Rudy Franchi is a writer

Writer

A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....

 and editor on film theory and film criticism and an antiques and collectibles expert. He helped to introduce the French critical protocol the "auteur theory

Auteur theory

In film criticism, auteur theory holds that a director's film reflects the director's personal creative vision, as if they were the primary "auteur"...

" to the US

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. For several decades, Franchi also operated galleries that specialized in pop culture

Popular culture

Popular culture is the totality of ideas, perspectives, attitudes, memes, images and other phenomena that are deemed preferred per an informal consensus within the mainstream of a given culture, especially Western culture of the early to mid 20th century and the emerging global mainstream of the...

 collectibles. In 1995, he began appearing as an appraiser on the PBS series, Antiques Roadshow, specializing in pop culture memorabilia.

Career

Franchi's early education was at St. John's Grammar School, St. Ann's Academy, and Fordham College. He left Fordham at the end of his junior year to work with Dan Talbot

Daniel Talbot

Daniel Talbot is a former footballer. He played in the Football League for Rushden & Diamonds before dropping into non-league football. His father is Brian Talbot.-References:...

 at the New Yorker Theater running a weekly film society. He then started the Archive Film Society and after its first season, joined the Bleecker Street

Bleecker Street

Bleecker Street is a street in New York City's Manhattan borough. It is perhaps most famous today as a Greenwich Village nightclub district. The street is a spine that connects a neighborhood today popular for music venues and comedy, but which was once a major center for American bohemia.Bleecker...

 Cinema as associate program director

Program director

In service industries, such as education, a program director or programme director researches, plans, develops and implements one or more of the firm's professional services...

 (along with the late Marshall Lewis.)

During this period, he was the New York representative of the Montreal World Film Festival

Montreal World Film Festival

The Montreal World Film Festival , founded in 1977, is one of Canada's oldest international film festivals and the only competitive film festival in North America accredited by the FIAPF...

 and also did free-lance publicity, specializing in independent and foreign films. He then joined 20th Century Fox's

20th Century Fox

Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation — also known as 20th Century Fox, or simply 20th or Fox — is one of the six major American film studios...

 New York office as head of Newspaper and Trade Paper publicity. After a stint of unit publicity work, he married Barbara Passel and moved to Montreal

Montreal

Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...

 with his wife and two young girls, and eventually the couple had a third daughter.

NY Film Bulletin

While in college, Mr. Franchi started a small, mimeographed newsletter, the New York Film Bulletin, which listed various screenings and other off-beat film events in the New York area. It also contained film reviews and articles on trends in the world of independent and U.S. released foreign films. When he left Fordham, he took the publication with him, upgraded it to a fully printed magazine and began, in the early 1960s, to print translations from the famed French film theory and film criticism magazine Cahiers du cinéma

Cahiers du cinéma

Cahiers du Cinéma is an influential French film magazine founded in 1951 by André Bazin, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze and Joseph-Marie Lo Duca. It developed from the earlier magazine Revue du Cinéma involving members of two Paris film clubs — Objectif 49 and...

.

NYFB helped to popularize the views of the French New Wave

French New Wave

The New Wave was a blanket term coined by critics for a group of French filmmakers of the late 1950s and 1960s, influenced by Italian Neorealism and classical Hollywood cinema. Although never a formally organized movement, the New Wave filmmakers were linked by their self-conscious rejection of...

 in the US, and helped introducing Francois Truffaut's auteur theory

Auteur theory

In film criticism, auteur theory holds that a director's film reflects the director's personal creative vision, as if they were the primary "auteur"...

 to America via the early writings of Andrew Sarris

Andrew Sarris

Andrew Sarris is an American film critic and a leading proponent of the auteur theory of criticism.-Career:Sarris is generally credited with popularizing the auteur theory in the U.S...

, among others. The magazine published two major interviews with François Truffaut

François Truffaut

François Roland Truffaut was an influential film critic and filmmaker and one of the founders of the French New Wave. In a film career lasting over a quarter of a century, he remains an icon of the French film industry. He was also a screenwriter, producer, and actor working on over twenty-five...

 in which the famed director outlined the evolution of his Politique Des Auteurs. NYFB was edited and published from an office located in The Bleecker Street Cinema and the theater became a focal point for New Wave directors (Truffaut, Goddard, Renais, among others) visiting New York as well as a meeting place for New York auteurists and others.

