My friend Paul, who I’ve known over 35 years, has been a producer in Los Angeles for a long time. As his career evolved he got involved in repackaging older shows to rerun on cable. When the Smothers Brothers went back to E! or Sonny and Cher’s old shows reran, it was Paul who put together the package.
He is called, “Raider of the Lost Archives!” The title fits.
To make these old shows new and attractive, special extra features get added. This is where Paul is a genius.
For each release there is also the pain of getting clearance and making payments to artists and performers who’d worked on these shows decades earlier. Some are tough to find. Some are impossible to find.
Over the past few years Paul has branched out. Now he repackages old shows into DVDs. The medium is different though his work product is similar.
Every few weeks we’ll be on the phone talking and Paul will tell me about some TV star of twenty or thirty years ago who he will be meeting to get guest commentary for a new DVD collection. Usually, these are people who were big stars, but have now retired… or sadly aged out of the roles they used to play.
All this work pays off, because sometimes it’s the special features, the little extras, that make his DVDs so desirable.
I’m not the only one who’s realized that. Just yesterday he scored the top two of the five “Best DVDs” in an article in the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
Paul lives in Los Angeles where success is often looked upon with envy. Not here. This is my friend and I couldn’t be more proud.
1. “The Dick Van Dyke Show”
Rob and Laura Petrie never had it so good. Each of the five season sets for the classic sitcom includes a giddy wealth of special features, thanks to DVD producer Paul Brownstein’s uncanny ability to dig them up and — more important — secure the rights to use them. Favorites are the cast’s appearance on the game show “Stump the Stars” and Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore’s in-character commercials for products such as dish soap and — gasp! — cigarettes (the latter a hidden feature). (Image, $69.99 per season; $249.99 for the entire five-season run.)
2. “The Twilight Zone”
Brownstein strikes again with the “Definitive Edition” re-releases of Rod Serling’s sci-fi anthology series, which has two seasons to go after the new third-season set. Goodies include commentary, isolated scores, archival audio interviews and fun bits such as the Sci Fi Channel’s promo spots for its annual “TZ” marathon. And the first-season set comes with the best program notes ever included with a DVD, the 466-page “The Twilight Zone Companion.” (Image, $119.99 for first season, $99.99 for others.)
DVD Views: These TV shows are in the Zone
Randy A. Salas
Star Tribune
Published July 5, 2005
The new third-season set of “The Twilight Zone: The Definitive Edition” can’t help but make one think of the best TV DVDs ever released. Its impeccable digital presentation justifies the show’s lofty status as a TV landmark — and easily earns it a spot on a list of the elite.
“I love ‘The Twilight Zone,’ ” Jonathan Winters says in his commentary for “A Game of Pool,” the third-season episode in which he plays a pool champ who returns from the grave to challenge Jack Klugman to a life-or-death game. “I’m sorry today … [that] we don’t have more of these shows; they’re not as well written.”
Here are the five best TV series on DVD, based on the legacy of the show and the inclusion of bountiful and substantive extras. They’re sure to take you to another dimension, a journey not only of sight and sound but of mind.
1. “The Dick Van Dyke Show”
Rob and Laura Petrie never had it so good. Each of the five season sets for the classic sitcom includes a giddy wealth of special features, thanks to DVD producer Paul Brownstein’s uncanny ability to dig them up and — more important — secure the rights to use them. Favorites are the cast’s appearance on the game show “Stump the Stars” and Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore’s in-character commercials for products such as dish soap and — gasp! — cigarettes (the latter a hidden feature). (Image, $69.99 per season; $249.99 for the entire five-season run.)
2. “The Twilight Zone”
Brownstein strikes again with the “Definitive Edition” re-releases of Rod Serling’s sci-fi anthology series, which has two seasons to go after the new third-season set. Goodies include commentary, isolated scores, archival audio interviews and fun bits such as the Sci Fi Channel’s promo spots for its annual “TZ” marathon. And the first-season set comes with the best program notes ever included with a DVD, the 466-page “The Twilight Zone Companion.” (Image, $119.99 for first season, $99.99 for others.)
3. “The Simpsons”
Creator Matt Groenig knows what fans want: commentary for every episode, deleted scenes, audio outtakes, commercials and oodles more. The only downer is that the sets come out so far apart, with the sixth season due Aug. 16 and many more to go. (Fox, $39.98 for first season; $49.98 for others.)
4. “Seinfeld”
The show about nothing sure has a lot to say on DVD: newly produced interviews with the cast and creators, commentary, deleted scenes, bloopers, yadda yadda yadda. Let’s hope it continues for the five seasons that remain of the series’ nine-season run. (Sony, $49.95 per set; first and second seasons combined in one volume.)
5. “The Mary Tyler Moore Show”
The good news from fictional Minneapolis TV station WJM is that Mary and the gang are back, after a nearly three-year break, with a second-season set whose extras are just as good and plentiful as the first, including commentary and fun retrospectives. But the tam-tossing euphoria won’t last long. The upcoming set, due July 26, was put together before the first-season collection landed with a thud on store shelves, and future volumes are expected to be no-frills affairs. (Fox, $29.98 per season, as of July 26.)
Honorable mentions
Other shows considered for their top-notch DVDs include “Freaks and Geeks,”SCTV,”The Kids in the Hall,”Battlestar Galactica,”The Ben Stiller Show,”I Love Lucy,”Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Stargate SG-1.”
Randy Salas is at rasalas@startribune.com.