Michael Schlesinger

A TCM Classic Film Festival audience favorite from the get-go, Michael Schlesinger is widely acknowledged as the dean of classic film distributors, having worked for more than 25 years at MGM, Paramount, and Sony, keeping hundreds of vintage movies in theatrical release (and later, on disc), and initiating the restoration of many more, including the award-winning completion of Orson Welles’s 1942 documentary It’s All True some 50 years later. Since then, he has recorded dozens of acclaimed DVD commentaries. He is a popular Trailers from Hell! guru and has appeared in numerous documentaries, notably the Emmy-nominated HBO smash If You’re Not in the Obit, Eat Breakfast (2017). Behind the camera, he wrote and produced the American version of Godzilla 2000: Millenium (1999) and co-produced such Larry Blamire parodies as The Lost Skeleton Returns Again (2008) and Dark and Stormy Night (2009). His maiden effort as a writer-director was a series of shorts starring faux-1930s comedy team Biffle and Shooster (available on DVD from Kino Lorber), and he just completed his eagerly awaited first feature, Rock and Doris (try to) Write A Movie, which he claims will be the greatest comedy since Airplane! (1980). Of course, that could just be the cocaine speaking.