Before the internet made (no pun intended) virtually everything accessible, I used to wonder how it was that knowledge of the obscure, the forgotten, or the "cult" films came from. The information seemed to travel like a meme; no one could pinpoint exactly where they heard it from, or declare with any certainty that this knowledge originated from any source more reliable than a "friend of a friend told me." It just appeared - one day you didn't know about these movies, and the next you did.
Voracious readers experience a similar phenomenon, one that provides a gateway into the experience I'm talking about: at a certain point in time, almost invariably high school, some students clue in to "alternative" literature, seemingly without a point of reference. The only point of entry that makes sense is the one student that always seems to carry around The Portable Beat Reader, but how one makes the leap from Jack Kerouac to Aldous Huxley or Philip K. Dick, H.P. Lovecraft, William Gibson, or Hunter S. Thompson, I can't say. If my library had a copy of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, I didn't know it. I don't even remember how I knew the book existed: I just did. Ironically, years before I had been reading issues of Rolling Stone that Thompson wrote essays for (the one that springs to mind is "Polo is My Life," which became the book he never released between Better Than Sex and Kingdom of Fear), but I didn't read those articles. In retrospect, I wish I had, but the literary "virus" infects without warning.
The same is applicable to film, even if there are a few more tangible sources to point towards. Most film "geeks" spend (spent? considering current trends) hours poring through the titles at video stores, attracted to lurid cover art or titles that confound the mind. The video store clerk, not always the stereotypical "comic book guy" from The Simpsons, was handy in offering suggestions. True story: while applying for a job at a local video store (a job I did not end up getting because I was too young), the manager interviewing me suggested that I watch Swimming with Sharks because I really enjoyed Kevin Spacey in The Ref. Had she not suggested I rent Swimming with Sharks, I may have missed out on the film entirely for years.
Looking back on the job I did get, a seasonal shift working for Suncoast Video (now FYE), the root cause for the cinephile "meme" still remains elusive: aside from a friend asking me to find Sid and Nancy*, much of my time working there wasn't spent combing through titles I didn't recognize or hadn't heard of. To be fair, it was the holiday season and I was only sixteen, but both prime opportunities to identify an originating "there" for the cinematic virus both come up blank.
The truth is that I don't know who told me that The Evil Dead was a film to see. Maybe it was The Video Movie Guide by Mick Martin and Marsha Porter - that was, I recall, the first time I ever heard that Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn was practically a "remake of the first film" - then again, maybe it was a review of Army of Darkness in the local newspaper. I didn't see Army of Darkness at the time, but I knew it existed, and with a bit of diligent investigation, it's possible I traced the sequel back to Sam Raimi's debut. The problem is that you always seem to be telling other people about these films, but can never suss out how you knew about them. Nobody told me about The Rocky Horror Picture Show; it just always seemed to be there, a midnight listing for The Rialto every week. One week, we decided to go, not really knowing much more about the film or the rules than when we didn't want to go.
Once the meme reaches you, infects you, the information and the desire to learn more increases exponentially. One film leads to another, that leads to another, that leads to a dead end, a rumor, a film no one can find: the Cannibal Holocaust's, the "director's cut" of Dawn of the Dead, a "workprint" cut of Alien 3, the "five hour" Dune. At the time, with limited resources, these seem like impossibilities. They have to be "out there" because you read some arcane reference to the fact, or saw a discrepancy in the running time** somewhere.
Now, things are a little different: the internet leveled out much of the conjecture, many of the second or third-hand sources, and the growing availability of DVDs have, in many ways, altered the landscape permanently. Access is different, although surprisingly as vague as the meme was before an era of instant availability. While it's much, much easier to find out about apocryphal "geek" trivia, like what's missing in different versions of a film (see Movie-Censorship dot com), the paper trail is nevertheless no more definite. The availability of information is more prevalent; it's source remains nearly as ethereal.
Apropos to this discussion is the fact that I don't consider the internet to have "ruined" geek culture: Patton Oswalt made several salient (if tongue in cheek) points in a Wired article titled "Wake Up, Geek Culture: Time to Die" and maybe the "cult" aspect of fandom is vanishing thanks to over-saturation. We live in an age when the random, the lost-in-the-shuffle, the marginal can not only be found on the Internet Movie Database, but the poster is only a Google Image Search away (often linked to a page where it's for sale), has at least one link on Amazon***, and if an industrious pirate has enough perseverance, the film itself is floating somewhere in the digital cloud.
