Henry S. Rosenthal and me (Pt 2)

_{Tough guys – Rosenthal playing tough with the band Crime}

Last month, preparing for a trip to Croatia for a festival under the banner, “Invisible Cinema,” for which the organizers wished to show All the Vermeers in New York, and The Bed You Sleep In, both of which were beautifully restored by EYEfilm in Amsterdam, I received the following letter from Mr Rosenthal, as did EYE. EYE cannot send out a DCP without Rosenthal’s consent (and mine.)

The letter is in effect one of blatant blackmailing, and I wrote to Simona describing it as such. Rather than submit to this extortion attempt, I instead published this on my Jon Jost Blog, sending link to it to a mailing list of mostly cinema people. I have heard nothing from Rosenthal after; he did subsequently give EYE his OK to send the films. Read that as you will.

“I always knew something was wrong with me,” Rosenthal admits. “Mentally or physically?” I ask. “That’s a good question,” he replies. From a recent article in the San Francisco Gate on Rosenthal.

TRUE STORIES

Some time, quite a while ago – I don’t really remember – I was contacted by a young filmmaker in San Francisco who wrote of having secured insurance from Rosenthal’s Complex Corp for equipment, as required to rent for a film he was making. Apparently something had gone wrong, something stolen, lost or broken. Rosenthal had told the person not to report it to the insurance company but rather to him. He then stiffed the person who did not get whatever to cover the loss, and he wrote me thinking I could help. I couldn’t. I recall when I was still “a friend” of Rosenthal’s his telling me he would slip people under his Complex Corporation insurance, bill them for it, and as things seldom went wrong, it was “free money.” He thought this was clever. It was also illegal. Sometime after this, I don’t recall how or why, I came across a public notice of the California Department of Insurance issuing to Henry S. Rosenthal, Complex Corporation, 535 Stevenson St, San Francisco, an order to “cease and desist” from fraudulently selling insurance policies. This was after he had fraudulently told the Library of Congress that he had a “letter of assignment” from me turning over the rights to the four films, Sure Fire, All the Vermeers in New York, The Bed You Sleep In, and Frameup, to him and his Complex Corporation. No such letter ever existed, the Library did not ask to see it, and gave him the copyrights to those films. Rosenthal did this furtively, without informing me, and secured control over those films, blocking me from access and use of my own work ever since. Fraud is of no importance to Rosenthal.

At the time, Rosenthal, since 1990, was on the Board of Directors of the Film Arts Foundation, at some point becoming its head. It is clear he used this position to steer people into buying his fraudulent, illegal, insurance.

According to Rosenthal, from an interview he did for the FAF publication Release Print that he became a BoD member because:

“I was targeted as a candidate because I think I represented that bridge between the maker and the world of people [with money] ––I guess they perceived me as someone who has raised money for films, who was maybe more savvy about money, and who could help move the organization to a more stable place financially, and they saw me as a player in that role…. I was one of the bigger contributors to the organization, and tried to rally support everywhere I could.”

Again, this was in effect a fraud since Rosenthal had not produced the films made with me, the only ones he had supposedly “produced” by then, and had, while I was his “friend,” demonstrated his ineptness and incompetence with regard to the film business. I regret ever having let him put his name on those films as “producer.” He was at best a “co-production manager.” I was the other production manager and he was learning through me.

For a full history of the FAF, and its demise while Rosenthal was head of the Board of Directors, you can read this.

Film Arts Foundation 1976-2008: A Regional Media Arts Center With National Impact

As for playing fast and loose with film-world designations, I note that tucked between four of my films listed below, which he did not produce, on his IMDb page we find Gregg Araki’s The Living End, for which Rosenthal claims he was “executive producer.”

One of the descriptions of an executive producer, on the net:

“An Executive Producer (EP) is the driving force behind a film, television show, or other media production. They oversee all aspects of the production, from securing financing to managing the production team. The EP is often the primary decision-maker and the final authority on creative and financial matters.”

