- F.X. Feeney: Z Channel had what they call a "zero churn rate" which means that nobody would cancel the service.
- Penelope Spheeris: [on "The Decline of Western Civilization] I made the movie. The guys that paid for it where a couple of independent businessmen from the Valley who wanted to make a porno movie. And I went in and talked 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 line check, you know. And they did!
- Penelope Spheeris: [on "The Decline of Western Civilization] 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.
- Self - Filmmaker: I had a film called "Images" that I had done in - shot in Ireland in '72. And he was particularly - Jerry liked that film a lot. He said, "Let's run that on the Z Channel." We couldn't find who owned the title. He said, "Well, I'll run, if you'll run it." I said, "Well, I'll run it, if you'll run it. So, here's the print."
- Self - Filmmaker: 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.
- Jerry Harvey: [when asked in the 1980s about the secret of Z Channel's success] I don't know. If I told you, it wouldn't be a secret.
- Self - Actress: I was up for an audition to go do "Star Wars" - of all things.
- [laughs]
- Self - Actress: And, so I was reading "Star Wars" and my agent was like pressuring me, you know, like, "Go, read for 'Star Wars'. You know, this is gonna be this thing." And I'm going, "I don't know". And I always said my little actress prayers, "If anybody just gave me a chance, I could just show 'em. I know it! I could - please, God, give me this job." And then - "Bad Timing" fell in my lap and I said, "Holy shit! Can I do this?"
- F.X. Feeney: HBO, Showtime, The Movie Channel, all of us are at this big convention in some hotel. Big table. Dais. Pitchers of water. Nameplates. Jerry's down at the other end. And everbodies like going down the list, talking about how many committees they've got, how may market research. "We hire this firm from New York." "We've got this firm from Chicago." Bop-bop-bop-bop. "Jerry, how many firms do you draw on to, you know, choose your programs?" "Well, I don't consult anybody. I just, you know, I just see movies. I just show good movies." "Yeah, but, you're decision-making process - whose your committee?" "I don't have a committee. It's just me. I just, you know, I mean, we have people in the office. We talk, you know. We like movies. But, you know, basically it's just whatever we want to see."
- Penelope Spheeris: The thing about the Z Channel is that the sensibility was - offbeat and a little bit, um, I don't know, I mean, they showed everything.
- Self - Filmmaker: 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 of mine 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.
- F.X. Feeney: Jacqueline Bisset is so much a figure in Z Channel, I think, because her great beauty - her great beauty led itself to "Day for Night" by Truffaut, it led itself to 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.
- Self - Filmmaker: I knew Jerry personally so well. He would say, "Hey, I'm going to sneak your film on my channel." And I'd say, "Oh, that's good." But - because, otherwise, they didn't play anywhere. They just didn't play anywhere.
- Self - Filmmaker: It's hard to keep the audiences' attention when you show them everything. And the problem with most films is, is it, you hear it, you see exactly what it is, if you're talking, there's a big closeup of your face, so we know that you're talking and we hear it. So, I think the mandated film is to hide that. To make the audience, "Oh, what's going on? I don't quite see that. And, oh! You think that's..." So that - the goose bumps can come out. Otherwise, you know, you're sittin' there drinkin' coca-cola and eatin' a hot dog.
- Self - Actress: Doing "Le Magnifique" was interesting, but, it was a lot to do 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, you know, just - oh, not a leper - a - a leopard.
- [laughs]
- Self - Actress: Oh, God. Like a person - like an animal. Like a beautiful animal.
- F.X. Feeney: "1900" was a very jinxed film. You know, 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 pique. Jerry insisted to the Grimaldis, for five years, that they had an uncut "1900". You know, a five hour version of "1900". They insisted, "No, no, it no longer exists. Maybe it existed once, but, it no longer exists." But, he pressed them and pressed them and eventually managed to get it released. And so we showed it on Z Channel and there you could see in all it's splendor what Bertolucci had intended.
- Self - Filmmaker: Antonioni is not necessarily about the logical structure of a dramatic story. But, about atmosphere and nuisance and the kind of emotional tension in that exist - 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, you know. And it says so much about Italian culture, about visual imagery, about femininity, about sex, about, you know, just being a human and then being in a place - in a like kind of classical piazza, somewhere very, you know, very Italian and Mediterranean. I don't know. It's just kind of haunting.
- Self - Actress: When I did "Le Magnifique", Philippe de Broca asked me to play this part. One part was the student and one part was this sort of - Bond type character.
- Self - Actress: Jeanne Moreau walking down the street in "La Notte" did it for me. I said, this is all - this is a job - whatever this woman's doing, I have no idea why she's so depressed, she is obviously terribly depressed and this man is not treating her well. I don't care about him. *She* is fascinating. And I don't know what all that means. It's just unknown material.
- Self - Filmmaker: I saw "Berlin Alexanderplatz". Now, that was the most extraordinary revelation. Where else are you going to see this 12 or 14 hours of this 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, you know, and you saw the whole thing. It was breathtaking.
- Self - Filmmaker: Claude Chabrol - that was one of the other Directors, alright, that Lance gave me. I'd never seen "This Man Must Die", alright, and they showed it on Z Channel and I got it from him. You still can't see that goddamn movie.
- Self - Filmmaker: 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; but, you know, with all those politics involved. But, to just have access to the vision of the Director is amazing, you know. Invaluable.
- Self - Filmmaker: If you couldn't get a studio to release your picture, your picture did not get seen. One of the big things that changed that was the Z Channel.
- F.X. Feeney: One interesting aspect of "Das Boot", you know, it had - 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. It makes sense. We showed it.
- F.X. Feeney: If we ran it, even certain foreign films, would end up running on the other places. They would have to be pretty sexy, usually. Our Night Owl films tended to show up a lot on Movie Channel and Showtime and HBO - just because it's like - well, tits and ass.
- F.X. Feeney: 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, you know, even in the *lamest* of the Night Owls, you know, even in the one that has like no plot or its just like why am I watching this - I know I'm only watching this till the next nude scene; but, I'm going to stay in there, you know. You know, the "Lady on the Bus" I remember. Someone like Laura Antonelli or Sônia Braga would hit it big with a respectable film, but, their backlog was full of all kinds of early nudie kind of film. And we would get them all. So, basically we would have, you know, Laura Antonelli festivals that had *every* last movie she made, you know, with all the nude scenes.
- Self - Actor: Z Channel was really about content. Here's what we love. We love movies. And here's a whole bunch of 'em. And here's some really interesting people talking about them.
- Self - Filmmaker: Laura Antonelli is 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 to like see her films and they were generally 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. Alright. But, I'm watching "Wifemistress". There's a scene with this actor whose trying to get her to his room and they're making out on the stairs and he reaches and grabs her in her crotch and it was really sexy to see that. And when he did it, she went like "ahhh!" She almost like collapses in his arms. And then they didn't go in the room. And I was pissed.
- F.X. Feeney: 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 got to be kidding." He said, "No. We're killing Nightline. We're killing the 11 o'clock news.
- Self - Future Z Asst. Programmer: 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... We were showing "The Silence" by Ingmar Bergman. The end, very climatic scene, it's all about the quest for God. Is there God? Or, is there just silence? And here we reach, you know, the climax of the movie. Then comes on on the bottom of the frame a yellow chyron: "Don't miss the Dodgers Game. Coming up next at 7:00 on Z Channel." Well...
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Top Gap
By what name was Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession (2004) officially released in Canada in English?
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