The New Orleans Connection

The New Orleans connection by wikilipwak

Four people from New Orleans are responsible for us having the Director’s Cut and what is later called the Final Cut.

Stirling Smith

John Alan Simon (See him in The Wicker Man Enigma and Burnt Offering - The Cult of the Wicker Man.)

Ron Weinberg

Micheline Charest

Stirling Smith was a film buff who had a tv show in New Orleans (on WGNO) called Critic’s Choice.
(You can see his interview with Christopher Lee and Robin Hardy talking about the film here. It aired on December 11 of 1977. This is the second of two interviews he did with Christopher Lee. The first one was about his films in general. That aired on December 4 of 1977. I haven’t found that yet.)

John Alan Simon was a recent Harvard grad who was working at the local paper, The Times-Picayune, in 1976. In August of that year, he met Stirling through a story he wrote about Stirling being bitten by a rat at the Orpheum movie theater downtown. They bonded over their love of films and formed the Abraxas Film Corp that month to distribute obscure films that they loved. They found out about the Wicker Man and got a print sent out to them from Warner Brothers on 9/7/76. Once they saw it (at the Robert E Lee theater in Metairie, a suburb of New Orleans) they wanted to distribute it. Robin Hardy found out about this and they began the hunt for the Director’s Cut. They found the print Corman had, restored most of it but not all (due to financial reasons and some editorial judgements from Robin and perhaps others) and that became what is later called the Final Cut. Before that was released, Abraxas had to win back the rights to the film from Summerisle Films (see below). John had a copy dubbed off and made a deal to distribute it on home VHS. That was the Director’s Cut.

Ron and Micheline had joined Abraxas in 1976 to help get funding to restore the film. A few years in, they had split off from Abraxas to form Summerisle Films. That is why you see their names on the opening credits as they owned the rights then. (Larry Gordon, the first name on the credits, owned Beachfront Properties, a tax shelter set up to profit from whatever money the film might make after Warner Brothers gave up on it also owned a major stake in the film. He lived on Long Island, NY.)

Ron, also from Long Island originally, went to Tulane University at roughly the time I went there (and I lived across the Long Island Sound from him) but I never knew him (each class was over 1000). He was interested in film and helped with the campus film society which showed films many nights a week, either for free or a dollar. (Very few films cost more than that.) It is possible that the film could have played when I was there when Warner Brothers still had the rights. I am researching that. I do have a diary entry that says I saw it on Dec 15, 1981 on tv in the NYC area. (I would see the director’s cut on VHS with Morris friends annually from 1982 on on May Day as part of our ritual.)

Ron graduated two years before me but was still in New Orleans in 1976 and helped run a woman’s film festival there. That’s where he met Micheline. She was French Canadian. The two joined Abraxas along with another Tulane grad, Buddy Brimberg. Buddy now runs the local and very culturally significant Jazz and Heritage Festival poster company. (I have tried to reach him with no success so far…)

Ron and Micheline, after they split off from Abraxas as Summerisle Films, showed the **theatrical version** of the film driving it around the country in their car. Abraxas (John Alan Simon and Stirling Smith) won the rights back in June of 1979 and premiered their version in NYC that summer. (As far as I know. I could be wrong about what version Summerisle Films showed.)

That brings us to today, Stirling died in 1979 or 1980. (I also see a date of 1986...) John Alan Simon is alive and well. I’ve been in touch with him and he’s been very forthcoming. We haven’t talked in awhile. Ron got involved in a multimillion dollar scandal in Canada and only last year got out on bail. I’ve written to one of his lawyers but not heard back. Micheline died in 2004. Buddy is still around but hard to get in touch with. Craig Miller, who is a member of a Wicker Man Facebook group, also worked with Summerisle Films in Los Angeles. He is responsible for the poster that has the crowd lined up on the cliff with the antler dancers being most prominent amongst other things.

There is much more to this story and lots of double-checking needs to be done to be sure I have the facts right. I just thought I’d put a spotlight on these people as they played such an important part in the film’s success.

