How The Grinch Stole Christmas!

[Zack Sporre]

How is it that the 1966, animated, How The Grinch Stole Christmas short has never been released on Super 8 film? To me, it feels like this would be a very popular short to have on film. Christmas is always a great time to pull out films with family members. How many members out there would be interested in buying a new copy if it was available? Does anyone know if a good master 35mm or 16mm copies are readily available?

[Osi Osgood]

Yeah, but then, there is the whole copyright issue and while nearly every super 8 release these days (especially features) are films that the copyright is owned by someone else other than the super 8 provider ...

Unless you want to risk serious prosecution under the law, it really wouldn't be worth taking that risk these days.

That's why the best "risk free" super 8 releases are best left to trailers, commercials or other rare films that the copyright has luckily ran out on.

I highly doubt that the owners of "Grinch' have let the copyright run out.

[Zack Sporre]

Pardon my ignorance, how do they print copies of many of these new pixar shorts, etc. without infringing on those copyrights?

[Steve Klare]

You can't take it for granted that they do.

As long as there has been film, people have been sneaking prints out of theaters overnight and copying them. With newer technologies, it doesn't even need to come to this. If you read "A Thousand Cuts", it talks about kind of a shady side of film collecting: for example the time the FBI raided Roddy McDowall's house and hauled out several million dollars worth of pirated prints. (They also hit Rock Hudson's house, but didn't find the secret door!)

It's fair to say if you have enough prints in your collection, some of them are in this category. Some might even surprise you.

There's always Reflections USA (Precious Images). This is a film made of about 500 clips from classics going all the way back to the beginnings of motion pictures. I read an article about it once that said it's impossible to get on home media because of the nightmarish mess of copyrights from hundreds of films.

-yet there are all of those 200 footers out there...

[Graham Ritchie]

How true Steve...I was surprised that I managed to get it onto you-tube a while ago