Courtesy of John Nowak / TCM
Like other creative enterprises that get national exposure but can be overlooked in their hometowns, Turner Classic Movies is a lodestar for fans of classic film that is sometimes taken for granted in Atlanta.
The network’s film-purist canon of uncut, commercial-free movies, piped into American homes like cinematic catnip 24 hours a day, has made it a beloved binge-watch for top directors like Nancy Meyers, Alexander Payne, and Martin Scorsese. TCM debuted in 1994 with Gone with the Wind, and this year turns 30, having weathered a whirlwind of corporate mergers, the death of its iconic host Robert Osborne, and the dismissal of much of its leadership in 2023.
Working out of Turner’s Techwood campus, a key group of Atlanta-based talent has been programming films for the network, creating documentaries and short films to support the TCM mission, running a TCM podcast, and orchestrating Hollywood’s TCM Classic Film Festival, which will mark its 15th anniversary this year on April 18 to 21. The Peabody Award–winning network boasts an Atlanta staff of longtimers fiercely loyal to the brand. “It really is like a family,” says the TCM Classic Film Festival’s director, Genevieve McGillicuddy, who has been with TCM since 2004.
TCM’s Atlanta team tends to geek out, hard, over classic film. The senior director of original productions, Scott McGee, has been with the network for 24 years. With a master’s degree in film from Emory, he has seen his dreams come true—interacting with the kind of silver-screen figures who defined his pre-VCR childhood. He recounts how he was once scolded by How Green Was My Valley star Maureen O’Hara for never having been to Ireland, despite his Emerald Isle ancestry. As a kid growing up in Peachtree City, he was obsessed with Tarzan films and would mark up the family TV…
Read the full article here
