The Extras - "Night Gallery", "The UFO Incident," and Composer Billy Goldenberg

Episode Date: August 22, 2022

Film historian Gary Gerani joins the podcast to discuss his documentary extra “Romantic Mysticism” on composer Billy Goldenberg.  We discuss Billy’s early career working with Steven Spielberg on the pilot for NIGHT GALLERY (Spielberg's professional directorial debut) as well as the TV movie "Duel."  Gary provided the audio commentary on the pilot for the Kino Lorber Blu-ray release in November of 2021 and he provides background into the three episodes that make up the pilot, including "Eyes," starring Joan Crawford in one of her last performances and directed by Spielberg. Then we get into a discussion of the 1975 TV movie, THE UFO INCIDENT starring James Earl Jones and Estelle Parsons.  Gary provided the audio commentary for the Kino Lorber Blu-ray release in June of 2022 and struck a deal with Kino to include his documentary on that release.  And finally, we discuss the recent release of NIGHT GALLERY season 2, which is packed with extras, including numerous audio commentaries from Gary Gerani.Purchase "The UFO Incident" which includes the documentary as an extra.Gary Gerani's Facebook page.Otaku Media produces podcasts, behind-the-scenes extras, and media that connect creatives with their fans and businesses with their consumers.  Contact us today to see how we can work together to achieve your goals.  www.otakumedia.tvThe Sitcom StudyWelcome to the Sitcom Study, where we contemplate the TV shows we grew up with and...Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify The Extras Facebook pageThe Extras Twitter Warner Archive & Warner Bros Catalog GroupOtaku Media produces podcasts, behind-the-scenes extras, and media that connect creatives with their fans and businesses with their consumers. Contact us today to see how we can work together to achieve your goals. www.otakumedia.tv

Hi, I'm film historian and author John Fricke. I've written books about Judy Garland and the Wizard of Oz movie, and you're listening to The Extras. Hello and welcome to The Extras, where we take you behind the scenes of your favorite TV shows, movies, and animation, and their release on digital, DVD, Blu-ray, and 4K, or your favorite streaming site. I'm Tim Millard, your host. My guest today is the screenwriter of the 1988 Stan Winston directed classic Pumpkinhead.

He is also the author of the 1977 award-winning nonfiction trade paperback called Fantastic Television, which was praised for being the very first book to explore science fiction, horror, and fantasy on the small screen. He was also instrumental in reviving interest in seminal sci-fi TV series like The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits. And for the past half century, he has created hundreds of products for Topps, Upper Deck, and other companies. he has created hundreds of products for Topps, Upper Deck, and other companies. But what we will primarily be talking about today is his recent excellent documentary called Romantic Mysticism, The Music of Billy Goldenberg, which was included as an extra on the Blu-ray

release from Kino Lorber of the 1975 TV movie, The UFO Incident. And we'll also get into his audio commentary extras for the recent Blu-ray releases of seasons one and two of the classic Rod Serling-hosted television show, Night Gallery. Gary Girani, welcome to The Extras. Hello there. It's a real pleasure to be here. I've enjoyed your show in the past and I'm happy to have contributed extras that were worthy of this interview. Well, it's a real pleasure to finally get you on the show as well. I see your name on a lot of the different titles, especially with Kino, that have been coming through. But I know you also do a lot of other things as well. But before we kind of dive into some of that work and your documentary about the composer Billy Goldenberg, I was curious about your nickname

as the Card King. Tell us a bit about your career working with Topps and Upper Deck. Yeah, yeah. I never thought when I was a child that I was going to have a career creating trading cards and other bubblegum-related items, but that's kind of what happened. I started, God, it was 1973, and I got my job through the Monster Times, which was a tabloid format monster magazine that had come out around that time. And I had written a very funny article about the creature from the Black Lagoon taken from the creature's point of view and autobiography as if he was writing about, hey, you know, I came to Hollywood, I made a big sensation, et cetera, et cetera. And that article impressed the folks at Topps and I was hired to write gags.

And, you know, I just wound up enjoying creating all the nutty products that they did. I mean, we did all these what I call lethally subversive products for kids. I mean, Topps on the one hand was the all-American baseball card company. But on the other hand, you know, it was wacky packages, garbage pail kids, all these things that were kind of naughty. And that's what we basically developed a new product development. Either our fun, wacky, crazy products or tie-ins to popular fans or movies or TV shows. Yeah, and unlike the baseball ones, this was for primarily pop culture type products, correct? Yeah.

I mean, it could be anything from, you know, the Beatles to Star Wars and everything in between, really. So we basically, it was really two different areas. We would either tap into the movies or TV fads or whatever, and then do our own spin on it. Or we would, in between the cracks, you then do our own spin on it. Or we would, in between the cracks, you would create our own nutty things, you know. It all appealed to the same kid audience. And being a Brooklyn boy myself, you know, Topps was originally a Brooklyn company. I collected all this stuff as a kid. I was into it. So it was kind of fun doing for kids what had been done for me when I was a kid, because these things that would brighten my day, they'd be so crazy, a pack of cards or whatever.

