Expanded Hitchcock: Vertigo

Thomas P. Pollock served as Vice Chairman and Executive Vice President of MCA Inc. and Chairman of its Motion Picture Group, Universal Pictures. During Pollock’s tenure as Chairman, Universal released over 200 films that grossed in excess of $10 billion worldwide including Jurassic Park, the then highest grossing film of all time, Parenthood, Cape Fear, Back to the Future 2 and 3, Casper, Backdraft, Do The Right Thing, Fried Green Tomatoes and Lorenzo’s Oil. Also during this time Universal had seven Academy Award Best Picture Nominations, including Schindler’s List, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1993.

Mr. Pollock played a key role in the creation of United Cinemas International (UCI), a joint venture with Paramount Pictures, which has become the largest exhibitor outside North America, with nearly 700 multiplex screens. Mr. Pollock worked with Director/Producer Ivan Reitman to create The Montecito Picture Company, which produced a wide range of films including Old School, Disturbia, Up in the Air, Hitchcock, Draft Day, and the forthcoming Baywatch (2017) starring Dwayne Johnson and Zac Efron.

James Katz is a film producer and restorationist. With Bob Harris, he was responsible for the restorations of Rear Window, Vertigo, Spartacus and My Fair Lady. He has produced such features as Scenes From the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills and Nobody’s Fool.  Katz received a B.A. from Ohio State University and began his career in the United Artists publicity department, eventually becoming Director of Worldwide Publicity.  As President and founder of the Universal Pictures Classics Division in the early 1980s, Katz was responsible for the reissue of five Hitchcock films – Rear Window, Vertigo, Rope, The Trouble With Harry, and The Man Who Knew Too Much – as well as the reissue of the Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night.  Under Katz’ aegis, Universal Pictures Classics became the first classics division to be involved in film production, with John Huston’s Under the Volcano. Katz was also involved in bringing such films as Jerszy Skolimowski’s Moonlighting, Merchant Ivory’s Heat and Dust, Nagisa Oshima’s Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence and Franco Zeffirelli’s La Traviata to U.S. audiences. Katz has been a longtime member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, and is a charter member of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, Los Angeles.

Charles Wolfe, moderator, is Professor of Film & Media Studies, whose research and teaching interests include international film history and theory; American cinema and cultural history; documentary film and photography; historiography; archival studies; comedy performance; voice in cinema; and film sound. He is the author of two books on the films of director Frank Capra and has published widely on various aspects of the history of commercial, independent, and documentary filmmaking in the U.S. With Edward Branigan, he co-edits the American Film Institute’s Film Reader Series, which to date has published 30 volumes of new critical essays on topics of contemporary concern in film, television, and new media studies.

A member of the Board of Directors of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies from 2006 to 2009, Wolfe also has served as a consulting scholar for the New York Center for Visual History’s American Cinema Project, as a member of the AFI’s Academic Advisory Council, and as a Rockefeller Fellow at the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research. Wolfe received the Outstanding Pedagogy Award from the Society for Cinema and Media Studies in 2011, and is a past recipient of a Distinguished Teaching Award from the UCSB Academic Senate. He chaired the Department of Film and Media Studies from 1994 to 1998, and served as Associate Dean of Humanities and Fine Arts in the College of Letters and Science at UCSB from 2003 to 2008.