Fun City Editions is a film distribution label that was created by Jonathan Hertzberg in 2020. Jonathan is a lifelong cinephile who has been collecting physical media since he was very young. He has also lived in the New York area for the majority of his life which has had a strong impact on the types of films he highlights with his label. Jonathan is just as passionate talking about vinyl records and music as he is talking about great and forgotten films from the Sixties, Seventies, and Eighties. Fun City Editions was one of the first labels to be featured on Vinegar Syndrome’s website in partnership with OCN. The label has been a great success with collectors and has released a strong core lineup of titles with new scans and restorations. Some of the label’s most recognizable titles include Cutter’s Way, Married to the Mob, Breathless, Rancho Deluxe, and Morvern Callar. I was lucky enough to get to interview Jonathan for a couple hours in January. We had a nice free wheeling conversation that covered everything from taste in music to the many moments that led to the formation of his label. Jonathan could not have been kinder or more generous with his time. We appreciate his willingness to go so deep into so many topics with us and then to work with us after we had edited the interview over the course of a couple months. I think it will be obvious for all of the fans of the label that read this piece that Jonathan is certainly one of us.
Without further ado – here is that conversation:
Art House Cult: First off, thank you so much for joining me this morning. I’ve been a fan of the label since it first began. I pre-ordered Alphabet City, so I was one of the first to check out your brand. I really appreciate that you made the time to talk with our website. We’re a real small website and I tend to approach these interviews more from the business side, because my family and I are in business in the restaurant industry here in Little Rock. I appreciate your time.
Jonathan Hertzberg: I appreciate your giving me the forum and having the interest, and for supporting us from the beginning by pre-ordering Alphabet City. Thank you.
Art House Cult: I wanted to sort of start from the beginning with the name – Fun City Editions – you’re taking the name from an old school name of New York. How long have you been living in New York at this point?
Jonathan Hertzberg: So, I’ve been living in New York for all of my adult life, save for about three and a half years when I was in grad school when I was in Chicago and Indiana. So, I’ve been in New York for almost twenty years if you remove those three and a half years that I spent back in the Midwest.
Art House Cult: Where were you born and raised prior to that?
Jonathan Hertzberg: I was born and raised in the suburbs in New Jersey about ten or fifteen miles outside of the city. For the most part except for my schooling, I’ve always been in the New York/ New Jersey area. When I went to college, I went to school in Wisconsin, in Madison. Then I moved back to New York and lived here for a few years. Then I went to grad school in Chicago and Indiana. So, I did some time in the Midwest before I came back here.
Art House Cult: The Midwest is a fun area. I’m in the lower Midwest, which can be even more interesting in its own ways. Where I live – Arkansas – is considered a flyover state.
Jonathan Hertzberg: Yes. [laughter] That whole area is kind of unfairly regarded as the flyover country.
(at this point we spoke for ten minutes about travels and Chicago O’Hare airport before returning to the interview.)
Art House Cult: So, you were born and raised in New Jersey, moved out to Chicago for college and then back to New York. One of the things that I’d seen from another interview was that E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial was sort of a formative experience for you as a four-year-old, is that right?
Jonathan Hertzberg: Yeah, that’s true. That was the first movie I remember seeing in the theater when it came out. I remember that I was really scared at some point and I kind of forced my mom to take me out of the theater. I said, “this is too much for me.” And then I think as soon as we left, I was like a typical kid, so “no, I want to go back. No, I want to see the movie [laughter]” So then I guess she took me to the next show and it was no turning back from there. I was one of those kids that was obsessed with the movies from then on. It was kind of like a joke. My maternal grandfather would say, “I don’t know what this kid is going to do in the movies, but he’s going to do something in the movies. I don’t know what.” But it was kind of like pre-ordained, I guess. Every time I saw a movie, I wanted to talk about it, I would go over the whole movie with all the adults after. Eventually they said, “You can only tell us about one part in the movie because you can’t retell the whole movie. (laughter) Those were my early memories.”
Art House Cult: As a kid, starting out with a Spielberg film, were you on board for all of the Eighties Indiana Jones Spielbergs and everything like that from that point forward or?
Jonathan Hertzberg: Yeah, well, I guess I was just about the right age, so I was able to see from E.T from like ’82 onwards, I saw most of the big tent pole PG movies at least. I saw pretty much everything in the theater when it came out. I saw E.T. because they would re-release E.T. seemingly every two years or something. So, I think I saw that probably two or three more times when it was on re-release. Then when it came out on home video, obviously that was like such a big deal because they had delayed the home video until 1988.
Art House Cult: Oh wow.
Jonathan Hertzberg: Yeah.
Art House Cult: I didn’t realize that.
Jonathan Hertzberg: Yeah, because they did not put it on home video. I remember it was a sell through tape right away and I remember my mom bought it. She got it for us. I do remember that, because it was like in the supermarket. It was everywhere. So, I saw Back to the Future and The Karate Kid and Ghostbusters and the Rocky movies and the Indiana Jones, the Star Wars – anything that was coming out from that point on. I mean, I didn’t see the original on some of those. I didn’t see a Rocky movie until Part IV or, I saw Return of The Jedi when that came out.
Art House Cult: Part IV is such a banger though. I mean, who doesn’t love Rocky IV?
Jonathan Hertzberg: Rocky IV? You know, I’m partial to the original three. I’m one of those.
Art House Cult: My brother and I jokingly theorize that Rocky IV actually ended the Cold War. This was like the final nail in the coffin. His speech at the end. “I can change, and youse can change [laughter]” The Russians were listening and they were like, “alright, we’ll tear down the wall.”
Jonathan Hertzberg: That’s funny. I had friends later that had grown up in Russia and then came to the States in the late Eighties or early Nineties. I do remember that one friend told me, they used to just laugh. They thought all those Hollywood movies that portrayed Russia were hilarious because they were so far from what their reality was. So, the cartoonish-ness of specifically Rocky IV. They were just like, “yeah, we just cracked up, because there’s nothing like Ivan Drago. Nobody. It’s like a complete cartoon comic book portrayal.” But…you know what… the montages in it are something special. I mean,… for sure [laughter], but it’s just like… that’s all it is. I was obsessed with those movies growing up. They were a huge part of my formative years in coming of age, but I guess I’m kind of a purist. I’m kind of like, “nah, you should have stopped, I feel like, after III.” That was the first one I watched was III. I feel like that one actually kind of really gets underrated now.
Art House Cult: III is really good. It’s really solid. I think I’m probably only partial to IV based on how many times my brother had it on television when I was growing up.
Jonathan Hertzberg: It is the most popular one. I feel like there’s a lot of people that it was the first one they saw, or it’s the only one they saw. By the time that came out I had seen the other ones. So, when I saw IV, I was already all in. I had probably seen Rocky III, you know, fifty times by then. I had a tape with that [laughter] and I had a tape with that and Superman II on it. And that was just like…. I watched those things all the time.
Art House Cult: Were you like all of us and just recording off WGN at that time? I feel like that was the channel that was playing most of that.
Jonathan Hertzberg: Funny thing is, we didn’t have WGN when I was growing up. It didn’t make it over to the New York market until much later.
Art House Cult: Little Rock would get WGN. So, my Star Wars tape was recorded off of WGN.
Jonathan Hertzberg: Yeah. Yeah. It totally would’ve been WGN if I was in the Midwest. In New York we had some New York specific stations, like WPIX Channel 11, which back then was New York’s movie station and, similar to WGN, the Yankees were on there on Channel 11 and they played movies. It was that era where there was a movie every night on there. And they had a thing people of our age that grew up here remember – in October for a number of years, it was Shocktober on Channel 11 and they just played a different horror movie every night. They had those voiceover guys that were just very authoritative. You can see all the TV spots on YouTube now which is fun. The bumpers. Just hearing that very commanding voice, saying “We now return to… “
Art House Cult: Yeah. You’ve got to love that. You and I, we have seven years age difference is what I calculate. Because I’m from ’85 and you’re…
Jonathan Hertzberg: I was born in ’78. Yeah.
Art House Cult: So, we have seven years age difference. My big brother is nine years older. So…
Jonathan Hertzberg: So, he’s closer in age. He’s older than me by a couple years.