So yeah, I responded to Topps and I stuck with that for all these years because I really enjoyed it. I got into my other areas too, screenwriting and nonfiction, book writing, documentaries, whatever. Yeah. Well, let's get into that for a second as well. You are very well known as a screenwriter for the movie Pumpkinhead, directed by Stan Winston. Tell us about that experience. Yeah. First of all, yeah, I co-wrote the screenplay with my writing partner, Mark Patrick Carducci, who passed away a couple of decades ago. But Mark and I were childhood buddies who grew up reading famous monsters of film land. You know, we worshiped the Ray Harryhausen movies, the Hammer movies, and all of this. And the fact that we eventually got to the point where we were able to create our own famous monster of film land was such a thrill.

And the fact that it was a Stan Winston film. So not only was it a state of the art creature who has become sort of iconic, but the film itself was really beautifully photographed and really, really well done. So we lucked out, quite honestly. You also have worked as a journalist in science fiction, horror and fantasy that goes back to the 70s in your book, Fantastic Television. What kind of led you to write that book? Was it just your own interests or how did you get into that genre? Yeah, I mean, you know, you got to realize, you know, uh, I'm what they call a monster kid and the monster kids were the, the, uh, kids from, um, basically who, who were born in the early fifties, who, who were coming of age in the very early sixties. And, uh, being a

monster kid, we were plugged into all those things that were happening at that time. So I was there when The Twilight Zone premiered in 1959 on a Friday night on CBS. And obviously, a few years later, I was there for The Outer Limits and, you know, The Monsters, all the things that happened in the early 60s. Now, in terms of fantastic television, there was no book that existed that dealt with science fiction, fantasy, and horror on television. The very, very first book ever written about horror movies, which is Carlos Clarence's An Illustrated History of the Horror Film, actually mentions, you know, there's a lot of great stuff was done for television, but the study of that really belongs elsewhere. Well, I know when I was a kid and I read that, I said to myself,

I'm going to be the guy who puts that study together. And, you know, so I mentioned my buddy Mark, we were monster, you know, kids as kids, and we'd be waiting for his bus to come, you know, and we would play Remember the One, which was a game. Remember the one, remember the one with Agnes Moorhead where she's fighting the aliens? Remember the one? All these different episodes of Twilight Zone and Thriller and whatever. And I said, I got to put this in a book. So there'd be a real intelligent way to analyze and study these films. So yeah, it came out of my natural interest and

love for this stuff. Did that book have in any way an introduction into some of the music, which is a big part of our discussion today of the Billy Goldenberg? Because that was a lot of the music he was doing, right? Yeah. Well, this is true. The made-for-TV films, you know, the movies and the series and all of that stuff. I mean, actually, even beyond Billy Goldenberg, you had all the great composers. You had Bernard Herrmann working on the Alfred Hitchcock episodes. You had Jerry Goldsmith doing episodes. You had some of the greatest composers who ever existed working on these fantastic television shows. And Billy was kind of like the next generation to come out of that. He was the last of the great ones from that era. Because they all were developed by Stanley Wilson over at Universal.

He was the music director at Universal Pictures and handled all the television stuff. And he's the one that brought Quincy Jones in and John Williams in and Billy Goldenberg, all these wonderful people. So yeah, yeah, my book does cover that era, which was a very exciting era for music on television. No question. Stay with us. We'll be right back. Hi, this is Tim Millard, host of The Extras Podcast.

And I wanted to let you know that we have a new private Facebook group for fans of the Warner Archive and Warner Brothers Catalog physical media releases. So if that interests you, you can find the link on our Facebook page or look for the link in the podcast show notes. Well, why don't we get into a little bit of the discussion of Billy and the documentary. I know that that's kind of why we first started talking was because of the documentary. And I found it fascinating when I watched it. And I think others will as well.

So how did you decide in your mind that this was going to be something you were going to do for X number of years of your life. Well, you know, I've been very fortunate in that the things that I'm interested in are things that I wind up sort of working at one way or another. And Billy's music, as the documentary tells you, kind of hit me at exactly the right time. And when a composer's work hits you that way, you kind of, you fall in love with it. And I bring up that point. It is like falling in love where there's something about the person. You know, if you're a guy, you know, and there's this beautiful girl, you can say, oh, I love her or whatever. And your friend might say, she's nice, but she's not that pretty. To me, she's the most beautiful thing in the world. And that's the way it happens with music. There may be other composers out there who are even

bigger or greater. But something about what Billy did just got me right inside. I was in love. And I became obsessed with his music. At that point, he was just beginning, and there really weren't many recordings of his music out there. So when was this, Gary? When was this? I mean, how old were you? You got to figure it started in the 70s, because his first made-for-TV feature-length music score was in 1969 for a TV movie called Fear No Evil with Louis Jourdan. It was a very, very good supernatural thriller, the first major TV horror movie. And then he followed that up with the Night Gallery two-hour pilot, which was Steven Spielberg's debut as a director. As a matter of fact, Stephen, and as the documentary gets into,

