Turner Classic Movies

The Missus’s and my favorite between-the-films bumper/promo on the Turner Classic Movies (TCM) cable/satellite TV network:

For those not familiar with it, the network specializes in films — mostly Hollywood-made — from years ago. They’ve been showing this occasionally for years. It so dreamily evokes bygone days, without overt sentiment. It doesn’t include any clips from old movies. (Indeed, the only reference to film at all is the shot of a guy selling tickets from a theater booth.) It keeps the locale(s) non-specific, although it’s hard not to assume they’re all in New York City. It uses jazz effectively, and even references Edward Hopper. But somehow — even without the TCM logo at the very end, probably — it unambiguously tells you what you can expect to find featured here.

It is, we think, a masterpiece of the form.

[Found it, while looking for something else, at the YouTube channel for the AJ Ross advertising agency — the firm which produced it.]

Dear Turner Classic Movies (TCM):

I fell in love with you years ago. Who wouldn’t love a cable channel that broadcasts (and re-broadcasts (and, all right, re-re-broadcasts)) timeless movies, often in black-and-white, that otherwise would have faded into obscurity years ago?

True, I had moments of doubt (they happen in the best of relationships).

Mostly, you didn’t seem to care that I had to change the channel. Not because I didn’t want to see the feature (I did! I did!), no. Rather, I had to change the channel because I couldn’t hear what anyone was saying, or could hear only sporadically. I could often read lips in the closeups but eventually I’d tire. I’m no spring chicken anymore, you know. So I’d sigh melodramatically — you never noticed, did you? — and switch over to something ghastly like SPIKE or SciFi or even the Hallmark Channel… at least until they, too, turned a cold shoulder to me.

But you kept winning me back. More and more films would be close-captioned — even the oldest ones from early in the sound era. And I know, I know — the studios and distributors probably paid for the captioning. So maybe it was out of your hands, not your decision anyway.

Still, I think maybe you were just toying with my affections.

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