In an interview with Letterboxd, Best Picture nominee Greta Gerwig revealed that her major inspirations for “Barbie” included “The Philadelphia Story,” “Singin’ in the Rain” and “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.” Fellow nominee Martin Scorsese said his vision for “Killers of the Flower Moon” was formed in part by the 1948 Western “Wild River” and the 1960 romantic drama “Red River.”“The Holdovers” director, Alexander Payne, was largely influenced by ‘70s filmography, with a dash of older movies, such as Charlie Chaplin’s “Modern Times” (a film that Gerwig also found inspiration in).
What do all of these inspiring movies have in common, aside from critical acclaim? Well, they’ve all recently aired, or will soon air, on Turner Classic Movies, one of the only remaining fully-curated, 24-hour film channels on television.
In an age where most media is scattered across various online streaming platforms, all of which are controlled by a handful of massive conglomerates, TCM has been a breath of fresh air and a reassurance all in one. Despite the network’s ill-fated foray into the streaming world, the channel itself has a reputation for being unusually static.
While most platforms like Netflix are centered around the up and coming, with a rotating roster of fresh movies, TCM as a brand is sold on its unchanging collection of gold and silver age films. When media mogul Ted Turner founded TCM in 1994, he based the channel around a library of movies he’d acquired from his purchase of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer nearly a decade earlier. Though TCM now supplements its library with movies licensed from other production companies, its basis is in a backlog of old movies from MGM and current parent company, Warner Bros.
It is the fact that TCM is founded on these pre-existing movie libraries that makes the network such a valued anomaly in today’s media landscape. Instead of selling on novelty alone, TCM had to market movies that had already been seen. This challenge naturally led to TCM becoming a major player in film education and preservation.
The network has become known for high-quality curation and commentary, led by VP of programming Charles Tabesh, giving viewers context and history for why the films they’re seeing are important. TCM has also worked in collaboration with Scorsese’s film preservation company, The Film Foundation, and helped to restore 11 classic movies in 2023 alone.
For film buffs, TCM is a steady beacon of light in an increasingly uneasy and impermanent landscape, and the network has gathered something of a cult following over the years. So, when Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav laid off the network’s entire executive team in June of 2023, there was some backlash.
TCM viewers had already been wary of Zaslav’s place at TCM’s parent company following the Warner Bros. merger with Discovery. He was behind the abrupt cancellation and permanent loss of the “Batgirl” movie, which was in post-production at the time, and was likely shelved for tax benefits according to sources.
Zaslav was also behind the change of “HBO Max” to just “Max,” and came under fire for the platform’s push towards “female-leaning” reality television shows, as opposed to “male-leaning” critically acclaimed prestige dramas. Suffice to say, fans of a channel known for the preservation and celebration of cinema were not confident in his ability to lead their favorite network.
Unfortunately, their fears were confirmed with the TCM layoffs. Fans were particularly upset about the loss of Tabesh, who had been in his position for over 25 years at the time, as well as VP of enterprises and TCM festival director Genevieve McGillicuddy, who had been with the network for almost 20 years.
While there was plenty of outcry among average television watchers, there was also a loud show of opposition from within the Hollywood community. A number of actors expressed their concern and disappointment in the situation, including Ryan Reynolds, Ellen Barkin and Brian Cox. But perhaps most importantly, the changes caught the attention of Scorsese and his fellow directors Steven Spielberg and Paul Thomas Anderson.
Scorsese, Spielberg and Anderson met with Zaslav privately the day after the layoffs were announced. All three are members of The Film Foundation’s board of directors had a vested professional interest in making sure TCM remained afloat to continue their working relationship. Personally, they have all been outspoken fans of TCM and its library for years, leaving the channel on while they work and making appearances at the network’s annual festival.
After meeting with Zaslav, the trio of directors released a statement announcing that they were “heartened and encouraged” by the talk. A little over a week later, it was announced that they would be acting as consultants for the network, and that Tabesh would be returning to his previous role as VP of programming. Just a short time after that, McGillicuddy was reinstalled as VP of enterprises.
Many people saw the fact that such monumental directors needed to step in at all as a dismal sign of things to come. Scorsese is, after all, in his 80s, with Spielberg not far behind. However, the real takeaway from this series of events should be that they were able to stop Zaslav from destroying a beloved historical treasure. They successfully convinced a CEO to value social capital over his profit margins, which is generally a rare occurrence.
Even if the old guard of directing is on its way out in Hollywood, all hope for the future is not lost. Apart from their important work preserving and restoring movies for future generations, Scorsese’s The Film Foundation provides a series of educational materials so that students can learn about movies for free. The Criterion Collection is also working to restore, distribute and educate the public on classic movies that are considered essential to film education.
And, of course, TCM is still up and better than ever, with carefully curated educational programming playing 24-hours a day, a festival in April and even a new podcast coming out later this year. With any luck, the channel will stay that way, and continue to inspire Oscar nominees for decades to come.