Billy Goldenberg was Steven Spielberg's main composer for almost everything he did in his early television work, starting with the Night Gallery Joan Crawford segment, and Duel, you know, and an incredible science fiction episode of The name of the game that the guys did. So they were a team for a while. And the documentary gets into, you know, where that went and where that didn't go. But anyway, this was like, you know, the 70s, late 60s, early 70s. And I began to like go after anything that had Billy's name attached to it. I watched these TV movies that would just

be on. And if it was a Billy score, I'd be like, oh, God, I know I was in for something great. So that's when the obsession started. But it was really years later that I actually said, you know, I would love to have recordings of his stuff. Because since TV movies are not like theatrical movies, they didn't put out records and soundtracks on those things. They just came and went on your TV screen. So I said to myself, well, since these things aren't available, why don't I try to reach the composer himself? Because it seems likely he might have copies of his music. And maybe that's one way of getting it. Once again, it was the love of the music. It's not like saying, I've got to meet this great man.

I wanted his music because it hit me with so much whatever. Of course, then I tracked him down and I got to meet him. And of course, it was a one-two punch of greatness because he was a great guy, and it was endlessly fascinating to talk with him and hang with him and go to dinner with him and get into all this stuff. Then he did take me to his vault, and he did have copies of his music, as which I mentioned in the documentary. You actually see us going to the vault. I wound up really going wild with this. So I wound up, you know, really going wild with this. And since I had gotten all this wonderful music and now was friendly with the man, my big

hope was to get his music released on CD. So I got in touch with all the people who do this. And, you know, that required a deal with Universal, with the music rights. It's a whole special thing. So that became very, very complicated. Also, a lot of Billy's greatest music are for things that are not household titles, like Fear No Evil. You know, I mean, no one, you know, you have to be into this to know what that is. That's why ultimately something like Duel got a CD release because Duel was famous and Steven Spielberg, whatever. Why they haven't done the Columbo scores yet? Because Columbo is internationally beloved. I guess there's still some legal difficulties with you. But anyway, so I went that route and really didn't have much

success in trying to get his music out that way. And so I went that route and really didn't have much success in trying to get his music out that way. And then I noticed that people were doing documentaries. My friend just did one. And I said, wow, documentaries, if you do them the right way, it's really fair usage, you know, because it's about, it's educational. It's about something. So the whole point of doing a documentary is you don't just play the entertainment to enjoy it. It's there educationally. So the man who composed this music could explain what he had in his mind when you're hearing that. So I said to myself, since I'm always hanging with Billy, I live in California, Sherman Oaks. Billy lived in, you know, Broadway in New York.

I live in California, Sherman Oaks. Billy lived in, you know, Broadway in New York. He had come to California, obviously, in the late 60s and pursued, you know, his career writing for film and television. But then he had gone back to Broadway. He had a whole background in Broadway, too. Ballroom, Michael Bennett, of course, line fame is based on. He's made for TV movie The Queen of the Stardust Ballroom. So yeah, since I would always go to New York, see all my friends and relatives from there, and Billy when I was there, I said to myself, why don't I just film Billy while I'm hanging

with him? And here, let me get this down. People say, you know, is this a low-budget documentary? And I joke, and I say, no, it's a no-budget documentary. It was just financed by the change in my pocket as I was going along. Luckily, my protege, Dan Nastro, was this young fellow who was the son of a good friend of mine, who I kind of inspired and helped when he was a young man interested in getting into film and film production. when he was a young man interested in getting into film and film production.

And then he became a fantastic professional person who did films for the NFL and whatever. So I had him available almost as a surrogate son to come in with the editing and some of the filming and whatever. Without Danny, I really couldn't have pulled this off with no money. So that's how I did it and why I did it. You're two New York guys, so I'm sure you connected on that level. And as you said, you're already going back there anyway. Specifically, when did you start kind of moving this from just, you know, I just wanted to get to know him and work on the music to actively working on the documentary? Well, I guess I had connected with Billy probably for a good 25 years, you know, uh, we, we, we were friends. And, uh, one of the things that comes up in the documentary, uh, we'd even worked on this, uh, animated version of the golem. Uh, we work in over at the author's house using her piano.

It was great. Uh, so I was actively involved with him, uh, first, you know, and foremost as a friend, but then also because we were both creative people and I was so obsessed with his music. I mean, what could be more wonderful than working with the person whose music you fell in love with? I mean, whoa, it doesn't get any better than that. So we were doing all this and whatever. And the Golem, you know, didn't work out. A lot of projects that Billy got involved with, everybody, and this is standard. So many people, creative people in the industry, will work together on projects, really exciting projects, and they were basically doing, trying to do a musical version of Somewhere in Time, which was the movie that had been made based on Madison's thing. So Madison

worked with Billy to create that. And that didn't work out either. You know, every step of the, even toward the end of the documentary, I mentioned how this documentary inspired producer Dean Hargrove to approach Billy to do a new Columbo. And I felt very proud. I said, oh, my efforts brought these guys back together again. Dean Hargrove produced the original Ransom for a Dead Man pilot that sold the ongoing series. And, of course, Billy did an incredible score for that and some of the early Columbo episodes, which are remarkable. So this seemed to be, you know, kind of a way to do everything I ever kind of wanted to do. But as was mentioned here again with Dean Hargrove or whatever, again, that didn't work out either.

