Does on the wind hear the stories call?
Footsteps echo down an old town hall.
Lights flash quick where the legends grew.
Hollywood's riding back to you.
Lights on the old frontier.
Stories come alive right here.
Step inside the past is true.
Hollywood's looking back at you.
Hollywood film and TV.
Hi, it's Nicole Brandon and we are here with Hollywood film and TV.
This is the best time of the year to be talking about films and television because we talk
about Hollywood and the incredible weather, the draw of Hollywood, the draw of the west,
the sunshine, just being able to shoot outdoors back in the 1800s when they started making
these movies.
A lot of the sound stages at that time were on rooftops.
A lot of the sound stages at that time were just rolling pieces of wood, almost like homemade
stages that they created and then they would have slats behind them and the slats behind
them would be the different sets and they would roll them in and they would roll them
out and they would be shooting outdoors.
A lot of times they would rent houses and the houses would be used for wardrobe, for
makeup, for hair, for offices.
But the sound stages themselves were very often outside especially when we talk about
the wild west and we talk about the old frontier.
We talk about the silent movies that we're going to talk a little bit about.
Time mixed today which I'm so excited about.
So in the 1800s and the early 1900s when movies were being made in Arizona and movies
were being made in Hollywood, a lot of people thought that the movies were being made out
west because of this beautiful sunshiney, they're right, that's the Hollywood.
But actually a lot of the film history comes from Thomas Edison.
That's right.
Edison was a bear as far as taking people to court.
And when somebody would develop a camera, when somebody would come up with a cinema
scope, when somebody would come up with a polyscope, whatever the invention was at that
time for early movie making, Thomas Edison wanted to say it was his, that he had the
rights to these and he would take people to court and he would try to shut down the sound
stages in the studios and so people traveled out west to get away from Thomas Edison.
So it wasn't for the sunshine and lollipop and roses that we think it actually was to
escape Thomas Edison's rap and to be able to have the freedom which today when we think
in today's world that the freedom of speech on portnet is to be able to write stories
and to write scripts and to tell stories and to be able to have television shows and movies
and plays that really face these tough issues and things that had on and talk about, that
we speak about the unspeakable, we talk about these things that are very fragile in our
worlds and especially at the time when movies were beginning, a lot of the movies you would
think would have these happily ever after endings, they really didn't.
A lot of the movies had very tragic endings in the early 1900s.
So today I am speaking to you from the city of Prescott, Arizona.
So we're going to talk a little bit about the history of Prescott, Arizona.
So in the late 1800s, early 1900s, when movies started being made here, one of the things
that I love is that they were promised real Indians, indigenous people as experts.
So they were promised that which is why they stopped here and didn't go on to Hollywood.
And also Prescott, Arizona was one of the very first cities, if not the very first city
that is accredited for its humanitarianism.
That is correct because in the old Western movies,
it didn't matter what your race or what your origin or what your color was, that in the
wild west, everybody rode as compadres.
Everybody rode together in the wild west.
They're, you know, because of the color of your skin or your background or your origin,
you are not made to be a villain.
Everybody got to ride together.
I absolutely love that history.
And then we talk about in the old silent movies here in 1905, a theater opened up called
the Elks Theater.
Originally, it was an opera house and in order to see a show or in order to see a movie,
it was 25 cents and a box seat was $1.25.
It's $1.25, which is roughly maybe $46 in today's world, which is really a lot if you
think about we complain about it being $5 or $7 to see a movie or to see a show.
But at that time, $1.25 and it was the only opera house and theater within miles and
miles and states of people came from California, from San Francisco and they would travel
here just to be able to see shows and then a transition from the opera house into a silent
movie house.
And when it became a silent movie house, real live orchestras would play.
Even John Philip Sousa, all these famous orchestras would play this incredible music.
And why they shot here?
Because the landscape was incredible.
The windfall they were bringing in maybe $7,000.
A month revenue into the city of Prescott, which was roughly like $190,000.
In today's world, that was a lot of money back in the early 1900s.
If you think about it, for a city to be making money just off of these films.
And then one of my favorite stories is the story of Tom mix.
And we talk about Tom mix a lot.
I actually the other day was I had the opportunity to give a history lesson in film.
And people were asking me about Tom mix.
So Tom mix was incredible as a Western hero, his skill set as a writer, as a roper.
