Inveterate credits readers who have Arrow releases in their collection have no doubt seen the name James White. That said, White is stepping back into a producer's chair for the first time in several years with Arrow's release of
Wild Style, and Blu-ray.com's Jeffrey Kauffman conducted an interview with James about his career, Arrow, and this particular release.
JMK: Let's start with some biographical background.
JW: I've been involved in film restoration for about 30 years or so, and I've been Head of Restoration at Arrow Films for nearly 12 years. Before that I worked for a decade at the BFI, and I've assisted with numerous projects for Eureka/Masters of Cinema and a few other film labels along the way.
Before relocating to the UK, I spent a few years working at film labs and archives in New York. Like most people I know who work in this field, my journey to specialising in film restoration wasn't at all straightforward and it wasn't until after a few years of working in this industry that I decided that was going to be my focus. It had become clear that my passion for film history was stronger than my interest in current cinema, so the opportunity to work on older films was exciting to me.
Why did you decide to return to producing with Wild Style? What about that particular movie caught your interest?
Over the years I've been fortunate to have been able to work on a number of film titles that have meant something special to me -
Cruising, Excalibur, American Gigolo, Ms. 45, The Warriors, The Dollars Trilogy all being recent examples. But
Wild Style remained something of a personal white whale for me, as it was a title I never thought I'd get the chance to work on for a few reasons. For one thing, it's not really the type of film that Arrow normally releases, so I didn't expect much enthusiasm for it. I had also assumed that rights and materials would be too complicated to navigate through. So I was content to put it out of my mind in the hope that someday another label would give the film the kind of release it deserved.
But then at some point a couple years ago, my restoration colleague Jimmy Pearcey and I were discussing dream projects, and I brought up
Wild Style again. To give credit where it's due, Jimmy played a big part in pushing us to investigate what the rights situation actually was - and whether it was something we could actually restore and release. And then over a few months, surprisingly, everything ended up falling into place.
Why do I feel so strongly about this film?
I first saw
Wild Style during its theatrical run in late 1983 in Cambridge, MA. I was only 12 years old at the time, but It's no exaggeration to say that the film had a profound effect on my life from that point on. Sure, I'd had some exposure to hip hop before then ("Rapper's Delight", "The Message", etc.) but this film revealed an entire world to me, one that felt both raw and fully formed at the same time. The young talent onscreen was bursting from every frame, creating this incredible outlaw art and this mind-blowing DIY music.
Wild Style allowed viewers like me to experience the original hip hop scene in its truest form, unspoiled by commercialism or success. This was our punk rock. I wrote a short piece in our booklet in which I describe the effect that viewing had on me, as it did for so many others at the time. Experiencing the film at that tender age was a gateway drug of sorts, as it sparked an obsession that has never really left me, one that had a profound effect on my subsequent interests in art, music and cinema.
Anyway, given my knowledge and enthusiasm for the film, it made sense for me not only to oversee the restoration but to be the producer of our release as well. It was such a great opportunity that I didn't foresee any problems with this arrangement, although if I knew the amount of work I was in for, I might have thought differently! I can say that this project has certainly instilled in me a renewed respect for the extent of the work a producer does.
What exactly are your duties as the producer of the project?
While the restoration team is responsible for making sure the presentation of any film we restore is delivered in the highest quality while being as historically accurate as possible, the producer's job is to manage all other aspects of what's included on the release.
For the actual disc this means making curatorial decisions about what to present alongside the feature, from the sourcing and selection of archival extras to the creation of new interviews, feature commentaries, short films, etc.
For the booklet, this includes the commissioning of new essays as well as doing the necessary research to locate valuable historic written work on the film. This also involves the careful selection of stills, artwork and how the contents of the booklet are organised.
And then finally there's working with a designer in making decisions about how the film is represented in its artwork, packaging, disc menus, and every other physical aspect of the release. It's working with Arrow's media team to ensure that the disc contents are organised and encoded according to plan, and like restoration, countless hours are spent watching and reviewing all of these aspects to make sure that nothing is missed, and no mistakes get through. And of course all of this needs to be done in keeping with a set budget and a fast-approaching deadline.