In the case of the Araki film what really happened was that I met Gregg at a summer Sundance something in Utah, at Redford’s place there. He had made his first film, critically well-received in LA, and could not raise the money to make the next one. I offered to let him use my equipment (a CP GSMO 16mm camera; sound stuff) and to give him film stock I had bought cheap earlier to make the film. He accepted, and, on my instigation, Rosenthal shipped it to LA by courier. Period. Rosenthal did nothing else, certainly none of the things an “executive producer” supposedly does. Again, Rosenthal is a fraud, eager to snatch credit for things he never did.

Quote from an article in the SF Gate regarding Rosenthal:

I note that Araki in fact made two films with the equipment and film stock I sent him, The Living End and Totally F**cked Up. He sent it all back rather carelessly tossed in the container it had been sent in and never said “thank you.” I am used to such self-centered “artist” sorts.

_{Cosplaying punk drummer}

One of the filmmakers, who prefers not to be named, whom Rosenthal “produced,” told me a story, again regarding the insurance scam. In this case the FAF equipment being used, doubtless theirs rather than a rental house because Rosenthal was on the BoD, and which he “insured” with that “free money” in mind, was stolen. It was a sizable pile of stuff, and not a little money. Under the circumstances, it being FAF and he on the BoD, he actually had to pony up and replace the lost equipment, keeping his insurance scam hidden. After having been friendly with the filmmaker, he blew a gasket, turned on a dime, and was vituperative and nasty when his con turned on him and he had to shell out. It was of course someone else’s fault, not his illegal action to blame.

STALKING

In the times I have had screenings in San Francisco since Rosenthal’s theft took place, he has managed to come to each – once at the New No Nothing Cinema, and the second at the Public Library, back in December, 2017. At the No Nothing, approaching from behind me, I heard his voice, cheery and casual, say, “Hi Jon!” and he passed by me. I ignored him. At the screening in the small theater, he sat in the first row, quite visible during the Q&A, during which he said nothing. In a second screening, at the public library, of Blue Strait, there he was again, in a front-row seat. Stayed through Q&A and when he left he went to back of big auditorium and grabbed a sizable box, which when he lifted it, seemed to be light, and left. At the time I thought maybe he’d intended to give it to me, whatever it was, and as I had ignored him, had to take it back home – a walking distance. No idea. Before he did so he talked with a friend of mine there, Barbara Hammes (lead in Rembrandt Laughing) and had told her that he’d been at the previous screening and I hadn’t recognized him and apparently did not there. After Barbara let me know this, I wrote this to Rosenthal :

_{Barbara in Rembrandt Laughing and now.}

He responded with this email:

More recently, in Spring of 2021, Bruce Posner, a well-known figure in the film scene, invited me to participate in a Zoom thing he was doing during the Covid period. They’d look at a film, and we’d talk about it. I said OK, and signed on.

Not long afterward he informed me that Rosenthal had requested to participate and I asked him to decline it, which he did. This begot this email:

Rosenthal afterwards contacted the library and institutions involved and caused Bruce a lot of problems.
From note from Bruce after I wrote him for a confirmation on this:

More recently, this past June, 2025, I was in Los Angeles, for a partial retrospective done by the American Cinematheque there, in a festival under the banner ‘Bleak Week: Cinema of Despair’. As they wished to show 3 of the films requiring Rosenthal’s OK, he knew of it, and wrote me this some weeks before:

I did not reply to this email.

Rosenthal did show up for the screenings in LA, in his guise of having been the “producer” of these films. I did inform the Cinemateca that he was coming, and asked that he not be allowed to go on stage if perhaps he’d ask; they agreed. After the last screening, at the Aurora Cinema in Santa Monica, a good crowd of people – friends of mine, actors, Erling Wold, and others – were gathered on the sidewalk in front, talking. I went to one cluster to join in, and shortly after Rosenthal came striding in its direction; seeing this I left, and went to another cluster. He came quickly towards that one. I left it and went to wander the periphery of the crowd, Rosenthal following me, stalking, and approached seemingly to “glad-hand” me – I punched him in the gut. It wasn’t too hard as the camera around my neck got in the way. He did buckle over and I stepped towards him to offer some more. Shocked, he backed off, yelling “You’re a coward, you’re a coward.” His car was right there and he jumped into it and sped away.

