Heavenly Bodies and it's not so heavenly rights acquisition history

Tonight, my partner is coming back from work, and I have a special evening planned for us. A meal of oven grilled kabobs, and a screening of the oh so tawdry film, Heavenly Bodies (1984). Heavenly Bodies is a campy cult classic about an aerobics studio that is in danger of being shut down by a larger competitor. In order to keep its studio space, an aerobics-off is chosen...last man standing from the representing competitor gets to keep the studio space to use for their business. Here's a beautiful dance number featuring the music of Bonnie Pointer:

I wish I had this film on an official DVD. Luckily, the DVD I made came from a pristine VHS that had hardly been touched since its issue in 1985, as released by Key Video. The VHS has an incredible Hi-Fi track, as well as mono, so although the DVD is pan and scan, the analog quality from the VHS does not ruin the viewing experience. Still, seeing it in its original aspect ratio and digitally mastered (in 1985, VHS weren't even digitally mastered yet, and this probably came from a 1" source) would make Heavenly Bodies more Heavenly!!!

I wanted to do a quick writeup on this issue because it is one that affected me regularly when I was working at the Sundance Institute. Many people are under the assumption that because a film was once released by a large studio or has been put out on home video that the film is archived and safe. Luckily, this film has seen a Turner Classic Movies broadcast in widescreen, which means that the elements of the film are probably still around, and that a decent master on a newer format must exist somewhere, but that isn't the case for a lot of films.

Heavenly Bodies was produced by several independent companies, Playboy Enterprises for one, and was originally released in Canada. MGM/UA released the film theatrically in 1985, and the home video distribution rights, as I mentioned, were handled by Key Video. Key Video is no longer around, and the theatrical rights to films not made by large studios usually run out over time. When I was at Sundance, dealing with this on a daily basis was the most difficult part of my job. I would call filmmakers, asking them for information on their films that ran in the festival. They would tell me the same story every time. A studio handled the theatrical rights for a few years, another studio handled the video rights, and both contracts had expired. After expiration, they never contacted the filmmaker to tell them where the elements were or bothered to tell them how much was owed to the lab that was storing the film elements. The lab refused to return the elements to the filmmaker unless the lab storage fee was paid, and threatened to destroy the elements to the film. These weren't films that were all that old either, many of them were 15-20 years old and were remembered by large audiences-- some even got DVD releases and were now falling apart in a lab. Other times, the filmmaker would hold the original elements in an environment that was not ideal for the film, such as rental storage or in a New England basement. In many ways this was the big shock to me about the film archive world. Physically saving the elements wasn't the hardest part. Going through the negotiations to start the process was much more difficult.

Sadly, unless the rights of Heavenly Bodies are renewed with the same or another distribution company, it may never hit DVD, and this is the truth for many films. Far too much has been lost because of the negligence of filmmakers, studios, and labs-- not knowing where things are, who owes who money, or not caring whether the film survives beyond a rare VHS at a video store that never threw it away. Lucky for Heavenly Bodies, there is a huge cult following and prints are still circulating at vintage theaters such as the Cinefamily and Nuart. It is time that we as an industry remember that there are still so many films that need to be given access to audiences. Audiences do not need to see another restoration of Casablanca or Citizen Kane...keeping the current home video releases in print will suffice. Films like Heavenly Bodies do not need a 5.1 upmix and a meticulous restoration for Bluray. They just need to have a barebones transfer that looks slightly better than their VHS counterparts and put on an accessible format so that the lovers of that film, no matter how large or small, can share its memories. When we as a society decided that film archiving was important, we carried a motto that sharing the culture and history of a specific time and space needed to be attended to in regards to the moving image form. As I hear that some films have gotten their 4th or 5th DVD release in the last 15 years and films like this have been brushed aside because they are not guaranteed to make the same profit, I worry that our motto as a field has begun to vanish. I ask you, who wouldn't want to rent or buy this charming gem?

Signed,

The Celluloid Avenger