So, like I say, very often you work on things and for whatever reasons they don't come to fruition. So for those listeners who aren't quite as familiar with Billy Goldenberg's work, you named the documentary Romantic Mysticism. Maybe you can explain a little bit about that and put into context some of his work in that era. can explain a little bit about that and put into context some of his work in that era. Romantic mysticism was a term that Billy came up with to describe the very, very unique transcendent sound of a lot of his music. Not everything he did was romantic mysticism, but to some degree, there's a bit of romantic mysticism in everything he did, because it's kind of like Billy's soul. It's kind of like reaching, it's sort of heaven and hell, which he did beautifully, both extremes. And the romantic mysticism, he also joked, I suppose we could also call it perverted melodious, because what it was was usually a very, very pretty, beautiful piece of music, but awful little, telling you that this is beautiful, but the person it's scoring or the character or whatever is a little evil, is a little whatever. Now, it works perfectly in all of the made-for-TV supernatural thrillers

that he did, which had a lyrical quality. And Billy pretty much, with Fear No Evil, Ritual of Evil, which was the follow-up film, they were pilots, and then Night Gallery, he pretty much established the sound of the made-for-TV horror movie of the 1970s. It was usually a beautiful, lyrical kind of romantic mysticism. But then it probably reached its height when he used it for Columbo, because it was the perfect way to score the villains. They were always larger than life, usually rich people, glamorous people. So this beautiful music seemed to sum up them and their world and everything. But they were murderers. There is that dark, weird, off quality in there. So it was very, very compelling stuff. And I just fell in love with it. And this was the era when that music of his kind of made its biggest impression, as far as I'm concerned, during the 70s. That's when that sound that he created really hit big and startled people.

And people, even the Beatles, Beatles loved it because Billy came out of the late sixties. It was head music to some degree, you know, the, the, the drug culture was all part of it. And, and it just added to this, like I said, I say, it's like, it's transcendent. It's like taking you into a higher level of existence. transcendent. It's like taking you into a higher level of existence. In the documentary, Billy talks about, you know, some of his depression or psychology and how he brought that and poured that emotion into it. I think that fits right into what you're talking about. Yeah, yeah. He sums it up beautifully in the end when he basically says, music saved my life in just about every area. And one of the things that the documentary does beyond just focusing on this one composer is to kind of suggest overall the importance of music.

You know, music can change your life. In the course of that documentary, we see how music helped his sex life, how it brought someone back from dementia. The music brought their minds, their memories back. How people who were in the middle of a war, they could have been killed. But this music, listening to it, was so important to them. So this is the power, the power of music. And with Billy specifically, and as a documentarian, it's exactly what you want to hear because it ties it all together, the power of music. And for him personally, how it really did save his life, his emotional life. There is that one fascinating sequence where he's talking about how his psychiatrist said,

instead of going out looking for a sexual partner, put all that into your music and see what comes out. And watch the documentary and you'll hear what Billy has to say about that. And watch the documentary and you'll hear what Billy has to say about that. Well, you mentioned a little bit earlier the fact that Billy, with the Night Gallery pilot, that was Steven Spielberg's directorial debut on television? Mm-hmm. Yeah, it was the original two-hour TV movie. Interestingly enough, Billy did not work on the Night Gallery series, on the segments that he did the major piece, the two-hour pilot, which launched the show and launched

Spielberg's career. And that's an amazing, that's the one with the three stories of Roddy McDowell and Joe Crawford, Richard Kiley. It's a terrific, that's the one with the three stories of Roddy McDowell and Joe Crawford, Richard Kiley. It's a terrific, terrific TV movie. So how did they work together or get put together? I guess he was hired to do the music for the pilot. And then Stephen was one of the three directors of those three segments. They were both kind of, you know, relatively new at Universal.

Yeah, they were both kind of, you know, relatively new at Universal. I think Night Gallery might have been Billy's maybe third score, you know, but there was Fear No Evil, there might have been one in between, but Night Gallery came very quickly after that. So they were all just starting out. And like I say, this was Spielberg's very first professional film. Another thing the documentary covers, which is a very, very exciting era at Universal Pictures and Universal Television, where all of this incredible talent, whether it was the Billy Goldenbergs or the Steven Spielbergs or directors like Bob Zemeckis or, you know, John Badham, they all came out of Universal television from the late 60s to the mid 70s. Because during that period, Universal had an arrangement with NBC, where NBC was hands off. And this comes out in the documentary, which is so significant. It's so different than the way things are today, where everyone has total control. The network tells artists what to do. The film companies tell writers the parameters of what they can write. I mean, it's a nightmare. As a screenwriter from the old days, I'd hate to be a screenwriter today. But yeah, during this era we're talking about, NBC just said, look, you know