Art House Cult: So, I got lucky. I was constantly being exposed to all these things because my brother and his friends were always around. My brother, to his credit, was very inclusive of me in letting me watch things on the couch with him.
Jonathan Hertzberg: I think that’s because you were that far apart in age. When you’re nine years apart, you don’t have the typical brother… Like my brother and I are only two and a half years apart. So, we were… I was terrible. I was a terror. I’d beat my brother up until the day that he weighed more than me. Basically, until the day that he outgrew me, I was whaling on him. And I think if there was a big age difference like you and your brother, it would’ve been different.
Art House Cult: For sure.
Jonathan Hertzberg: I always wanted an older sibling. I was interested in things that were a little older than me – before my time. So, I was always envious of the kids that had older siblings. And we would try to get information or learn about stuff from older brothers and older sisters.
Art House Cult: It is a lifeline into another decade or generation when they’re that far removed from you. I remember Tommy buying me my first Fugazi record when I turned 13. He’s like, “Here’s Repeater.” I’m like, “What’s this?” He’s like, “It’s Fugazi man. Just do it. You’re gonna be fine.” And stuff like that.
Jonathan Hertzberg: Yeah. And that’s awesome. That’s awesome. I didn’t have that. Your brother is late Gen X.
Art House Cult: Yep.
Jonathan Hertzberg: And you’re like more firmly millennial.
Art House Cult: Yeah. I discussed this yesterday with a friend. I consider myself a “Xennial” because we’re right on the cusp. And maybe that’s simply because I dislike the millennial stuff so much.
Jonathan Hertzberg: No. I think it’s true if you’re on a border in terms of the years. I feel like, for me, because I was someone that was always wired to be interested in stuff that was from my parents’ generation and from older kids – basically stuff that was really before my time or that I was too young for. But I think a lot of other kids my age, people that are from the same year or same group of years, especially if they were like me – an older sibling – and they weren’t that way, then they may be geared more towards the stuff that came in their time and after. I’m more geared towards the stuff that was before my time, and then of course I took in as much as I could from the older kids. I think they usually say Gen X goes to around 1980.
Art House Cult: Yeah.
Jonathan Hertzberg: So, I’m there. I’m a late Gen X, but I have a lot of friends that are older who are in their fifties. They’re friends of mine that I have now as an adult. Oftentimes I’ll have a friend who’s like forty-nine and I’m forty-four, but they’ll think I’m the same age as them because we talk about stuff – the references and stuff are such that they figure I’m a few years older because of the things that I remember. But when I say that, I feel like that kind of makes Fun City Editions make more sense.
Art House Cult: Yeah, definitely. I’m geared the exact same way. I have a lot of trouble keeping up with the things that are newer because I don’t find it as interesting as things from the past. I see what’s happening that’s new every day when I wake up. I’m in this generation, you know, so for me, I’m typically a lot more fascinated with things that came before, which is why, if you look at my site, most of the reviews are not movies that are super recent. I’m lucky enough to get to review the tentpole films that I want to – for example I really had a blast watching the new Top Gun – but nine times out of ten I’m probably going to be watching something that you guys put out or maybe that Criterion or Arrow are putting out. I like being exposed to things that came before most of the time.
Jonathan Hertzberg: Yeah. I get you. It’s hard to keep up with. Now there’s so many more outlets and so many more places – new music, new film, new media in general that comes out. So, it is really hard to really have your finger on the pulse. Things in the past I feel like came out through sort of more traditional channels. Maybe it was harder for lots of little things to break through in the way they can now … which is a good thing. Although there can be too much of a good thing.
Art House Cult: Yeah. My Blu-ray closet is evidence of that. [laughter]
Jonathan Hertzberg: Yeah. Mine too. You can’t see my shelves here because this is not the room, but there’s way too much to ever actually view in one lifetime.
Art House Cult: What do they call it? It’s the paradox of choice when there are so many choices it actually makes it very difficult to pick something, whereas when there’s less choices, you can pick something more easily.
Jonathan Hertzberg: Back in the day, when you consumed, when you watched things, when you saw things, basically what was on TV for instance, that was how certain films like TV movies, or certain films when they played on TV got so much more viewership, because there was no other option. There weren’t nearly as many other options for people. So, you’d go to school and everyone would’ve seen something, or kids would’ve been talking about such and such movie that was on TV last night, because you had only so many channels. You didn’t have the internet. Now people have so many choices. So, there’s not a consensus like there would’ve been in previous generations where things would rise to the top more easily. The funny thing about it though is that there’s the feeling that earlier generations in some ways had more cultural literacy of things from the past because these things would be played on TV and kids would–because of the lack of other choices out there–see things. More people would see these films from an earlier generation because they were just rerun over and over.
Art House Cult: Even with cable, we only had 32 channels back then.
Jonathan Hertzberg: Yeah. Right. And you didn’t have the choice of like, let me watch HBO East or HBO West even. It was just one, you know?
Art House Cult: You mentioned seeing PG-rated movies as a kid. I was in the same boat. In my household, my mom was, and I love this about her, was very Focus On the Family. James Dobson and PG rated movies. Nothing above that until you’re thirteen. So, that hurdle actually is what led to my loving movies so much. I was watching everything that was edited on TV. That’s how I saw Predator, or Lethal Weapon or things like that – watching edited movies where they are saying things like “Mother father!” and things like that.
Jonathan Hertzberg: Right, right.
Art House Cult: But could read between the lines. They never really edited out the violence. The thing that might have made the movie R was always there.
Jonathan Hertzberg: They would edit out only the most graphic stuff.
Art House Cult: But those limitations were the reason that I ended up going to the foreign film section. I realized that I could watch a more violent movie if it’s in black and white and from Japan. That exposed me to Kurosawa. So, if my mother hadn’t put these sort of bumpers on me, I don’t know that I would’ve gravitated towards that section necessarily.
Jonathan Hertzberg: That’s right. Well, it’s where limitations cause you to be more creative in your thinking. That’s the same thing with low budget filmmaking. Filmmakers don’t have the resources to do what they could do in a big budget movie and that forces them to be more creative and come up with solutions based on those limitations. So, you did the same thing right? With [laughter] “Okay, I’ll go into the foreign section.”
Art House Cult: Pretty much. That was a big like light bulb moment for me. When I watched Seven Samurai, I was like, “this had an hour-long sword fight scene!”
Jonathan Hertzberg: Yeah. [laughter] Another thing is if you found PBS, it would show films like they were originally, because they were more artistically inclined films. You would see unedited films on PBS, I found, even though it was not cable. Because of the funding, it would also not have commercials. They would show artistically valuable films and you would see stuff that wouldn’t be edited. So, it could be an R-rated film and it would be full strength.
Art House Cult: But sadly, it wasn’t Predator. And so that was the problem.
Jonathan Hertzberg: It wouldn’t be Predator. No, it would be things more like Equus.
Art House Cult: Yeah. [laughter]
Jonathan Hertzberg: If, you know who Jenny Agutter is, it’s not a movie that would really interest a kid…it doesn’t even really interest me now as an adult actually. It’s based on a play. But it does have…When you’re like a 13-year-old kid and you stumble on that, like I did at the right moment, it’s a young Jenny Agutter in her prime, and it’s very R-rated [laughter], not so much in terms of the violence.
Art House Cult: I don’t want this question to be a downer at all, but you also mentioned in an interview that your father passed when you were 18 years old…
Jonathan Hertzberg: Yeah.
Art House Cult: And that has influenced in a way the direction of the label for you. Could you speak about that?
