Way back in this message in July, I mentioned I was working on a "secret project" that gave me much joy. Fifty years ago next month, a movie changed my life a lot and in a good way. I was delighted to participate in what will easily be the best version of it ever made available to the public for home viewing.
January 21 of next year, the Criterion Collection — the class act of home video — will bring out a five-disc set of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. Here's their announcement…
Stanley Kramer followed his Oscar-winning Judgment at Nuremberg with this sobering investigation of American greed. Ah, who are we kidding? It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, about a group of strangers fighting tooth and nail over buried treasure, is the most grandly harebrained movie ever made, a pileup of slapstick and borscht-belt-y one-liners performed by a nonpareil cast, including Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Ethel Merman, Mickey Rooney, Spencer Tracy, Jonathan Winters, and a boatload of other playing-to-the-rafters comedy legends. For sheer scale of silliness, Kramer's wildly uncharacteristic film is unlike any other, an exhilarating epic of tomfoolery.
- Restored 4K digital film transfer of the general release version of the film, with 5.1 surround Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- New high-definition digital transfer of a 197-minute extended version of the film, reconstructed and restored by Robert A. Harris using visual and audio material from the longer original road-show version—including some scenes that have been returned to the film here for the first time—with 5.1 surround Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- New audio commentary featuring It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World aficionados Mark Evanier, Michael Schlesinger, and Paul Scrabo
- New documentary on the film's visual and sound effects, featuring rare behind-the-scenes footage of the crew at work and interviews with visual-effects specialist Craig Barron and sound designer Ben Burtt
- Talk show from 1974 hosted by director Stanley Kramer and featuring Mad World actors Sid Caesar, Buddy Hackett, and Jonathan Winters
- Press interview from 1963 featuring Kramer and members of the film's cast
- Interviews recorded for the 2000 AFI program 100 Years…100 Laughs, featuring comedians and actors discussing the influence of the film
- Two-part 1963 episode of the CBC television program Telescope that follows the film's press junket and premiere
- The Last 70mm Film Festival, a program from 2012 featuring cast and crew members from Mad World at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, hosted by Billy Crystal
- Selection of humorist and voice-over artist Stan Freberg's original TV and radio advertisements for the film, with a new introduction by Freberg
- Original and rerelease trailers, and rerelease radio spots
- Two Blu-rays and three DVDs, with all content available in both formats
- PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film critic Lou Lumenick
It's been an open secret for some time that they were doing this and I apologize to many of you who wrote to ask what I knew of it and couldn't be answered. Some of you even guessed it was my "secret project" — and by the way, I don't want to give the impression that I did more than appear on the commentary track and offer some advice and info to the fine folks who really put this together.
I am amazed though that some lovers of this film have posted messages of genuine fury across the Internet, livid that the film was not coming out when they wanted it to come out; upset that Criterion was withholding a formal announcement of a release date and what would be on it; demanding that certain things be included, etc. Let me state something that oughta be obvious to all but apparently isn't…
Putting something like this together is a helluva lot of work. Footage must be located. It must be processed and restored and color-corrected and such. Rights to some extras must be obtained. If you're the releasing company, you don't want to announce what's going to be in the set until you're reasonably certain you can deliver it. They're announcing it now because they're reasonably certain. They couldn't announce it months ago because they weren't. (And things are still turning up. We recorded the commentary track in July and we're going back into the studio next week to record additional narration for "lost footage" that has been located and added in since then.)
I'm delighted with what I've seen so far, my one regret being that it won't be out next month for the 50th anniversary. But it wouldn't have been as good or as complete if they had hit that deadline so I'm glad they didn't. I'll tell you more about it and post a link to order when we get closer to January.