"All About the Golden Age of the Made For T.V. Movie with Amanda Reyes 

From Mitch’s Notebook about the episode: 

“One of many, in my view, most unwelcome developments in public commentary as of late are the explicit demarcations being made regarding culture - usually between the trivial and the essential, or between the irrelevant and the mandatory. 

The suppressed question then becomes, who gets decide where that line is and should we all fall in line? I am not suggesting that some works of art are not in fact better than others in all sorts of ways, but I am stating that those evaluations have little or nothing to do with the style of art and when, where, or how it was made. 

I have been a fan of Amanda Reyes' podcast, Made For T.V. Mayhem for sone time now and one of the many things I love about her show is that, for her, dramatic feature productions made for television in the 70s and 80s are never irrelevant and always valuable. Reyes is both a film and television historian and scholar as we all as a film archivist and thus it was a real joy to finally sit down with her and discuss some frankly forgotten gems that happened to have been made for the small screen over several decades. Is Night Terror (Night Drive) starring Valerie Harper dated or irrelevant? 

Since it is a film representing in frank terms a woman trying to find herself amidst an extreme situation, and since things like that do happen in life, for better and worse, we feel that that particular t.v. movie is always ever relevant. If you listen to our episode you might be inclined agree. We hope you enjoy our discussion as much as we did having it. I learned a lot from Amanda Reyes. 

Her mind moves very fast and I have to struggle to keep up with her, which in itself was lots of fun. She knows more about television and television history than anybody I have ever met and is a genuinely warm and engaging conversationalist. " 

Amanda Reyes is an archivist, author, film and television historian and academic. She edited and co-wrote Are You in the House Alone? A TV Movie Compendium: 1964-1999 (Headpress, 2017) which celebrates the made for television film, and was featured on Barnes and Noble’s Best of Horror list for 2017. She's been a guest speaker at international film festivals and conferences in such places as the UK, Australia, and the United States. She's also contributed commentary tracks for several made for television Blu-Ray and DVD releases, including the made for TV movies The Girl Most Likely To... (1973), Nightmare in Badham County (1976), Amazons (1984) and Death Dreams (1991), all of which were released through Kino Lorber in 2019. For 18 months, Amanda also curated a quarterly series of made for TV mystery screenings at the Alamo Drafthouse, and has hosted other screenings in conjunction with the Austin Film Society. When she has a moment, she also podcasts and blogs about anything vintage small screen. 

Made for TV Mayhem (blog): www.madefortvmayhem.com 

Made for TV Mayhem Show (podcast): www.tvmayhempodcast.wordpress.com 

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