Jonathan Hertzberg: Yeah, sure. My dad passed away when I was eighteen just as I was leaving for college. We didn’t have like a super tight relationship when he was alive, just in terms of, we didn’t communicate. We just didn’t get to that point where we were really able to communicate with each other well. So, my dad, as it turns out though, after he passed, I learned a lot more about my dad. When you have a close loss like that, it kind of forces you to really reevaluate the person, especially when you’re as young as I was. And I didn’t really have the opportunity to have an adult relationship with my dad. So, it forced me to really reevaluate and open my mind. When you’re a kid, especially at that age or in those years, you tend to think you know everything. So, in those difficult teenage years, my dad and I clashed, and I really saw him only in one light. And it was after he passed away that I really appreciated that he had a lot of other aspects, a lot of other interests including in film, which unfortunately we didn’t really get to really talk about when he was alive and really bond on. After he passed away, I was asking a lot of questions of my relatives and friends and really trying to learn more about my dad, things I didn’t get to talk to him about. One of those things was his love of films, especially as a younger man, like when he was college age and he grew up. He was in that era of the counterculture and the anti-war movement and also the sort of boom of the European New Wave. So, it was a time when people of a certain age, you weren’t even necessarily considered a cinephile, but you would know who and go to see the new Godard or Truffaut film, or Antonioni or Bertolucci, or Bergman. All these filmmakers had kind of a rockstar status even amongst kids that were more casual film-goers. My dad was one of those. I don’t think my dad ever considered himself a cinephile, but he was literate in all those filmmakers. He didn’t really share that with me when he was alive. So, after he passed, I really dug into trying to see a lot of films that I remembered him mentioning to me in passing when he was alive or that maybe my mom remembered he really liked. So, I guess around the time I was eighteen, nineteen, and twenty, I looked at a lot of those films and I would end up seeing a lot of things that at a certain point sort of felt to me like “dad’s movies” that would have resonated with my dad, even if I didn’t really know for sure, and certainly a lot films that are from that late Sixties and Seventies era that portray younger people from that time. Those are films that I’m drawn to for a lot of reasons. I mean, obviously it’s a very interesting, very fruitful era for films in general. It was an era of a lot of adventurous filmmaking, a lot of boundary-breaking filmmaking and a lot of those films are very political. They’re envelope pushing and they’re dealing with a lot of the sociopolitical concerns at that time. My dad was one of those people that was politically engaged. Before I knew him, he was definitely more on that counterculture side so there are a lot of films in our collection, which feel to me like these could be films that my dad would’ve connected with or would’ve seen when they came out and that we would’ve probably dug together if he were around.
Art House Cult: That’s pretty cool that you get the occasional good reminder of your dad when you’re watching something. Which films in the collection stick out to you the most that really made you think of your dad?
Jonathan Hertzberg: I would say Born to Win is one for sure. That just seems like my dad would’ve been into that one. He probably did see it back in the day when it came out. It’s not a film that I remember talking about with him, but that one seems like it’s from the right time period and I think he definitely had a yen for that sort of dark, edgy early Seventies American cinema. There were some films that he mentioned to me when I was a teenager. I told this story in another interview. I had this Leonard Maltin’s Movie Encyclopedia – not the video guide – but this Leonard Maltin Movie Encyclopedia that had bios of film actors and directors. You could look up any kind of A-lister. It wasn’t like everyone was in it. I wish I still had it. This was in the early Nineties and I got it. I was like, “Dad, who do you want me to look up?” And I was probably like fourteen or fifteen at the time. The first two people he mentioned to me, he was like, “see if they got Julie Christie and Robert Blake” and I didn’t know who they were at the time. And then he told me about Robert Blake, and this is long before Robert Blake’s legal problems. And anyway, he told me how he was the best guest on Johnny Carson. He was a repeated guest that always was one of the most entertaining. And he said he did these two movies that were really cool that my dad had seen back in the day – Electra Glide in Blue and Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here. So those are kind of Fun City-esque movies. I mean, they’re not Fun City in the sense that they’re New York movies, but they’re Fun City I think in the sense of a lot of the types of movies that we’ve released or that I would like to release. And he wasn’t like, “oh, see if they’ve got The Godfather in there or Taxi Driver or something.” These are deeper cuts.
Art House Cult: Yeah, those are deeper cuts [laughter]
Jonathan Hertzberg: But they’ve become better known since obviously those films have been released on DVD now.
Art House Cult: Twice now.
Jonathan Hertzberg: And Blu-ray a few times and have become more known, and then Julie Christie, I don’t remember…
Art House Cult: Was it McCabe & Mrs. Miller he was going with or…
Jonathan Hertzberg: I don’t remember if he mentioned a specific movie, but I do know that I ended up seeing very soon after my dad died Petulia, Don’t Look Now, McCabe & Mrs Miller, Darling, a lot of her films and Shampoo. So, it could have been any number of films. But I just saw those picks are like, forget about the Robert Blake’s craziness and his issues later on, those are two pretty good picks. He wasn’t asking to look up Al Pacino and Meryl Streep or something. These are like kind of more culty picks.
Art House Cult: Yeah, that’s pretty cool.
Jonathan Hertzberg: It was at the same time that I was picking up all the Danny Peary books – the Cult Movies books and Guide for the Film Fanatic. Those were books that I had discovered around the same time, when I was 14 or 15, and I would just pour through those books when I was supposed to be doing homework. So, there was this fairly early exposure to this stuff in those formative years that got me geared towards films outside of the canon. I was always drawn to things that were a little less talked about, that were not the most obvious choice, because part of me wanted to be a little bit of an outlier and then part of me just naturally was that way. So, in hindsight it made a lot of sense that my dad was picking out these movies that were not necessarily the second tier, but they were B-sides or the deep, non-single tracks, if you will – the album tracks as opposed to the top 40 hits.
Art House Cult: That’s a really good quality in general. I’m very similar-minded to that. I like the things that veer just slightly off the path that feel like a discovery which you can then share with somebody, versus something that’s just sort of fed to you. It’s a lot more fun to discover something that maybe people aren’t talking about and then bring a friend over and have a beer and be like, “Oh man, can you believe this crazy thing?” So, I’m right there with you.
Jonathan Hertzberg: I completely relate to that. And I remember you mentioned having a buddy come over for a beer. You know what was the worst feeling though? The worst feeling was when, because I did this when I was a kid in high school, in my teenage years I was into these films and my friends had more typical interests. They were like, “oh, you’re gonna make us watch another Seventies movie? [laughter]” And I twisted my friend’s arms to watch things like The Warriors or Car Wash or Street Trash, I mean… Dawn of the Dead, all sorts of stuff. And once in a while, a friend would really be into it. More of the time, I remember I had a response of like, “Hertzberg, man, you’re really weird.” You know that was more the response. Like, “why did you make me watch that?”
Art House Cult: I feel your pain. I’ve literally only got one buddy that is really into it with me, that sadly lives in Park City. So only when he’s in town do we get to watch these films and have fun. For example, when he was in town most recently, even his dad came over and we just went to the movie room and we watched Under Siege and Above the Law, and it was just like, “isn’t this amazing?” But that’s the thing – you have to have that friend that’s gonna go ahead and be down to watch those with you, that you’re literally saving these movies until they’re in town for, you know what I mean? It is a hobby that is more fun if you can share it with somebody.
Jonathan Hertzberg: Right. And that’s why with Fun City, it’s sort of like sharing the film with your buddy, but I’m getting to do it on a much wider scale. And when I can actually involve some of the people that made the movie or are in the movie, it really is a dream. It is weird because this was not what I ever thought I would be doing. I was like a lot of movie crazy young people and I went to school wanting to make films and be more on that creative side. And, I haven’t completely abandoned that, but I didn’t think I’d be in distribution. I never imagined I would be at this point, ever. If I told my teenage self, “oh yeah, you’re going to get to put Jeremy out on Blu-ray and have the actors come back and be in some ways, with some of these people, become more friendly.” You end up becoming friendly with them. A lot of these films where the people that made the films, or were in the films, they could be my parents. So, in some ways I’m like a surrogate son in some cases. [laughter] Or a friend. It’s almost like a being a custodian for some of these films even though a lot of these films are owned by the studio. The fact that we’re being given the permission essentially to take care of the film and put it back out there – It’s like being a caretaker, for this thing that was here before us and will be here after us. It’s a great honor. It really is. And especially when the filmmakers, when they’re still alive, when they’re still able to appreciate it, you know, it’s really cool. I mean, most of the time, they’re just absolutely tickled that this film is getting reissued. Because so many of the films we’re putting out, tend to be films that weren’t really successful when they first came out. And a lot of times, what fans don’t often realize is that even though they think this movie is a “cult movie” and they love the movie…oftentimes, what they don’t realize is that the people who made the film or who were in the film, their memory and their reality is “Oh, the movie – yeah, we liked it and had high hopes, but it wasn’t a success when it came out,” or “it wasn’t a big enough success.” So, their memory of it is, “Oh, it had mediocre or a bad box office, or bad reviews,” and that was it, because you’re only as good as your last movie. So, when you work in the industry, if your movie wasn’t successful, and then they hopefully do other things, that movie from like five years ago, twenty years ago, forty years ago or whatever, oftentimes, they’re not in the same place as fans because they’re in the industry and they’re working. Like I said, you’re as good as your box office was. And if that movie was a failure back then, to a lot of people, it’s still a failure. So, some of these film makers are genuinely surprised when I’m like, “No, your movie is a cult movie.” And I’ve had filmmakers say, “Okay, I believe what you’re saying is true. I didn’t know that” or, “I haven’t seen that” because, again, to them, a lot of these things hurt. They put their heart and soul into something and it wasn’t received as they hoped it would be when it came out, and they’ve moved on. And they don’t often realize that somehow over the years through the film being on TV and being on video and streaming and whatnot, or someone influential saying, “Oh, this movie is great.” Like if Tarantino champions something, he has such a powerful voice -in terms of filmmakers who are also cinephiles he’s got one of the most powerful voices in terms of influence – So when there’s something that he really likes or champions, which is often things that were not successful when they came out, that can really change the course of the film’s life in terms of how it’s received and how it’s regarded. That’s one of the cool things about when you’re working on films from the past like we are. We have the advantage of being able to look at, if it’s a film that’s fifty years old, a lifespan of fifty years. We’re able to look back at the whole landscape in a way. That goes back to what we were talking about. What’s so difficult about the current landscape is there’s just so much stuff coming out from all sides, and it takes time for things to mature. It takes time for certain films to be well-received or to be understood, and we have the advantage that we can look back at films that have lived that life, and it’s easier. I find it easier. To other people, it might be more difficult.
