As a rule growing up for someone like myself who lived off of old movies, if you rented a video and it started with this logo, you knew you were in for a troublesome experience:
Goodtimes Home Video...the king of public domain and obscure home video releases at cheap quality rates. From the KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park TV special to clip videos such as A Tribute To Lucy and classic features such as Charade and Royal Wedding, Goodtimes was one of those home video companies that always made me scratch my head and wonder how they always stuck around. Their transfers were usually analog from old analog video sources from old public domain prints. Every Goodtimes VHS I have seen has been recorded on LP mode. Most tapes are recorded on SP mode, which allow 2 hours of program on an average size cassette, allowing for superior video quality. By recording in LP mode, which allows 4 hours of program, about half of the amount of physical tape needs to be used. This had its downfalls. It meant low frequency sound and a much softer image, not to mention thick lines during seek mode on your VCR that made it difficult to scan through. Also, LP tapes have a higher rate of video dropout.
Through 2007, when the company finally folded, Goodtimes seemed to nudge its way into the DVD era, by releasing their older titles on DVD using the same video sources they used for their VHS. I was taken aback the other day when I went to the public library and decided to rent an old film for the evening. There on the rack was the DVD of "Royal Wedding", a public domain film that every video company and their Nanna has tried to release. Official releases from MGM exist as well, but the film is commonly seen on internet streaming sites, public television, VHS and DVD because anyone has the right to profit from it. I saw the Goodtimes Home Video logo before I saw anything else and decided that I was going to tolerate whatever transfer I received as it was a free rental. There on the front cover though, my friends, were the words used so liberally: Digitally Restored. "This I have to see" I told myself and popped it into my machine the minute I got home. Before the feature even started came a white text on black background disclaimer, and I'm paraphrasing here: "This film has been restored using the best possible elements."
The first frame came on, and my inner voice flipped into Claire Huxtable sternly saying "What have you done?" to the makers of this DVD. Spending many years in the film and video archive world, I have been able to identify analog video sources based on grain pattern, dropout quality, and video overhead quality. What I was seeing, based on the video line on the right and the grain pattern of the image, appeared to be a DVD of a D2 of a 1" C video source. The 1" soundtrack had not been calibrated before being transferred to the D2 and the result was a lot of pops and clicks on the DVD. Now I have not seen the official DVD of this film, but SURELY there exists a better "element" of the film than a D2 or 1". This is what we were looking at:
This opens my third eye. I don't mind people releasing films on home video and them being sub par quality if there are other versions available. If you can make a buck, and there are people willing to pay a few bucks as opposed to more than 10, go for it! But why lie? Blatantly, at that. Nothing was digitally restored for this film. There wasn't a computer used to color correct the image. Scratches weren't removed, the soundtrack wasn't cleaned. What exactly was done to fix this? And on top of that, why is the company claiming that they used the 'best elements' for this, as if it had accomplished some great feat by releasing a D2 of a public domain film on DVD!!! The people who would buy a film like this would know when they are being fed a bowl of doo-doo in the form of a home video. Shame on you Goodtimes Home Video! It's no wonder you folded!!!
If you've visited the Smithsonian, you've seen the chair. If you've watched That's 70s Show or The Simpsons, you've seen the parody, and if you've tuned into any syndication channel, you've seen and heard the familiar theme song:
All in the Family will go down as one of the most important and influential shows of TV history. For nine seasons, CBS brought the Bunkers into our living rooms. Archie, the patriarch, was a working class middle aged republican who supported the war, hated diversity, and got a little confused when paraphrasing his great American quotes. Edith, his wife, was a mousey homey "dingbat", as Archie called her, who believed in serving her husband and family, but spoke up wisely when she saw something unjust. Gloria, their daughter, was a feminist who believed in the future of our children through demonstration and outspoken reaction. Her husband, Mike, was as far left as they come. Together, they brought issues to television that no one before dared.
Starting in 1969, CBS went through what was referred to as the "Rural Purge", cancelling any shows that portrayed middle American life, to appeal to a younger demographic who desired to see shows about the more hip metropolitan areas of the time. Unfortunately, this meant that most family plot shows were tossed aside as well. All in the Family revived the family sitcom by tossing aside issues such as Beaver being jealous that Wally was hanging out with girls, or Opie stealing a candy bar from the drug store. Instead, it dealt with more raw family problems, such as a draft dodger being invited to dinner, or Gloria being sexually assaulted and the family debating on whether or not to report it, but doing it with a flawless mix of drama and humor. This is the true success of the show. The performances are unlike anything one will ever see on TV again. Never in my life before or since have I laughed uncontrollably and started sobbing in the same breath because of the way an actor changed a climate from one line to the next. I don't tend to get emotional when watching a film or TV show, but every 4th episode or so of this series will somehow get me because of the powerful way it is written and the way the script is carried out in the performance.
There is another element that helps evoke emotion in me with this show-- the help of the studio audience. Prior to All in the Family, the 3 camera live audience sitcom had been on hiatus. Series were employing the process of shooting shows with a single camera and using a laugh box during the jokes. Tests found that audiences reacted better to a show if there was laughter on the soundtrack, which encouraged them to laugh along. Although many shows after All in the Family, which was also the first show to utilize videotape for the three camera process as a means of saving money, were 'filmed in front of a studio audience', most of them tended to be sweetened by the laugh track, meaning additional canned laughter would be utilized where the audience didn't laugh as hard as one would expect. If you watch DVDs of shows like Gimme a Break or Roseanne, you can hear the difference in quality of the studio laughter and canned laughter now that it has been digitally remastered.
All in the Family did not do this. Norman Lear has gone on record several times to say that the show was not sweetened and that the audience reactions were accurate to the taping. In the final season, when the show was taped on a closed set, a videotape of the show would be broadcast to audience members attending tapings of One Day at a Time, and these reactions would be added onto the soundtrack of the final product...still not sweetened. The omission of canned laughter is only the tip of the iceberg in regards to how this affected the quality of the show. Microphones placed above the audience record all reactions, giving it a more genuine feel. For three camera live audience sitcoms, there are two 'fourth walls', the one between the live audience and the actors on stage, and the one between the viewer at home and the live audience. The latter wall I mentioned is immediately shattered by Lear's choice of recording all reactions to this show. If an audience members shuffles uncomfortably when Archie is screaming about his support for the war in a dramatic moment, or someone lets out an inappropriate small chuckle at what they might perceive was a joke during a mood change of a scene, the microphones pick this up and bring it into our living rooms. So, when sitcoms today choose not to record laugh tracks in order to allow the home viewer to decide if a joke is funny or not, I feel that this is choice by Lear is comparative. It brings the viewer closer to the action as opposed to dictating when to laugh or not laugh. There is one known instance of when the laughter of a taping had to be edited: the Sammy Davis Jr. episode. Davis, playing himself, comes to Archie's home. Archie is excited to meet him but is still not shy about sharing his feelings about African Americans or the Jewish race with Davis. At the end, while posing for a picture, Davis kisses his cheek, and Archie is confused on whether he is delighted or disgusted.
The laughter went on so long that there was no choice but to edit it down. To me, it is one of the funniest moments ever to hit television.
I love this show and am so glad that it is on DVD (some episodes transferred better than others) for all to watch. Many episodes have hit Youtube recently, and I encourage everyone to check it out!