The digital cloud, so to speak, has become another fold in which the film meme hides itself. What's different is that the limited resources of fifteen or twenty years ago have, for the most part, disappeared. People visit this blog as a result of image searches for films like Monsturd, a movie I can't imagine is really that widely discussed. Still, someone heard the title from a friend of a friend (or from Netflix), and plugged the title in. They ended up here, and I take great pride in being a source that passes on the film meme, or Cinephilia as I like to classify it. Maybe I can tell you where I heard about these films from, but I'll be more than happy to pass them on if they're worth your while.
* True story - Sid and Nancy was, at that point, not available on VHS. I jokingly suggested she buy a sixty dollar Laserdisc copy of the film. The laserdisc's publisher? Criterion.
** This continues to be a point of curiosity among friends: when Artisan released The Ninth Gate, the Spanish running time was fifteen minutes longer than the American version, which I have never found any accounting for, or if a longer cut even exists.
*** Take, for example, Five Minutes to Live, also known as The Door-to-Door Maniac: a Johnny Cash and Ronnie Howard vehicle from the 1960s that most Cash fans don't even know exists. Seven Amazon listings for the DVD as of five minutes ago.
Showing posts with label Video Movie Guide. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Video Movie Guide. Show all posts
Friday, March 11, 2011
Thursday, January 7, 2010
The End of One Era, the Beginning of Another...
Greetings, gang-a-rinos! How's everybody doing? New Year treating you all right so far? The Cap'n is making with the generic intros because I'm still mulling over what to chat up you good people about today. I saw Up in the Air last night, which was excellent, but I don't quite want to review it yet. I want to let the movie simmer for another day, I think. At this moment, it easily fits in my "Favorites" of 2009, just a few days removed. But we'll get to that soon, methinks.
Let's talk a bit about Blockbuster shutting down stores, shall we?
In the last month or so, I've been in two different cities where at least one Blockbuster video was shutting down, in that "we're even selling the shelves and fixtures" way that Circuit City did last year. While I don't mourn the massive liquidation of a video store behemoth, there are two points of interest that arise when considering the demise of a major chain: 1) what's to become of the "mom and pop" independent video stores, and 2) how much should one comfortably benefit from their creed that "everything must go"?
The first comes up in the wake of a series of articles I wrote over the last three years about the slow death of the independent video store and even, to some degree, the "baby" chains like North American Video. Netflix and Redbox are just hurting the Hollywood Videos and the Blockbusters; their convenience and ease of use are leaving the indie stores struggling to keep up with the demand for everything right now.
I don't necessarily weep for Blockbuster because they were directly responsible for killing Carbonated Video, my favorite local rental hub growing up. Carbonated Video had a great selection of well known and obscure titles, they stocked multiple copies, and had deals where you could rent twenty movies for twenty dollars (plus get a free copy of The Video Movie Guide). I frequented that cinematic watering hole and through years of combing through titles, saw movies I never would have experienced at the bigger stores.
They even rented Laserdiscs and Laserdisc players, which to younger readers might sound like a foreign concept, but once upon a time movies in a digital format were the size of records and had to be flipped over. Back in the old days, before dual layer DVDs or Blu-Rays, the Laserdisc was a cineaste's treat: commentary tracks, alternate versions, bonus material... a joy.
But Carbonated Video doesn't exist any more. Blockbuster opened up and killed it. North American Video (formerly Video Bar) is hanging on, but just barely. Like Video Review here, it survives due to a loyal fanbase, but that can't last forever. It's getting too easy to have movies delivered to you, without late fees, and with a selection I've yet to see any video store (even the big ones) top. And if the big boys are being choked out, the little stores don't have much hope either.
To wit: I am a Netflix user. I've had the service for almost five years now, and I use the rental and "watch it now" streaming frequently. Their selection of Blu Ray films is better, their foreign films span deeper and wider, and it saves me considerably more money than hunting down titles or driving around. In one month I pay less for any three movies than I would buying them, and I see things I wouldn't otherwise. So I realize I'm part of the problem here, but I'm not trying to bemoan the loss of our beloved "independent stores"; this is more of an acknowledgment of the passing of one era to another.