Art House Cult: Yeah.
Jonathan Hertzberg: But I find it easier to be able to look back at, “okay, let’s go look at this year, or this era.” You can really narrow the search in terms of films from this country, or films from this studio, or films of this type. And that’s one way that you end up finding things, uncovering things. “Oh, this thing hasn’t come out,” or “this thing has sort of been forgotten or is somewhat slept on.” We have that advantage of being able to look back and see everything, and then, of course, with the internet, do all kinds of focused searches and things like that to really target things.
Art House Cult: With your label you’ve got a gigantic microphone you get to hold up to these films, to say “hey, you might have slept on this, but you should check this out.” It gives a lot of these films a second life that they otherwise wouldn’t have. That’s one thing that I love about these boutique labels. I don’t know 99% of the titles that boutique labels pick to distribute. In my youth, it was always about going to the video store, or the CD store, and talking to the staff, maybe talking to them for hours, to be like, “what have you got for me? What do you have?” And then they would direct you towards something. As a collective experience that’s gone, the movie stores are gone, the CD stores are gone.
Jonathan Hertzberg: For the most part, yeah.
Art House Cult: But what you all do is essentially that. You all are my lifeline back to what I grew up doing. I have to have boutique labels so that I’m being exposed to things, otherwise, it would all be sadly pretty vanilla. There’s not a lot of films that feel super surprising that are coming out these days. That’s probably a big statement to say, but a lot of the newer stuff, I can’t get into it. Maybe it’s a bit of a dislike of some of the proclivities of my current generation show up in the current movies. The Seventies, the Eighties, the Sixties – the generations that your label tends to focus on are a little bit more rough and tumble. There’s thicker skin. There’s a little bit more honesty there, even when it’s ugly, you know? That honesty is just sort of missing now. It just feels a little weak, you know? [chuckle]
Jonathan Hertzberg: Yeah, I think in a general sense certainly there’s films that we’ve released where you have a protagonist that has ugly qualities, that has…
Art House Cult: Yeah. Rancho Deluxe, goodness gracious, those guys are scoundrels.
Jonathan Hertzberg: (Laughs) Yeah, Rancho Deluxe or Cutters Way, or Heartbreakers, they have characters that are messy, they have characters that say things that are really verboten now – things that are, as a protagonist for a more modern audience, are very hard to look past. That’s a difficult thing sometimes when a younger audience is seeing some of these movies for the first time. There are certain types of films where if you haven’t seen them before it seems really radical the first time you watch it, and then you start watching more films from that era, or more films of a certain type, and you start to see, “oh, there are certain characteristics here that are just part and parcel of when this movie was made or where it was made.” I think that’s true of a lot of those films that we’re putting out from the Seventies and Eighties in particular where it was the first time that a lot of boundaries in terms of what you could and couldn’t show were being pushed. The preexisting production code from the Thirties to the late Sixties was abolished and you had this new rating system. So, you had a lot of films that then came out in the ensuing 15 years or so that were really saying, “Now anything goes, we’re gonna do whatever the hell we want.” [chuckle] It was seen as very liberating. Things like nudity – In the early Seventies you have, and into the Eighties you have a whole lot more obviously because you just didn’t have it before, and it was something that was I think seen as a sign of being more progressive than the earlier generations. “We don’t have the same hangups,” and then later I think we subsequently in the Nineties, at some point had more of a wave of a pushback against that and we’re still seeing that, lack of, or a disappointing portrayal of sex or nudity in mainstream films and TV.
Art House Cult: There’s a lot of self-censorship.
Jonathan Hertzberg: Well, it sort of switched from being something that was a sign of being more progressive to almost being the opposite, in our more current social political landscape. And anyway, that was a long tangent to say that a lot of our films are firmly in that era where it was more anything goes. So, there’s nudity in a way that I think becomes surprising to a younger audience. There’s a certain kind of, like you said, a language and an honesty and an ugliness, which is present. And characters that are supposed to be your heroes do a lot of anti-heroic things and I think that’s a linking, quality for a lot of our films, even if they’re rather disparate in other ways. I think that it takes a certain amount of conditioning. You have to watch a lot of these films, I think to sort of say, “Okay, we can’t do that now, or I wouldn’t say that. I certainly wouldn’t say what that character just said,” but also understand. It’s not entirely a good excuse, but you can say it was the time, it was the times that these things were made.
Art House Cult: It feeds into a realism though that I like – not because these are things that I would say or anything like that – but I’m saying none of the dialogue in those situations feels forced. If I’m watching a movie now and somebody says something, let’s say racist or sexist or something like that, I feel like this is a writer trying to be edgy because people don’t really talk this way now, or at least it’s not how people in my sphere talk now. But in those films, if a line is thrown out there it’s like, “okay, so this is an attribute of this character.” It’s not an attribute of the character just to have a pressure point for the audience, it’s simply an attribute of the character.
Jonathan Hertzberg: You feel like it’s not often that it’s a calculated choice, it’s a more organic choice.
Art House Cult: It’s an attribute of the character that they have, but it’s not a forced attribute. You know what I mean? And so, I think I can watch some of these movies now where I say, “oh, okay, this guy is obviously gonna say racist garbage because they’re trying to say, “Hey, we’re edgy,” or something like that.” So, it just feels more trite, it’s…
Jonathan Hertzberg: I see.
Art House Cult: You know what I mean?
Jonathan Hertzberg: Yeah, or that character’s traits are assigned to someone that’s very clearly a bad person, not the person that’s ostensibly your protagonist.
Art House Cult: Yeah, there you go. There’s an honesty even when it’s ugly in the films.
Jonathan Hertzberg: Did you watch Heartbreakers? It’s an example of one of those movies that has protagonists that are… Well, you’ll watch it, you’ll see. I think you’ll enjoy it based on everything you’ve said to me just now. A lot of what you see in that film fits in with what you were just saying in terms of characters that are messy, that are often very objectionable. And especially in terms of where we are now in terms of what’s acceptable and what’s not and. I think the same thing goes for The Coca-Cola Kid. We’re putting these films out to a niche audience. So as much as I’d like to have a much bigger audience, and hopefully we are continuing to grow and get a bigger audience, but a lot of our things that we’ve put out, if they were seen by a much bigger audience, we would probably get more flack from certain quarters, because all of these films have things which are no-no’s now. I mean, that’s not really saying too much because that’s pretty much true of most films made from in previous eras. They all have things that qualify as “you can’t do that now.” But our films certainly have things that even sometimes I read their reviews of our films and the reviews of our Blu-rays, our current reviews, and people will feel like they have to mention certain things that are triggering.
