What “Restored” Actually Means
“Restored” gets used as a marketing word, so here is what it actually meant on this film. The grade, shot by shot. Lifted blacks, so the shadows hold detail instead of going to mud. A film-like roll-off in the highlights, so a red signal in the rain stays a red signal instead of blowing out to a white blob. ARRI-tone flesh, so people look like people. This frame is Frankford Avenue at dusk, and it finally reads the way it read standing there.
That was one pass of many. Every photograph and every pulp paperback cover got rescanned. The sound was rebuilt from nothing, because the original mix buried Goodis’s own words under a soundtrack that never let up. None of this is glamorous work. You sit with a single frame for a long time, and then you go do it again.
What comes out the other end is the movie it always was. Same footage, same cut. It just isn’t fighting itself anymore.
It premieres live on Zoom, Friday, August 21 at 7:30pm CT – co-hosted by Lou Boxer of NoirCon, closing with a live table read of my new noir UNDERBELLY.
Two days. The man who wrote Dark Passage gets his night back.
He sold in the millions and died a name nobody could place. Dark Passage became a Bogart
Four days. One dead writer. One live night.
Friday, August 21 is the night. The restored cut of Retracing the Footsteps of David Goodis plays
The table read: UNDERBELLY, live
On Friday, August 21, the restored Goodis documentary plays — and then we keep going. Actors take