He won overall in the rodeo year after year after year after year.
He was an incredible athlete and incredible sportsman.
There's even a story of that there was a bull rider and he got thrown from the bull
and the bull started to charge him and Tom mix jumped over the stands and he grabbed
the bull by the horns and he flipped him to save this man's life.
He was such a hero.
But some of the stories that are really interesting is that we talk about Tom mix
and we were talking about Tom's marriages, Tom's relationships.
So Tom's first wife, I love learning little facts about people, but Tom's very first wife.
He was in the army when he met her and he actually went AWOLB because he found love
with her and every state at that time had their own legal age.
And if you were under that legal age, you needed your parents consent to get married.
And Tom did not get the consent for the marriage and therefore the marriage had to be annulled
just a couple months after the marriage, which I imagine was very difficult.
But by going AWOLB from the army, he went out and he rode in all of these Western shows.
And so, you know, they couldn't find him in it.
He became quite a hero.
Then he was working at a hotel in this swanky hotel and he was bartending at this hotel
and he fell in love with the owner's daughter.
Yes, such a good story.
And they were married.
So that was his second marriage, only a couple months after they were married.
What happened was she grew up with all these binaries.
She grew up in this five star beautiful hotel with the little forks and the dessert plates
and the flowers and the champagne glasses.
And after a couple months, here she is.
She is out at the rodeo and stables with menores, sleeping in tents.
And it wasn't the lifestyle that she had become accustomed to.
And it wasn't the life that she wanted to live.
And so the second marriage ended.
But the third marriage is the most important marriage, the third marriage.
He was married to an incredible Western store named Olive Stone.
And when he met Olive, she was just a teen.
And Will Rogers actually introduced them at the state fair.
And they were both performing in the Western shows and they both admired each other's skills.
And she was just a young lass and he was so smitten there.
And he followed her over the next couple of years.
And he found out that she was going to be in North Dakota.
She was going to be buying a horse and he went and he followed her.
And as she's buying the horse, he came up behind her.
And he purchased that horse for her and he bought her like this incredible little Western outfit.
And he started to date her and started to romance her.
And it was right before Christmas.
And right after the holidays, everything was all set up and it was all festive.
And one of their friends on the rodeo circuit was a wedding efficient.
But Olive did not know that.
But certainly, certainly Tom knew this.
And so Tom asked him if he would marry them.
And he set up this whole little reception in the living room and they were in the kitchen
and they were playing this game.
And he said, let's play this game.
And OK, what if we were getting married?
Would you marry me?
And whatever it was that they said.
And she thought she was playing a game and she didn't know that the Western
that was there was an actual real efficient.
And when they said, I do, I do.
He said, I now pronounce you man and wife.
And she was so shocked.
She was actually married.
She didn't know she was actually married.
But she took this marriage very seriously.
And they worked together in Western shows.
They were remarkable because they were both so skilled and so talented and so beautiful.
And then silent movie started and when the silent movies came.
To be she had all of these offers.
She had five offers from five different studios that were just now launching
into stardom and into this is the birth of the silent movies.
And she was so beautiful and so talented and so sexy.
And they all wanted her to be a movie star.
And they all offered her contracts and she said, I am only going if you take
down and for the studio.
So we want you.
You're the one we want.
We can make you a star, but one studio indeed said, OK, we'll take Tom.
And when we look back and we think that he was discovered
as this Western hero and this Western movie star, actually it was his wife
that was responsible for the birth of Tom's movie career.
And Tom and all of worked on several movies together.
She ended up getting pregnant and then wanted to focus on the baby at that time.
And he continued on and I will share more of his relationships.
But let's talk about what happened to Tom at that time.
So Tom was one of, if not the most talented of Western heroes.
I was watching the movies the other day and you look at these stunts that he did.
You look at his writing skills and how he climbed these mountains and jumped
into the waters and just incredible.
But besides acting and starring in these movies, many of these movies
Tom wrote the script.
He also was responsible for routing where they went.
So this is where the horses go.
They're going to go up the smell and they're going to carry the woman down there
and actually mapping out the entire movie and the rides and then the stunts as well.
And I was watching the other day and thinking, gosh, they didn't have CG
and they didn't have a stuntman.
It was Tom mixed doing these wild, remarkable, incredible stunts.
And a lot of the mountains were rounded at the times.