I am hoping that If anyone has any leads or additional info they can share about any of this, they let me know. Thanks.

Brown devotes a whole chapter to this. (Chapter 17 in the paperback, Chapter 15 in the e-book.)

See the Timeline for more New Orleans events and other events in the area.

- 11/19/77 Appearance by Christopher Lee and Stirling Smith at the Sena Mall Theater in Metairie.

- From Stuart Byron's Something Wicker This Way Comes article on the film, re: Larry Gordon: “In the past few years of trying to produce and distribute films, Smith has had ample opportunity to meet and deal with many of the meat-grinders and flesh-peddlers who make up the business end of filmdom, but he confesses that he has never met anyone quite like Larry Gordon. I honestly think he hates films, says Smith. The first thing Gordon says to me is, “You really want to buy this dog?” Fortunately this gave Smith the perfect opening to begin negotiations from a favored position. Actually nursing national ambitions for what he considered a class item, Smith could pretend to agree with Garden on the downbeat possibilities for The Wicker Man. “I know it's a dog, Larry," he replied "But look- we might be able to make some money on it. Drive-Ins in the South. you know.””

- John Alan Simon info from imdb: "Prior to his entry in the film industry, Simon was a successful journalist and film critic, both as staff writer for the New Orleans Times Picayune and as editor-in-chief of New Orleans magazine…. During this period, Simon also taught courses in film and writing at Tulane University, Loyola University…" (I apologize for giving the impression that I didn't believe this. It is true.)

- LA Times article about Micheline. "Their first venture after forming Cinar was marketing an obscure horror film, “The Wicker Man,” literally from the trunk of their car as they drove across the country to show it to local exhibitors. The movie was screened in about 30 small art houses, and made the couple about $250,000 over two years."

- 7/3/78 Abraxas, based in Metairie, is Stirling Smith, president, Ronald Weinberg and Robert Manard, attorney. Smith was previously president of Cinema Systems, Inc.

- 7/28/75 Smith, host of the Hollywood Showcase tv show, was named executive director of the New Orleans International Film Festival, 7/27 - 8/4/75.

- Abraxas used the Warner Brothers trailer, a very poor copy of the movie, and cut off the WB graphic at the beginning. Apparently Summerisle Film also made a trailer which you can see here.

- In Cinefantastique vol.6/7 no.4/1 (April 1978), a Minneapolis, MN man wrote in to say he had seen the film there in October (of 1977) distributed by Hemisphere Pictures. Cinefantastique replied that Abraxas is considering suing Hemisphere for their "unauthorized distribution of the film." The print was an original Warner Brothers print provided for viewing purposes only when they "expressed interest in bidding on certain territorial distribution rights." That explains the Minneapolis showings then.

- Also in Cinefantastique vol.6/7 no.4/1 (April 1978), it mentions the film opened on Nov 11 at the Meadowbrook Cinema 6 in Jackson, MS, played for 2 weeks grossing $5478 and at the University Cinema in Baton Rouge, LA, Nov 18, grossing $15,926. (The dates might be off abit. See the timeline.)

- Film Comment vol.14 no.2 (March 1978), Wicker follow up. Stuart Byron mentions that Abraxas "**has only one print of the director-approved 102-minute\* version working", the rest being the 86 minute version**. \*(102 being the 99 minute version.... see John's explanation here in the last paragraph about times/lengths.) Hardy and Lee will do no more promotional work until the 102 (99) minute version is restored. He closes the article with this: "As FILM COMMENT went to press, three entities--Howard Mahlet Films, Cinema Shares International, and Seattle's Specialty Films were all in negotiation with Abraxas. The winner must pledge to restore the film to its original length."

Sight and Sound, July 4, 2016: The medium-length American internegative and prints all mysteriously vanished. “What puzzles me,” ponders Hardy, “is that that there must have been **thirty or forty prints** in distribution.” Now, just as mysteriously, one of these prints has resurfaced\* and, digitally remastered, will see release as ‘The Final Cut’. There. \*= The Harvard Library copy...