The second point is a weirder one to raise, I know. Clearly, if Blockbuster is selling their movies, and a high quantity of films that might otherwise be unavailable are suddenly for purchase, why on earth would I think twice about cleaning them out? After all, when I go to the closing stores, I tend to pick up movies their normal customers wouldn't think twice about, and movies I don't typically come across, like Timecrimes, The Five Obstructions, and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance.
My answer goes something like this: while it is taking advantage of a great deal (we're talking $2-4 per movie here), the money is still going to Blockbuster. It's still helping them out, and might I not consider that this money could be spent just as well at a local bookstore like Edward McKay's, which also stocks a varied selection of films. For example, I just picked up Roman Polanski's Knife in the Water today, and considered buying Francis Ford Coppola's One From the Heart. I've seen The Five Obstructions at Ed McKay's, and for a few dollars more could have supported that business instead of a video store I've actively avoided for the last few years.
It's not that I have some blanket condemnation of Blockbuster on some moral high ground; it's just that I don't really feel the need to go to Blockbuster and they don't seem to want my business. It's mutually beneficial that way. Suddenly I'm jumping in like a jackal to feast on their remains because, well, I can. Did I really need a copy of Surveillance on Blu-Ray, or did I just buy it because I'd never seen it anywhere else? Why am I not just renting this stuff?
That sounds a bit ridiculous and self serving, but I do wonder what the value in piling on with the other vultures is. Sometimes I wonder if I really need any of it, or if it's just such a good deal that not picking it up would seem foolish at the moment. I passed over a copy of Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, a Clint Eastwood heist flick featuring a young Jeff Bridges that I happen to enjoy, the last time I was over there. If I go back, and it's much cheaper, will I buy it just because it's there? Because most people would walk right past? I'm not sure.
What I will say is that if I see more copies of Blood Car, I'll pick them up as a way to entice you good people to "Guest Blog" for me. Consider it a "win/win": I get to read your writing and you get a copy of Blood Car. I can't see a loser in this scenario, except the video stores.
Aw crap.
Let's talk a bit about Blockbuster shutting down stores, shall we?
In the last month or so, I've been in two different cities where at least one Blockbuster video was shutting down, in that "we're even selling the shelves and fixtures" way that Circuit City did last year. While I don't mourn the massive liquidation of a video store behemoth, there are two points of interest that arise when considering the demise of a major chain: 1) what's to become of the "mom and pop" independent video stores, and 2) how much should one comfortably benefit from their creed that "everything must go"?
The first comes up in the wake of a series of articles I wrote over the last three years about the slow death of the independent video store and even, to some degree, the "baby" chains like North American Video. Netflix and Redbox are just hurting the Hollywood Videos and the Blockbusters; their convenience and ease of use are leaving the indie stores struggling to keep up with the demand for everything right now.
I don't necessarily weep for Blockbuster because they were directly responsible for killing Carbonated Video, my favorite local rental hub growing up. Carbonated Video had a great selection of well known and obscure titles, they stocked multiple copies, and had deals where you could rent twenty movies for twenty dollars (plus get a free copy of The Video Movie Guide). I frequented that cinematic watering hole and through years of combing through titles, saw movies I never would have experienced at the bigger stores.
They even rented Laserdiscs and Laserdisc players, which to younger readers might sound like a foreign concept, but once upon a time movies in a digital format were the size of records and had to be flipped over. Back in the old days, before dual layer DVDs or Blu-Rays, the Laserdisc was a cineaste's treat: commentary tracks, alternate versions, bonus material... a joy.
But Carbonated Video doesn't exist any more. Blockbuster opened up and killed it. North American Video (formerly Video Bar) is hanging on, but just barely. Like Video Review here, it survives due to a loyal fanbase, but that can't last forever. It's getting too easy to have movies delivered to you, without late fees, and with a selection I've yet to see any video store (even the big ones) top. And if the big boys are being choked out, the little stores don't have much hope either.
To wit: I am a Netflix user. I've had the service for almost five years now, and I use the rental and "watch it now" streaming frequently. Their selection of Blu Ray films is better, their foreign films span deeper and wider, and it saves me considerably more money than hunting down titles or driving around. In one month I pay less for any three movies than I would buying them, and I see things I wouldn't otherwise. So I realize I'm part of the problem here, but I'm not trying to bemoan the loss of our beloved "independent stores"; this is more of an acknowledgment of the passing of one era to another.
