
John Korty is a really interesting dude in that he was a filmmaker who was doing his own thing independently of Hollywood up in Marin County California before George Lucas and Coppola had thought of setting up shop there. Apparently Lucas met Korty when they were on a panel together in the late 1960s and he was immediately taken with Korty's whole setup. Korty had made three features (THE CRAZY QUILT, FUNNYMAN & RIVERRUN) from 1967 to 1970 and he was holding his own in his Hollywood-outsider way. He had previously been nominated for an academy award for his animated documentary short (called BREAKING THE HABIT) about smoking an lung cancer in 1964. Lucas would of course go on to executive produce TWICE UPON A TIME.
Korty had lots of talented people working with him on TWICE UPON A TIME including Henry Selick (Coraline, The Nightmare Before Christmas), Harley Jessup (production designer on Ratatouille and Monsters Inc.) and even another guy you might know by the name of David Fincher. There's even a story about how Selick and Fincher almost came to blows whilst working on this movie (though that is not really touched on in the commentary).
TWICE UPON A TIME has an interesting history behind it and its lack of much in the way of home video releases since it first came out in 1983. It was produced by The Ladd Company for distribution by Warner Brothers, but the powers that be at the time had little confidence in the movie and it received a minuscule theatrical release (basically it ran for two weeks in Westwood, California). Warners apparently even opened TWICE UPON A TIME against another of their own animated releases (DAFFY DUCK'S FANTASTIC ISLAND) which would seem like an extra kick to keep TWICE down. After it's two week theatrical run, Warners was free to sell TWICE to pay TV and they did just that. A good portion of the film's limited notoriety came from a dozen airings that HBO did in the summer 0f 1984. Lots of people saw the movie that way and some even taped it and passed around those tapes for years after. The movie didn't get an official VHS'LD release until 1991 and when folks who had seen it on HBO saw this "official" version, it was now minus the profanity that they had remembered hearing when they first watched it. You see, for a long time, that "swearing version", the PG rated version of the film was considered the definitive one. Not so though as John Korty had intended the movie for a family audience and the re-recorded dialogue with colorful metaphors had been added later for the HBO TV airings (to widen the films appeal beyond young children supposedly). So this movie has had a long road to more home video glory and it is very nice to see Warner Archive dig it up and send it out into the world again. WAC has put out the film with both the original (director's preferred) clean audio track and the latter HBO/PG-rated sweariffic version.
As hinted at above, this disc does include a newly recorded commentary track which includes Korty himself and several of his collaborators like Henry Selick, Harley Jessup, John Baker, Brian Narelle, Will Noble and Carl Willat. The track is serviceable, but is made more enjoyable by Korty himself interjecting with some technical bits and bobs during much of the dead air that exists on the track.
There is a great article written by Taylor Jessen which covers a lot of the details and conflicts surrounding TWICE UPON A TIME getting made. Check it out here:
The Warner Archive DVD of TWICE UPON A TIME can be purchased here:
John Korty's Film THE CRAZY QUILT can be purchased from his website here:
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