
Producer, director, and film preservationist Michael Schlesinger, 74, died of cancer on Jan. 9. Schlesinger produced and/or directed such delightfully titled comedies, spoofs, and shorts as Trail of the Screaming Forehead, Bride of Finklestein, Imitation of Wife, Schmo Boat, and last year’s Rock and Doris (Try to) Write a Movie. But he is best known for producing re-releases of older films, with United Artists Classics, and then Paramount and Sony. He was a regular at Cinevent, Cinecon, and other film conventions, and was a good friend not only to many classic film fans, but to directors and producers happy to see their long-forgotten films brought back into circulation. When he remastered Gojira ni-sen Mireniamu as Godzilla 2000 and released it in the US, Schlesinger told Scott Michael Bosco, “one of the reasons American audiences laugh at Godzilla movies is that the Japanese culture is very serious. So you have this very serious movie then this guy in a rubber suit comes along stomping cardboard buildings and the tendency is to laugh. In redoing some of the dialog, I felt that maybe if I put some intentional funny things and kept the human stuff on a lighter level, maybe, it wouldn’t seem so laughable when the monsters show up. I think I succeeded to some extent. But you know, people come to a Godzilla movie to laugh at it anyway. So that’s something, I don’t think one can never overcome.”
