“This is Hollywood’s quintessential movie studio,” said TCM host Ben Mankiewicz as he toured the Warner Bros. backlot. Discovery. ” MGM had the pomp, this position had the courage, and we say, ‘Courage instead of pomp. ‘”
Mankiewicz, along with other on-air personalities Eddie Muller, Alicia Malone and Dave Karger, are in the box filming promotional curtains for the new TCM Classic Film Tour that will show enthusiastic Old Hollywood advertisements on the Warner backlot.
It’s a time of resurgence for the old-time movie network, coming nearly a year after David Zaslav, chief executive of Warner Bros. Discovery, stoked the ire of moviegoers by firing several key crew members at Turner Classic Movies and eliminating the network’s already shrinking budget. During that time, the network rehired two of the first fired creatives — program director Charlie Tabesh and festival scheduler Genevieve McGillicuddy — and passed them on to Warner Bros. executives. Pictures, Pamela Abdy and Michael De Luca, guilty of overseeing the network along with a board of trustees that includes Martin Scorsese, Paul Thomas Anderson and Steven Spielberg.
“It’s a rare time where I think corporate discourse makes sense,” Mankiewicz told TheWrap in an exclusive interview. “That’s the kind of synergy that works. ” Part of this synergy lies in this new excursion, which is part of a reinvestment in the network and its old film project. The new TCM-focused tour includes all-new trams, evoking the Art Deco spirit of the network, while committed tour guides present locations with old-fashioned cinematic appeal, such as the studio’s Rose Garden, the last remaining set from 1942. ” Casablanca” and the Real Estate Breakdown.
The new excursion also comes with an ad campaign, broadcast on a rotating basis on the TCM network, in which the presenters recreate the “chicken fight” from the 1955 film “Rebel Without a Cause. “
Mankiewicz, who according to TheWrap was a key figure in getting traditional Chinese medicine back on solid footing, humbly refuses to take credit for bringing Zaslav to the station. “It was very exciting to play a small part in what was going on,” he said. I don’t think anyone here is saying we’re not in a better position than we were a year ago. “
Much of this, as Mankiewicz and Muller explain, is due to the board of directors made up of Spielberg, Anderson, and Scorsese, whose impact was immediately felt through fans. “The biggest difference is that there’s a sense that TCM has raised its profile among the general public because of their involvement,” Muller noted. “What started as a negative, we’ve controlled it to turn it into something very positive and a lot of that is due to what we now call the board. “
In addition to the increase in the number of administrators and artists such as Olivia Wilde and Spike Lee who jump on the network to communicate about videos, administrators participate daily in the network’s programming meetings. Mankiewicz said that, in one case, it was Anderson himself who asked TCM to repair the “what’s next” spoken menus, read TCM’s longtime “voice,” Robin Bittman. Paul Thomas Anderson said, “You used to have menus between videos where they told you what was going to happen. Can we bring this back?
Representatives for Anderson responded to TheWrap’s request for comment.
“The interaction with the administrators has been amazing from my point of view, they like TCM’s approach, values and respect for cinema,” Tabesh told TheWrap. “We created interstitial pieces based on concepts they came up with, and their participation helped develop more skills than being had on the network. “
But above all, Müller is happy to talk about cinema with film entrepreneurs. “It’s pretty amazing to be on a Zoom call with those guys,” he admitted. “You can only believe they talk about videos and they go crazy. That’s when I knew they were genuine because they were wasting a lot of time communicating about videos. “
Famous Hollywood administrators are just like us.