Deluxe Entertainment Services Group, which started in Hollywood 90 years ago (under the William Fox Studio film lab banner) and became an industry mainstay in Southern California, has now added to that heritage with the new Bud Stone Building at the company’s Hollywood campus. A dedication/ribbon cutting ceremony was held this week (7/20) for the building which is named after Burton “Bud” Stone, who served as president of Deluxe from 1976 until his retirement in 1994. Stone passed away in April 2008 at the age of 80, leaving behind a storied legacy, which included not only contributing to the growth of Deluxe but also mentoring assorted people, and taking a proactive role in support of the filmmaking community.
The Bud Stone Building increases the Deluxe Hollywood campus to 152,000 square feet. The expansion includes the installation of new, higher capacity film processing and printing machines that will create greater efficiency in handling theatrical release schedules for studio customers in the U.S. Furthermore, updated technology enables Deluxe to decrease use of electricity by an estimated 20 percent and to realize some 25 percent savings on water as part of the company’s programs to cut back utility and chemical usage while also reducing, reusing and recycling raw materials during production of motion picture film prints.
The dedication ceremony for Deluxe’s Bud Stone Building drew a turnout that included Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, filmmakers such as Brett Ratner and Julie Taymor, American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) president Michael Goi, International Cinematographers Guild president Steven Poster, lauded cinematographer Owen Roizman, and Stone’s family, including his children, grandchildren and wife Judy Stone.
Deluxe chairman Ronald O. Perelman and Deluxe president/CEO Cyril Drabinsky joined Mayor Villaraigosa and Judy Stone on stage for the formal ribbon-cutting ceremony.
Perelman offered his reflections on Bud Stone, first from the perspective of a competitor. Perelman noted that in the mid-1980s he became owner of Technicolor, an arch business rival of Deluxe. “We faced Bud Stone as a worthy competitor,” said Perelman, citing Stone’s “integrity, spirit, generosity and loyalty” as making him beloved throughout the marketplace.
Those qualities, continued Perelman, made it clear that Deluxe’s Hollywood expansion should be dedicated to Stone.
Drabinsky cited Stone’s close-knit professional relationships with artists, including filmmakers and cinematographers, as being a major part of Deluxe’s success.
Stone received the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ John A. Boner Medal of Commendation for outstanding service and dedication to the industry and was conferred honorary membership in the ASC, a tribute that has been reserved for a select group outside the ranks of cinematographers, including Thomas Edison, George Eastman and astronaut “Buzz” Aldrin.
Stone also played a key role in the creation of the ASC Outstanding Achievement Awards. And fittingly the 2009 ASC Heritage Award was dedicated to Bud Stone. Inaugurated in 1999, the ASC Heritage Award–which recognizes the talent of undergraduate, graduate and recently graduated film school students–has been dedicated to the memory of a different cinematographer each year. This year was the first that the award was dedicated to the memory of an extraordinary individual in the film industry who was not a DP.
While Deluxe has expanded over the years with facilities in New York and internationally, Perelman noted that the company’s roots are in Los Angeles. He credited Mayor Villaraigosa’s support as helping to make Deluxe’s Hollywood expansion a reality.
Villaraigosa said that the Bud Stone Building reflects what has been building momentum for Hollywood. The Mayor said there’s been “a renaissance” of restaurants, tourism and investments in Hollywood recently. He noted that Deluxe maintains a staff of 500 in Hollywood, contributing to a total of more than 2,100 skilled workers employed by the company in Southern California. “The fact that Deluxe has decided to grow and invest here for another generation is an acknowledgement that Hollywood is on the right track,” said Villaraigosa.
Deluxe Entertainment Services Group, a wholly owned subsidiary of MacAndrews & Forbes Holdings Inc. is a leading provider of a wide range of entertainment industry services and technologies, including motion picture film processing, printing and distribution; EFILM digital intermediates; postproduction and subtitling services; titles design; digital VFX; DVD compression, encoding and authoring; digital cinema services, digital asset management, digital distribution; and marketing fulfillment services.
Deluxe maintains facilities in Greater Los Angeles, New York, Toronto, London, Rome, Barcelona, Madrid, Vancouver, B.C., Melbourne and Sydney.
Supreme Court Seems Likely To Uphold A Law That Could Force TikTok To Shut Down On Jan. 19
The Supreme Court on Friday seemed likely to uphold a law that would ban TikTok in the United States beginning Jan. 19 unless the popular social media program is sold by its China-based parent company.
Hearing arguments in a momentous clash of free speech and national security concerns, the justices seemed persuaded by arguments that the national security threat posed by the company's connections to China override concerns about restricting the speech either of TikTok or its 170 million users in the United States.
Early in arguments that lasted more than two and a half hours, Chief Justice John Roberts identified his main concern: TikTok's ownership by China-based ByteDance and the parent company's requirement to cooperate with the Chinese government's intelligence operations.
If left in place, the law passed by bipartisan majorities in Congress and signed by President Joe Biden in April will require TikTok to "go dark" on Jan. 19, lawyer Noel Francisco told the justices on behalf of TikTok.
At the very least, Francisco urged, the justices should enter a temporary pause that would allow TikTok to keep operating. "We might be in a different world again" after President-elect Donald Trump takes office on Jan. 20. Trump, who has 14.7 million followers on TikTok, also has called for the deadline to be pushed back to give him time to negotiate a "political resolution." Francisco served as Trump's solicitor general in his first presidential term.
But it was not clear whether any justices would choose such a course. And only Justice Neil Gorsuch sounded like he would side with TikTok to find that the ban violates the Constitution.
Gorsuch labeled arguments advanced by the Biden administration' in defense of the law a... Read More