I was saddened to hear of the passing of Nick Redman–filmmaker, cineaste and co-founder of the Twilight Time Blu-ray label—who died on January 17 following an extended battle with cancer.
I’d spoken with Mr. Redman several times over the previous decade, beginning in 2011, the year he co-founded Twilight Time along with partner Brian Jamieson. Dedicated to bringing high definition editions of classic and not-quite-classic widescreen studio films to Blu-ray and DVD—the kind of catalog titles that the studios didn’t want to invest their distribution dollars or time on—Twilight Time arrived on the scene with such diverse titles as the sprawling CinemaScope epic The Egyptian (1954), the colorful 1966 remake of the classic Stagecoach featuring Red Buttons and Ann-Margret (!) and, more recently, the Madison Avenue working gals saga The Best of Everything (1959) and 1961’s Mysterious Island, a fantastical adventure adapted from a Jules Verne novel and featuring the wonderful stop motion creations of effects wizard Ray Harryhausen.
Nick Redman, 1955-2019
DiscDish.com was one year old when Mr. Redman and his team hung their shingle, and he was only too happy to tell me about his outfit’s MO and talk film when I contacted him to request to be put on Twilight Time’s mailing list. He was as charming and polite and lively as any studio or label executive I had ever spoken to, which is notable as it was back when emailing was beginning to replace phone calling as the primary method of communication between journalists and just about everyone.
I spoke to Mr. Redman more-or-less annually from that point on, usually after forwarding him DiscDish’s write-ups of Twilight Time’s titles, nearly all of which we covered, either with new release announcements or reviews. I once had a particularly lively chat with Mr. Redman following the publication of my review of Walter Hill’s 1978 crime thriller The Driver, the package of which also featured an exuberant essay by Twilight Time Creative Director Julie Kirgo, Mr. Redman’s partner of many years. Mr. Redman and Ms. Kirgo also contributed commentary tracks to a number of Twilight Time releases, which were always entertaining and insightful. After listening to just a few minutes of any of Mr. Redman’s commentaries, you could quickly identify him as true film lover who thrived on sharing that love, as well as his wealth of knowledge on the subject, with those who had a similar passion.
A really nice guy. He will be missed.
Sad. A great loss.