You can see them slide off and go down.
The granite tells a lot was shot in the Prescott, Arizona area during that time.
And then Tom was sent to Hollywood to learn to produce.
And he came back and he actually opened his own studio.
But when we think of Tom mixed, we think of the heroism.
We think of the cowboy, the iconic cowboy.
But truly his stunt career, his ability.
I know that when I was creating the film and television tours,
I hope that was they told me a story about Tom mixed that there was a train
that was going by and he actually wrote and caught the conductor of a moving train.
That's how skilled he was.
And I was watching a movie the other day,
my Ohio and in the movie, he literally ropes and he's tiny, his legs.
And you could see how quick he was able to do that from all of the years
of the cattle and all of the years on the Western.
The silent movies brought so much to history
because the silent movies gave us love stories.
The silent movies made us laugh.
The silent movies gave us an idea of hardship and it gave us an idea of humanity
and how to take care of one another.
The silent movies were inspiring.
The silent movies had the most incredible in costumes and in story lines
and backgrounds and set drops.
And it was something that could take you away.
It's something that could captivate you.
And they would make movie after movie.
They started with these two and three minute movies and 10 minute movies
and my Ohio almost an hour long in length.
And unfortunately, a lot of these classic movies are no longer
in existence because at that time, film was very flammable.
And so many movies, there were vault fires
at that time and a lot of actors, their entire careers,
went up in smoke or a lot of films that were meant to be distributed.
They've companies that had huge distribution deals.
And what we talk about one day, the birth of the studios,
what happened to each studio and I would love to share that with you.
But a lot of the studios, they these big deals with Europe.
If you think about the early 1900s,
1915, 1920, to have a distribution dealing Europe, a film distribution deal,
that's where money was being made.
And then all of a sudden for a vault fire and for all of the footage to be gone
for the distribution deal to be extinct at that time.
And even some of the greatest, one of the very first filmmakers,
that's an accredited with an Academy Award and a star in Hollywood.
His entire film career was lost in vault fires.
And we will do a show just on him because I want to dive deep in.
And I want to keep a little mystery of who these people are,
but I want to be able to share with you their stories and then really do a show
where you're like, wow.
But from being one of the world's most famous filmmakers
and certainly accredited were beginning film and the history of film
and to win the Academy Award to have a star in Hollywood Boulevard.
And then to end up going back to New Jersey to become an optometrist,
because all of the money that was lost just because of the film fires,
which at that time was absolutely devastating,
not only for the history for us today, as we are filmmakers,
and we look back over those films, but also to be able to imagine what it was
like to have worked that hard.
I mean, some of like Tom Mix hundreds and hundreds of movies,
entire careers of people that worked on hundreds and hundreds of movies
completely gone, but the movies themselves, what the movies brought to us
and how we learned to be able to alleviate our own pain and suffering,
our own time to be able to be taken away from what we had going on in our lives
and to be inspired and to be drawn and to be entertained in such a new fashion is incredible.
And as we talk about fashion and we were talking about Tom Mix,
I love the white hat, right?
We talk about the white Stedsin hat.
So I love when Tom first was starting in the movies,
the Stedsin hat, the white hat was deeper than most hats at that time.
And Tom had a horse, Tony, the Wonder Horse.
And I love the idea of Tony, the Wonder Horse.
Tony, the Wonder Horse was really like the Shirley Temple of Horses.
Tony, the Wonder Horse could act be dramatic, was happy, was sad,
couldn't be fearful.
Tony, the Wonder Horse was an equal stunt horse.
Like you look at Tom Mix, Tony, the Wonder Horse was able to dive off rocks into oceans.
He was able to tumble and Tony was able to do so many stunts and rescue
corporations.
And for myself, it's awe inspiring to see that this horse was able to do everything it was able to do.
But of course, if you go to the gym and you work out and you know how thirsty you get,
or if you imagine the stunt people and how stunt people are, you know,
rumbling and running and jumping and doing everything, well, the horse was no exception.
And so Tom would use his
this deeper hat to be able to get water.
For Tony, the Wonder Horse, which I love and he also used to just want flies,
keep the stunt away as they were out on these deep
sun-jurrenge days.
But that hat became a signature.
And Tom Mix was really one of the very first people when we look back in our nation
of the United States of America.
Tom was one of the very first people that's been accredited to merchandising.