how to make these films and stories. We just want product. If it doesn't work, we cancel it. We'll put something else. This enabled Universal to bring in the most creative and experimental. Steven Spielberg directed episodes of The Psychiatrist, which nobody has seen. It was part of the four-in-one series of which Night Gallery was originally a rotating part of. And they're beautifully directed. He did a couple of them just because, again, they were allowed to experiment. So this is a Camelot period in television, 1969 to 1975 at Universal, which is why so many great people came out of that era. Well, this show, of course, is called The Extras. We talk about The Extras on the home entertainment releases. And so this kind of dovetails right back into the season one Blu-ray release from Kino Lorber, which came out last November. So not too long ago. And that release, I believe, had the six episodes from season one, of which that that first one is pretty long because it's a full TV movie length. Actually, it was a two-hour movie. And then there were, was it six or eight-hour installments that

were called The Recruiting Four and One. So yeah, you should really think of the two-hour pilot as a kind of separate entity. As a matter of fact, the two-hour pilot was never even syndicated with the rest of the series. It had been syndicated separately just as a TV film in a movie package. And of course, the whole story of Night Gallery and syndication has been said forever. One of the most glorious extras, Craig Beams did these little documentaries which explain what happened to Night Gallery and syndication, where they were all cut up and re-edited and episodes of the Sixth Sense series were cut down and pushed into Night Gallery. Totally crazy. But, you know, all part of that era.

Well, let's talk about the fact that you did an audio commentary for that season one pilot. And did you talk then about the full pilot, the three segments? pilot. And did you talk to them about the full pilot, the three segments? Oh, sure. Yeah. When you do a commentary, you start talking from the minute it fades in, and then you finally shut up when it fades out. And you can't stop talking because then all of a sudden there's silence and people get disoriented. So you got to keep talking. Let's talk about that because I just, I just watched it the other night and I'm sitting out, you know, in my viewing room, watching this kind of, you know, after my daughter and wife are at bed and I put on that first one, the cemetery, or, I mean, you know, I started starring Roddy McDowell and I mean,

this is an older show and I've got like chills running up my spine every time that they cut to that painting and you see the progression in the painting and then you hear the footsteps at the door. And talk a little bit about that one. That's the first of the three stories. And it's a very classic kind of a horror tale. Universal wanted more of a supernatural-type series. That's kind of why they were developing Fear No Evil, Ritual Evil. Louis Jourdan was an investigator of the supernatural. So whether they were playing with a series with regular characters, that eventually mutated in a roundabout way into The Sixth Sense, with Gary Collins investigating

paranormal stuff. So Universal was very, very into that. They knew it was their legacy. So they had the Fear No Evil, Louis Jourdan thing in development at the same time that they had Night Gallery. Both did well in the ratings. And because they wanted the supernatural, that was a story that Serling pretty much kind of created to make them happy. And it's fine. It's spooky. It's got all the bone-chilling aspects you would want. The other two stories were based on pre-existing stories of his that he adapted and reworked. Okay, they're quite different. As a matter of of fact in the commentary i go into detail about the differences between his original story and how he had to cut them down and rework them for the

pilot and that's the middle one we've talked about called eyes that's one of the last times that joan crawford that's one of her last films i I guess. The interesting truth about that, she could have gone out by saying, you know, I ended my career working with a young director named Steven Spielberg. Unfortunately, the last film she made was Trog, which was not exactly a earth-shattering, wonderful, terrific movie. It was a terrible Herman Cohen movie. However, however, that wasn't Joan's last dramatic appearance on film. She actually turns up in an episode of The Sixth Sense, which years later was combined with

Night Gallery and Syndication. And it was an episode that Billy scored, as is mentioned in the documentary, called Dear Joan, We're Going to Scare You to Death. It was a season two, six sets. So that was the very last film dramatic appearance that Joan Crawford, which is a little bit more respectable to trod at least. Right. Well, I know in the documentary, he just gushes about like any chance he had to work with Joan. He's like, I'm doing that. I love that. I love that part where, you know, Stanley Wilson called me and said,

you know, I think it would get away with just two pianos for George. Oh, no. I want them. Like Max Steiner had a big, why can't I? Right. So great. You know, classic movies. He grew up with this stuff.

I like the way he was talking about Fred Astaire. And then he had the opportunity to write that wonderful little theme for Fred Astaire and it takes a thief. Stare. And then he had the opportunity to write that wonderful little theme for Fred Astaire and It Takes a Thief. So yeah, it's like you become part of the magic. I kind of know what that's like because I moved myself into the magic because I wanted that feeling. Right. The eyes piece is obviously well known for all of the things we just talked about, but was that the first time that he worked with Spielberg? And then they worked on Duel after that? Yeah, that was their very first collaboration. That's when they kind of met. And like I said, they were just two, they were young guys at Universal. Billy was a little older, but they were both young guys.

