AADL Talks To: Phil Hallman, Film Historian, University of Michigan Librarian and Archivist

Tue, 10/07/2025 - 12:04pm

When: September 9, 2024

Phil Hallman's lengthy relationship with Ann Arbor film culture began with trips to Ann Arbor during high school in nearby Plymouth and includes his involvement with the Ann Arbor Film Cooperative and city-wide film festivals through the 1980s and 1990s. Since then, Phil has been curator for the Mavericks & Makers collections housed at the U-M Library’s Special Collections Research Center; the Donald Hall Collection screenplay collection in the University of Michigan's Film, Television, and Media department, and has served as Film Studies Librarian and subject specialist liaison for the Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library. Phil talks with us about his long love affair with film, the heyday of Ann Arbor's famous campus cinema culture, and some gems from the collections he curates.

Transcript

[00:00:09] AMY CANTU: Hi, this is Amy.
[00:00:10] KATRINA ANBENDER: This is Katrina. In this episode, AADL Talks to Phil Hallman. Phil has a long history with film in Ann Arbor and is currently librarian in the department of film, television, and media at the University of Michigan, where he is responsible for the Mavericks and Makers and the Donald Hall collections. In this episode, Phil talks with us about the Ann Arbor Film Co-op, the heyday of campus cinema, and Robert Altman's connection to Ann Arbor. He tells us about the changes he's seen in the city and its film culture over the years.
[00:00:39] KATRINA ANBENDER: Usually, we just start by asking, where did you grow up, and what brought you to Ann Arbor?
[00:00:49] PHIL HALLMAN: Well, I actually grew up in Plymouth, Michigan. I'm not that far away. The apple didn't fall that far, I guess, is what you might say. I grew up in Plymouth, which is actually, for those who may not know where it is, it's the westernmost suburb of Detroit. It's actually closer to Ann Arbor than it is to downtown Detroit. I had a teacher, and I was fortunate enough to have a kind of To Sir With Love moment, or whatever you want to call it, where somebody changes your life, and they have a huge impact on you. This was a teacher in high school, and she taught this course called Approaching the Arts. Her philosophy was that, here we are living in the 20th century, but we're not really engaged with the 20th century. But our education and our culture is really more 19th century. Her task was to drag us into our time. She taught this course, and she introduced us to modern art, basically. Part of that was directing us to Ann Arbor, which was only about 20 minutes away. Throughout that time, I would come three or four times a week to Ann Arbor and primarily to these movies that were being shown on campus, but also to plays and listen to poets speak or writers or guests who were coming to the university. That was my magnet, and that was starting in the mid-70s. I came and I loved it. At that time, Ann Arbor felt more like an alternative place. It was hippieish. That felt freeing, coming from a Plymouth was a little conservative, really, in some ways, and a little small town. Ann Arbor felt wild. Obviously, it wasn't, compared to say, Berkeley or someplace like that, but it did feel like an alternative community. I just took to it immediately, and I almost never left. I did leave for a while -- I did live in New York for a while -- but then I returned.
[00:03:08] KATRINA ANBENDER: Did you go to U of M then once you were done with high school?
[00:03:12] PHIL HALLMAN: Yes. Primarily because of these film societies that were here, and other people have written about them. But it was such an important part of my life. What I do now is so informed by those times and that experience. These were film societies that were on campus. There were as many as 10 at different times. I was part of the Ann Arbor Film Cooperative, and these were student-run organizations, completely student-run. Student-governed. They each had 15 members, and the university rules only allow a cap of 15. When there were two or more openings then they would recruit to bring on new members. But I stayed with that group for more than 10 years, and it just became my life. In fact, I spent more time with that than school at different times. But we were responsible for bringing in, you know, programming the films, running the sales of the tickets, and all the promotion of it, everything that you need to be successful we were responsible for, including getting the prints. We were showing on film. These were primarily 16 millimeter, but sometimes 35 millimeter film. We had to schedule the rooms, work with the university, all the things, the banking, everything was all student-directed, and that was exciting.
[00:04:55] AMY CANTU: I want to ask you more about that in a minute, but I want to step back. I love it that we've already gotten a film reference from you -- To Sir With Love. I want to ask you when... So presumably you...Was Ann Arbor your introduction to film? Coming here? Or what got you interested in film as a kid?
[00:05:13] PHIL HALLMAN: It's my family business, in a way, like, exhibition. We didn't make movies, or I wasn't part of that world, but my father ran a drive-in movie theater.
[00:05:23] AMY CANTU: Oh, really?
[00:05:24] PHIL HALLMAN: He didn't own it. He managed it. That became our family trade. My brothers were projectionists, and they were involved in the projection union. My brother was the president of the Detroit Projection Union, and another brother ran another movie theater. My brothers met their wives through these theaters. It was really our family business. I grew up watching movies at a drive-in from the time I was three. What was interesting about that experience was that, it was my father's job. I went with him, so the theater opened, l could get there, like 6:00 or something, and then we left there at 3:00 in the morning. It was just an all-night activity. What was interesting was that they generally had a double feature, and then the first film would play again. I got into the habit of rewatching a film, like on the same evening. Watching and rewatching a film became part of my normal movie-going experience. I think that changes your sense of, I'm rewatching this film, and what do I notice now that I didn't see the first time? It really trained me to look at films in a slightly detached way. Obviously, enjoying it, but at the same time looking for the art.
[00:06:54] AMY CANTU: Studying it.