In turn this begot an email sent to me, EYE, the the USC Archive in LA, mostly dealing with the quality of the files of Frameup and Sure Fire, about which he complained. He ended with this:

_{Rosenthal in Frameup, watching execution}

In his references to an “agreement” made, which was the Lawyers for the Arts arbitration, Rosenthal neglects to note that I never signed that agreement. And had he a gram of self-honesty, he would acknowledge that his “rightful” credits would be co-producer of Sure Fire, and “co-production manager” of the other 3 films. I would be happy to list him as such. I regret that long ago I let him masquerade as something which he was not; something which has caused many others damage. Rosenthal is a fraud and shares certain qualities of Our Great Leader, who is clearly a psychopath.

_{From The Bed You Sleep In}

As I gather still more information on Rosenthal I will do a follow up post on his actions. He complains that I have violated a “non-disparagement NDA” which I never signed. Those who require NDA’s have things they wish to hide.

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Henry S. Rosenthal and me (Part 1)

I don’t recall when I met this man – 1985? 86? – but I do recall why. I’d moved to San Francisco with my then partner Alenka Pavlin, and at first we’d stayed, subletting, in a nice spacious loft, while the owner, filmmaker John Knoop, was off on a long trip. Maybe. As someone who travels a lot and can’t drag many things with him, and pre-Facebook, most of my where/when memories are a bit fuzzy, lost in the smear of places I’ve lived, a year here, 4 months there, 2 years somewhere else, and even 5 years once. Along with the places there’s also the shuffle of faces – the long list of friends scattered around the globe. Facing the end of our sublet from Knoop we shopped around for a new place, and answered an ad for a “loft” south of Market (SOMA). We met the landlord, Rosenthal, going to check it out – the “loft” description was rather misleading: the place in fact was one of a cluster of 6 or so very small cottages on Natoma Street, and the “loft” was a shelf below the ceiling just big enough to put a mattress in for sleeping, though far from being able to stand in. The little court was kind of cute, and though small, we took a cottage. It turned out to have an illustrious past, or so it was rumored, as a whore house, with each little cabin serving as two “cribs” for the working girls to conduct their trade. At the back of the court was a bigger cottage, divided in two, above which a large flat plywood painted red rooster above it, apparently to advertise the old biz. It has all been torn down since we lived there.

So this man became my landlord, and, as it turned out, was apparently producing a film by famed Bay Area artist-experimental filmmaker Bruce Connor. I’d known Bruce from a few decades earlier when both he and I had served on the BoD of the Canyon Film Coop. The film they were making was about a well-known gospel group, forget which; it was never completed. Rosenthal did have some of Connor’s larger graphic works in storage in the 4 floor warehouse which he owned and lived in, at 535 Stevenson, an alley parallel to Market street, only a half block away. The place also had other art items, apparently sourced from Rosenthal’s father, a wealthy businessman from Cincinnatti, who among other things was a collector. So there was a Warhol print (real), and, as the father had specialized in him, a number of Kurt Schwitters collages.

At some point, I suppose early on, I let it be known I was a filmmaker and gave Rosenthal some DVDs, or maybe VHS. One of them was of Last Chants for a Slow Dance, which apparently hit him quite powerfully, and he waxed on and on about Tom Blair, and would quote lines from it, one being “small man just can’t get ahead” which he found quite funny. Not his problem. Being myself, I did not jump at this obvious matter, and it was 6 months or so, after we’d become no longer renters, but “friends.” Alenka and I went to the warehouse, named “The Complex,” for meals and get-togethers with Rosenthal and his then-wife, Carola Anderson, who came from Healdsburg, northern California. They were a kind of artsy couple, doing music in just intonation, and they had a supposed organization and archive for such work, which struck me as the kind of thing a rich child might have as a kind of hobby, like a big model train set. The music they did, along with their air about it, was rather pretentious, and as “music,” utterly pedestrian.

