Gerald Francis "Jerry" Harvey (October 28, 1949 – April 9, 1988) was an American screenwriter and film programmer, best known for his work on Z Channel, a pioneering cable station in Los Angeles from 1974 to 1989.
Harvey's passion for film won him friendships with filmmakers such as Peckinpah, Robert Altman, James B. Harris, Monte Hellman as well as actors such as Peter O'Toole.
Unimpressed with the usual television fare, Harvey wrote an angry letter to the Los Angeles-based pay-TV service SelecTV; they were so impressed that they hired him as an assistant film programmer.
Harvey brought his relationships with the above-listed filmmakers and championed their work, including Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate,[5] The Ruling Class with Peter O'Toole, Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in America, Karel Reisz's The Loves of Isadora, John Ford's Up the River, Bernardo Bertolucci's 1900, and Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch and Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid.
[4] Jerry Harvey's first significant coup came in 1982 when studio executive David Chasman alerted him that the director's cut of Heaven's Gate, written and directed by Michael Cimino, was lying fallow in a British vault.
[4] Although Harvey saw to it that Z (as it was known by its subscribers and devotees) kept commercial pace with its rivals HBO, Showtime and The Movie Channel by showing the latest box-office hits, Z's primary appeal to viewers lay in its devotion to films that were personal passions.
[4] The film also chronicles Harvey's often-tragic history with women alongside his unhappy childhood (being raised in a strict Catholic home by his judge/attorney father and hospital administrator mother) which he describes as being a cross between American Graffiti and Two-Lane Blacktop.