[00:06:55] PHIL HALLMAN: Exactly. That was part of what I did. Then eventually I worked in this theater, too, in the concession stand and stuff like that. Plus, I have this bizarre mind of, I was really fascinated by movies in general and where they were playing and would basically study the newspaper, like a text of some kind, and I'd fantasize about where these other theaters were and wanting to go there and looking at the ads. I was like, I want to go downtown Detroit and see X movie at X Theater. All of that was part of my interest.
[00:07:40] AMY CANTU: That's fascinating. Now, do you have any films stand out to you from your childhood or anything really...
[00:07:47] PHIL HALLMAN: Well, I like the good, the bad, and the ugly. I don't mean literally that movie, but I really have a real wide interest. I loved, at least as a child, horror films. I remember seeing Night of the Living Dead, which was the third film on a triple bill, and really being terrified at the time. My sister and I and her friend were sitting alone in the car, and we were like, shaking and quivering, and I kept saying, I'm never coming back again. But of course, the next week, I came back. But that was a really terrifying experience, but I like that thrill of being scared. Actually, I'm not really that interested in horror movies anymore, but I remember seeing The Graduate and Bonnie and Clyde and The Godfather, the Love Story. All these films from the early 70s, those were part of what I did, and saw them in growing up. Interestingly, the first movies I remember seeing were all musicals. I love musicals. I didn't have a problem. Some people who think, Wow, they're singing. That's so bizarre. That's not real. Because those are the films I first saw, like Mary Poppins and Sound of Music. I had this love of these British star, Julie Andrews and Hayley Mills. Those were, two favorite people at the beginning. Then, of course, Disney, Bambi, Snow White and all those things. I just immediately loved movies. Even at home watching on TV, like Bill Kennedy -- a reference for people who may not know him, he was like a host of a local Channel 50 show about movies, and he would interrupt them and talk about them and had guests who came through Detroit and things like that.
[00:09:59] AMY CANTU: Do you remember, Sir Graves Ghastly?
[00:10:01] PHIL HALLMAN: Of course! Saturday...
[00:10:01] AMY CANTU: I watched those with my dad.
[00:10:05] PHIL HALLMAN: I loved Sir Graves. That was all part of my growing up period.
[00:10:14] KATRINA ANBENDER: But you would still come to Ann Arbor to see movies, even though you had access to this drive-in theater and being able to see them. Can you talk about the differences?
[00:10:22] PHIL HALLMAN: It was a much different experience. The drive-in was the Hollywood thing. This was foreign films or older films that I hadn't seen as a child. They would be maybe 30s or 40s films that I didn't grow up with, but suddenly had a new appreciation for. People would say, Hey, have you seen, Meet Me in St. Louis or something like that. I said, No, I hadn't seen that. That was an introduction to these films that I was too young or wasn't born, when they were made.
[00:11:04] KATRINA ANBENDER: Of course, there wasn't home video.
[00:11:06] PHIL HALLMAN: Exactly. Unless you saw it on Bill Kennedy. NBC would have Saturday Night at the Movies and things like that. But I never had problems with black and white or anything like that. I love those films, too. You have to remember our TV was black and white, so it wasn't so strange. But I remember seeing things like Comeback, Little Sheba, on Saturday night at the movies and just loving that kind of film, I do love melodrama and things like that. But anyway, Ann Arbor presented Ingmar Bergman and Fellini, and these foreign films that I didn't grow up knowing about. I really took to those. It's not like I thought they were better or worse or anything like that. They were just different, and therefore, I tried to understand what was going on in those.
[00:12:05] KATRINA ANBENDER: When you became involved in the Ann Arbor Film Co-op, how did you go about choosing what movies would be shown?
[00:12:12] PHIL HALLMAN: We rented these films from different distributors, and those distributors represented certain studios. For example, there was a Films Incorporated was one of these companies, and they had a deal with 20th Century Fox. They would have all the Fox titles. There was a company UA, MGM United Artist, they obviously had those films. But then there were companies like New Yorker Films, which was a small boutique distribution company, and they had the foreign films, particularly at that time, they were introducing to American audiences the German New Wave films by people like Herzog and Fassbinder, and so they had that. They were all based on contracts that they had devised with studios. These catalogs were in the office. We would go through them. But then also watching and looking in the newspapers to see, well, what's playing at the retro houses in New York? What's playing in Los Angeles or San Francisco? There was this company, and they put out these wonderful brochures where they had all these double bills. Basically, we were inspired by other people, and we wanted to bring those here. That's what we did. Those were new releases where we would basically copy what was happening and bring them here. That was what made this really exciting because it was a mixture of brand-new films, cutting-edge stuff, but also classics, French New Wave, or even older French films. But then also silent films and things like that. Every night, especially on the weekends, you could see like 10 different movie choices, and it would range from Charlie Chaplin to this German New Wave to a new brand-new release, things like that, and they were really popular. I don't know if you remember, Amy?
[00:14:34] AMY CANTU: I do.
[00:14:35] PHIL HALLMAN: But in the modern languages building, which seats 550 people. The line would literally extend around the building and touch itself. There was such high energy. That's what people did on the college campus at that time. Now they do other things. But at that point, that was what you did. The fact that there were so many choices really was remarkable. I enjoyed my classes, but I feel like I learned even more by just watching and talking with friends.
[00:15:18] KATRINA ANBENDER: Do you remember in making those selections if there's one screening that like really stood out, or maybe if there was a contentious moment trying to select as a group?