And it's true.
Tom had Dakota rings.
Tom had cereal, Ralston cereal.
He had a radio show.
They had the hats made after Tom, the little Western outfits.
Tom was one of the richest men in the nation.
And they said that his salary in one day's salary is what a small town would make in a month.
So he was just so incredibly successful.
But when we look at Tom Mix, we think about our Western cowboy.
We don't think he was a producer.
He was a writer.
He was a director, that he was a stuntman, that he did the location scouting,
that he did the roots for the movies and for all of the action scenes, that he trained Tony
the Wonder Horse, this incredible horse that was able to just like leave tall buildings in a single
bound and jump on and off trains.
Tony the Wonder Horse had dinner with President Eisenhower.
Tony the Wonder Horse went to Europe, what a horse.
Tony the Wonder Horse traveled.
Was a very special horse.
One of my favorite things to know about Tony the Wonder Horse is that Tony the
Wonder Horse of all the things that Tony the Wonder Horse could do.
Tony did not do stairs.
That's true.
Tony the Wonder Horse did not do stairs.
So the theater here in Prescott, Arizona, the Elks Theater would invite Tom and Tony the
Wonder Horse to come and very often they would do events and they would do many charity events as
well for children and Tony would not go up the stairs and the stage was on a higher level.
And so what they did is outside the building, if you ever get to come to Prescott, Arizona,
and you go to the Elks Theater, just go down the alley and on the side, you can see the entrance
to the stage, which is almost at the second level from the ground there.
And they have a hook that's on the wall.
And what that hook is for is they used to put a harness through that hook and they would
attach it to Tony the Wonder Horse and they would pull the harness and they would
voice Tony up to the stage.
So could he be on stage with Tom Nixon for their film premieres and he could be there for
the charity for the kids.
So I love the fact that he could do everything.
So if we look at ourselves, like, what are you afraid of?
Some people are afraid of growing old.
Some people are afraid of sharks.
Some people are afraid of bugs of spiders.
Some people are afraid of the dark, right?
I mean, what everybody has their own fears.
Some of them are health related.
Some of them are financial.
Some of them are of heights.
Some of them are of closed spaces.
There are all sorts of fears.
But if you can imagine it and you don't know why.
But Tony, the Wonder Horse was afraid of stairs.
But yet he was the most fearless of horses and being able to climb up and down mountains.
So maybe just the position of stairs for the hips of a horse or for the hooves of a horse,
it would be a great question for an animal person.
I should come in one day.
Maybe we'll even bring like an animal psychic and have somebody come in and see
if they can't communicate with Tony, the Wonder Horse.
But what an incredible career they had.
And then Tom, when Tom passed, Tom died in a car accident and he was very young when he died.
But there is a statue here of Tony, the Wonder Horse with his head hung down
and the tears.
And of all of the relationships, they came out of silent movies, all of the love stories and the marriage
and the romances and the really good stories, the sweet stories that have come out and the juicy stories
that have come out of the romance.
One of the greatest romances of all time from the silent movie was Tomics.
And Tony, the Wonder Horse, it was a love story between a man and his horse and it was a partnership.
They were friends, they were family, they bonded in a way.
If any of you have pets and you feel that connection to your pet, then you can imagine what this was like
because they did death defying feats together.
And Tom trained Tony to be able to do these stunts.
And so the amount of time that they spent together must have been great and it must have been grand.
So very interesting.
And then when the talkies came in and the talk movies came in, they had to take out the walk seats
because they needed that space because it was a bigger screen for talkies for the sound.
And so a lot of those old theaters that had the beautiful incredible box seats, a lot of those box
seats were lost as the talking movies came in.
And that's really what had ended Tomics' career.
All of the movies that he made, all of his celebrityism, when the talkies came in,
a lot of them were singing cowboys, a lot of them.
Their voice and Tom ended up instead of going into the transition of the talkies, Tom ended up going
back out on the Western circuit and he actually also worked with the circus.
That is how he ended up meeting his last wife.
But as we talked about Olive Stone, who was his third wife, first wife, remember, was a young girl
that he fell in love with. He went, he went for the army, he went.
She was too young. Her parents didn't give consent.
Second marriage was to the daughter of the hotel owner, who wanted a luxurious cashier life,
then being out on the rodeo circuit and Olive Stone, who really made his career.
