What Happened to the American Film Institute "100 Movies" CBS TV Specials?

No matter what you think of the American Film Institute's Top 100 Lists of America's greatest movies, their "100 Years, 100 (Put Film Genre Here)" TV specials produced every June for CBS were well worth the three-hour viewing time. When AFI started these specials in 1998, they not only set off the new firestorms about "Citizen Kane" being picked the #1 greatest American film, they also set off a comfortable tradition in creating a worthwhile and epic TV special on a major TV network. Usually aired in early to mid June each year, they were an inspiring respite during a time when TV falls into the proverbial canyon of repeats or new unreality shows and cable not offering much else of substance. It brought back a time when you could turn on network TV and see a substantive TV special celebrating retro media during an era when classic media was still accruing.

Unlike some network TV specials of yore that examined classic entertainment, AFI's specials were still highly charged with loads of subjectivity. And it was all done in such an authoritative way that more than a few people lashed out angrily at it for pushing many films into the Top Ten even more film fans thought shouldn't be anywhere near there. Arguably, the two biggest flaws of the AFI specials were that the movies were picked by industry insiders instead of average people and limited its list to just American films rather than international cinema.

Of course, we were reminded that this was the American Film Institute and not an International one, or else face having "Battleship Potemkin", "Grand Illusion" or "Napoleon" as the Top Three on the list ahead of usual suspects "Kane", "The Godfather" and "Casablanca." But just choosing the greatest American films is a surefire way to create bickering among the film community, which was the full intention of the AFI from the get-go. Their intention to create debate was actually a brilliant psychological approach to bring classic films back into everyday discussion other than the latest hourly scoop on Jon & Kate or "I'm an Imbecilic Celebrity, Please Dump Me in a Scorpion-Infested Jungle."

And the AFI managed to sustain that for well over a decade on an annual basis, with particular volcanic reintroductions of debate when perpetually irritating people on the "Citizen Kane" kowtow consensus. I looked forward every year to the heated classic movie discussions generated on the net the night after the specials that were ordinarily relegated to the message boards at Turner Classic Movies or the blight of the earth IMDb.com boards.

Now, as I write this, a haunting and perplexing note was placed next to AFI's TV special schedule for 2009: To Be Announced. Also, the usual date of when the AFI "100 Years..." specials air in June has already passed. This, obviously, gives rise to the inevitability that there won't be a new AFI special this year after 11 years. As of last count, I only found a couple of blogs mentioning its absence from the airwaves this year.

Based on the obscure blogs who happened to notice the dearth of any AFI shows this year (other than an umpteenth salute to NBC News announcer Michael Douglas), it appears most of the viewing public don't wait for those specials. Perhaps that was the biggest advantage of the AFI specials in the last decade: Catching viewers by surprise and then inciting a fresh debate after the fact. Admittedly, when finding a few of the categories in past years initially contrived, I still found myself engrossed through the entire three hours as a parade of legendary actors, directors and producers expounded their own views on classic American movies that always deserve attention.

Yet the question has to be answered why AFI decided to drop out this year. Some blogs say that it was simply the economy and CBS making drastic budget cuts due to lowering advertising rates. Then the typical joke comes up that the AFI merely ran out of category ideas. With some categories in past years representing "Thrills", "Passions" and even a tenth anniversary special last year recounting the Top 100 from a decade earlier, I was already making cracks in past articles about it that we'd soon see "100 Years; 100 Movie Sneezes (or Hacking Coughs)."

Well, yeah, even something mundane as listing the highly mundane in classic movies would be a treat--no matter if that included comedic sneezes or dramatic ones. Then again, there's still plenty of more worthy subjects to mine in these shows if the AFI has a creative staff willing to take it to the limit.

For true classic film lovers, 2009 is actually a banner year, because it's the 70^th anniversary of the greatest movie year in history: 1939. I already wrote an extensive article earlier this year reflecting on some of the movies from '39 and how we'll be seeing 70^th anniversary DVD sets of those everywhere in the second half of 2009. The only thing left after the DVD sets is some extensive analyzing on TV considering most analysis of 1939 over the years has been in print (literal or cyberspace) rather than on the tube.

If there's any chance that the AFI will still do a special later this year, having one devoted to counting down the films of 1939 would be fitting to keep the franchise fresh and full of debate topics. Instead of having to grapple with "Citizen Kane" getting another #1 nod, we'd have a new debate over whether "The Wizard of Oz" or "Gone with the Wind" was really the #1 movie of 1939.

I say give it to the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland musical "Babes in Arms" and call it fair and square.

What happens then if the AFI decides to fold up their "100 Years" franchise? The good news is that you can buy the previous specials on DVD. The bad news is that they'll probably only be sold or rented to a niche market rather than having millions of families playing it in an evening. If the economy is the true reason for bringing them down, then classic movies in general are arguably in trouble once again within the cable universe. It's an unfortunate reality that classic movies have to be marketed in clever ways to capture the attention of a fickle newer generation who think any movie older than 20 years isn't worth their time. Since Turner Classic Movies is so adept at making classic movies compelling, it's already shaping up that they'll be the lonely outpost having any care about airing the classics AFI celebrated.

Those AFI specials need to come back for no other reason than inciting passionate public discussion in order to keep these films relevant rather than passively airing on TCM with more benign commentary.

Source:

http://connect.afi.com/site/PageServer?pagename=100yearsList