[00:15:28] PHIL HALLMAN: There was a very long process. Three times a year, we had a selection process. It was an all-day event, and we went to somebody's house, and we planned to be there literally the whole day. We started cooking breakfast, and then it ended up to lunch and dinner, basically. Every person was allowed to submit up to 50 film choices. But it was your job to defend or argue for why this film should be selected. That took hours and hours. There were sometimes fights or arguments. I guess one time, this was later, but somebody wanted to try and do a series where it was a double feature where there was a silent film star, somebody who was well known in the silent era, and then either didn't make it or was successful in transitioning into the sound era because a lot of actors didn't succeed. It was this double bill where we would show a silent film and a talkie with this person. It sounded like a great idea. It bombed so badly that it practically killed us, really. But interestingly, that man has gone on to be the head of this prestigious silent film festival in Italy, called the Pordenone Film Festival, so Jay Weissberg, and I'm still in touch with him. But again, what was so amazing is like that experience allowed this person to have the training and the background to lead one of the world's most prestigious film festivals on Silent Film. At that time, he was so in love with silent film, which was a little bit of an oddity at the time. But he loved it, and he wanted us to love it, too. We tried, but it didn't work.
[00:17:41] AMY CANTU: Frank Uhle's wonderful book, Cinema Ann Arbor, covers so much of this history -- and we gotta bring him in here and talk to him, too.
[00:17:53] PHIL HALLMAN: If you haven't, you must.
[00:17:56] AMY CANTU: But did you specifically want to be in Ann Arbor Film Co-op? Was it because of the programming they were doing?
[00:18:07] PHIL HALLMAN: Yes. At that time, each group had a very clear identity based around the posters that they made. In order to advertise what was showing, each group had a poster, which was roughly around the size of a one sheet, if you know what that is. It's about 24 by 36, and they printed these things out and listed what was playing for the entire semester, for four months. You got locked into whatever you chose. If there were some duds, you had to bite the bullet. But hopefully, you had a mix of successes and duds. By duds, I just mean films that didn't make back their money. You had to rent these films, and you had to pay the projectionist, and you had to pay the university for the use of the auditorium. You had just to open your door was like 100 and some dollars plus whatever the rental fee was for the movie. If you only got 50 people, that was a loss. Anyway, this film co-op, what I liked was their posters, primarily, but also the mixture of what they were showing. They generally always had double bills, and they had a lot of exploitation-type things, but they also had cult films, but also these German New Wave films and things. They really had, I thought, more diversity than the other groups did. So that was my first choice. But actually there was a bit of an audition process. You had to interview with the people who were already part of the group, but when you're 20 or whatever, it was very intimidating to be trying to sell yourself to these other people. And the first time I actually didn't get in, so I got rejected, but I was like, Oh...
[00:20:13] AMY CANTU: But you tried again.
[00:20:16] PHIL HALLMAN: Yeah. But then I tried again. The second time it got in.
[00:20:21] AMY CANTU: Was there much rivalry between the groups?
[00:20:23] PHIL HALLMAN: Oh, yeah, there definitely was.
[00:20:24] AMY CANTU: Talk about that a little bit.
[00:20:25] PHIL HALLMAN: Well, interestingly, we shared an office or three of the groups shared an office together, and I don't know, maybe it's just me, but I got along with all the groups. I actually got invited to their outside events that they did. Cinema Too was another group, and they had these baseball games and these croquet games and stuff. They invited me. I was floated between the groups. But in terms of business, we were competing with each other. We had this process where we didn't want the same film shown more than one time during this semester. We had to sort of duke it out with each other, and we would meet with one another and look at what we wanted to show. Then if there was a conflict, we had to sort of trade between each other. Actually, I was really good at that part. It's just very strange. Like, I had this weird sense about what might do well. I don't know why exactly. It was just some weird sixth sense. I don't know. But I was pretty good at that. We'd say, We want this film, and you can take that one. That was for our own protection, 'cause we didn't want the same film more than once because then you wouldn't maybe do as well if you were the person showing it the second time.
[00:22:02] KATRINA ANBENDER: Were you studying film as a student then?
[00:22:04] PHIL HALLMAN: Yeah, I was a major in film and also art history. I had two majors, but film was.
[00:22:11] KATRINA ANBENDER: What were you hoping to do when you graduated?
[00:22:14] PHIL HALLMAN: Well, it's interesting because originally, I wanted to be a film critic. So as a high school student, I was the editor of my high school newspaper, and I wrote film reviews, and I won prizes for them. That was really what I intended to do. But then, my experience with this film society, then I was like, Well, maybe I should work with these film distributors. I actually visited them. I went to Chicago. I went to New York. I tried to see what that was like. But then what was odd was that in this film group, there were some older members who were librarians, and they worked at the University of Michigan Library. Then I thought, Oh, maybe this is a better match for me. That became a different path.
[00:23:14] AMY CANTU: We understand your interest in being librarian.
[00:23:16] PHIL HALLMAN: I know.
[00:23:17] AMY CANTU: Where did you go to school for library school?
[00:23:23] PHIL HALLMAN: Here at Michigan. That was in the 90s, I guess. But then later, this whole other world opened up of archives. It's funny, as a high schooler, I took these tests that -- they sort of help you, aptitude tests. I don't know if they still do those or not, but I took this test, and the test said that my match would be as a curator. Interestingly, that's what happened. Not initially, but later that became what I do now. That's funny that these tests would predict what I would be good at.
[00:24:09] KATRINA ANBENDER: You said you were involved with a Film Co-op for 10 years?
