Yes, yes, and yes. Yeah, you see people that were big marquee names like Michael J. Fox from Back to the Future and Doc Hollywood, movies like this. Then you turn on the TV one day and there he is, not on the silver screen. It’s definitely a disturbing trend. There are new actors that can sometimes come in to replace them and fill the void, but some of these actors are literally irreplaceable. We’re talking about Henry Fonda, people like that. Catherine Hepburn, Humphrey Bogart, Clark Gable, they can never be replaced. So I think it’s a mistake to let these people slip away before they miss their chance to fulfill their destiny and make all the movies that they have in them.

On On Cinema you’re the one with all the informative segments about Hollywood, like “On Cinema On Location.” This season you’ve mentioned some new segments “Gone But Not Forgotten” and “Road to Hollywood” but they’ve kind of been steamrolled in favor of some non-cinema related material. Anyways, I thought if you’d like to talk about these new segments without interruption, you’re welcome to give them their due here!

Well with “Gone But Not Forgotten” the idea is that you’re taking actors, actresses, directors, even composers and producers a chance to shine from beyond the grave. These are people who died recently. I’m sure you’ve watched the Academy Awards and they always have a small In Memoriam segment, but a lot of people watching it are saying, “Why can’t this be a longer segment? We’re not getting enough of this!” Because for every big actor like a Gene Wilder that dies who gets the coverage, there are also smaller actors like Alan Young who wasn’t mentioned. And that’s not right. So we thought we’d expand it into what I originally saw as a five to seven minute segment. Tim insisted on cutting it down so that it was a one minute segment and at this point none of them have aired. Zero segments.

I think you look at the Academy Awards which are the premiere movie show and you try and do better than them. I’ve been trying to say for a while now that the Academy Awards should be twice a year because people love the show so much and there are enough movies to justify it. I think that would open a lot of things up. Also, they release these movies that they want to win Oscars all at the same time of the year, but if you did it twice a year you’d be releasing great movies all year long, which would be great for moviegoers and cinema in general.

It’s a good point, you know we have a Winter and Summer Olympics and what are the Academy Awards if not the Olympics of Filmmaking? So yeah, why not do it twice a year?