Z Channel created an outlet for marginalized films to blossom.

In 1980, director Michael Cimino, who won an Academy Award for 1978’s The Deer Hunter, released an ambitious and expensive Western titled Heaven’s Gate. After the studio cut 70 minutes from Cimino’s three hour and 40 minute version, the recut film received abysmal reviews. It was such a huge flop that it caused United Artists to declare bankruptcy. Following the film’s disappointing results, studios reined in the freedoms directors enjoyed in the ‘70s, giving filmmakers less artistic control over their works.

But the reputation of Heaven’s Gate was given a reprieve when an upstart  Los Angeles cable movie station called the Z Channel aired the director’s cut of the film. With the 70 cut minutes added back to Heaven’s Gate, viewers were able to grasp Cimino’s intent, and some started to come to the realization that Heaven’s Gate was far from the worst picture ever made.

Z Channel, which was broadcast in a portion of Los Angeles from 1974 to 1989, not only resurrected Heaven’s Gate, but also helped make flops like Robert Altman’s 1971 film McCabe and Mrs. Miller cult classics. Z Channel also brought European movies like Andrzej Zulawski’s The Important Thing Is to Love to American audiences.

In the 2004 documentary Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession, filmmaker Xan Cassavetes—daughter of independent film legend John Cassavetes and his collaborator Gena Rowlands—interviews all sorts of Hollywood bigshots, like Quentin Tarantino and Alexander Payne (Sideways), about the project’s lasting legacy. In one segment, actor James Woods calls his meeting with Z Channel program director Jerry Harvey the turning point in his acting career.

Woods credits the Z Channel’s saturation broadcast of the political thriller Salvador in December, when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announces its nominees, for his nomination for a Best Actor Academy Award.

While watching Cassavetes’ documentary, it is apparent that the rise and fall of the Z Channel was inextricably linked to program director Jerry Harvey. A film buff who co-wrote the script for a 1978 Western titled China 9, Liberty 37, Harvey helped Z Channel develop an eclectic offering of films that caused the cable channel to thrive. For a number of years, the Z Channel had more viewers than HBO and Showtime in LA.

More importantly, Harvey used Z Channel to launch the careers of directors like Paul Verhoeven (Robocop), and was about 20 years ahead of his time by showing the director’s cuts of various films on the station. These days, even Hollywood junk like Gone in 60 Seconds is released on DVD in special-edition director’s cut versions.

The documentary also shows that, unfortunately, both the Z Channel and Harvey had bad endings. The Z Channel was eventually bought out by a Seattle cable company and rechristened Z Plus. The ill-conceived new version of Z Channel attempted to sandwich eclectic films between broadcasts of sports events. Meanwhile, after years of struggling with personal demons, Harvey shot and killed his second wife and then himself.

Before Harvey’s death, John McNally, current general manager of Pacific Grove NPR affiliate KAZU, was able to interview the influential programmer for a Santa Monica NPR radio show called Castaway’s Choice. McNally’s interview is featured prominently throughout the Z Channel documentary. McNally, who says he was a fan of the station while living in Westwood during the early ‘80s, says that by subscribing to the Z Channel “you could basically have a movie festival every night in your home.”

Ever since the documentary came out in 2004, McNally has been looking for a way to screen the film in the Monterey area. When Monterey’s Golden State Theatre started to play old movies, McNally knew he had found the right venue. Then McNally had two revelations. First, in addition to showing Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession, the Golden State Theatre should show a series of films that were featured on the legendary cable channel. Second, McNally realized that the film festival could serve as KAZU’s annual summer fundraiser.

McNally chose a handful of films, with the help of people like Golden State Theatre general manager Matt Molloy, the documentary’s production team, Cassavetes and FX Feeney—a movie critic and friend of the now deceased Harvey. But Molloy, who had to track down prints of the films, found that the task was a little harder than expected. Some films that he wanted were difficult to find—especially the 1980 Nicholas Roeg film Bad Timing, a twisted love story starring Art Garfunkel and Theresa Russell. Molloy discovered that there were no prints of Bad Timing remaining in the United States. He eventually found that the only known print of the film was owned by London’s Winstone Films, which agreed to send the movie for the festival.

In addition to the screening of the Z Channel documentary and seven films that were popular on the channel, the film festival will include appearances by Cassavetes, the documentary’s producers Rick Ross and Marshall Persinger, and director Stuart Cooper, whose films Overlord and The Disappearance were Z Channel stalwarts.

Though the Z Channel has been given an American Film Institute tribute, McNally believes that there has never been another Z Channel film festival. “This is really a first,” he says.

McNally says that if this event is successful, Z Fest could become an annual local event. “It has the potential to go on,” he says, “because so many films were shown on the Z Channel.”

FOR A COMPLETE SCHEDULE OF Z FEST EVENTS, SEE RELATED ARTICLE