Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession

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• 85   Metascore
• 2004
• 2 hr 2 mins
• Documentary
• R

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Presents a profile of the Z Channel, one of the US's first and at the time most successful pay cable stations launched in 1974, this one serving much of Los Angeles, and of its programming director in the 1980s, Jerry Harvey, who is credited with much of its success. A highly knowledgeable cinephile, Harvey programmed an eclectic mix of movies in an era where access to films in general was limited to cinemas or traditional television just as home video was emerging. His programming was much like film festivals, thus opening up such to larger audiences than could access movies at traditional festivals. He provided viewers access to hard to find movies, many unknown to the general public until he programmed them. He also championed certain, often previously panned movies and filmmakers, many who became his friends. Many of those movies were what was then emerging of director's cuts in he wanting to show a film as a director had envisioned as opposed to what a movie studio had dictated. The most famous in that category is Michael Cimino's highly derided Heaven's Gate (1980), that derision until it was shown on Z in its extended cut as Cimino had intended. Much of what Harvey was able to achieve at Z is overshadowed by his personal life, in he, having mental health issues which ran in his family - his largely associated with obsessive behavior - committing a murder (of who was his second and then current wife, Deri Rudulph)/suicide just before the demise of Z itself for other reasons.