Art House Cult: Yeah. [laughter]
Jonathan Hertzberg: They want to mention basically that, oh, by the way, this movie has some bad, questionable casting or some questionable language or questionable nudity or something, because it’s almost like they want to make sure that the reader knows that they’re aware that there is some material in this movie which is not acceptable now basically, which is passe, which is not up to our current progressive standards. But then you look back at the reviews from when the movie came out and certain things that people are all up in arms about now, or get sensitive about, they don’t get mentioned at all in the contemporary reviews. And some of that I think is a sign of, well, they were not sensitive. Sometimes they weren’t sensitive enough back then, and sometimes it’s that we’re too sensitive now.
Art House Cult: It’s the yin and yang.
Jonathan Hertzberg: It is. In some ways they went too far in the past and in some ways, we go too far now.
Art House Cult: Yeah, and I find myself even when I write my reviews, sometimes I feel the need to maybe mention something. It’s almost like, I think it might be a little bit callow on my own part to do it, but it’s almost a buffer against somebody perceiving the reviewer in a certain way, you know what I mean?
Jonathan Hertzberg: Right, right, you don’t want to be perceived as being not sensitive enough or not aware enough to mention that, “Oh, this movie did this thing that’s completely wrong.” Rancho Deluxe is a good example with the casting of Sam Waterston. And Joe Spinell as Native Americans.
Art House Cult: I was gonna bring that example up. I will say that trying to apologize for somebody else’s creation, apologizing for liking it is a bit of cowardice. You know what I mean? If you like it, you like it.
Jonathan Hertzberg: Right, just like it doesn’t make the filmmaker guilty, if you have a character in a film that does something really ugly or says something ugly, it doesn’t make you guilty of condoning it or the filmmaker guilty of condoning that if you enjoy it or they put it in the movie.
Art House Cult: An extreme example would be that you don’t see people, for example, going after a Scorsese film which are typically filled with total reprobates, but they’re amazing movies. You don’t see people trying to take it down because of some arbitrary language in the film or something like that. Nobody apologizes for a Scorsese film, but if something is made in the Seventies that might have something objectionable, people try to apologize away liking the film. It all just feels a little bit silly.
Jonathan Hertzberg: No, I think you’re right. I think that a lot of things are much to do about nothing. A lot of things are not worth the attention given or the upset. And then, and compared to things that then are allowed to pass, that are much more impactful on our lives versus a movie. But that’s a whole other conversation so…
Art House Cult: So, talking about the beginning of your career and what led to Fun City Editions… was IFC Films before Kino or was Kino before IFC. Which one were you working at first?
Jonathan Hertzberg: I worked with IFC Films before I was at Kino.
Art House Cult: And how did you land that job, and what was your job at IFC?
Jonathan Hertzberg: I had worked before previously in college and in grad school and then after in film programming. So, I had done a lot of film programming as an undergrad in the student film societies, and was involved in running a student film society.
Art House Cult: That’s cool.
Jonathan Hertzberg: And so, I got to learn how to license films and program a calendar and deal with distributors and sales companies and stuff like that. I did that in grad school as well when I was at Chicago with Doc Films. And I had also worked in some distribution. My first job out of college was with a New York independent distributor called First Run Features that’s still around. So, I had some experience in programming and in distribution. I had volunteered with the New York Film Festival as well in my early twenties. And I’m probably forgetting some things because I don’t have my resume in front of me but…[laughter] When I was in Chicago, I was a programmer for the Chicago International Film Festival for a couple of festivals in a row in my sort of in-between my grad school years. So, I had a lot of connections with different distributors of especially art house films and independent films. And most of those distributors are in New York. So, after I left grad school for the last time and I came back to New York, I just contacted all of the distributors who I had worked with as a programmer at the Film Festival in Chicago. And IFC was one of them. So, I just went on a lot of informational interviews. And I had interviewed in the past over the years, even at places like Kino. Many years before I ended up working at Kino, I had interviewed for a job there as a much younger person. It’s just funny how things just come full circle. In this case, they literally did. So, I ended up speaking with folks at IFC and they said “Hey, we want to try to find a position for you.” And they ended up creating this position of being a theatrical booker for some of their smaller titles. They had a couple of different banners at the time. Sundance Selects was one I was working on. There were a lot of films by emerging filmmakers. That was my first really long-term film distribution sales position. I worked there for a few years as a long-term consultant and booked a lot of different types of movies and just built up a network with all the different theatrical venues around the US and in Canada, festivals, independent cinema techs. Museums, art galleries, university film societies, basically anyone that will play these types of movies. Then a few years later I had a good friend of mine who worked at Kino Lorber, and he said they had an opening for a theatrical booker over there. And so, I applied and that’s how I ended up at Kino. Eventually they expanded the department and because I had such an interest in the deep catalog titles, the repertory stuff, we created Kino Lorber Repertory and that was really to focus on booking out the very deep back catalog of Kino Lorber and also new reissues of older films. There I really got to work on marketing of films and work more on acquisitions and on the sales and really kind of try to build a label. I, of course did not do that by myself and it was a small enough company that also I learned a pretty good deal about the home video side because that company has theatrical, has home video, has streaming, they release their films in all manner of distribution. So, I was able to kind of glean quite a bit of information over the years being there for eight years. Also, I was always a collector. I always collected physical media from my youngest age that I could and not just movies but comic books, baseball cards, sports programs, music, CDs, tapes before that and records. Anyways, I always was interested in publishing and I always liked having a tangible product – something that you could hold and put on a shelf and pull off a shelf – and Kino obviously has a wonderful home video label, but there wasn’t really a place for me there to be able to sort of indulge that part of my interest and ambitions. There’s a lot of good people already doing all those jobs there. So, I established the business entity that is Fun City Editions several years ago, a few years before we actually put out any product. It just so happened that I had friends at other labels and people that had connections and friends that were connected with different studios. And I was just given the opportunity to take part in a licensing deal with Vinegar Syndrome for some MGM titles and that’s how the First Fun City titles happened was because I was asked “do you want to license some titles as part of this larger package?” So, that’s what happened and…
Art House Cult: Pretty amazing.
Jonathan Hertzberg: Yeah. So, it was a very convoluted path. Like anything in this industry, there’s no real textbook, there’s no science to it. It’s not like other industries you can be in where you take certain steps that everyone takes to get to climb a ladder, so to speak. And so, just from being in the right place at the right time and having all those different jobs, which obviously I didn’t even mention all the different jobs I had but those different jobs combined with your own passion and things you’re interested in, which obviously goes, as we talked about, back to the time I was three or four years old. It all hopefully comes together in some way. In my case, it’s certainly a dream situation to be able to have that be my job and have a creative aspect to it. Also, as we’ve talked about before, it all goes back to the love of the thing. It’s a passion project it’s not a “get rich project.” It’s a “hopefully make enough money to be able to keep doing it kind of project”, but it all goes back to the opportunity to shine the light on some things that are not otherwise getting that light shined on them and hopefully spreading the gospel a little bit. This is my religion, I guess.
Art House Cult: The other question I had on that was – you had founded Fun City Editions, or the company a few years before, but the first physical release Alphabet City that came out, your business goes full force in 2020.
Jonathan Hertzberg: Right, right.
Art House Cult: Which of course is one hell of a year to start any business.
Jonathan Hertzberg: Yeah. Yeah.
Art House Cult: What was it like rolling into this business right as the pandemic began? In some ways did it help because people were stuck on their phones at their homes and were trying to buy things, or was it scary?
Jonathan Hertzberg: Yeah. It was definitely a very traumatic, very strange, very unpredictable, nobody really knows where things have been or where they’re going kind of time. But one thing that was happening around that time was of course, that people had been stuck inside for so long that people pivoted to spending disposable income in different ways, so there were a lot more new collectors of physical media. And there continue to be! Not just movies, but records and comic books and baseball cards and books.
Art House Cult: And vinyl outsells CDs last year..
