. Just it feels like all of that art was all coming together during the seventies and just I can't wait for you to unravel that. When it comes to Danny Elfman the interview.
I've been a fan since I was four, and I also just think for Danny, he's probably one of the most talented film composers working today, next to people like Thomas Newman and Hans Zimmer of course, but also yeah, Danny just was in the middle of everything, and not
just with the underground scene but in Hollywood too. The evolution of Hollywood and also the sound of Hollywood, like soundtracks really changed from by the time he was writing Peewee's Big Adventure all the way through like Batman was a game changer, but then he wrote something like Edward Scissorhands and then Nightmre before Christmas and it completely changed
a game. All of the stuff he did, but even his lesser known things like Dolores Claiborne and night Breed are just so fucking good and just he deserves a lot more credit than I think he gets, and he gets a lot of credit. People love him, but I think he needs to be Harold did as a genius. I don't use that term lightly. So I was really excited to dive into starting some early research on that book. He'll be Bunderwight. I'm excited like you.
I worked at a movie theater as well when I was coming up, and we used to play soundtracks all the time in the lobby, including that I can't remember the name of it, something about Darken Theater. The greatest hits of Dann music for a dark in Theater.
He was one and two.
Yes, the best, the best. I recognize this, but oh he also did Midnight Run. This is crazy and it's such a different style run. Yeah, Summers be black beauty.
He did so much stuff. And yeah, Music for a Dark in Theater that's a pretty remarkable two volume set, just because you hear the familiar, but then you also hear these not so well known Elpman works that are just as good, maybe a little bit better than some of his more popular things. Like I said, Summersby has this one track that I was just like, this is
one of the most beautiful things I've ever heard. And Yeah, you also see the range of filmography throughout Hollywood history that it's he's doing these big budget the Batman's and the Edward Sensor Hands, but then he's also doing the Gus Van Sant films, He's doing To Die for a Goodwill Hunt Team, and then venturing into television with Tales from the Crypt. There's just such a good history with his filmography. It's pretty remarkable.
Yeah, which I had one percent of the royalties he's probably made off of The Simpsons.
He went on Mark Marin's podcast and he said the reason he gets the royalties, and I hope I'm remembering this correctly, was he sang the Simpsons that he's one of the three who sing that, and so that's how he gets much of the royalties is from that. Yeah, because he sang on it. I know, so I was in and yeah it's yeah, it's pretty incredible. But yeah, people don't know that he wrote it. When they learned that the guy who wrote Edward Scissorhands wrote The Simpsons
an Tails from the Crypt, it's pretty remarkable. Yeah, a long, incredible career.
Is there a good place online for people to keep up with you in your work?
You can follow American Genre Film dot com sign up for our email list. You can follow us on Instagram at AGBA AGFA on Facebook as well. My social is the dot Jackson Cooper on Instagram, so you can see my other lives that I live. But I would just point people to following actvosts so that can keep up with the work.
That we do.
Fantastic Jackson, thank you so much and I hope you have a great festival.
Yeah, thanks, Mike, appreciate it.
I put that stout as book. But Bo