Cable System Lets Pair of Film Buffs Review the Classics

Two local film buffs are bidding to become the Siskel and Ebert of the Tustin scene, reviewing movie classics that appear on the basic cable package offered by American Cablesystems.

William Gray and Bruce Potter, who have regular jobs outside the entertainment business, have begun a twice-monthly show on Cablesystems’ public-access Channel 33 in Tustin. The system has 8,500 subscribers, the company said.

The half-hour shows are repeated at 6:30 p.m. Monday through Friday for 2 weeks. Each segment reviews six movie classics scheduled to appear on the system’s basic services, along with promotional clips from each one. Another six upcoming films are mentioned briefly.

A “movie map,” displaying where and when the movies are shown, is also provided. This enables viewers to set their videocassette recorders to tape such movies as “King Kong,” “Mutiny on the Bounty” and “On the Waterfront.”

The main problem, Gray said, is that “there are lots of great films that we can’t find enough time to talk about.”

Gray, who has reviewed movies on a campus PBS television outlet in Utah, said he hopes that the program will be picked up by other systems owned by American Cablesystems, which is a subsidiary of Continental Cablevision, the third-largest operator in the country.

“What we’re trying to do is make it generic” by identifying movies according to the cable network rather than the channel numbers assigned on the Tustin system, Gray said.