[00:24:13] PHIL HALLMAN: Oh, at least, yeah.
[00:24:15] KATRINA ANBENDER: Then if it was a student-run group...?
[00:24:18] PHIL HALLMAN: Well, that was there there were these what do you call? Like fudging things happening. You really were supposed to be enrolled in students, but they allowed a certain percentage of people to not be students. It's happened now with, like, WCBN. I don't know if you've interviewed anyone from there, but there are people who have been including Frank Uhle. Like, he's had a show there forever. They do a little fudging. But yeah, you're right. We had to have a certain percentage of people who were students, but there were some of us who were long past that, and we stayed on.
[00:24:57] KATRINA ANBENDER: What were you doing for work during that time period, then?
[00:25:01] PHIL HALLMAN: While I was a student?
[00:25:03] KATRINA ANBENDER: Or after you were a student and you were involved in the co-ops. While still here in Ann Arbor.
[00:25:09] PHIL HALLMAN: Yeah, I was working for an organization called Michigan Media, which was part of the university. That was a combination of it was a production house. It's a really interesting story. You may want to do something about that. But yeah, so they made movies, really more television programs for the university. They had their own studio and things like that, but they also had a library. This was an educational library. They rented films to schools, different schools across the country would call this place and rent a film. They were primarily to be screened in classroom use. It was mostly documentaries, but there were some other things, too. I worked with that. That helped to solidify this interest in libraries.
[00:26:09] AMY CANTU: Before we talk about what you do now and some of the collections that you do curate, I assume that you were involved some way, shape, or form with the Ann Arbor Film Festival, or that you at least went because that's another big film-related institution in Ann Arbor. Can you talk a little bit about your work there?
[00:26:25] PHIL HALLMAN: Yeah, well, first, I was involved with the Ann Arbor Eight Millimeter Film Festival. That was the festival that the Ann Arbor Film Co-op sponsored. It was the baby festival, compared to the Ann Arbor Film Festival. That was like festival-lite. It was a different format. It was 8 millimeter. It was less professional or at least viewed that way. Eight millimeter was cheaper to buy the camera and buy the film, but also couldn't do as much. Like, it was harder to come up with a look that 16 could achieve. A lot of times, the people making films would make these silly things in their basements or their backyards or something like that. There was a lot of use of Barbies and GI Joes that get animated. But that was a great experience. We both ran that festival, but also were screeners, which meant we had to watch all the entrance or entries. That was done primarily in the evening. There was a place in East Quad called the Half Ass, which was this great little restaurant, and they had these amazing pecan rolls. This woman who was part of our group, she also happened to work there. There was a funny experience. One time, well, we had this person who entered the festival, and they wanted us to screen the film at a very specific time, and then they would come and pick up the film after we finished. I'm like, Well, that's weird, but we agreed to it. It turned out he was connected with Sam Raimi, right, the horror film who grew up in the area. This was this film called Strikers War, and it really divided the group. Some of us gave it a 10, and others gave it a zero because it was very divisive in terms of its depiction of war and things like that. That was one of these moments that was very memorable. But, yeah, we would watch all these things. Sometimes I felt like I was going a little brain dead, to be honest, because they really weren't the greatest. But every once in a while, there was like, Oh, that's a surprise, and that's fun. So, then I also got involved with the Ann Arbor Film Festival as well, but as a screener, as well. I don't think anyone realizes the amount of work that's involved. You have to watch all these films in their entirety. Some of them were just so bad. Oh, my God. I mean, but some of them were great, too. Obviously, a lot of them were great. I was involved with that during the time when Ruth Bradley was the head of that festival. She was just amazing. She would be great for you to interview if you haven't already. I haven't seen her in years, but I know, I think she recently retired from her teaching position in Ohio. But, yeah, those festivals really require the passion of an individual to keep going. It's really remarkable that it's still happening all these years later because if you don't have that spark of an individual who drives it, it just can't work. All of that stuff. I'd say the same with these film co-ops. They were all passion projects for people. Without that, who would do the work then? There's no one paid. They're all volunteer stuff mostly. You need that drive. But anyway, we would watch these films in the evening and sometimes start around six o'clock and end at midnight or something. Six days a week, I think. It was a huge commitment.
[00:30:49] AMY CANTU: Phil, did you ever try your hand at filmmaking or screenwriting?
[00:30:54] PHIL HALLMAN: It was something I sort of thought I'd want to do. I got involved in this as a PA. There was this film that was shot here in Ann Arbor called The Carrier. I don't know. A film in the mid-80s. They had already started before I got involved, but I started out as a office PA, and then I was a little bit on the set. But I just didn't like it. I didn't like the idea of being on call whenever and, like, standing out in the cold. Then I got involved in this weird thing where they had these, it's part of the plot. It's a funny film, it's like a pre-COVID movie in a weird way. There's this virus or disease that's spreading. One way to tell if someone has it, they would use cats. The animal cats as a detector of whether or not someone had this disease. They needed cats on the set. [LAUGHTER] And this woman volunteered her cat to be, she thought like, maybe become the next Morris cat or something. Anyway, I had to drive out to Farmington to pick up this cat. When I did, her daughter was in tears, like, No, Mommy, you can't let little Fifi, go on this set. It's going to run away, and I'll never see him again or whatever. The mother's like, Take the cat, take the cat. The girl's crying in hysterics. So I took the cat reluctantly, and I put it in the back seat, and then the cat was crying, too. I just turned right around and said, I can't take the cat. I said, I don't want to be responsible for losing it. That stuff, like, that did it for you. [LAUGHTER] I don't want this. The fun part was taking the film print to New York to be coded for editing, so I had to take, like, six reels of 35 millimeter. Wow. Yeah, to New York. Then after they finished, I was, like, standing in the middle of a busy street. It might have even been Broadway in New York, and trying to find a cab, and I was literally there for more than an hour, 'cause I couldn't leave the boxes. And I wasn't really knowledgeable in how to flag a cab? This guy came and parked, and then he did whatever he had to do. Then he came back and he saw me, I'm still there. He's like, Can I give you a ride. It was like one of these wonderful moments where New Yorkers really aren't as bad as they made out to be, so he took me where I needed to go. But after that, I'm like, I don't know. [OVERLAPPING].