Jonathan Hertzberg: Anything that people can collect. I feel like in the late 2020, even early 2021, it does seem like that’s when the prices on things just kind of kept going up on whatever you collect. I collect records. I have floor to ceiling shelves full of record and I feel fortunate that I got a lot of the records that I got when I did, because I can’t afford them now because the prices just continue to go up. I don’t think it’s a bubble that’s going to burst. So anyway, all that’s to say, I think it’s a good time to be producing anything in physical media, even though, again, it’s very much a collector’s market and a niche that we’re in. I think in the time that we started, I think a lot of new collectors have joined the hobby. So anyway, it’s a weird time to start for sure and it’s a time I’ll never forget for a lot of reasons. I also didn’t know, when we were in that first few movies, I didn’t know if it was anything that was going to last beyond that. I didn’t have a grand plan. I didn’t have a bunch of new acquisitions lined up for the next year. I honestly had the first five movies for a while, and that was it. And it took a long time. Things were really delayed because of the effects of the shutdown in terms of just replication and a lot of stuff, and supply a lot of things. Obviously in that time period of 2020 and into the early 2021, things were more expensive or were in short supply or facilities hadn’t reopened. So, there’s a lot of question marks.
Art House Cult: Yeah.
Jonathan Hertzberg: I really did not know how it was going to go, if it was going to be a viable thing that I would be able to keep doing. So, I still had my job at Kino Lorber for the first year plus that…
Art House Cult: Wow.
Jonathan Hertzberg: That Fun City was putting product out. So, I still had my job at Kino, and then I had the Fun City and it was like two completely separate entities and separate jobs and wearing two different hats…and that was funny.
Art House Cult: It speaks pretty well to Kino that they were allowing you to pursue your passion project that in some ways is a competitor.
Jonathan Hertzberg: Yeah. Right. The thing is, I don’t even know how much awareness there was of Fun City when I was at Kino. It wasn’t like I kept it a secret, but I think there was a disconnect as far as…they were busy. They’re so busy and they have so much stuff coming out. I’m putting out one movie every couple of months, I don’t think it was really high on their radar to be honest with you. It was definitely funny to be, if you can imagine…you’re in one place where you’re a cog in the machine and you work for other people, and you have an established role and an established relationships, and then you have this other thing where you’re the boss and it’s your show. So, on one side I’m making all the calls and it’s ride or die with me, and then I go to another place and I’m still like, “Yes, boss, no boss,” [laughter] You’re wearing a couple of different hats and at a certain point, I just really felt like I couldn’t really do both jobs well. Part of it was because of the work requirements for both, and part of it is a mental thing as far as just trying to sort of be two places at the same time and be present. You know how it is, you’re a business owner. At a certain point I was just kind of like, “It’s time. It’s time to just really try ride or die with Fun City.” I guess I had enough at that point. I felt like there was enough momentum behind it, and I felt like I’d seen enough signs that this has got a little juice. People seem to be aware of us, even though we’ve only done a handful of releases. People seem to be into what we’re doing. So, I kind of had to just take that leap.
Art House Cult: Any label is just as good as the titles that they’re putting out in a way. I think what has been awesome about each of your releases is that I feel like you’ve put a lot of craft into what you’re putting out. I was really impressed with your recent release Cutter’s Way. First off, I think that movie is pretty brilliant. I love any type of sun-drenched noir film. The fact that it’s also about just disillusion Vietnam Vet type folks trying to figure out a fairly vague mystery. It would be a great double feature to watch with Altman’s The Long Goodbye. Watching that back to back would be a perfect night at the movies for me.
Jonathan Hertzberg: Yeah. And it’s been done, I’m sure. [chuckle]
Art House Cult: I thought the release was awesome because all the special features were great. I noted that the commentary from Twilight Time with Julie Kirgo and Nick Redman was on the disc. I’ve been friends and in correspondence with Julie from back when Nick was still with us. She is salt of the earth and one of the nicest people. Just seeing that commentary track was living on from the releases that used to reside at Twilight Time made me very happy. It made me curious… do you plan to mine any more titles from the Twilight Time catalog at some point? Will there be some more overlap?
Jonathan Hertzberg: Yeah, possibly. I can’t right off the top of my head think of one, but it’s certainly possible that it could happen. I don’t think there’s anything right now. There are other things we wanted to do, for instance, that were former Twilight Time titles that had gone back to the licensor, but other labels licensed them. They’re coming or they’ve already come out from other labels, but you can probably guess some of the other ones that we would’ve liked to have done and…
Art House Cult: Well, Kino had just snatched up the Truffaut films, for example. I bet that had to be on everybody’s radar.
Jonathan Hertzberg: Yeah. Those weren’t the ones I was thinking of right away, but certainly. It could have been those, but there were other titles that we wanted, and they would say, “No. Sorry, so-and-so got them. Or somebody else got them.” They’ve already come out or they’re coming out.
Art House Cult: To discuss a few of your recent titles, I already mentioned my love of Cutter’s Way, which was excellent. I also recently watched Married to the Mob. Was that your fastest title to sell out? That thing seemed to just fly off the shelve.
1:37:16.5 Jonathan Hertzberg: Yes. Yeah, it was. The slipcover sold out from Vinegar Syndrome website before the month was out. That was the quickest one.
1:37:30.0 Art House Cult: I really enjoyed the movie because of Demme. I also like… Radiance is about to put out Miami Blues, which MVD also put out and Shout has put out before. I’m a weirdo, because I’ve bought every single edition of this movie, ’cause I just love it.
Jonathan Hertzberg: That was one of the titles that we wanted.
Art House Cult: Oh, really?
Jonathan Hertzberg: It’s one of the titles we tried to get. And it was already taken by MVD.
Art House Cult: What I like about Married to the Mob is that it sort of fits in there between Something Wild and Miami Blues and…
Jonathan Hertzberg: Oh, yeah.
Art House Cult: It’s a very colorful film. It’s got a David Byrne score. But anyways, I was just gonna say I really liked it. So, Miami Blues was one of the ones that you were gunning for originally. Is that what led you to Married to the Mob or was that just on your list from the beginning?
Jonathan Hertzberg: No. Married to the Mob and Miami Blues were both on the list that I had submitted at the same time. And Miami Blues was originally supposed to be directed by Jonathan Demme. He produced it and it has a lot of the same personnel. It’s a lot of Demme’s usual collaborators are on Miami Blues. Married to the Mob, of course ends up in Miami. I think part of the reason why he decided not to do Miami Blues, from what I understand, is because he had just shot this other movie, Married to the Mob in Miami. And I think that was part of it and maybe the tone of it. Maybe he just felt like he had done that. And, of course, Silence of The Lambs is the next movie that he directed. Miami Blues – I love the film. It totally would’ve been up our alley and I would’ve loved to have done it. But it’s obviously out there now in multiple iterations.
Art House Cult: I think it’s pretty great that you guys are pairing up with Radiance Films to have your titles released in collaboration with them as a partner label occasionally. It’s fun to see, one of the first Radiance released FCE tiles in the UK is Married to the Mob, and in the next couple months their Miami Blues is out there, so if somebody picks up Something Wild, they can do the trilogy of colorful violent films together.
Jonathan Hertzberg: Yeah, it’s true. It’s true. That speaks to some of the similarities in terms of the Radiance and the Fun City curation, I guess. Because obviously he snagged Miami Blues in the UK and if it had been available to us here, we would’ve done it here. And then, who knows, maybe that would’ve been a Fun City UK release through Radiance instead of a Radiance release.
Art House Cult: Congratulations on landing Breathless for FCE. That is a pretty exciting title. I noticed that title was still being distributed by VS and OCN. Is this the final title that will be released through that channel or have you struck up a new deal with them?
Jonathan Hertzberg: It’s the last planned new FCE title to be distributed by OCN
Art House Cult: I watched Morvern Callar last night. I thought it was really good. It’s a really different film. It’s got its own vibe to it because from what they mentioned in the special features, they took out basically all of the book’s monologue and just tried to portray the monologue just through the emotional depth of the actions on screen. I thought it was a really good film. I was gonna ask, with us being seven years age different.
Jonathan Hertzberg: Mm-hmm.
Art House Cult: So, were you 24 when that was released theatrically, right about?
Jonathan Hertzberg: Let me do the math. Yeah, I guess so. If it came out in 2002 here in late 2002, yeah, I was 24. And I saw it when it came out here. Yeah.
Art House Cult: It’s funny. I was working at a CD store at that time, at age 17. I was recognizing, music from Aphex Twin or Boards of Canada, stuff like that. So did all that music in the film and what the characters were going through, did you find it sort of put a good finger on the pulse for the age you were at the time when you saw it?