I should add that although the producer is the one managing all these things, producing any release at Arrow is a collaborative process involving many key people assisting along the way. In this situation I was incredibly fortunate to have my colleague Leila Hall as my co-producer, as she helped in no small way to keep me and the project on track, throughout the entire process.
Tell us about the restoration undertaken for the release.
Wild Style is an independent low-budget feature shot on location in New York between 1981 and 1982. The film was shot on 16mm and originally exhibited theatrically in 35mm blowup prints. Subsequent video releases on VHS and DVD were sourced from these prints, and as such the film has suffered from generational loss, exhibiting a lack of detail, faded colour and a generally fuzzy quality. It felt to me that film on video never had anywhere near the same impact it had on the big screen, so one of my aims with this new restoration was to present the film to match that experience as closely as possible.
To achieve this, we scanned the original 16mm AB negatives in 4K/16 bit on a Lasergraphics Director scanner at Metropolitan Post in New York. The picture restoration work was completed in 4K resolution at Resillion. There were substantial challenges along the way. The negative had experienced severe density fluctuation and fading throughout, exhibited through intermittent but regular instances of flicker. These hundreds of single frames had to be manually restored and individually graded throughout the film in order to make them match perfectly with the surrounding footage, an arduous process that took several months to complete. My heartfelt thanks goes to the Resillion team for all their hard work and dedication throughout the project.
Director Charlie Ahearn worked directly with us on the colour grade, which was completed to 4K SDR, HDR10 and Dolby Vision standards. As with the image quality, the colours of
Wild Style needed to accurately represent how the film looked in 1983, so having access to original reference prints was key, as was the guidance of the filmmaker.
We restored the film's mono soundtrack from the original optical negatives at Deluxe in Los Angeles. The audio was carefully digitised and restored by removing and/or improving instances of surface noise while ensuring that the original ambiance was retained. Hearing the original soundtrack so clearly was something of a revelation after years of hearing it sound so muddy on prior video editions. Sometimes the clarity revealed interesting aspects of the production. One special moment for me was discovering that the wire from one of the turntables played during the Dixie Club performances wasn't fully grounded, causing a slight variation in background noise every time the DJ switched the decks from left to right.
I'm also happy to report that we were able to reinstate a much-loved track into a particular scene that had been removed for uncleared copyright reasons on prior video versions. Real heads know what I'm talking about.
How did you go about assembling your extra features? Do you reach out personally to people?
The most important thing was that we were able to collaborate with Charlie Ahearn and his co-producer Fred 'Fab 5 Freddy" Brathwaite, to ensure that our release honoured their shared vision, and covered all the aspects of the film and what made it so special. Charlie's enthusiasm for the film and everyone involved is infectious and his direct involvement throughout was key to what has made our release so special. For one thing, Charlie let us explore his archive of production materials, which gave us access to the original film and sound elements for our feature restoration, but it also allowed us to discover what else he might have that would be of real interest to fans like myself.
At 42 years old, it's possible that some fans might have started taking
Wild Style for granted by this point, which is why it was important to not just repeat the same oft-told stories and to shine a light on the talent both in front of and behind the camera.
For example, the music in the film was an absolutely critical element to the film's success. The performances by such legendary figures as Busy Bee, The Fantastic Five and The Cold Crush Brothers are classic, but the story behind the creation of the original breakbeat score created by Fred and Blondie's Chris Stein, is just as important. There's never been another film score like it created in just the same way. For our release, Fred and Chris kindly participated in a brand-new filmed interview with Charlie in which they discuss the creation of the music in the film at length.
It was important to show how the graffiti scene circulating on the subways of New York had affected the local and international art scenes and how this blending of uptown and downtown scenes was portrayed in the film. Just as critical were the social, cultural and political circumstances in New York at the time, which played no small part in helping spawn this artistic revolution during the mid to late 1970s.
Other aspects that I wanted to focus on included the innovative use of animation in the film, used to great effect during the opening titles. I wanted to focus on Charlie's own history in art, filmmaking and hip hop prior to making
Wild Style , and his indelible "scratching on film" photographic artworks that he would project at the legendary Ecstacy Garage club the Bronx. Charlie even contributed a short piece about the first time he'd been exposed to "B-Boying" (later called breakdancing) at a Brooklyn gymnasium in 1978.