[00:34:03] AMY CANTU: I don't want to make movies.
[00:34:03] KATRINA ANBENDER: Six wheels of film is heavy too.
[00:34:08] PHIL HALLMAN: It is, yeah. I was surprised they let me do it cause something happened, like, that would be a real disaster. This director who worked really hard to get this movie made. [OVERLAPPING] Anyway, that was my attempt at movie-making.
[00:34:31] KATRINA ANBENDER: Glad we asked. To transition a bit into what you do now, can you tell us some about the Mavercks and Makers collection and how that had begun and then how it's continued?
[00:34:44] PHIL HALLMAN: Sure. Yeah. Well, I mean, I was hired by the university to run this library that's a department library for the Department of Film. Well, their name has changed over the years. Now it's called the Department of Film Television and Media. But at certain times it was called just Film and Video. It was called Screen Arts and Cultures at one time. It's changed its name several times. But back in 1999, this man named Robert Shaye, who's a graduate of Michigan. He is a very successful businessman. He started the New Line Studio, which was always considered a mini major, but they still were very successful. They're big films. He introduced John Waters to the world by distributing his films. He was one of these companies that we rented from in that era. I knew him via the boutique and very odd collection of films that he distributed.
[00:35:53] PHIL HALLMAN: But then eventually he got into producing and making films. They did the Lord of the Rings and the Austin Powers and Nightmare on Elm Street, Ninja Turtles, all of these stuff. So they were very successful. Anyway, he gave $1 million gift to the department with the intention of it being used to create a library. I was hired to start and build this library, the purpose of it was to collect screenplays to support the screenwriting program that Jim Bernstein, who heads our screenwriting program, it was to help him teach better. Then in addition to that, Robert Shaye wanted, because the new format of DVD was starting in 1999, it started maybe a year before that, but it was starting to kick into gear. His hope was that students would read the script and simultaneously watch the movie and compare and see what changes might have been made or things like that. That was how I first started. Then I shared my line with the university library, and became the film studies librarian, where my responsibility was to buy books and periodicals that support film studies. But not just for the department, but for the university. The university has bought and has had a film collection and books for decades, and so I was doing both of those. But then the university library was given the papers of Robert Altman, who did not go to the University of Michigan, but he's had a long association with it. That dates back to 1977 when this Ann Arbor Film Co-op and actually, they jointly sponsored a Robert Altman semester in 1977, which culminated with him visiting the campus and giving a talk at Hill Auditorium, which was packed, and that seats over 3,000 people. That just showed how popular he was at that time. Throughout that semester, they brought in people like Elliott Gould who had worked with Altman multiple times, they brought in Alan Rudolph who I also work with now and Altman did too. I think there were critics and other screenwriters and people like that who came as part of this semester-long tribute. But then he came here in the early '80s, he was asked to direct an opera with the School of Music and Theater, and he did this opera, what's it called? The Rake's Progress. He directed that and performed it in Power Center, and worked with the students, and really liked that experience. He eventually actually did other operas that he directed too. But this was a down period for him. Popeye had been released a couple of years earlier, it was not as successful as the studio had hoped it would be and so he was having trouble getting the funding that he was more used to, and so he in the '80s switched to these much smaller scale films, and he made a film here on our campus called Secret Honor, which he shot in Martha Cook dormitory. That's, an adaptation of a play about Richard Nixon, though, Richard Nixon is the sole character in that movie, it's like a one-man play that he then transferred to the screen and it's very powerful. It's a great performance by this actor Philip Baker Hall. He had a student crew who helped him, again, a great experience, so he really liked Ann Arbor and was actually thinking of relocating here, but it didn't happen. But he kept an ongoing association; the school eventually gave him an honorary degree, so he decided to leave his papers to Michigan. Which was unusual at the time because Michigan did not have a film-based archive collection policy, so they accepted it, but at same time, they didn't really have a tradition of working with filmmakers, they had worked with other artists, but they were literary figures or poets. I know, they collected along those lines, but not filmmakers. Then coincidentally, there was a faculty member in the department that I'm with, Catherine Benamou, and her work was based on Orson Welles. She was very much ingrained the later work of Orson Welles. In particular, she got involved with a gentleman named Richard Wilson and Richard Wilson was a longtime friend of Orson Welles and there really would be no Orson Welles in the way we know him if it hadn't been for Richard Wilson. I know that sounds dramatic and bold proclamation, but I really feel it's true. He had saved material that Orson Welles didn't. Orson Welles was a bit of a vagabond and didn't really value keeping things in that sense. He also didn't have a lot of respect for institutions, and I'm not making this up, he's quoted by saying things like that. But ironically, Richard Wilson saved this stuff, and Orson Welles' reputation is probably partially preserved because of this man. He was the wind beneath his wings. They had a long association, and then when that ended, I think Welles needed a keeper, he needed a wife, so to speak, somebody who could take care of the nuts and bolts of things while he was coming up with ideas and new things. But he wasn't as good in the practical sense of things, Wilson was. Without him, I think his career suffered. But anyway, Wilson had this