MRH: I got FSM’s Raksin set as part of a bonus gift order, and while it was always on my list of sets-to-get, the price was a bit high for me at the time, and when I finally listened to the set I was just blown away by it. I’d always liked his writing, but I was stunned at how good he was, and it’s definitely one of my favourite sets.

I wonder if its failure to sell well is due to several generations of film music fans and film fans who don’t know who these people are. When I started collecting LPs, theirs was largely the music one would find in new & used shops, but today they have to compete with reissues & new releases of music by several generations of composers coming from every conceivable background, discipline, music stream, and country. There’s simply a wealth of music that never existed so readily to buyers before.

I also wonder if that’s similar with the catalogue movies. Enhanced by an aversion to black & white cinematography, non-widescreen formats, and actors they’ve never heard of, the films are disappearing because several generations can’t related to their technicalities, style, or content. It’s alarming to think that for many catalogue titles – be they studio or even grungy exploitation films – the target market is comprised of a small group of aging film fans.

NR: I know that our audience is aging fast, particularly when it comes to the TT stuff. It’s called Twilight Time for a reason; that was a joke title: the sun is setting on the world of physical media, and it’s also setting on the generations of people that actually care about it. This is a race against time, you know, because it’s all going to come to an end in a very short period, and it’s just becoming a race to get out as much stuff before the curtain comes down.

MRH: Compared to the soundtrack grey-level and bootleg market that was ridiculously prolific in the nineties, there’s far less (if not miniscule) illegal CD activity today because it’s pretty much gone digital via P2P file-sharing and archive sites like Megaupload. It’s less clear whether the current circumvention activities have been as detrimental as the illegal CDs that once flooded the market.

NR: Yes, they were causing some damage unquestionably in the nineties. I think with the file sharing it’s hard to say how much damage that really does. There’s no way to control it or stop it, and of course you’ve got the European copyright laws where everything is basically going into the public domain after 50 years. This is all going to come to a colossal head very shortly when The Beatles’ catalogue is in the public domain. I think that’s when you’ll see real government legislation coming in to put an end to this kind of copyright absence that we see now.

And we’re also toying with a whole generation that’s grown up on the internet and effectively think everything should be free. I’m amused by the people that say on the message board ‘Well I won’t buy this TT Blu-ray for $29.95. I want to wait to when it’s $14,’ and then someone will write and say ‘Would you buy it at $14?’ ‘No… I’d rather wait until they came down to $7.99.’

In the end you’d have to give it to them for free and give them $5 just to take it off your hands. There never will be a point in time when it will be cheap enough for anybody because they live in a world unlike older generations, who knew that you had to go to a store and riffle through the LPs, and then select one and then go buy it; that whole very premise – choosing what you do or what you watch – has changed so exponentially.

MRH: This is purely conjecture, but each year another set of films is poised to fall into public domain [P.D.], that realm where copyright has lapsed, and a film can be legally downloaded from sites such as Archive.org.

I can’t help wondering if one benefit of the studios switching the distribution of their aging catalogue titles (particularly the P.D. material) to MOD and digital delivery is to maintain an impression of ongoing ownership in the consumer’s mind - that if it doesn’t come with a studio imprimatur, it’s not valid and / or will be a poor quality P.D. release.

As The Beatles is the crown jewel in their current owner’s catalogue, Mickey Mouse and his brethren are equally valuable to Disney, but with the possibility that elements within the Disney empire will one day become P.D., I wonder if the studio’s ping-pong game of moratorium-reissue-moratorium every 4 years is also designed to present Disney as the ultimate and eternal guardian of its creations, since it owns the negatives, and has decades of stewarding its creations through new generations of physical media.

NR: Honestly, I don't think I'm qualified to comment on this--inevitably, the studios and other major media asset owners are going to have to be proactive in some way to enforce copyright.

ALSO AVAILABLE :

In Part 2 of our Twilight Time label profile, film historian Julie Kirgo discusses her work writing liner notes for the label's releases, and contributing value-added special features for DVD and Blu-rays, including commentary tracks.