hey guys,

I just finished capturing the Ronald Haver commentary off the Criterion Laserdisc and was wondering if anyone was interested in it. I have leeched quite a few things off of you guys from myspleen, and just wanted to give something back that to my knowledge hasn’t been offered here before and isn’t on any DVDs anywhere. note: I have only been reading this forum for a few months, so it might have been put out sometime, but it didnt’ come up in the search box.

I was contemplating posting it on a newsgroup somewhere, but I don’t really want to do that and be labelled a source in some lawsuit, plus I have no idea how to do that anyway. PM me if you would like it, and I can send it to you on AIM or something.

Also, if someone has some webspace and bandwidth and would like to post it for people to download, that might be a little more secure than just throwing our IP addresses all around the usenet.

I have the raw wav that is 506 MB, a flac file that’s 293 MB, and a 128 kB/sec mp3 that’s 91.2 MB.

Here’s what I wrote in the nfo file:

This is a laserdisc audio capture of Ronald Haver’s commentary for Merian C. Cooper’s “King Kong” (1933) from Criterion’s release. It has the distinction of being the first commentary ever published with a home video, opening with the lines, “Hello Ladies and Gentlemen, I’m Ronald Haver, and I’m here to do something that we feel is rather unique. I’m going to take you on a lecture tour of King Kong as you watch the film.”

As far as commentaries go, it’s not all that great. He doesn’t even directly reference the image that is on the screen for twenty minutes or so, but since it was the first commentary and not available on any DVD to which I have access, I decided to capture it and share it. The stories are second hand from Cooper, and Haver seems to do his best to suck all the fun out of them. Very professorial.

Also, please realize that this has not been modified to sync up with any DVD’s video stream, so it’s more just for audio use only. I suppose you could play both simulataneously, but the audio might get off at the side changes of the LD. If you want to hack it up to make it match the video, knock yourself out.

Let me know if you’re interested,
–bdev