Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession (2004)

A Disappointing Continuation

The first must-see film of the year.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

It's a bit disconcerting when you personally know the subject of a documentary. It's even stranger when that subject was a murder victim."Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession" chronicles the ups and (many) downs of a deceased Los Angeles film buff named Jerry Harvey. If you think you're obsessed with movies, you have nothing on Harvey. In the movie, Harvey's ex-wife tells how he once literally spoke of nothing but Stanley Kubrick's movie "Dr. Strangelove" for 24 hours.Harvey began as a programmer for a movie theater but made L.A. history when he joined The Z Channel, an independent cable-TV channel that began broadcasting in 1974. In the prehistoric days of cable before HBO, Z gained its reputation and cache by showing uncut movies of all kinds, 24 hours a day.After Harvey wrote several letters of complaint to Z about their informational errors and lack of range, Z decided to hire him as a full-time programmer. Harvey went to town on movies, showing everything from obscure European art films to "Star Wars." In the movie, several major filmmakers and stars, including Robert Altman and James Woods, rave about how their more obscure movies received a second life via broadcast on Z. (Although Woody Allen's long-time producer Charles Joffe is interviewed, strangely unmentioned is how it's believed that Z's frequent broadcasts of "Annie Hall" helped to win the unsung comedy several Oscars, including Best Picture.) Along with Harvey's successes, the movie chronicles his checkered family history and his life-long battle with depression. When cable channels such as HBO muscled in on Z's territory, Z's owners looked more to the bottom line and decided to run sports events along with movies. The movie's final half-hour covers the sad decline of both Z and Harvey, whose depression finally moved him to shoot and kill his second wife and then himself.The documentary is well-done and extremely engrossing. Yet it almost serves as a cautionary tale, a "Taxi Driver" for movie buffs, showing how a singular obsession–-even with something as artistically worthwhile as film–-can have negative consequences.(My personal connection with the story: Harvey's murdered wife, Deri Rudulph, was my employer for the brief time that I lived in L.A. She was one of the most generous, wonderful people I've ever met. Ten days after I returned to Jacksonville, I received the sad news about her murder. I was asked to be interviewed for this movie but could not make it to L.A. in time.)

A young movie theater manager near Los Angeles, a lover of obscure titles and cult films, writes an angry letter regarding programming to a pay-TV outlet and arouses enough curiosity about his knowledge of cinema to land himself a job; soon, Jerry Harvey is on the move from Select-TV to Z Channel as programming director. Z Channel, an L.A.-area based station showing both old and newer movies uncut and commercial-free, creates a buzz in the Hollywood community, turning its bearded, manic programmer into an underground celebrity. In the years prior to the burgeoning cable conglomerates Home Box Office and Showtime, Z Channel provided the heart of show business with diverse and stimulating programming, a virtual olive branch to overlooked movies, their directors and stars. This documentary by Xan Cassavetes includes clips of many of the pictures aided financially or otherwise by Harvey, as well as interviews with filmmakers, co-workers, friends and exes involved with Harvey prior to and during his most successful years. The story ends on a sad, puzzling note--with lives unraveled and business affairs in disarray--but for awhile there, Harvey seemed to have it pretty good. Unfortunately however, Jerry Harvey was never able to enjoy his own success, being the product of a very mixed-up family with mental illness the dominant gene--and apparently, there isn't anyone left who can fully explain his devastating ups and downs. Cassavetes doesn't recognize or underline the fact that Z Channel appears to have been a rowdy boys' club for film-geeks, with she herself contributing to the misogyny (lots of naked women and/or overt feminine sexuality in nearly every picture spotlighted). I found myself at the finish-line with a litany of unanswered questions, and there's very little attempt to get into the backgrounds of the cast of characters presented here. Still, "Z Channel" whets the appetite for a film-festival of hidden gems and unrealized genius, and it showcases a pointed yearning many of us have for personal redemption through movies.

a pretty straight forward documentary about an early pay cable movie channel, yet this movie itself serves if anything to pique an interest in the thousands of movie that disappear year after year into the oblivion of forgotten film. as a lover of film and viewer of far too few i find it fascinating that even with all the cable options now available there are so few willing to take the types of risk involved in old film, foreign films, crass films, art films, short films and combine them in the manner that doesn't insult the viewers intelligence. this movie in and of itself may not be terribly interesting, but it will perhaps stir the imagination towards other movies that you may never forget.

Xan Cassavetes' great documentary won the Audience Award for Best Documentary film at the first Turks & Caicos International Film Festival, held in the Caribbean from Nov. 13-20, 2004.Z CHANNEL beat out SLASHER, another IFC doc, by ANIMAL HOUSE's John Landis, and the acclaimed DIVAN, by Pearl Gluck, among others.Keep an eye out on IFC to catch Z CHANNEL, a film that is as much about the tortured man behind the long-defunct pay-cable channel as it is about the historic channel itself.The Turks & Caicos International Film Festival attracted over 1,000 moviegoers, as well as luminaries such as Oscar nominated director Jim Sheridan (MY LEFT FOOT), Oscar-nominated screenwriter Richard Price (THE COLOR OF MONEY), Tony-nominated actor Delroy Lindo (GET SHORTY), and renowned film critic Rex Reed (THE NEW YORK OBSERVER).Lindo served on the festival's Jury with Oscar-nominated screenwriter Naomi Sheridan (IN America) and culture editor Marvin Siegel (THE NEW YORK TIMES).