But Olive also wrote a book about her life with Tom and that book was published and to
his very dying day, she, it was the love of her life.
She's only said wonderful things about him and they have a daughter together who also became
a Western star as well. So it's a beautiful story. And we looked at when the silent movies came out,
very often when movies were being filmed, they didn't have the actors like they have now. They
didn't have extras like they have now. So very often the townspeople were cast in the movie.
So if you were a banker, you might be cast as the bank teller. If you were the head of the
Chamber of Commerce, you'd be cast as the head of the Chamber of Commerce or you could be cast
as a background person in a cafe or someone on the train. And so they were able to get local talent.
And that was why people were willing to pay that 25 cents, the dollar 25, whatever that was,
to see a movie because very often they were going to see themselves and they were so excited
to be able to go and to see the movies. The history of movies is incredible and as
Edison was chasing, chasing, chasing, chasing, all of these filmmakers, we think today what it's
been like when voices are silenced. But I love being here in Prescott, Arizona. And as we talk
about that transition from starting with one studio into a second studio into a third studio
and now how many movies and television shows are being shot here, they recently had a television
series that was the Abigail Mysteries. And originally it was Mysteries of the Heart,
Moth Mysteries of the Heart, and then it became the Abigail Mysteries. And when they were filming
here, the cast and crew said that the entire town was so welcoming, so welcoming people.
It just opened their stores, opened their shops, the police, people from permits. We talked about
it in one of my previous shows, the fact that when they left, they left little stones, little
pebbles like you would imagine of breadcrumbs. And they wrote, you know, Moth on it or their names
or their little hearts. And they were hoping that people would find them and hotels or find
their restaurants and that it would lead them back here to be able to film again.
The old theaters were wonderful here. We did theater that was in Presquiter, Arizona,
and Mickey Mouse used to be here on Sundays. And so that the history is so remarkable and we
are creating new history right now. In Presquiter, Arizona, we have several programs that are
youth programs right now. And these young filmmakers are absolutely blowing my mind. And when I say
blowing my mind, I mean blowing my mind. I've had the opportunity to watch these young kids.
Seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven years old, thirteen, fifteen years old, make movies that would rally
any movie that you've seen in the theater over the past 40 years. And what I love about it is
that they work in a team. So they do everything. They learn how to write. They learn how to produce.
They learn how to edit. They learn sound engineering. They learn costume. They learn makeup.
And then one child writes the script and other child directs, you know, they cast whatever
that is. And then after that movie is made, they switch and somebody else. So everybody is learning
their skills. They're learning to do everything. The middle school here has one of the best youth
programs I've ever seen. And in that class period, they go in and they have a writer's room. They
write the show. They create the show. They film the show. They edit the show. They do sound. They do
slides. They do cues just in the period of a class time. It's absolutely remarkable that we
now have opportunities because before it was like some faraway dream, now you can make a movie
with your iPhone. Now you can make a movie with AI. Now you can make a movie. You can have a story
and tell that story and find an avenue of entertainment. You look at Netflix. You look at Hulu. You look
at Amazon or some of these distribution and they need content. And so you can create something.
And it could be seen around the world, which is amazing because if you think the original dream,
back in those 1800s, back in the early 1900s, all the way up to maybe 1926 when talkies started
coming in. And then there's a huge, huge journey in talkies. But in the silent film era,
what it took in those conditions, you know, if I was watching, you know, a Tom mixed movie the
other day, and I was thinking about before they had sound stages, I mean, we're so lucky to have
sound stages that have controlled environments that we can create a rainstorm that we can create
Paris that we can create jobs that we can create these CG that we can create all of these images.
But during that time, if you think,
okay, if they were supposed to film for whatever day they're supposed to film and it's snowing
and it's a blizzard or it's raining and they couldn't film that day. They didn't have the luxury
of the sound stages and to be out and the blazing heat and the conditions in which they filmed,
they recently shot a movie here called Frontier Crucible. And they were just out in these conditions.
And I was in Croatia and I had the opportunity to see some of Game of Thrones being shot there.
And you think, oh my gosh, you're out there and they heat and the dust and what it takes to make a
movie. I was in an acting class once and my acting teacher was Harry Mastro George.
And I would guarantee that Harry Mastro George, one of the best acting teachers in the world,
in the world. And Harry would teach that the story is the most important thing.