The second point is a weirder one to raise, I know. Clearly, if Blockbuster is selling their movies, and a high quantity of films that might otherwise be unavailable are suddenly for purchase, why on earth would I think twice about cleaning them out? After all, when I go to the closing stores, I tend to pick up movies their normal customers wouldn't think twice about, and movies I don't typically come across, like Timecrimes, The Five Obstructions, and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance.
My answer goes something like this: while it is taking advantage of a great deal (we're talking $2-4 per movie here), the money is still going to Blockbuster. It's still helping them out, and might I not consider that this money could be spent just as well at a local bookstore like Edward McKay's, which also stocks a varied selection of films. For example, I just picked up Roman Polanski's Knife in the Water today, and considered buying Francis Ford Coppola's One From the Heart. I've seen The Five Obstructions at Ed McKay's, and for a few dollars more could have supported that business instead of a video store I've actively avoided for the last few years.
It's not that I have some blanket condemnation of Blockbuster on some moral high ground; it's just that I don't really feel the need to go to Blockbuster and they don't seem to want my business. It's mutually beneficial that way. Suddenly I'm jumping in like a jackal to feast on their remains because, well, I can. Did I really need a copy of Surveillance on Blu-Ray, or did I just buy it because I'd never seen it anywhere else? Why am I not just renting this stuff?
That sounds a bit ridiculous and self serving, but I do wonder what the value in piling on with the other vultures is. Sometimes I wonder if I really need any of it, or if it's just such a good deal that not picking it up would seem foolish at the moment. I passed over a copy of Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, a Clint Eastwood heist flick featuring a young Jeff Bridges that I happen to enjoy, the last time I was over there. If I go back, and it's much cheaper, will I buy it just because it's there? Because most people would walk right past? I'm not sure.
What I will say is that if I see more copies of Blood Car, I'll pick them up as a way to entice you good people to "Guest Blog" for me. Consider it a "win/win": I get to read your writing and you get a copy of Blood Car. I can't see a loser in this scenario, except the video stores.
Aw crap.
Monday, November 16, 2009
Fun for all ages... for about two turns.
Have you ever played "The Movie Game"? It was ubiquitous when I was at university the first time around, and I was quite pleased to discover that it exists outside of the world of college film dorks. I am going to do you a huge favor if you've ever tried the game and stalled out, but first let's catch up everybody else.
For those of you who have not or aren't sure, the game is remarkably simple. At a party or social gathering, take any circle of people (the larger the better), and start the game by naming a movie. The person to your left will then name an actor / actress from that movie, and moving clockwise, you will continue to name another movie they were in, someone in that movie, and so on.
Some folks play for points, and if you get to a certain number of "pass"es, you're out. Others will do an indefinite movement to keep the game going as long as possible, because it can be fun.
There are, invariably, two exceptions to the "fun" rule:
1) Someone who is moderately to very drunk will always insist that they're going to "kick your ass", only to complain about how hard the game is and wander off halfway through. Happens every time.
2) Two or three people will emerge as being very good at the game, and eventually as alcohol and party interests remove all other players, it will shrink to a very sad state indeed.
As a way to prevent the second from happening and to provide the drunken fool from the first point a fair shot, I'm going to provide you with the Rosetta Stone of "Movie Game" movies. It also happens to be the easiest way in or out of a "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" game you'll ever play, but that is another story.
Normally, I would tell you to study up on the filmographies of Wallace Shawn, Paul Giamatti, Bud Cort, Bob Balaban, or any number of terribly useful supporting actors that appear in just about everything, but for the novice, may I present a film so packed with actors and actresses that it's almost impossible not to immediately find another movie to go to.
I present to you, Michael Mann's Heat.