stuff, and Catherine knew him, and he passed away, but she kept in touch with his son, and he gave us this material. Suddenly, here are these two lions of movie making, Robert Altman and Orson Welles, and their papers are at the University of Michigan, of all places. That was the start. Then we've just grown from there. What an opportunity, right? Somebody like me who watched their films growing up, I grew up simultaneous with the career of Robert Altman so whenever a new film of his came out, I was there watching it. Then oddly enough, Robert Altman, when he was doing that opera, he taught a class in the free time, down time, and I actually took that class. That was weird, that coincidence that I took this, and then years later, I got to know his wife -- he had died at this point -- but his wife, it was really important for her to place it here and honor his wish. She was amazing. I got to know her pretty well before she passed away and what a wonderful person and a mom you want to have, this really cool woman. I don't know, I just really love her. But now we have these collections, they're big, the Robert Altman collection is huge, you know how archives get measured. But they're measured in banker boxes, so it's measured by the foot, so a banker box is a box you'd buy at Staples or something to put your documents in, that's one foot. This Robert Altman collection is 700 boxes, that's massive. But even then, there's stuff that we don't have, where it is, it just gets thrown out, somebody else has it. As large as it is, there's still gaps. People, they always want certain things, then they expect it to be there, and it's very disappointing to say, Well, we don't really have that, or that's not how he work. With literary archives, people often will have diaries or personal letters where they're explaining what they're thinking or what they want to accomplish in the project or something, but I don't find that to be true with filmmakers. You do get that in interviews with people, but in terms of the documents themselves, it's very rare to have: T his is what I'm trying to accomplish. But that's what researchers want, but sadly, we don't have that. That's the interesting part of archives, is you have what you have and you can't make up something, but this is what you get. And so that's frustrating, though.
[00:46:39] AMY CANTU: But what is in there that you would like us or whoever's listening to know? What are some standout items?
[00:46:45] PHIL HALLMAN: It traces the production of a movie from the time they're trying to get funding to the time it gets put in theaters, so it's this arc of time. But again, sometimes some people do better job of keeping things. Or what often happens is when a filmmaker first starts, they don't keep as much or they're not as involved in the whole process. With Altman, his '70s films are very much thought of as this great period of time. But the archive is thin in terms of what it has, but what is there, that's great? Well, with Welles, there is this diary that he started when he was 16, going to Ireland for the first time. That's amazing to have these little insights to what he was seeing, and then he was also a pretty good artist himself. I wouldn't call it super fine artist, but he was good at sketching, and he trained a little bit at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago. He was good in doing sketches, and so in this diary, there are a little sketch of this donkey that he got to help him get around Dublin or people he was observing in cafes or places. They don't really tell you a whole lot, but he has cables or telegrams, there's tons of telegrams, and he would use telegrams, people text nowadays. He would just send one line, a lot of these were sent to his wife, and he's like, I miss you. Where are you? I just love you or whatever, just little sentiments, and they're really great. Because cables in that era were restricted mostly to your grandma died or something like that, these tragedies, but he's using them to keep in touch. Those are fun. What else do I like? I love the photographs. I love onset photos because it shows you stuff that isn't in the final film, I like those a lot. I like these unmade projects. Every filmmaker has projects that never got made, and in the Altman case, there's something like 80 projects that were hoping to get made, but didn't get made.
[00:49:51] AMY CANTU: That's a lot.
[00:49:52] PHIL HALLMAN: Yeah, sometimes there's more than other... In some cases, they really got close to production, in other cases, it was just a thought but didn't really take off. They really vary in what's there. But that's a lot. He was a work derby, every year had a project and sometimes more than one per year. But I love those. We have a book series that we do with University of Michigan Press, and the next iteration is to produce as books, some of these unmade scripts so that people can see them.
[00:50:35] AMY CANTU: That's a great idea.
[00:50:36] PHIL HALLMAN: Yeah
[00:50:37] KATRINA ANBENDER: Was any of the collection used when it came to The Other Side of the Wind?
[00:50:43] PHIL HALLMAN: Yeah. A lot of it was used. It was an odd project because Welles, he did some editing on it, and he would change things as he's editing, and he would develop his own rhythm of a film. That film, I don't know, I don't really like it because it's missing him. Obviously, he was involved with the shooting of it, but he wouldn't have edited it the same way. They literally just edited it based on the script they had. But he would have changed it and modified it and sped things up, slowed things down, whatever, but it feels a little flat to me as a view. But, yeah, they used all the script notes and things that we have and documents. That was a big project to be involved in and help with. But that's an example of how archives can reshape things. In some ways, if I were doing it, I would have done it more like a documentary about the movie and then included clips from it, rather than have the whole finished film. But I'm maybe in a minority opinion on that.
[00:52:10] AMY CANTU: It's a more archival way of looking at it, maybe.
[00:52:14] PHIL HALLMAN: Yeah, I think so.
[00:52:16] KATRINA ANBENDER: Can you tell us then -- you said you took the class with Robert Altman or one of the classes that he offered to you? Can you tell us about the class?