And I love that he would talk about the story. I mean, because that is,
that's it. If you were telling the story and back in those silent eras, it was story based the same way
that we would sit around campfires and we would share stories back in, you know, caveman times
and as we go and through our indigenous cultures, through our traditions and our
herdage and our different origins, we're sharing the stories of our faith of our
heritage of our background. But I remember talking with Harry and he was sharing about how many
people it takes to make like two seconds of film. Right? So if you think about these silent movies,
how many people were needed on the set, what was needed at that time, why they were filming
here, how they filmed here, what the conditions were, and then for the audiences to be able to,
it was so special to go to a movie. But Harry had shared with me one day and I'll share a personal
story with you, which I think is kind of fun. But Harry was saying that when he first moved
to Hollywood and he was living in Hollywood, California and he was a young aspiring director,
Harry Master of George, you can certainly find him and find, find, find, find director and end.
One of the most amazing coaches and you look at the people that Ray La Jota is in the John
Etc. And on and on the people that he's coached the Daryl Hammers and he's just not just a celebrity
coach, but the way that he taught you to be so deep and so real and so true. But he had said that
when he was a young director, that he was in his house and his apartment and there was all this noise
really early in the morning, three, four, like in the morning, he's like, what's going on? And he
looked outside and ate a balcony in his apartment and the street under his apartment, they were
making a movie. So of course he was very excited, incredibly excited because he was a young director
and to see this movie being made right under his window. The first thing the police came and they
corded off the street and then they started bringing in the trailers. They brought in what they call
honey wagons, which are the trailers that have the costumes, the trailers for hair and makeup,
the trailers that have the dressing rooms for the actors, the trailers that have the bathrooms,
the trailers that have craft services for food. And one trailer after another trailer after another
trailer, the trailers that have all the cameras and the electrical equipment, more trailers,
more trailers, more people, more people, more people until on a short period of time there are
couple hundred people in the street. Howers go by hundreds of people setting up scenes you see
everybody down there. And then finally they're ready to film. And the scene was a man in the
center of the street. And there was a woman that was in his arms. And she was laying on the street
and he was sitting on the street with her head and his hands and in his lap. And she was dying
in his arms. And there was complete silence. There were no words. She just died in his arms.
And in the movie maybe two seconds of film, but it took the entire day and hundreds and hundreds
of people to make this what scene magic happened. And Harry had said to our group or to our classes,
he was sharing this story that if you look around you, you will realize that in any given moment of
your life of your life, there are all these people supporting you to make that moment happen that you
just don't realize it. But if you dissect your life and you look at your life, you will realize
that your life is just like a movie and that you have all of this support and things have already
been set up for you. That before any moment in your life happens, all of these things have been
a prelude to that happening. And that even if there aren't words for that moment, and even if
it's just a second in your life, it is being fully supported. And I never forgot that he said
that and a very short time after he shared that moment, I had a knock on my door. I was living
in Malibu at that time. And my neighbor was standing at my door and she was moving to Austria.
She fell in love with an accordion point in Austria. I just think that's wonderful. And she was so
excited. And she asked me if there was anything that I wanted from her house as she was shipping
some of the big items that she wanted. She was shipping her piano, which blew me away that she
was putting her piano on a crate and a crate to put on a boat to somehow get to Austria.
And some items that she wanted that were special family heirlooms, she wanted to take with her,
but she asked, you know, Pottspanstish's plants, is there anything that you want?
And I said, are you leaving behind your bicycle? Because she had a bicycle and I did not.
And she said, Oh, absolutely Nicole, you want the bike. You know, give me your welcome to the bike.
And I offered to pay for it. And she said, Oh, no, she said, just, you know, you want the bike,
take the bike. But there has been a church that's been very good to me. Since I've been here in
America and this is a church. And if you ever want to give a donation to the church,
I would appreciate that. But please take the bike. And I was so excited. And I went to the garage,
and I went to get on the bike. And she was much taller than I am. I'm five, six, but she was like
model tall on the six feet. And the seat was too high. My little feet didn't reach the ground,
so it wasn't very safe. And I went back up and I knocked on the door and I said, do you happen
to have a toolkit to lower the bicycle? And she said, we've already packed it. It's already been
shipped. But I think one of our neighbors might have a toolkit. And so she went with me with
her fiance and we went to the neighbor and we asked the neighbor if he had a toolkit and
indeed he did. And he brought his toolkit to the garage. And the toolkit was on wheelies,
like it was on rollers and it was waist high. And obviously he did a lot of mechanical work.
