Courtesy of Paramount Pictures

FINDING MY FIRST ROOTIE KAZOOTIE PRINT

In 1975 I was working on the first DEATH WISH movie, starring Charles Bronson, as a production assistant to the assistant director and production manager. I’d been out of college a year.

It was when I was scouting locations for a warehouse to rent in New York’s Greenwich Village, to build some of the main sets and props for the movie, that I had my first Rootie Kazootie experience.

All I remember today is walking into a large empty warehouse that had just been cleaned up, and all that remained in the room was a large garbage can filled with trash, pieces of wood and plaster.

But stuck on top of the pile was a medium-sized reel of 16mm film. What was it?

Prior to walking into the warehouse, there was no such thing as video taping anything--in fact there was no such word in our vocabulary.

I was one of the few people in the country that was part of a breed of celluloid 16mm film collectors, able to buy old kinescopes and films of old shows and movies and run them at home with my 16mm projector and a screen on the wall

It was a hobby started in college when I saw that I could buy films at flea markets and then rent them to my school, which never had a film series or access to movies because they didn’t exist for students to view.(see TELEVISION TOY STORY catalog for detailed story of lost TV history and the Television Archives sections of TELEVISIONTOYS.COM

back at the can....WOW IT’S ROOTIE KAZOOTIE

There was no reason I can remember today, or back then, as to why there was even a reel of 16mm film in this large-sized garbage can.

But when I looked at that film leader and saw the name Rootie Kazootie on it, and then held the first few frames after the countdown, to see an image of Rootie in the opening frame in the dull light, it brought a wave of memory flashes of my childhood rushing before me.

I never asked anyone why the film was there, and I can’t remember if I asked what the warehouse was before, but I did put the film under my coat and left with it.

Here I was, learning to work in society for the first time since college, and now remembering my childhood through my one-time favorite kids show.

It’s also around this time that I started becoming a toy, film, poster, picture, and book collector, and the future Noah’s Ark of collecting a little of everything.

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