Jonathan Hertzberg: Oh, I definitely felt like when I saw it that it was just such a cool movie. Obviously, the soundtrack was killer then and it’s killer now. And it totally felt to me like a very finger on the pulse kind of movie at the time. For sure. And it was definitely, at least in my mind, when it came out just one of those movies you had to go see if you were at all engaged with new international films. Living in New York, obviously you have the opportunity to see all that stuff as it comes out. Because if it’s going to come out, it’s going to come out in New York for the most part. So, it was just like a movie that I would probably have read the Village Voice review and the New York Times review and… or just knew that this was an acclaimed film so I saw it back then and it was a movie that made a pretty big impact for me – and on a lot of other people that were my age I guess at the time, and who were cinephiles. It was a movie for a long time that I wanted to try to license and reissue because it had been out of circulation for a long time, including when I was at Kino. And it just didn’t work out. Fortunately for me it didn’t work out at the time at Kino. It was because it’s kind of lots of things.
You have a lot of conversations and a lot of times things would kind of get put on the back burner and forgotten about because there’s just so much shit going on. And then we had the pandemic happen and stuff like that. So anyway, I just was lucky that I knew where to acquire the film and license the rights and we did. I knew it would be one of those films that would probably make another group of cinephiles aware of our company because it’s a film that has a lot of notoriety and is beloved. And I mean, you saw it, we had the biggest response at the time when I announced that movie on social media, it was our biggest response of anything we announced. And I feel because of our alignment with Vinegar Syndrome, we were helped immeasurably by that association. They have such a strong core preexisting loyal audience and buying public. When we started, we were the only partner label outside of AGFA. So, we got a lot of exposure and we had a really nice runway there, but it was not an audience for the most part that was maybe a Morvern Callar audience. It’s a different film fan audience that is largely a genre loving audience and obviously a lot of the things we were doing and are doing are not typically, or obviously genre films. We have a couple things, like something like Walking the Edge is more straight up genre. It’s a revenge thriller. It’s a vigilante film. But a lot of our films are multiple things at once. So, a lot of our films have genre elements but are not really so firmly in that camp. And so Morvern Callar was definitely an important title because it was a film that I think that was for some of our audience that we already had, but it was also a film for a little bit of a different audience that we would like to have. It was definitely a pivot point. It’s really funny because that film and Radio On were both films that were to a lot of people on the surface departures from the films we had done earlier. I of course can make a lot of connections to them that make it all seem to me more cohesive, but for a lot of people who were with us up until then, those are not their favorite releases. Then there’s other people who, for them, those are their exact two favorite releases that we’ve done. But at the end of the day, I’ll take that over just continuing on in one vein and potentially not having both of those audiences. But there’s a lot of crossover in those audiences. I would rather, I think especially being as young as we were at the time as a company, kind of branch out where we can. If I can see the connective tissue, that’s enough. If there’s some pushback, sorry that we’re not exactly who you thought we were, but maybe, like I said, maybe we’ll convert some of those people and then maybe we’ll gain some new audience share. And there’s movies that have come since then that are the same thing that people that loved us for Alphabet City say Walking the Edge – not as cool. Those folks maybe don’t think Party Girl is as cool, but then Party Girl has a huge audience, such a beloved film for a lot of different people and includes I think a lot of people that haven’t been aware of us up until now. So, you need all of it. You need all of those people. You can’t shut yourself off to one audience or another or be afraid to piss off one part of the audience. I mean, we have people that want to collect everything and they get upset because they’re like, “I want to collect everything on Fun City, but I’m not happy that some of these movies I had to hold my nose when I ordered them.” Because they’re completists…
Art House Cult: If you see a movie you’re not interested in, there’s no gun to your head.
Jonathan Hertzberg: It’s true. Some people feel like “I was with you on the ground level, on the ground floor, and I said, I’m gonna collect everything and now I have to jump off, or I’m thinking about jumping off the train.” And you know what, that may be the case. They do say, “you know what, I’m not gonna buy those two.” And then we come out with something, another release further down the line and they’re like, “Oh shit. Fun City’s back. Oh, this is my jam.”
Art House Cult: Yeah. One of the things that I was talking about with a restaurateur that’s sort of redoing some elements of his restaurant and it is early on in his ownership of the restaurant. I was like, “man, this is the time to do it. It’s okay to lose a few of the guests that you have at this point to take items off in order to gain the audience that you’re going to gain by refocusing the menu and adding a couple other things that you’re passionate about.”
Jonathan Hertzberg: You’re right.
Art House Cult: It is okay to do these type of things early on. What you’re doing is saying “our label isn’t just one thing,” especially when it is something that you’re passionate about. I could see people getting upset at Severin for releasing that Mike Leigh film recently. At the end of the day, if you don’t wanna buy it, just don’t buy it.
Jonathan Hertzberg: Right. What people have to realize is that there are obviously such a deep well of movies to acquire, but at the same time there’s all sorts of complications that can prevent you from acquiring this film or that film or accessing films from this place or that place. There are many more reasons to say we can’t close ourselves off to this type of film or that type of film. People sometimes have talked to someone about Fun City Editions, and they’ll be like, “Oh, that’s that label that only does movies about New York films from the Seventies and Eighties.” And I thought, “well, Fun City is a nickname for that particular time in history of New York.” But if we were to limit ourselves only to movies that were made in New York at that time, it would be really tough. It would be really hard to maintain a flow of titles for a variety of reasons. Even though the movie exists or you like the movie, there’s so many more reasons why you can’t get it or you won’t be able to get it. So, you have to be open to all the opportunities out there. And so, sometimes that means that some people are going to be hurt because they felt like they knew what Fun city was and Fun City was the label for them, and maybe for them only. So…hopefully with some of those people we already opened their minds or surprised them with certain things and they’re like, “even though I didn’t like this or didn’t know I liked this kind of movie, or that I would be into this, now I am. Even though my first love is like horror films,” or whatever. You had so many people that loved Jeremy. That was the movie that when I talked about it with the folks at Vinegar Syndrome, because that was the outlier of the first movies that I licensed from MGM. “Okay, these are all cool. Are you sure about Jeremy though?” This is a movie that I love and have loved for many years and I felt like I can make this work. And it turned out that it’s not the best seller by any means, but the feedback we got from that may have been, just in terms of reviews and people’s reviews on Letterboxd, and on social media, the best response in terms of people’s types of responses, which were often: “Hey, this is not usually my kind of movie”, or “I am usually like a gore-hound, but Jeremy spoke to me like no other movie has”. Like “that was me.” So many people felt they saw themselves in that movie, which I thought was really special and really heartening. And when I told that to the actors, they were just totally blown away by that. Especially Glynnis O’Connor, who I spoke to quite a bit in the aftermath of the Jeremy release. For her, it really was like a gift. She told me that. Because that was a film that had an audience. It was a popular film when it came out. And it really spoke to a lot of folks who saw it at that age at the right age when it came out, but it sort of became one of those movies that didn’t really gain new audience for the most part as the years went on. It was a movie that people remembered who were fifteen in 1973, when it came out, but it wasn’t a movie that a lot of younger people from the ensuing generations knew. But when we put it out, that was a movie where I think for sure we helped give it this new audience from the next generation or generations. It was cool to see that that movie, which is so firmly entrenched in early seventies New York City was looked at by this audience now as being very universal.
Art House Cult: I love that.
Jonathan Hertzberg: Yeah.
Art House Cult: For your Primetime Panic box set – How did that come together? What led to mining TV movies and curating that box set?
Jonathan Hertzberg: That was a situation where the licensor has thousands of movies and some of the movies that they have are these TV movies that were produced by these now defunct production companies that did a lot of TV movies in that era. Now they’re all in one place. Vinegar Syndrome has worked with this company and they’ve picked up completely different types of movies from them, because they just have such a crazy huge library. A lot of these companies have collected film libraries from all over the place, from all different producers in different time periods, different types of movies, so… you’ll have a bunch of Nineties direct-to-video stuff that you have to be really knowledgeable of those films to know what’s the trash and what’s the treasure, and then they also have a bunch of TV movies, and I was just like: “Okay, these are the ones.” There are a lot of buried treasures there, which haven’t really been released on video. They haven’t really been exploited much in our format, and I saw some that I felt like I could make work as a collection. I felt like “there are some common elements here and there’s ways that this can fit with what we’ve already done at Fun City.” But it was a little bit of a risk. The reason why we made it a collection was because we felt like these are an example of something that if you had to put those movies out by themselves wouldn’t have worked, but to put them together in a collection – a thematic collection – made them more viable. And so that’s what it is.