Their careers were dovetailing. It just so happened that Stephen was directing things that Billy was assigned. And because they worked so well together, they didn't get together separately. So we got to just keep going. We're going to go up the ladder together. We're going to, you know, I'll be your composer. You'll be my director. And that's pretty much the way it was on television. I mean, they did remarkable. That Name of the Game episode, again, which no one can see because it's just not available. L.A. 2017, of course, it was done in 1970. So 2017 and 1970 was the future. And in the future, we're all living underground like the Morlocks because we poison the atmosphere with pollution. And again, in 1970, pollution was a very important issue. Billy even scored the film A Clear and Present Danger, which was the pilot for the Hal Holbrook Senator series. And that pilot dealt with pollution. So it was a key thing. But yeah, I mean, it's a beautifully directed, the LA 2017 episode of The Naming is a beautifully directed science fiction episode written by Philip Wiley, who wrote When Worlds Collide.

You could tell from Spielberg's early television work, this guy was like a Mozart. He had his cinematic syntax, if you will, a shot-to-shot experience. You would just go, wow. So I was having the same reaction to spielberg's early work before people knew he was the way i was to billy's it's like these guys are great right right right and dual of course has a little to no dialogue i mean so the music sound effects all that the audio portion of this uh film so important. And so the score is very important. And again, a good composer knows when to put music in, when to keep his mouth shut musically. He also knows what's right for the material.

And in a sense, there was nothing romantic about this truck. It was a monster. It was this, so the sounds that come out of it, I mean, you know, there's something vaguely mystical about it, of course, but there was nothing, it was just a savage thing. So his music is savage and unkempt, as opposed to the lyrical romantic mysticism of these other, the perverted melodious, if you will. These were just sounds, sounds that sounded like automotive sounds, you know, in keeping with the flavor of the story. Again, that's what a composer does. A composer has to be like a psychiatrist and figure out the subtext of the movie and score the subtext, not what's on

the surface. That's Mickey Mousing. What you got to do is, and nothing against some of the greatest composers who, Max Steiner invented film composing in a sense, and he Mickey Mouses a lot. Mickey Mousing meaning that's a term used when a music score sounds like it's from a cartoon where every you know the cartoon character falls down you know right directly that's like very much on the nose on the nose yeah right yeah and and max steiner let's face it you know in king kong when when the king of the natives is walking down we are bum bum bum bum to match directly to every footstep he takes but that was new and exciting back then. But as time went on and things got a little more sophisticated,

composers realized you shouldn't really be that much on the nose. So a composer has to figure out the psychological subtext of the film and zero in on that. The documentary goes into the fact that they worked on dual after night gallery and then they kind of you know parted ways and there was maybe a missed opportunity but uh but it wasn't you know because he didn't want they didn't want to work together it was just that billy was just so busy doing yeah you know i didn't get into this in the documentary. There are some conflicting views on this. Steven Spielberg's memory was that he kind of was thinking of John Williams, even from the beginning. But I tend to think Billy's recollection is more correct,

because Billy basically said, he sent me the script. I had it sitting there. What a jerk I was. I didn't read it. I was so busy with TV. The Sugarland Express thing didn't sound that interesting to me. Of course, as we know, if he had done Sugarland for Steven Spielberg, Spielberg's next project was Jaws. And most likely, Billy Goldenberg would have been asked to score Jaws, which was a duel at sea, let's face it. And so the quirky fate thing happened, and that's the way it went. Now, as you notice in the documentary, there's a few seconds, right? I have a few moments of Jaws with some Billy music to give you a sense of what that might have been like. I love that part, by the way.

a sense of what that might have been like. I love that part, by the way. It's just interesting, you know, that's the vagaries of a Hollywood career, by the way, right? One wrong move or one, yeah, one careless moment and the whole course of your career changes. Right. I mean, they obviously... I always point out, yes, he didn't become the next John Williams, but the body of work and the things that he did after that are astonishing stuff anyway.

So it's like, you know, I mean, this man was, whether it was Presley who responded to him, the Beatles who was on it, and Barbra Streisand always requesting him. He had something so special that the top people out there responded to it. That says a lot. He worked with Elvis Presley on which project? With Elvis Presley, he was basically, Billy was the key component responsible for Elvis's comeback with the comeback special. He was a musical director of that. And that reignited Elvis's career. As a result, Elvis said, gee, could you score my next movie? Sure. Okay. It turned out to be Change of Habit, which was one of Elvis's lesser pictures. But Billy was there doing a beautiful score anyway, because, you know, the Presley comeback thing was such

an important thing in Elvis's career. So Billy was really at the heart of that. Like I say, it's pretty amazing. And Barbara Streisand, he worked with Barbara Streisand, musical directing and being a part of her early Color Me Barbara, My Name is Barbara, one of those original TV specials were. And she worshipped his music, asked him to do Up the Sandbox when she produced that, and was always recording, you know, was always involved with him. She did one of the Ballroom songs just a few years before he died. She recorded 50%, which is a great song for ballroom. So yeah, he was appreciated by all of these great people, loved working with him, responded to him.