With Rosenthal salivating about Blair and Last Chants, I finally proposed maybe making a film together, which he bit at, though he wanted Blair as actor. I’d fired Tom twice, the last time being rather ugly and not so long before. But I said, OK, contact him if you want, feeling rather sure he’d decline. He didn’t though, and so Sure Fire kicked into gear. Rosenthal would play producer, and he did raise about half the $75,000 budget, while I raised the other half via some grants, if I recall properly from the NEA and the New York Foundation for the Arts. In setting this up, I let Rosenthal know I was a tax resister, and had been my whole life, and that I wished to keep me off-paper. He fancied himself a kind of libertarian, and was OK with this, and as friends, we made verbal agreements about the film, we’d split 50/50 on any incomes, and at a later point we agreed we would not copyright it and subsequent films as at that time it required giving a print to the Library of Congress, which was costly, and we’d just use the copyright bug. He tucked it under his already existing LLC, Complex Corporation, and agreed verbally to everything. He was a friend and I trusted him.

The making of Sure Fire became a nightmare, about which you can read here. Much of the difficulty was caused by Rosenthal, though Tom Blair also played a significant role in the problems. When the film, shot in Super 16, was finished shooting in Utah, I was more or less not on speaking terms with the actors (except Kristi Hager), or Rosenthal, and I declined to edit the film at that time, and left to live in New York.

While in New York, being the way I am, I gravitated towards making a film there, and did the kind of casual research I tend to do, sucking up the place I am living in, trying to tune into its qualities. Coming up with a vague idea, against a friend’s advice, who said they were totally script driven, I approached American Playhouse, a PBS production unit, and in two brief meetings with Lindsay Law, its executive head, making clear there was no script and there would not be one, I secured a budget of $200,000 or so, to which a grant I received from the NEA brought a total budget of $240,000. After I had personally raised all this money, I asked Rosenthal to be production manager, since he’d done that well enough for Sure Fire. He said he would only do so if he was listed as “producer” and I – not really giving a shit about such things – foolishly said OK. And, despite the mess he’d caused on Sure Fire, he was still a “friend.” My thought, discussed with him at the time, was that he would, in working with me, learn how to be a producer, and in my mind that would relieve me of that part of making films, which I loathed. I am almost allergic to money. I also made clear that he would not be around the actors or the shooting as he’d caused serious problems in the previous film. He accepted this.

After finishing the shooting of All the Vermeers in New York, I moved back to San Francisco to edit and to work with John A. English on the music. And then returned to finishing Sure Fire, doing the edit, overseeing the music, done in this case by Erling Wold. A sign which I should have read as a basis to end our partnership was when it came time for me to be paid for Vermeers – as budgeted (by me), with the money I had raised every penny of, and which I brought in on budget – was that Rosenthal initially was reluctant pay, and used the phrase that it was “his” money. I noted this, but at that time thought it was just rather misguided of him, and not something pathological, which it turned out to signal. I did get my pay and put the matter aside.

With these films finished, we went to Sundance, the Berlin Festival, Montreal, SWSX and other places, together. Rosenthal was catapulted into the big leagues. My thought was that he’d get introduced to how this little slice of the film world worked, part of his learning process. I recall his first time going to Berlin, along with Carola, wearing a Brooks Brothers suit, a haircut suitable for it (super straight & nerdy) and in the swirl of those people there to schmooze, wheel and deal, mostly dressed in denims, networking and all that stuff, he stood there forlorn, with his briefcase, thinking deals would walk up to him owing to this errant business costume. He made no sales, while I did – largely because I’d made good films which were hot items in Berlin, and at that time it was a nexus for selling. The films were sold to German, Italian, Czech and other distributors and broadcasters, and generated well over $100,000 in sales. Buyers approached me and I would turn them over to Rosenthal to deal with the paperwork – in effect he acted as a secretary/accountant. As the funds used for making the films – grants and the American Playhouse – did not have to be returned, it left a decent sum with which to do further films.