I wanted to show how the hip hop community in the South Bronx embraced Charlie and Fred's vision from the start. The story in the film was a unique hybrid of documentary and fiction, in which everyone in the film was playing themselves, or slight variations thereof. The people, places and performances are genuine; there's no fakery involved, which is one reason the film doesn't feel at all dated. I also wanted to show how
Wild Style was received at the time both in the US and abroad, and how its legacy has only grown over the decades since its release. We were able to include nearly an hour of video footage from the famous
Wild Style tour that the cast and crew embarked on in October, 1983. We've also included a new feature commentary by two NY hip hop luminaries, Jeff "Chairman" Mao, Andrew "Monk One" Mason.
Our 120-page booklet includes written pieces on the film by some of the most important hip hop historians & journalists around, including Dave Tompkins, Jeff Chang, Brian Coleman and Steven Hager and features artwork and photographic contributions by Charlie and Fred, Martha Cooper, Joe Conzo, Cathy Campbell and Bobby Grossman. We were even able to include a reproduction of the
Wild Style issue of Ed Piskor's seminal Hip Hop Family Tree series, thanks to the kind permission of Fantagraphics and the Piskor family.
Thanks to Charlie's generosity, we were able to transfer and restore his archive of mag audio production reels - a real treasure trove - which contained outtakes of iconic scenes in the film including the Basketball Throwdown and Stoop Rap performances, as well as musical outtakes from Grandwizzard Theodore and Grandmaster Caz. We also discovered never-before-heard
Wild Style radio promos performed by Fred and Lisa Lee. We found a rare radio interview with Charlie from 1983. And if that weren't enough, we commissioned renowned old school hip hop DJ Jorun Bombay to create an exclusive new 10-minute
Wild Style Megamix. These tracks all appear on the CD included on the Limited Edition 4K UHD and Blu-Ray release.
Finally I wanted to pay tribute to those key figures who played such an important role in making the film, but are no longer with us. This release is dedicated to the memories of Patti Astor, Frosty Freeze, Dondi White and Rammellzee.
There are a couple things I still wish we'd been able to include, but for whatever reasons we weren't able to. Probably more than anything else, I wish we'd been able to find and restore the mythical footage from the first Amphitheater Show from October 8, 1981 in which Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five performed. The original show had been filmed but when the audio from the first show was deemed unusable, a second show was scheduled for May 1st, 1982. This second show is the one that appears in the film. Sadly we were unable to find this footage, but it certainly wasn't for lack of trying. Hopefully it will emerge some day!
What's been made clear to me throughout this project is that
Wild Style feels just as relevant today as it did 42 years ago, and the enthusiasm that people bring to the film can't be diminished. I was repeatedly struck by how generous everyone involved was with their time, and how excited contributors were to be involved on this project, and I'm truly grateful to everyone who helped make this happen.
Our new 4K restoration opened the London Film Festival last month with two sold-out screenings, which Charlie and legendary graffiti artist (and star of the film) Lee Quinones both attended. For some this was their introduction to the film, but for the longtime fans like myself, it was an opportunity to revisit this amazing work that had been living in our heads ever since we first saw it , now looking and sounding better than ever.
Do you want to give readers any sneak previews on what may be coming from Arrow in 2026?
As busy a year Arrow has had in 2025, we have an even bigger slate planned for next year filled with a wide range of classic and cult titles. A couple of these have already been made public, like
Excalibur and
Salem's Lot. And as you know, we're working with the Shout Factory team to release definitive editions of the Golden Princess library titles like
Hard Boiled, The Killer and
Bullet in the Head. The films we're restoring for 4K UHD this year include classics from the 1960s, 70s and 80s and include titles I'm frankly pinching myself that we're getting to work on.
Other than that, I'll just say that those fans of Hong Kong action will have something very special to look forward to later in the year. Our
Bruce Lee at Golden Harvest box from a couple years ago set a very high benchmark, but I think we might just top it with what we have in store!