'REEL LIFE', a Memoir by Tony Sloman
Producer, Director, Film Editor, Sound Editor, Writer. Tony Sloman has done it all.

Readers familiar with the original Widescreen Weekend, Bradford, England are no doubt also familiar with the amazing Tony Sloman and his fantastic introductions to a long line of classic 70mm films.

• Go to in70mm.com review of 'REEL LIFE': Reel Life grips and engages from the start

MGM at Borehamwood was the only studio in Europe to have its own laboratories and special fx department in the studio itself, and that department was under the great fx man Tom Howard, who had won his Oscars for Blithe Spirit and tom thumb.

I made an appointment to see the great man, and arrived at the laboratory on the MGM lot a little early. In the foyer, sitting at a table, were two young Americans, who introduced themselves as Doug Trumbull and Con Pederson, and they were over here for work on Stanley Kubrick’s new project, a space film called, tentatively, 2OO1. Stanley Kubrick! My hero!! (I didn’t say). I just asked them all about it, and they told me that, since it was an MGM picture, they would be doing it all here, at MGM Borehamwood. It would be cheaper, and there would be no Hollywood interference. Besides which, Stanley Kubrick now lived over here, after Dr. Strangelove and Lolita. I hadn’t really time to chat with them, but we exchanged pleasantries, and they invited me to look over some time at the sets they were building, which I eventually did.

I then went up the stairs to Tom Howard’s office, and noticed on the wall a large transparency of the funeral scene from Doctor Zhivago, where the young Yuri watches his father being buried. I’d seen the film only a couple of weeks before, at the Empire, Leicester Square, in the 70mm. opening print. The door opened to reveal Tom Howard, who saw me looking at the picture. “Hi,” he said, “I’m Tom Howard. You must be Tony.” Then, looking at the picture on the wall: “Like it?” “Yes,” I replied, “I’ve only just seen it.” “What do you think of the sky?” I looked at the picture. “Oh, David Lean’s skies are always ravishing--” Tom cut me off. “That’s not David Lean’s sky. That’s ours. He just shot the foreground.” And then I knew I was in a den of wonders, a secret world where everything might not be quite as it appeared. I was clearly in the right place to lose our cigarette packet from the fight scene, and nobody would ever notice, and I secretly thanked Val Guest and Bill Lenny for giving me this opportunity. How thankful I would be eventually to know, and be able to work with, the wonderful Tom Howard would greatly show in the next time that I was to work at MGM, on what was to become arguably the greatest, most original, filmed television series of all time, for I would be working virtually hand-in-hand with Tom Howard’s superb FX department on the television series entitled The Prisoner.

How to get 'REEL LIFE', a memoir by Tony Sloman
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