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Posted by Jeff Joseph (Member # 511) on 11-28-2003, 12:13 PM:

The men behind movie munchies

The studio that made the catchy animated ditties for drive-ins says business is still good.

By Robert K. Elder
Chicago Tribune

November 28 2003

CHICAGO — "Let's all go to the lobby, let's all go to the laaah-bee …."

For those who have been exposed to the dancing ice cream bars and hot dogs in Filmack Studios' concession stand commercials — played endlessly at drive-ins and film houses since the 1950s — the jingles can be hard to shake.

Then there's that suggestive sequence of a lion-trainer hot dog bun beckoning to an acrobatic frank. That little clip has become a staple of pop culture, even showing up during the drive-in sequence in "Grease."

What you might not know, however, is that those wily wienies and saucy sodas were born, or drawn at least, in Chicago's South Loop. Since 1919, three generations of the Mack family have produced trailers for movie theaters at Filmack Studios.

Beginning in the silent era of film, Filmack used black-and-white nitrate film to produce newsreels and theater promotions — and even employed a young Walt Disney for a time in the 1920s.

Today, Filmack creates and duplicates the "Silence Is Golden" spots for AMC Theatres. It also produces coming attractions and policy openers nationwide for Carmike Cinemas and Century Theaters as well as for independent movie houses.

The nostalgic trailers, produced in the mid-1950s, no longer represent a large part of Filmack's business, but the demand for them remains steady, says owner Robbie Mack.

"I get e-mails all day long requesting them," Mack says, although he sells only to theaters and drive-ins. "I don't want 'em to be bootlegged. I just haven't put 'em out on DVD. Once you do, you're finished."

Film historian and TV's "Hot Ticket" critic Leonard Maltin calls Filmack "a name that looms large" for any film collector and the animated trailers "those immortal pieces of film."

"They were part of every American's moviegoing experience at a certain time," Maltin says. As for the production history of the shorts — actually five-minute-long cartoons — Mack is fuzzy on specifics. The 45-second "Let's All Go to the Lobby" reel, created separately from the dancing food pieces, "probably was produced around 1955." The famous hot dog and his dancing concession-stand brothers were animated by hand circa 1957, Mack estimates. They were produced by Mack's company-founding grandfather, Irving, and his team of animators. For 85 years, Filmack has dealt almost exclusively with rolling film stock, updating only in the last decade with the advent of digital technology. Mack and his employees regularly ship out thousands of hockey puck-size reels containing trailers to national chains.

Still, Filmack remains most famous for less than six minutes of film.

"But the hot dog is the most remembered one," Mack says. "The hot dog jumps into the bun, so it has little sexual overtones."

Not everyone agrees with his interpretation.

"I don't think that's truly the reason" people remember the hot dog piece, says John Scaletta, director of operations for F&F Management, which runs Chicago's Davis Theatre among others.

"As people got older, they put two and two together, but I don't think that's why people like it," Scaletta says. "They saw it when they were a child and innocent. Those are the trailers that we saw when our parents took us to the drive-in."

Posted by Gordon Bachlund (Member # 124) on 11-28-2003, 01:31 PM:

Jeff, thanks for the post. It is nice to see Filmack and Robbie Mack get some well deserved mention.

For those Film-Techers who don't know Filmack, Robbie always has a booth at ShoWest. Stop by and say hello next March, guys.

Also, visit Robbie's website, www.filmack.com, where you can click on "classic trailers" and view "Let's All Go to the Lobby" on line.

Cheers, Robbie!

Posted by Steve Kraus (Member # 476) on 11-28-2003, 05:16 PM:

Here is the direct URL of that trailer as this may give you more options including saving locally:

www.filmack.com/qttrailers/lobby.mov

Posted by Manny Knowles (Member # 1171) on 11-28-2003, 06:26 PM:

Filmack made the JBL logo trailer too.

Posted by Dan Lyons (Member # 1454) on 11-28-2003, 07:16 PM:

quote:
"I get e-mails all day long requesting them," Mack says, although he sells only to theaters and drive-ins. "I don't want 'em to be bootlegged.

