Two of my favorite movies from 1984 are Ghostbusters and Gremlins. I turned twelve that year and both movies were aimed squarely at me. But it was a banner year for classic movies that geeks love. Along with those two, there were the other big hits I love – Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, The Karate Kid, The Terminator, The Muppets Take Manhattan – and a slew of other memorable classics that I’ve also made my kids watch – The Last Starfighter, 2010: The Year We Make Contact, Dune (Lynch-style), Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, Red Dawn, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, Cloak & Dagger. There are more storied years in cinema history, even for geeks. But the weird, diverse collection of many of my favorites and the fact that I was in my ‘wonder years’ makes 1984 the top year on my list despite the fact that my top-three films (Star Wars: Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Tombstone) were not a part of it. It would be hard to imagine our culture without the movies of 1984.
But there is one movie no one got to see in 1984. A sci-fi/fantasy comedy that featured the stars of Ghostbusters, Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd, and starred the male lead of Gremlins, Zach Galligan (not Gizmo, sorry). It was scheduled to be released in the movie-doldrums of September, only three months after the wild successes of Ghostbusters and Gremlins. Just before its release date, MGM pulled the film.
Was it too terrible to be released? A prominent member of the Cannes’ Film Festival called it a masterpiece and begged MGM to screen it! They refused. They said there was no audience for it. To this day, it has never been officially released. How could a movie with – not one, but three – proven, bankable stars, a movie that was complete, finished, be buried to never see the lights of the silver screen? Or even the home screen in the age of streaming? How is it that we still can’t buy this lost classic on any platform in any country?
That is the mystery of Nothing Lasts Forever, directed by Tom Schiller. I learned about it a year ago and became a little obsessed. I didn’t expect the movie to be great. I didn’t think I had been deprived of a life-changing film to rival the ones on my list above. But I was nevertheless indignant – why is this film forbidden to me‽ I would pay to see it. I wanted to pay for it. A sci-fi/fantasy comedy with Murray and Aykroyd – Peter Venkman and Ray Stantz? Take my money already, MGM!
Our world, the real world, is largely without mystery these days. We know there is no intelligent life on Mars. Ghosts, aliens, bigfoot? Light entertainment, fully debunked. Cameras and facts at our fingertips easily explain and demystify. That’s not a bad thing, the world is a far better place for it. We are left with only the greatest mysteries – God and women – and the smallest, lowest-stakes mysteries, like Nothing Lasts Forever and Finding Drago.
It was the latter of these, a show about two Australian pop-culture detectives investigating a fan-fiction conspiracy (and its successors Finding Desperado and Finding Yeezus), that inspired me to track down a copy of Nothing Lasts Forever. This quest wasn’t of the same ilk as the “Finding” series – we know the film is real, who made it, etc – and I wasn’t even thinking about writing a blog post about my search, but I relished the challenge of it. I wouldn’t be solving any mysteries about the film, like why it was shelved, but I would be ‘finding’ the film itself. Hopefully.
I set up a Google Alert for ‘Nothing Lasts Forever Tom Schiller’ hoping to learn of any screenings I might be able to attend. Yes, some people have seen the film. It has been screened by the director a few times, was aired at least once on the BBC in the 90s, aired once on TCM in 2015, and was briefly uploaded to YouTube. I missed all of those, but the Google Alert was my long-term play. The movie had to turn up eventually.
Next I looked for bootlegs. I used to attend sci-fi, comic book, and gaming conventions between ten and twenty years ago. In the ‘dealer’s room’ of most regional and national conventions you could find one or two merchants selling discs and VHS tapes of hard-to-find movies and TV shows – Song of the South, Star Wars Christmas Special, anime before it was cool, etc. The legality of this practice was questionable, but there was no other way to see these lost gems and even George Lucas couldn’t afford to send lawyers and spies to every convention. The truth is, a little bit of piracy – of only the most obscure stuff for the most diehard fans – is good for business and stopping it when you won’t release this stuff yourself makes you look petty (take note, MGM!). That’s why you can find lots of obscure stuff uploaded to YouTube – it’s often in the copyright holder’s interest to leave it be.
Those booths at those conventions were before YouTube and streaming, so I didn’t know if there was still a market for this type of product at today’s conventions. But geek conventions have only gotten bigger and more mainstream in the last decade, so I thought it might be worth a try. Luckily, my seventeen-year-old was headed to our city’s Comic Con with his friends. I briefed him thoroughly on what to look for and what to ask (in case a merchant had a secret stash under the table). He searched the dealer’s room high and low and came up empty. He gave me a detailed accounting, so I know he did a thorough job for his old man (and he loves this kind of stuff too). None of the booths sold movies. Other than Nothing Lasts Forever, what else could a bootlegger sell today that you can’t find streaming or uploaded to YouTube? Certainly not enough material to warrant the booth fee.
I would get the occasional hit on my Google Alert. When Warner Bros shelved Batgirl there were a slew of articles mentioning Nothing Lasts Forever in lists of never-released and unfinished projects (there’s a Richard Pryor film on those lists that is nearly as intriguing). But the hits were all for think-pieces and mentions, no hard evidence to follow or announcements of screenings.
So I grew tired of waiting and tried searching deeper – past Google’s first page of hits. And the second. We’re talking ‘third page’ here! There are a lot of scam sites that will try to sell you the film, but they tripped the Norton security alert every time. My impatience had taken me where I had been scared to tread before. It took me to the ‘dark web’.
But also, I found a bit of the light side. A forum post, an invitation to screen the film to true seekers. It could have been a scam, but asked for nothing upfront. I took the risk.
It paid off! I’ve seen the film. My quest has been completed. I followed in the footsteps of those relentless Australian comedians to pull off my own little ‘finding’.
“So… how was it?” you ask. Next time.
Arthur P. Dutton 