On returning to the US, with money available to work with, I turned myself to my next film, The Bed You Sleep In, which cost about $100,000 – and for which I personally secured, for free, through Bob Harvey, a Panavision package of their best camera, lenses and other things. Rosenthal acted again essentially as a production manager and accountant, and once again was kept away as much as possible from any interactions with the actors and crew. The film was shot in a month, in Toledo, Oregon, and edited relatively quickly with Wold doing the music in close collaboration with me in San Francisco.

Having inadvertently written a script while preparing to make Bed, I decided, since there was sufficient money from prior sales remaining to do so, to make another film, Frameup. Rosenthal did not want to make the film, though the money was there to do it, and after resisting it, with me underlining it was our money, not his, I again secured a free Panavision package, this time including a Worral head, and went off with Ann-Marie Miguel to northern Idaho and back to coastal Oregon, and shot the film, in 35mm, in two weeks, with a budget under $50,000, with a crew of two – me and Anne-Marie. Rosenthal was not present during most of its making. Again the films went to Sundance, Berlin and other festivals. This time in Berlin Rosenthal seemed to have learned something and ditched the Brooks Brothers suit, though again he had apparently no clue on what to do, and all sales again were generated by myself and the buyers were passed along to him. I had become a modest name in this little slice of the film business and the films sold a bit more widely, returning all the money spent on them and more. I do recall during a press meeting, hosted by Ulrich Gregor, letting Rosenthal sit with me playing my “producer” and listening to him laud me as a filmmaker who could do so much with so little money, and how nice that was, and I was tempted at that time to say that you can’t do anything with money the “producer” hasn’t and can’t seem to raise. Outside the initial $35,000 for Sure Fire, he’d raised zero of the money for all four of the films; I had raised it all, from grants and from AP, and from generating sales from the films I’d made.

Somewhere in this period I recall watching Rosenthal sitting at his desk, a sizable half-circular one with a marble top, once owned by James Brown he told me, and talking on the phone with one of the band members from the group Crime, to which he’d belonged for a year, and getting the person, who was in desperate need of a fix, to sell his rights to the songs for $100. After he’d done this, he sat at the desk, looking like the archetypal shyster-kike, rubbing his hands together with a malignant smile, saying how he’d made such a deal and beat his “friend.” As distasteful as that looked too me, it seems it did not occur to me to say “over” and terminate our relationship, not seeing he could and would do the same thing with me.

I don’t recall the time – perhaps after Vermeers and Sure Fire were done, perhaps later, but I think not, we were invited to Paris, to discuss distribution as I recall. It was a business trip. With adequate time to prepare, Rosenthal neglected to line up one appointment regarding distribution or production; once there he made none. Rather he preferred to go to a sports center and play ping pong. I recall being highly disappointed with him, masquerading as a “producer” and not even attempting to do the minimal when he had a “hot” item at hand. His “rich kid” side was on display. Around this time I met another hustler, around same age as Rosenthal, and we established a relationship over some time, and regarding Rosenthal he said the problem was he was not “hungry.”

Likewise when distributing Vermeers, he and the fledgling distributor Strand Films decided to open the film simultaneously in 5 or 7 cities, including NYC. As it turned out they could not find a good cinema in New York, and opted for one in the Village which 2 months earlier had been a porn place. I asked them not do so, as the place was inappropriate, and said we should wait until the film ran up some BO elsewhere and then try to get a suitable place. They both said no. It opened in NYC with the other cities, with a nasty review by the NYTimes critic of the time, Vincent Canby, and ran one week. In Los Angeles it opened to 7 good reviews and none bad, on the first day of the 1991 riots, and the cinemas were closed the whole week. It thus did no BO and was pulled, by Hollywood logic, never mind the circumstances. Vermeers received a Best Independent Film of the Year award from the LA Film Critics association.

The film ran 6 months in Chicago and San Francisco, most likely on the strength of two “thumbs up” from the Siskel and Ebert television program. I had personally intervened to get them to look at the film, as Ebert had favorably reviewed my first short film in Chicago, way back in the ’60’s, giving me a wedge to write him personally and ask him to take a look. He and Siskel did look at it and I am sure most the box office was owing to their thumbs. Neither Rosenthal or Strand had any means to get such treatment, or did anything remotely equivalent.

