Jerry Harvey
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Jerry Harvey (1949 – 1988) was a California filmmaker and programmer, best known for his work on Z Channel, a pioneering cable station in the Hollywood Hills. Harvey's devotion to cinema and choice of rare and important films had an important influence on such directors as Robert Altman, Quentin Tarantino, and Jim Jarmusch. Harvey' died in 1988 when, after murdering his wife, he committed suicide.
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[edit] Early life
Harvey was born in Bakersfield, California, in 1949. His upbringing was not a happy one. His father, a judge in Bakersfield, Kern County, had sent the most people to death row than any previous judge in his county. His eldest sister Mary disappeared when he was a student at UCLA, and his next-eldest sister Ann died in a very theatrical suicide.
As a child, Harvey became obsessed with the movies. The first film he ever saw, Jubilee Trail, inspired him to eventually make and "midwife" films.
[edit] Filmmaking
While attending UCLA in the 1970s, Harvey developed a fast friendship with Douglas Venturelli. The pair cowrote a number of screenplays. Monte Hellman directed their script, a western, called If China 9, Liberty 37. The western was a genre Harvey loved. The film never received American distribution.
[edit] Programming
Harvey began programming at the Encore Theatre and then the Beverly Canon (a local cinema). There, he developed a reputation for programming offbeat films by well-respected directors, such as Altman's The Long Goodbye. He was best known for screening the director's cut of Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch, for which Peckinpah personally brought in the print.
[edit] Z Channel
It is said that after hearing him yell at the TV one time, his wife Vera suggested that he write to the head of programming at the cable network SelecTV to complain. The letter so impressed the heads of SelecTV that they invited Harvey to program a few films. His choices, a Laura Antonelli soft-core flick and a documentary about political uprising in Greece, showed the eclecticism that would become his trademark at Z Channel.
Not long after he arrived at SelecTV, a job opened up at Z Channel -- a pay service founded in 1974 to bring better reception to houses in the Hollywood Hills. About six months after he started work at Z the main programmer took ill and Harvey stepped into his shoes. He took over programming in 1980.
Harvey became known for programming especially of foreign and independent feature films by up-and-coming directors. During his tenure at Z he pioneered both the director's cut and the cable "special event" trends by screening the three and a half-hour director's cut of Michael Cimino's rarely seen western Heaven's Gate. This would lead to a close friendship between Cimino and Harvey that would last his entire life.