Well, one title that we haven't kind of gotten into yet, but also just released, into yet, but also just released, I think it was just June. And that's the UFO incident, which was released by Kino. A word of profound thanks to Mr. Frank Tarzi over at Kino Rorver. He's the guy that I introduced all of this universal TV stuff to. He didn't know much about it, and I kind of wrote all these things for him. So you got to do this. You got to buy this. You got to do this. I've been trying for years to get these TV movies released from Universal, whatever.

But it wasn't small potatoes for a big studio. It takes these smaller companies that cater directly to the film fan, the TV fan, to be able to profit doing these things. So the fact that he got these things, Fear No Evil, got all this stuff out, Night Gallery, I mean, was great. Not to mention the millions of other great movies, theatrical movies, that Kino was putting out as a result of his efforts. And other fine people working at Kino, too. But Frank was my main contact there. And I'm so grateful. Hey,

he put my documentary out. Yeah. Let's talk about that for a second because the UFO incident was scored by, by Billy, right? And so there was that natural tie in. Talk a little bit about the genesis of, well, that movie and then how you and Frank said, hey, this could be an opportunity to find a home for your documentary on that release. The UFO incident was probably the last, one of the last of the great made-for-TV Universal World Premiere presentations of this era. It was about 1975. This really started in the late 60s. And Universal did the two-hour ones, which had a bigger budget than the movie of the weeks. It was actually James Earl Jones who had gotten the rights to this story of Betty and Barney Hill and their experience. And he was trying to set it up as a theatrical movie. And he had resistance,

goodness knows. I mean, it was an interracial couple back then. I mean, there's so many different reasons why maybe there was some resistance. And maybe people thought UFOs were kind of goofy or whatever for a major movie. Who knows back then? So he finally wound up setting it up at Universal as a TV movie. It was a real quality TV movie. And every step of the way, it was done with tender, loving care. And the two of them, Estelle Parsons and James Earl Jones, playing Betty and Barney Hill, are, it's like, I remember like saying, you could say Tracy and Hepburn, but I also think of Inherit the Wind, where you had two great actors, you know, going at each other,

and you're watching them for a whole movie and you're just in awe. You get brilliance from one, then you go to the other and you're also knocked out by the brilliance. And Estelle Parsons, James Earl Jones together were just incredible. So what you really had here was a docudrama, not a science fiction movie, a docudrama with the glimpses of the aliens very, very, very limited. And each shot of the aliens, you know, because they look a little goofy. They look goofy when the Hills describe them and when Barney Hill drew them. So this is what the people at Universal were working with.

And then whenever you have these little guys walking around with taller people, it does look like, you know, a Boy Scout troop with the parents kind of, you know. So there is something a little funny about the little guys, but the filmmakers, Richard Culler, the director, made sure that every shot with an alien was lit beautifully and the camera move was just right. And then the editing, you cut away before you looked at the thing for too long a period of time. And this was the same thing that was true with Pumpkinhead, where Stan Winston, you get a great shot of the creature and then you would cut away fast, you know, so that it's the impression, just the way Ridley Scott did Alien, too. Matter of fact, that's the way you do it. It's the impression you leave.

The longer you stay on a rubber creature, the more you begin to, your mind tells you it's a rubber suit you're looking at. So the UFO incident was a real quality, one of the last of the great ones. And when I met, you know, it was one of the ones in the list of the things I'd given to Frank and they had gotten the others, but they hadn't gotten that one. And there was some issues for a while. We were hoping to release it about a year or two ago, and we had to kind of wait. And then finally, those issues were cleared, whatever they were, I'm not quite sure.

And the release came, and I was happy to jump in and do a commentary on the entire film. Because of my connection to Billy, it just made logical sense. I think I was the one who suggested to Frank, listen, Frank, we're going to be putting out the UFO incident with my commentary anyway. Let's put my Billy documentary on there. It's a perfect place for it. And he said, yeah, you're right. And it is the perfect place for it. So it's a good package because the UFO incident is a terrific TV movie. They're great in it. I'm proud of my commentary. I cover a lot of stuff. And the documentary, which is a feature-length documentary, you know, was done with a lot of 10 to 11 care, and I think that shows through. So it's quite a nice release.