[00:52:23] PHIL HALLMAN: Yeah, it was taught on Fridays. It only lasted 5 or 6 weeks, so it was a pretty short class. It wasn't a class where he had prepared notes but it was really a conversation class. But the premise of the class was he would pick two films per week that we watched, and one film was success, the other was a failure, and so the idea was for him to talk about what worked in one may not have worked in the other. That was a really interesting way of looking at his films because he acknowledged they all didn't work.
[00:53:05] KATRINA ANBENDER: Was he considering them a success and a failure based on finances?
[00:53:08] PHIL HALLMAN: Yeah, I think they were both financial, but also how they had been perceived critically, as well, so how they had been read by the public at the time. But I think he's uncomfortable calling any of his films a failure, 'cause in fact, I think he wrote about how one of the films that's seen as maybe his worst film, this film called Quintet, which is a sci-fi film, he says it's his favorite film. I think it's just 'cause it's like oh, you gotta love this.
[00:53:49] PHIL HALLMAN: But anyway, a lot of it was just conversation, people asking questions, him talking, regaling what it was like on the set, or problems that came up, or things like that. It was informal, but certainly enlightening and great to be in the same room with this person and him being so open and honest about his work.
[00:54:13] KATRINA ANBENDER: Were you a student at the time, or did you enroll just for the class?
[00:54:17] PHIL HALLMAN: No, I was a student, and then we had to write a paper. We got a grade. But it was, I think, just a one-credit class or something like that. But I remember talking to him in the hallway one time.
[00:54:31] AMY CANTU: What about the Donald Hall collection?
[00:54:38] PHIL HALLMAN: Well, as much as I like what I've done with the archive, that's like my child. The Donald Hall collection. I think that put my heart into that. That has 50,000 DVDs and hundreds thousands of screenplays. I bought everything there. It's so cool to be able to have a dream. You might have money, and then you can just buy whatever you want. It's intended to support the department. But I've been fortunate to have just-in-case philosophy. There's this management style of just-in-time versus just-in-case. We're fortunate to be just-in-case, which means that some of these things probably never watched or used, but they're there. Somebody years from now wants to use it. It's interesting that people they've rediscovered the physical media vinyl, but the DVD thing is fading away. But I hope it's resurrected because there's a lot of stuff on streaming that you can't find or it's there for a while, and then it disappears. Whereas this stuff is always there. The Ann Arbor Public Library has a very popular collection, as well, and I hope you continue that as long as we can continue buying things because it's important to our culture. The whole idea that we just dispose of things after a decade or so, it just feels wrong.
[00:56:28] AMY CANTU: It's easy to forget.
[00:56:30] PHIL HALLMAN: But the archives, because these collections are so large, they take time to process, and sometimes people are messy, they just send you boxes of stuff. But fortunately, not all of them are like that. A lot of times they're they just took the files out of the file cabinets, so they're arranged in the same order that they were in their offices. That's helpful for us because it doesn't take as long. But all this stuff has to be gone through and put in rehoused and other folders, things like that. The point is to preserve this forever. It just takes time.
[00:57:20] KATRINA ANBENDER: You've also been involved in research with film exhibition in Southeast Michigan, is that right?
[00:57:26] PHIL HALLMAN: This is an outgrowth of my weird childhood. I have created this database with the intention of, well, it's a combination mapping project which maps all the theaters that existed in the 20th century in the Detroit Metro area. Then the crazy part is to try to create a database of all the films that played in those same theaters. That's what I do for fun, do this data entry. I jumped around, so the 70s, 80s, 90s are done. The 30s and 40s are mostly done, although I have to revisit those. I'm working on the 60s now. I don't know. I like doing it. But hopefully it will help somebody in terms of understanding film exhibition and what that is. Now, originally, I had this intention of doing multiple cities, but there's no way I could, just Detroit alone is taking up all my time. What this will allow you to do is look at what played where and for how long and that sort of thing. But it's interesting how small stories have already emerged. For example, in the early 70s, this notion of redlining with, African-American populations can be also shown through cinema. You get a film like Shaft, for example, which opens downtown but then eventually expands, but it never really enters into the white market. It comes close, but it never opens in say, Livonia, which is predominantly a white population. It's a really interesting way of showing with specifics of how a film plays and how that relates to the sociological development of a community. There's another example, Detroit in the 30s had a very large German population, and there's another example where this film, it's called The Man I Killed, but it had two names, and I'm blinking on the other name for it at the moment. But it's about this French soldier who during World War I, killed a German soldier. That's a great example of seeing where it played, and it played predominantly in these German communities. You can really see evidence here of sociological things. One of the things I wanted to do was, so there's this idea that pornography brings in crime. What I want to look at is, well, where were the pornography theaters? What was the crime in those areas? Is there actually proof of what people claim? I'm not saying porno theater should be all over the city, but it is an interesting idea to see, like, is the narrative real? Are the complaints or concerns of people legitimate? Anyway, I just find it really fascinating to see how movie exhibition can help understand a community.
[01:01:28] AMY CANTU: Yeah, that is actually. Is there anybody else doing that?
[01:01:31] PHIL HALLMAN: Not to this extent. This is a little mad.
[01:01:35] AMY CANTU: This is your obsession.
[01:01:36] PHIL HALLMAN: To do an entire century is a little bit crazy. I admit that now, but I'm too deep into it to stop. But I do want to pause and I think evaluate what's there before I continue. Because I think there's some great stories and not just for me to tell but for other people. We've used this database in different classes in the film and TV. We've taken students to Detroit it's remarkable how many theaters are still in Detroit. They may not all be operating as movie theaters, but the building is still there, and they've been very welcoming and allowed us to do tours with them and things. It's a great little jumping-off point, and it just shows that studying films is not just about the movie itself. There are all kinds of other things going on that are fascinating to think about.