Art House Cult: Are you restoring or remastering the films? Alphabet City, for example, was from a new scan, right?
Jonathan Hertzberg: That’s right.
Art House Cult: Do you have great contacts that help you get these scanned in or…
Jonathan Hertzberg: Yeah. We began obviously by working with Vinegar Syndrome and OCN, which is the same company essentially. Separate entities business-wise, but the same people, and they obviously are a distributor and a label, and they’re also a lab. So, they have either as part of their operation people that do restoration, or they have people that they work with from outside of the organization. So, I was able to benefit from their expertise and their contacts and the majority of our films have been new scans, new digital masters that we’ve created, everything. Only in some cases have we received new masters. Like Radio On – BFI did that, and we licensed the movie from BFI and their master. The Primetime Panic films was a situation where those films had been scanned already, and they were already on streaming color corrected, restored, and cleaned up versions. But we went back to the original scans and did our own color timing on those, and did our own restoration and clean up, so that’s partially us, and partially we got it from somewhere else. But all the MGM titles, for instance, have been new scans that we did and new digital restorations or masters.
Art House Cult: That is really impressive to me because I know the amount of time commitment that goes into that and what you’re doing because in terms of full-time employees, you’re basically the guy, right?
Jonathan Hertzberg: That’s right. Yeah. Everything else is the outside contractors, essentially. Everyone is project by project. I’m essentially the producer. I hire, if we’re doing a shoot, the cinematographer, sound person, and we create new artwork, so there’s a different artist for every project. Everyone is paid on a project-by-project basis. So Bilitis was one other one where the master came to us. That was a new master as well. Bilitis. But everything else, for the most part is something that we initiated and did.
Art House Cult: That’s really impressive. I’m getting down to basically my last little bit here. You’ve been incredibly generous with your time. We went a little bit over.
Jonathan Hertzberg: No man, it’s cool, it’s fun. I appreciate having the venue and you giving me the forum and helping to spread that gospel.
Art House Cult: I consider this the rapid fire section just because they’re somewhat normal questions to ask. So, answer with what comes to mind quickly. What are some of your favorite directors?
Art House Cult: Let’s see. Frank Perry would be one. Brian De Palma, John Carpenter. Demme. I’m terrible with these. Again, I need, I always feel like… Jerzy Skolimowski, is another one… Let’s see. I just… I’m not into picking favorites.
Art House Cult: Yes.
Jonathan Hertzberg: I’m not into my… I don’t like lists or like who’s your favorite, this or that.
Art House Cult: Oh, I gotcha.
Jonathan Hertzberg: Yeah. But who else? Mizoguchi would be another one.
Art House Cult: Okay.
Jonathan Hertzberg: Yeah. Okay. I’ve given you a few. [chuckle]
Art House Cult: Who are some of your composers you like the best?
Jonathan Hertzberg: Okay. That’s actually easier for me for some reason than directors. Morricone. Elmer Bernstein, John Barry, Tangerine Dream, Giorgio Moroder.
Art House Cult: Yes.
Jonathan Hertzberg: Carpenter. Carpenter again. Jerry Goldsmith, John Williams, Bill Conti.
Art House Cult: Yeah. My list is real close to that. [chuckle]
Jonathan Hertzberg: Stelvio Cipriani. I could go on and on. Yeah.
Art House Cult: Okay. I’ve seen your label post numerous soundtracks and music from New York City. So, what are a few of your favorite bands?
Jonathan Hertzberg: Oh I would say… Let’s see. Bands or musicians. I’ll give you both. Talking Heads, Gang of Four, Brian Eno, anything Eno related. Roxy Music, David Bowie… who else? Joni Mitchell, Neil Young. God, it’s hard. It’s hard. Chic’s Nile Rodgers. It also depends on the day, to be honest with you. Now, there’s tons of people – tons of people. I could just go on and on. I feel like it can change on any given day. Joy Division. I’m thinking of ones that are sort of perennials… Elvis Costello. Yeah, it could just go on and on. You’re not seeing my record shelf right now. It’s on the other side of the apartment, but…
Art House Cult: Yeah. But you said it’s wall to ceiling.
Jonathan Hertzberg: Yeah. Yeah.
Art House Cult: I started collecting vinyls when I was seventeen. I spent thirty bucks for a record player, two speakers, and Pink Floyd’s Dark Side. And the moment I realized it was a drum beat instead of a heartbeat that’s on the remastered stuff. I was like, ” whoa… a freaking drum beat. They did it with drums… this isn’t what I’ve been listening to.” Then I got hooked, so I’m right there with you. I collected tons of records right before it got way more expensive.
Jonathan Hertzberg: Yeah, yeah.
Art House Cult: Now I buy like a few records a year to add in, but it’s like I’m gonna drop the $35 for the new print of Nick Drake album or something. It’s only stuff to round it out that’s very calculated.
Jonathan Hertzberg: Yeah. You can add Nick. You could easily add Nick Drake to the list of people that I couldn’t think of right at that exact moment. I’m with you, but I try to get original pressings, or I buy very few reissues, because they’re often more digital. They’re not fully analog and I’m a purist that way, and it has become a lot harder to get original. I’m just thankful I have like, OG or Pretty OG Nick Drake records, for instance.
Art House Cult: Oh, that’s awesome.
Jonathan Hertzberg: Because they sound a lot different because at a certain point with like Nick Drake’s records, I know this to be the case, and it’s true for really anything in the same way that negatives, film negatives, the way they try to not put a lot of stress on the original. They make a copy of the negative. We often work from an IP, which is a generation removed from the camera negative. The IP, you’re working from that. So, it’s to put less stress on the negative. And what happens with a lot of these… Like the Nick Drake records, for instance, at a certain point, the original tapes became too deteriorated for them to continue to use original tapes. So, at a certain point, the albums are sourced from duplicate copies. And then of course, they do all sorts of shit digitally that they can do. We do this same thing with film. Films often look different than how they originally did now because of all the tools, all the things people can do so easily with digital. With music and with film in terms of, “oh, I can just with one button, I can add this effect,” or “I can isolate these” or “I can do these things that they couldn’t do back in the Sixties or Seventies or Eighties,” or it would’ve been completely cost-prohibitive or time consuming to do back then. So those are always things that you have to consider as a buyer. The same thing goes for the movies we put out. Sometimes people are like, “oh, the color is not what it should be.” You know? And it’s hard to say. A lot of stuff is guesswork.
Art House Cult: I think, we’re just blessed to have the amount of releases of these films in condition that’s watchable. So much of this stuff that you folks are restoring, theatrically didn’t look great, and the fact that we get to see…
Jonathan Hertzberg: Yeah. Or there’s no print. You know, if you were to go see a print of this, of some of these movies, if it even exists, the print might be faded and salmon colored – completely red faded pink faded. And that’s it. And some people want that! Some people are like, “no, I wanna see it on 35. I wanna see it. I wanna see a sliced and diced print that’s completely beat red ’cause it’s 35.” [chuckle] I’m like, okay, have fun.
Art House Cult: There you go.
Jonathan Hertzberg: Just because it’s 35.
Art House Cult: People have their eccentricities for sure. Well for the last question I know that you’ve recently secured Party Girl and that’s going to be your first film released through MVD. What was the choice to move through MVD moving forward? I’ve got a great relationship with them, by the way. I think they’re really good people.
Jonathan Hertzberg: I mean, at the end of the day, it’s just business. We’ve obviously grown as a company, as a label, and matured and we explored all the opportunities out there. We just decided that seeing how things would go with a new distributor with MVD, which does things differently. It’s a different model than OCN and Vinegar Syndrome. Again, it was a business choice. So, we’ll see if it was a good choice or not. It’s only just beginning.
Art House Cult: Once again, thank you so much for your time. It’s been great getting to know you over the last couple hours.
Jonathan Hertzberg: Thank you so much. Best of luck!
A special thanks to Jonathan for donating so much time to this interview process!
Photo of Jonathan Hertzberg – Founder/Owner of Fun City Editions
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