And he came in with his really cart. And then another neighbor came in to see what he was doing.
And then somebody else was passing and came in to see the two neighbors until maybe there were eight
or nine people that were there in the garage all to put the bike seat down. And I kept thinking
it took, you know, seconds, a minute, whatever to lower the bike seat. But here are all these
people in the garage and it made me think of Harry saying that you don't realize in any given moment
of your life how many people are supporting your life. And so when we look at the original movies
from the early 1900s say 1905, 1906, 1915, 1910, we can equate those movies just like the story
to the stories of our lives. These are stories of romance, their stories of passion, their stories
of adventure. If all of those films had dreams, they had a hope, they had a vision the same way
we have dreams, we have hope, we have vision, they have a journey, something that they've gone through
we've experienced, things that we go through in life that we think we're never going to do or
they're just mountains that are too high to climb, whether they be emotional or physical or spiritual
mountains or hurdles or walls. And then you look at a movie like a topics movie as they're scaling
the walls and rescuing the girls. And we look at some of the talking movies. And what is the very
first thing when movies started to talk? What were the things that people wanted to say?
And so do you ever have anything in your life that is important for you to say? And if you could say
it, if you could capture it for all time, what would that be? What would that look like? And if indeed
this story is the most important thing? I know that even when I was a little girl and I would go
to see movies, they were so emotional for me. Those original Disney movies for children and you look
at the Bambi's or you look at Mary Poppins, Chitidi Bang Bang or Dumbo or Pete's Dragon or any of these
movies for me. Everything that I experienced as a child in cinema has somehow led me to where I am
today. And so we look at these adventures and old films and how they shaped our lives.
What it meant? Whether that's James Bond and having a martini, whether that was back. You think about
smoking. How smoking became popular is you saw smoking in movies. Cigars became popular when you saw
cigars in a movie. Fashion became popular because of what we had in seeing movies. And then as television
came into play, we and televisions came into our homes, into our homes, that we had a wider population
and or stories and or ways to entertain than ever before. And we look at movies as well
for the music. I know that here in Prescott, Arizona, there was a movie called Bless the
Movies and the Children and Karen Carpenter actually created the theme song for that and was up for
an Academy Award. So many movies that we see today, some of our very favorite songs have not been just
the theme songs for those movies, but they have become the theme songs for our lives,
which makes it so very special, so incredibly special.
And so when you look at sets, you look at the old movie cars, you look at the stunts that were
created, you look at the animals that were used. And one day as we're here, we'll bring people on
that now are the animal rights, because we now have animal rights in movies. So horses,
they have handlers, they have people that are making sure the horses are safe, making sure the
horses have rest, making sure the horses are being fed and taken care of properly and that they're
not being compromised. And then they're not jumping off a cliff and where something might happen.
The same for our dogs or cats or penguins or birds or any animal that we have in the movie. If you
look at the very end of the movie, you'll usually see where it says no animals have been harmed
during this movie. We now have certain departments and film making sure that's the case. That was
not the case back in the, you know, Wild West, that was not the case in the very first
sound stages in Philadelphia and in Brooklyn, when they were making movies on rooftops, we did not
have rights being protected. We did not have animal rights being protected. We did not have
unions that said you can't film for 30 hours or that you need a break to be able to have lunch.
We did not have people that protect us from sexual harassment, anything right now,
making a movie is safe. And it was safe back then because it was in the heart, but it did not
have the protections that we have now. And so I love the fact that there was trust, there was faith,
there was belief, there was hope, there was inspiration.
They were streaming and there was entertainment. So I'm forward to sharing with you each and every
step along the way, wishing you a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful week. And we look
forward to seeing you in the movies dream. Remember that every moment of your life is supported
and just like Tom McSinner movies, create your own past, create your own dreams and let your
own love story of love of you and your heart be able to be the thing that brings you into the light
and into the future. And we thank you for being with us at Hollywood Film and TV.
Take the trail, no need to feel Hollywood is standing near in the dust where the stories grew,
the screen is looking back at you.
I'll wear the West and the movies, me.
That's where the stories never sleep.