In the period after completing Vermeers, in winter of 1991, MoMA in NYC did a retrospective of my work, every feature from Speaking Directly through Vermeers, 12 films, running a month. It got good press, etc. In the little bubble of “American independent filmmaking” I’d become a “name.” After this I made Bed and Frameup, and my little flame burst brighter. It was at this time, I think spring of 1992, that a friend of mine, Jill Godmilow (who died this past month), gave me rights to the Raymond Carver book What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, for which she’d written a script, obtained the rights but found herself unable to raise funding. She had let me use her Steenbeck to edit Rembrandt Laughing and seen some of my films, Bell Diamond and Slow Moves among them, and told me she thought if anybody was right for Carver it was me. I discussed it with Rosenthal, and we were under the press of shooting a scene in June, to retain the copyright. In three months he raised zero dollars – with me as a hot movie name and Carver blazingly hot. Nor would he put his own money in. After this I decided Rosenthal was useless as a “producer,” having seemingly learned nothing in the 3 years we’d “worked” together. I told him I wished to terminate our partnership. I moved to Rome in May 1993, and within two months had secured a producer, Enzo Porcelli, to make a film in Rome. I wasn’t even trying to do so.

It was some time in this period that Rosenthal, furtively, without informing me, applied for the copyrights on the films, violating our verbal agreement we would not do so. He claimed to the Library of Congress that he had a “letter of assignment” in which I turned over the rights to him. No such letter ever existed, nor any verbal agreement to the same effect. Curiously, the Library apparently does not require the person applying in such a manner to show the letter. Henry S. Rosenthal, in applying for and securing the copyrights in this manner committed fraud. Far worse, he showed himself as a person utterly lacking in ethics, and with no moral character at all.

When I did find out about this, I consulted with my friend, Tom Luddy, who referred me to a Bay Area lawyer conversant with show business, copyrights etc. I did retain her, at a cost of about $5000, and filed a suit against Rosenthal. He expressed surprise that I had done so! The lawyer, on looking into the matter, informed me that to make a case would cost a minimum of $50,000, and further, that I would probably lose – in America (a) the legal system exists to protect the wealthy and (b) “possession is 9/10ths the law.” I certainly did not have that kind of money, nor did it make sense to spend money on a predicted loss.

Following this I contacted a group, California Lawyers for the Arts, and agreed to an arbitration process. I provided the lawyer with ample proof of where the money had come from, Rosenthal’s behaviors, etc. Rosenthal argued that my having made the graphics for the film which included a copyright bug and Complex Corporation, constituted a “letter of assignment.” The lawyer ruled in favor of Rosenthal and I was told to pay the costs for the arbitration and sign the end paper which included a non-disclosure agreement. I declined both. The lawyer was Jewish and I sincerely suspect their was some collusion involved. Tribal behavior.

As Rosenthal held the originals for all the films in his basement at 535 Stevenson, I did not publicly reveal the story, as he could have done whatever he wished with them and I feared the worst. Though I did tell people privately, friends, and when some “business” matters were at hand I would inform people of the reality. In hindsight I regret that I did not immediately make his actions public, as had I done so, it may have alerted people to his nature, and spared them damage.

I will continue with further information on Henry S. Rosenthal’s acts with my work, and his treatment of others in a coming post, and including emails he has written and other related things, such as other illegal acts he has committed.

Anyone with further information on Henry S. Rosenthal and anything he has done which would be of interest is welcome to comment below, and leave, if wished, a contact method.

Jeff Feverzeig, director and Henry S. Rosenthal, producer of “Devil and Danel Johnston” (Photo by J. Countess/WireImage)

AUSTIN, TX – MARCH 12: Producer Henry S. Rosenthal attends the premiere of “Bill Nye: Science Guy” during 2017 SXSW Conference and Festivals at Vimeo on March 12, 2017 in Austin, Texas. (Photo by James Goulden Photography/Getty Images for SXSW)

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