Yeah, you just said it's a feature-length documentary. How many minutes exactly are you referencing? I think it runs an hour and 41 minutes. I think it went to an hour and 42 minutes when some credits or something were added, which is pretty much the standard length for feature-length documentaries these days. Well, the UFO Incident has your audio commentary. It has that 142 minute documentary, which is fantastic that I'll have links to, um, in the show notes and on the website for those folks who are interested. I highly recommend the documentary. I don't know the movie so well,

but, uh, the documentaries I thought was fantastic. I, as people who have listened to the podcast, no, I just think music is such an important part of any movie. And of course, TV themes. And I just thought that Billy has a, just a really unique sound that, uh, that goes with, with his work. Well, the, the other thing, you know, that I want to just come back to and as we wrap this up is this season two Blu-ray of Night Gallery, which I was looking at the list of new audio commentaries and I just was like, wow, there's a lot. And you you do about what, two or three on there? I don't even remember. I did. I did a bunch of them. I don't even remember. I did a bunch of them. Now, the interesting thing about that is that there are so many commentaries on this season two, because in addition to the new commentaries

that we just recorded for this release, there had been previous commentaries that were rolled over from the old DVD release of Night Gallery. So Glamour del Toro had done a few for that, and then they're back here. But I was hired to do additional ones. So you'll have del Toro's original commentary on a certain episode, and then you could listen to my commentary on that same episode. So you get different perspectives. Every commentary is going to be a little different because every commentator is bringing his own, you know, whatever to the dance. Yeah. And I listened to some of his and it's interesting because he grew up in Mexico watching.

And he talks about the importance that it had in his development. So all of those are really interesting. And I noticed that the reviews pretty much all around for the season two release are very positive. These episodes are new 2K masters from the interpositives. I don't get too much into the specifics of it, but people can read reviews online about some that go a little bit deeper into that. But I can say that the reviews that I read were all positive and the extras are robust. that I read were all positive and the extras are robust. Season two itself was a great season.

It had the best episodes. I mean, if you put the pilot to our pilot aside, some of the best episodes were done for season two. That was when it was a full-fledged hour series, wasn't part of a rotating series, and it really kind of came into its own. And of course, you have an avalanche of experts commenting on all these episodes. So it's quite a package. You know, it had to get good reviews. I mean, it's like,

how much more can we give you? Similar to what we just did with the Kolchak, the Night Stalker. Now that was a single season show, but again, it was a ton of us commentators who love the show, who were rolled out to talk about that one as well. And we're recording this right after the Saturn nominations have come out. And I think, you know, both of those you just mentioned, the season one of Night Gallery and the Kulchak were both nominated for Saturn awards. I don't know how Saturn does things because also in those nominations are things from this year. So it's 2021 releases and 2022 releases mixed together. So I laughingly was saying, you know, well, gee, you know, how come season one Night Gallery was out? How come season two wasn't? Which I actually think

may even be stronger in some ways. So I'm not quite sure how they do it. But yeah, at least we did get the nominations that were there. And that's just great that we got those. Yeah. Well, I'm sure that season two will get nominated next year. I guess. Right. Right. Based off of our discussion of all the content involved and the quality of the episodes themselves. I would imagine. Yeah. And I guess next year it would cover this year's releases and a little bit of next year's i i don't know like i say they seem to mix years together but i guess they have their their system whatever the deadlines are and it could be it could be based on you know as long

as it released somewhere yeah around the world i don't know you know at least at least it's being appreciated we shouldn't lose track of that i I mean, it's gotten the nominations. These are all wonderful. Other films that were nominated from Kino included these beautiful 4K UHD releases of Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars and More. Gorgeous looking. What that has to do with Saturn and science

fiction, horror, and fantasy, I don't know, but there it is. These are gorgeous, absolutely beautiful releases that deserve nominations you know so a lot of wonderful exciting stuff is happening on blu-ray and on 4k these days uh even though everybody tells you ah physical media is dead everybody's streaming yeah that's true except for those of us who are still buying this stuff. And the companies, even though it's a narrow kind of, not a big thing it used to be, are catering now to us film buffs and are getting these incredible stuff off the original negatives. One of them is the original three Technicolor negatives, putting them together in what they call recombines.

So if you watch something like The Adventures of Don Juan with Errol Flynn, you'll be knocked into next week by the quality. Absolutely astonishing. So yeah, between Kino and Warners or whatever, very exciting stuff is happening in home video, right? Well, thanks, Gary, for that plug for some of the titles that we have talked about on the extras. We had a nice conversation with Tim Lucas about his work on the Fistful of Dollars,

that trilogy. Oh, Tim's great. Yeah. And then, of course, George has been on to talk about the Technicolor work on the Warner Archive releases. Oh, yes. Yes. Right.

Right. Yeah. Which is superb. Well, Gary, it's been really fun. I can't believe how the time has just flown by yeah it was fun talking about the the composer Billy Goldenberg and your um and your documentary as really an entree into all of these titles because he he had his fingers in in UFO Incident obviously in Night Gallery Columbo all these different things we've talked about that I think the fans will be interested in. So thank you. Thank you.

For those of you interested in finding out more about Gary Girani's documentary on composer Billy Goldenberg and his extras on the Night Gallery, Blu-ray releases, and the UFO incident, there'll be links in the podcast show notes and on our website at www.theextras.tv. So be sure and check those out. Also follow the show on Facebook or Twitter at The Extras TV or Instagram at The Extras.tv to stay up to date on the latest episodes and for exclusive images and behind the scenes information about the episodes and upcoming guests. And if you're enjoying the show, please subscribe and leave us a review at iTunes, Spotify, or your favorite podcast provider. Until next time, you've been listening to Tim Millard.

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