[01:02:45] AMY CANTU: I have a question for you. You've seen a lot of changes in the film industry. You've seen a lot of changes in Ann Arbor, but I first want to ask you about the film industry and what do you think it is about film that traditional film and film viewing experiences that still resonates today? How does it fare against, the addictive nature of the small screen, and where's it going? What are your thoughts on any of this?
[01:03:11] PHIL HALLMAN: Gosh, that's a big question. Well, some of what I'm going to say isn't original, forgive me for that. What I like about movies, and I've talked about this in relation to the drive-in, I think, because I've done some writing and presenting about the drive-in, but the drive-in specifically, which I think can be extracted to movie-going in general, is that it's both a private and a public experience simultaneously. Even though you are sitting in a theater with other people, you're still having a kind of private experience. It can exist where you tune out those around you. The drive-in really makes that even clearer because you're sitting in a vehicle. You're sitting on this lot with maybe 100 other cars, but each cars having their own private experience in it. I think that will never really go away. I think the streaming thing continues that. It's just that it's an interrupted experience because you can pause and go to the bathroom or get a snack or something like that, or you can watch the film increments to whatever you want. I don't think there's anything wrong with the streaming world. I would never say that's bad or awful because it still means people are watching. That's really ultimately what it's about. They're still sharing. It's just that it's different. I personally prefer experience in the dark with the big screen and getting out of the house. I don't always want to have everything connected with being home. To me, home is just for a few hours of your day. I like to be out of the house, but not everyone does. More and more people want to be home. I don't know if that's answering your question, but I do think that the industry is really in a state right now. What's going to happen? I go to the movies still, and there are times when I'm one of only a handful of people there, and I'm like, this can't continue. But then every once in a while, this past weekend, there was this film that generated a lot of business. But again, I don't have to worry about this, but I hate to have to think that we as the public are concerned about box office and things like that. That's not our worry. That's somebody else's worry. I hate the fact that the movies have become so tied to their success. Do we know how many books an author sold in some cases, or an artist, or whatever. That's their problem, not ours. I think we should be more about what is the movie? What is it teaching us or showing us or sharing with us or how do we feel about it? Those are the things I'm more interested in. I don't think that will ever go away. As long as people are able to make things that actually are about something. When I say "about something" I mean does it emotionally connect with the audience. It doesn't have to be propaganda or something that's teaching you something, but rather, is there a shared feeling? Because I think the shared feeling and the shared experience of watching the movie collectively, that's what I like about movies.
[01:07:05] AMY CANTU: Just out of curiosity, do you ever watch a movie on your phone?
[01:07:09] PHIL HALLMAN: I have. During COVID I did. I have to admit I watched CODA, I think. I don't really enjoy it. But, if you're on a train or something, there's nothing else to do, I might. I tend to watch TV shows, rather than movies.
[01:07:29] KATRINA ANBENDER: You've also seen a lot of changes in Ann Arbor over the years. What stands out to you whether good or bad?
[01:07:37] PHIL HALLMAN: It's mostly in the bad. I find Ann Arbor pretty bland now, in terms of what we're getting access to, really not so great. It's just become any other place. Obviously, the Michigan is still doing what they can. But there used to be more than one Michigan at one time. That's what I miss. We actually competed with the Michigan when we were in the film society days. That was unfortunate at that time. This is one of those moments where I'm not sure I should say this, but they kind of pushed us out. They saw us as their competition, and they went after us because they were a theatrical venue, and they could get things before we could. They were threatened by us. That was unfortunate. But they won, so to speak, and I always wish them well. I want them to continue because they're the only game in town for the things I'm interested in. What's also interesting about Ann Arbor, though, is now there's Indian films that are playing out at the CinemaMark and things like that. There's community within the area that wants to see films that represent them. That's good. There's still some things the University will still sponsor some series, South Korean films or whatever. Certain departments sponsor films that represent what they teach. That's a good thing. But I guess what I miss is just the sheer volume. But even places like New York are having a hard time. I was just in New York two weeks ago, and it's just not the same there either. Many of the theaters have closed. There's both more available, but at the same time, it feels less.
[01:09:59] AMY CANTU: What are you most proud of?
[01:10:02] PHIL HALLMAN: Oh, well, collection building. I'm so proud of these collections that will live hopefully into the future. That's awesome. I love building collections. Then having people, like, get excited that, "Oh, I've been wanting to see this. You have this. Wow" So that's really cool. Or recommending things to people that they don't know about. I love doing that, and people have often counted on me for like, "Tell me what I should be watching" and that's always fun.
[01:10:39] KATRINA ANBENDER: Spoken like a true librarian.
[01:10:40] AMY CANTU: We get it.
[01:10:43] PHIL HALLMAN: Yeah, that's the best thing. I love listening to NPR and shows like that that have other people, like librarians, who come on and tell you what books they like. I love those kinds of things.
[01:10:54] KATRINA ANBENDER: The curation again.
[01:10:55] PHIL HALLMAN: Exactly. I don't know how those tests are done and how they measure things, but somebody got it right.
[01:11:03] KATRINA ANBENDER: Well, thank you so much.
[01:11:05] AMY CANTU: Thank you, Phil.
[01:11:05] PHIL HALLMAN: Oh, thank you. I enjoyed this.
[01:11:07] AMY CANTU: AADL Talks To is a production of the Ann Arbor District Library.