Not true. I've seen the "lets all go.." trailer and many others for sale at Drive-infilm.com .

Danny

Posted by Steve Kraus (Member # 476) on 11-28-2003, 08:00 PM:

Ah but that site is no more. And its proprietor, Derek Maxwell, seems to have disappeared from this forum some 7 months ago.

Posted by John Schulien (Member # 215) on 11-28-2003, 09:08 PM:

I bought some of those in 16mm. Beautiful and top quality!

Posted by Jeff Joseph (Member # 511) on 11-29-2003, 01:22 AM:

"Let's all Go to the Lobby" and the others are in the public domain and are duped and copied endlessly.

Jeff

Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 11-30-2003, 09:28 AM:

Now if Robbie Mack were a big film studio, his material would NEVER go into Public Domain, which the studios have figured out how to get Congress to endlessly amend the Copyright law. If it were Disney Studios, that hotdog and it's willing bun would be locked down solid for the next 1000 years plus the life of the author (whatever that means). Anyone copying it would immediately be beheaded, just like Alice in Wonderland. [Eek!]

Frank

Posted by Jeff Joseph (Member # 511) on 11-30-2003, 02:53 PM:

Filmak put this stuff out with NO copyright notices on them at all... had nothing to do with the size of the studio.

Jeff

Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 11-30-2003, 07:04 PM:

I know this doesn't affect pre-existing 'old stuff', but does US copyright law still require you to include a copyright notice or are materials now automatically covered by copyright?

Posted by Aaron Sisemore (Member # 145) on 11-30-2003, 10:25 PM:

Per the Berne Convention, copyright exists at the time of creation of a given work, copyright notice or not. I am not sure if the DMCA revisions changed that aspect of it.

Most people add the notice as a way to cover their butts in case of infringement.

-Aaron

Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 12-01-2003, 04:55 AM:

Pretty much all the requirements originally contained in the law which put responsibility on the copyright applicant are now eliminated; long ago studios were exempt from depositing two "best" versions of the work to the Library of Congress because the studios claimed it was too much of financial "burden" for them -- they make 4000 prints and to submit two is too much of a burden. I guess "burden" is in the eye of the beholder. Congress agreed. They only need to submit a print if and when a copyright infringement claim is made. So much for the LOC copies being the last repository for works that are otherwise lost everywhere else.

Of course the requirement of submitting a copyright application itself with an application fee was also waved when broadcasters claimed that was impossible for them because their "work," i.e., a news broadcast, for example, was authored at the moment it was broadcast. The work is copyrighted as it is created live. Hence at the end of the network news every evening, they display a copyright notice even though the work didn't exist prior to its airing. But then again, as Aaron points out, even the copyright notice, which years ago was a very important issue -- print a work without it, or even with it but incorrectly stated, and the copyright was forfeited permanently. Now they don't even need the copyright statement to insure copyright protection.

quote:
Filmak put this stuff out with NO copyright notices on them at all... had nothing to do with the size of the studio.

Sure it did -- Disney had a legal department the size of Filmack. If it were Disney, putting out ANYTHING without a proper copyright notice would simply never happen. Besides, if anything was ever released by the big guys that somehow didn't comply with some regulation that threatened its copyright status, like for example the copyright protection time period expiring, then the Disney/ABC/The Planet conglomerate would simply go to their henchmen in Congress, get the law ammended and get the copyright protection extended to something more to their liking, say like another millenium or two. The want everyone to play by the rules, copyright or otherwise, as long as they get to make them. [Mad]

Frank

Posted by Jeff Taylor (Member # 443) on 12-01-2003, 11:08 AM:

...so how do we explain Charade, Royal Wedding, They Died with their Boots On, etc, etc, etc. Despite their legal departments the big guys do drop the ball and lose control of major titles now and then.

Posted by Ken Layton (Member # 133) on 12-01-2003, 12:21 PM:

Derek Maxwell's site is back up and running again.