If you want to know how difficult it is getting 70mm film prints screened at movie houses these days, just talk to Jerry Blackburn.
Blackburn is the senior manager and director of public programming for the Beverly Hills-based Fine Arts Theatre. Built in 1937, the repertory theater is one of the handful of historic movie palaces that still exist in Los Angeles. It’s also one of the few places in town where you can actually see films in 70mm.
This Labor Day Weekend, Blackburn has rounded up several 70mm prints for the “Star Trek” 60th Anniversary Series. All weekend, the first six films in the “Trek” movie franchise will be shown, accompanied by post-screening discussions from special guests. This isn’t the first time Blackburn curated a 70mm film series for Angeleno Trekkies. In the summer of 2010, Blackburn created “Star Trek Saturdays,” doing midnight screenings of the OG “Trek” films over at the Laemmle Royal in West LA. Special guests also showed up — most notably, original castmates Koenig and George Takei.
“I, myself, have always been a fan of 70mm and I saw some of these pictures in the theater, in 70mm, when they first came out,” Blackburn says over the phone. “The picture resolution is much better than 35mm. I feel that the sound on the mag tracks is better than other films. And I know that there are a lot of people who like to see things in 70mm, specifically. And there are so few prints left of various things and seldom do they make new ones. And I get a very positive reaction when we play these.”
“Trek” installments 2 through 6 will be shown in 70mm, but “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” will not be. (Blackburn will play the digitally-restored “Director’s Edition” that dropped in 2022.) It turns out the least beloved, notoriously troubled ‘Trek’ film had problems getting blown up to 70mm. “They never finished the first print,” says Blackburn. “They did reel one and reel two, and [director] Robert Wise looked at it and – they had bookings for it – he didn’t like it. And it was too close to distribution or opening day for them to try to fix it.” (According to the in70mm.com website, a 70mm print was eventually struck and had screenings at 70mm film festivals and other venues a couple years later.)
The prints for “Wrath of Khan,” “The Search for Spock” and “The Voyage Home” are archival prints straight from the Paramount vaults. Blackburn was given strict guidelines in order to borrow the prints. “They’ve been run very little and the only way I was really allowed to have them is if I had this lineup of talent, and [the prints] were not easy to get,” he says. “I would have to have a lineup of guests and, because they are archival prints, there’s an inspection fee. That’s for them to assure what’s the condition it’s in before they give it to me. So, when I give it back to them, it’s in the same condition.”
Blackburn thankfully wrangled a nice collection of guests to attend, including “Khan” director Nicholas Meyer, longtime producer Ralph Winter, actresses Robin Curtis & Catherine Hicks, and writer/film preservationist Michael Matessino, who supervised the 4K restoration of the first “Trek.” The big get is filmmaker/author Adam Nimoy, aka the son of Leonard Nimoy. He’ll be there for a double feature of “Khan” and “For the Love of Spock,” a 2016 documentary Nimoy directed about his dad and the impact his iconic character has had on popular culture. Blackburn admits that he threw in a “Spock” showing as an appreciative bonus. “It wasn’t that he requested it,” he says, “but I asked if he would like to do that. And he didn’t object to it.” Nimoy will also be signing copies of recently released memoir “The Most Human,” which gives a very revealing look at his life and the often contentious relationship he had with his father.
During a Zoom call, Nimoy discussed how pleased he is that his tribute to his old man will be paired up with his finest performance in a “Trek” film. “[‘Spock’] in particular is really a celebration of the character of Spock,” says Nimoy. “It’s a celebration of this incredible character he created – that’s number one. It’s also a celebration of Leonard Nimoy. I mean, a multi-talented individual, a real renaissance man with a lot of ability, a lot of drive. You know, it’s a celebration of life.”
This weekend of screenings will most likely be heavily populated with fans and novices fully ready to go warp speed with the USS Enterprise crew. But, even after all these years of screening super-cinematic spectacles, Blackburn remains pessimistic. In this age of people preferring to stay home instead of spending a night at the movies, you can hardly blame him. “I hope that it does well,” he says. “I hope that it sells out. It will do well. As far as it selling out, I’m not sure about that exactly.”
But even if every screening isn’t sold out, he’s looking forward to giving those who are in attendance one helluva experience. “I want people to have a good time while they’re here,” he says. “I want to hear them laugh. I want to hear the applause. We played the 70mm print of ‘Spaceballs’ in May. It wasn’t one of Mel Brooks’s better pictures, but they knew all of the lines and they laughed at every joke, regardless of how many times they’ve seen it. They came in and they had a good time. They were smiling on the way out. They were happy. That’s what I care about.”
For more information on the ‘Star Trek’ 60th Anniversary Series, go to the Fine Arts Theatre website.