The long Sunday afternoon discussions involved Franchi, Andy Sarris, Carlo Clarens, Jonas Mekas

Jonas Mekas

Jonas Mekas is a Lithuanian-born American filmmaker, writer, and curator who has often been called "the godfather of American avant-garde cinema." His work has been exhibited in museums and festivals across Europe and America.-Biography:...

, Marshall Lewis. Andy Sarris' review of Jonathan Demme

Jonathan Demme

Robert Jonathan Demme is an American filmmaker, producer and screenwriter. Best known for directing The Silence of the Lambs, which won him the Academy Award for Best Director, he has also directed the acclaimed movies Philadelphia, Rachel Getting Married, the Talking Heads concert movie Stop...

's The Truth About Charlie alluded to Franchi. Sarris stated that "not to mention the dedication of the film to the late Ted Demme

Ted Demme

Edward K. "Ted" Demme was an American film director and producer.- Early life and career :Born in New York City, Demme grew up in Rockville Centre on Long Island, New York and attended South Side Senior High School. He graduated from SUNY-Cortland in 1985. His media career likely began with a...

 and Marshall Lewis, one of the two guys in the back of the Bleecker Street Cinema (the other was Rudy Franchi) with whom I spent many convivial hours of Francophilia and cinephilia. After all that, how can I pretend to be objective about Mr. Demme’s labor of love?"

After working in the Canadian film industry for several years, Franchi left the movie business to follow his growing interest in antiques and collectibles. He opened a shop called Gallery 90/40 which specialized in art nouveau

Art Nouveau

Art Nouveau is an international philosophy and style of art, architecture and applied art—especially the decorative arts—that were most popular during 1890–1910. The name "Art Nouveau" is French for "new art"...

 and art deco

Art Deco

Art deco , or deco, is an eclectic artistic and design style that began in Paris in the 1920s and flourished internationally throughout the 1930s, into the World War II era. The style influenced all areas of design, including architecture and interior design, industrial design, fashion and...

 graphics and objects. This shop evolved into The Nostalgia Factory, which focused on pop culture memorabilia such as original old advertising, movie, war and travel posters, and political items.

In 1977 Franchi and his family returned to the United States, living in Newport, Rhode Island

Newport, Rhode Island

Newport is a city on Aquidneck Island in Newport County, Rhode Island, United States, about south of Providence. Known as a New England summer resort and for the famous Newport Mansions, it is the home of Salve Regina University and Naval Station Newport which houses the United States Naval War...

, until 1987, when they moved to Boston

Boston

Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...

. In both cities, Rudy and Barbara ran Nostalgia Factory shops and in 1994 launched a web site, Nostalgia.com, which evolved into the largest seller of original movie poster

Movie poster

A movie poster is a poster used to advertise a film. Studios often print several posters that vary in size and content for various domestic and international markets. They normally contain an image with text. Today's posters often feature photographs of the main actors. Prior to the 1990s,...

s on the internet. In 2005, the Franchi's sold The Nostalgia Factory and nostalgia.com to Newbury Comics

Newbury Comics

Newbury Comics is a New England-based music retailer. Newbury Comics began as a comic book vendor on Newbury Street in Boston. The company was founded in 1978 by Massachusetts Institute of Technology students John Brusger and Mike Dreese. Over the next few years, the focus of the company changed...

 and the couple moved to Los Angeles

Los Ángeles

Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

. In 2006 he created the website Poster Appraisal Dot Com which offers free evaluations of movie, war, travel, rock and advertising posters.

Antiques Roadshow

During its first season 1995, Rudy Franchi joined the PBS series Antiques Roadshow

Antiques Roadshow

Antiques Roadshow is a British television show in which antiques appraisers travel to various regions of the United Kingdom to appraise antiques brought in by local people. It has been running since 1979...

and he has been a regular on the series ever since. His specialty is pop culture collectibles and he has made a series of major discoveries on the show including an original first class menu for the R.M.S. Titanic. He represents Heritage Auction Galleries

Heritage Auction Galleries

Heritage Auction Galleries is the world's largest collectibles auctioneer and the third largest auction house, with over $700 million in annual sales and 600,000 online bidder-members...

on Antiques Roadshow and acts as a consultant to the movie poster and entertainment memorabilia divisions of the Dallas based firm.

External links

• Heritage Auction Galleries of Dallas
• Site run by Franchi
• (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950CE6D91F39F936A35756C0A9669C8B63) NY Times interview with Franchi