Watching it again this afternoon, as I seem to do every two or three years, I'm struck not only by how well it still holds up, but also at the almost ridiculous amount of "name" talent who appear in small roles. Starting with the leads, I'm just going to work my way through the cast - periodically identifying movies of names that don't seem familiar- and I guarantee your movie game has an ace up its sleeve from the get-go:
Al Pacino
Robert DeNiro
Val Kilmer
Jon Voight
Tom Sizemore
Ashley Judd
Natalie Portman
Jeremy Piven
Danny Trejo
Henry Rollins
William Finchter (Contact, The Chumscrubber)
Dennis Haysbert (24, Jarhead, Far from Heaven)
Hank Azaria (The Simpsons, Grosse Point Blank, Shattered Glass)
Ted Levine (Evolution, Birth, The Fast and the Furious)
Tom Noonan (Last Action Hero, The Pledge, Heaven's Gate)
Kevin Gage (Space Camp, The 'burbs, May)
Wes Studi (Dances with Wolves, Last of the Mohicans)
Xander Berkeley (The Grifters, Taken, Candyman)
Bud Cort (Harold and Maude, Pollock, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou)
Mykelti Williamson (Forrest Gump, Con Air)
Diane Venora (Bird, The Substitute)
Amy Brenneman (Your Friends & Neighbors, City of Angels)
Tone Loc (Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, The Adventures of Ford Fairlane, Ferngully: The Last Rainforest)
You can get in and out of Heat in any number of conceivable ways, and believe me when I say I'm scraping the tip of the iceberg with the likes of William Finchter and Xander Berkeley's film work. The same goes for Hank Azaria, Danny Trejo, Kevin Gage, and Henry Rollins. Or hell, play it safe and work from the top of the list. And what did I say about Bud Cort? See how he pops up in the oddest places?
Watching Heat is a who's who of "hey, that guy!", and movies like this keep "The Movie Game" interesting precisely because they open up more opportunities for others. It can get you out of a sticky situation when someone drops a really random movie that only one big "name" is in. Suddenly you can whip out Heat and save the day!
For you trivia junkies out there, I imagine you'll be studying the bottom of the list, and you'll have a lot to work with. I look forward to locking horns with you in the future...
For those of you who have not or aren't sure, the game is remarkably simple. At a party or social gathering, take any circle of people (the larger the better), and start the game by naming a movie. The person to your left will then name an actor / actress from that movie, and moving clockwise, you will continue to name another movie they were in, someone in that movie, and so on.
Some folks play for points, and if you get to a certain number of "pass"es, you're out. Others will do an indefinite movement to keep the game going as long as possible, because it can be fun.
There are, invariably, two exceptions to the "fun" rule:
1) Someone who is moderately to very drunk will always insist that they're going to "kick your ass", only to complain about how hard the game is and wander off halfway through. Happens every time.
2) Two or three people will emerge as being very good at the game, and eventually as alcohol and party interests remove all other players, it will shrink to a very sad state indeed.
As a way to prevent the second from happening and to provide the drunken fool from the first point a fair shot, I'm going to provide you with the Rosetta Stone of "Movie Game" movies. It also happens to be the easiest way in or out of a "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" game you'll ever play, but that is another story.
Normally, I would tell you to study up on the filmographies of Wallace Shawn, Paul Giamatti, Bud Cort, Bob Balaban, or any number of terribly useful supporting actors that appear in just about everything, but for the novice, may I present a film so packed with actors and actresses that it's almost impossible not to immediately find another movie to go to.
I present to you, Michael Mann's Heat.
Watching it again this afternoon, as I seem to do every two or three years, I'm struck not only by how well it still holds up, but also at the almost ridiculous amount of "name" talent who appear in small roles. Starting with the leads, I'm just going to work my way through the cast - periodically identifying movies of names that don't seem familiar- and I guarantee your movie game has an ace up its sleeve from the get-go:
Al Pacino
Robert DeNiro
Val Kilmer
Jon Voight
Tom Sizemore
Ashley Judd
Natalie Portman
Jeremy Piven
Danny Trejo
Henry Rollins
William Finchter (Contact, The Chumscrubber)
Dennis Haysbert (24, Jarhead, Far from Heaven)
Hank Azaria (The Simpsons, Grosse Point Blank, Shattered Glass)
Ted Levine (Evolution, Birth, The Fast and the Furious)
Tom Noonan (Last Action Hero, The Pledge, Heaven's Gate)
Kevin Gage (Space Camp, The 'burbs, May)
Wes Studi (Dances with Wolves, Last of the Mohicans)
Xander Berkeley (The Grifters, Taken, Candyman)
Bud Cort (Harold and Maude, Pollock, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou)
Mykelti Williamson (Forrest Gump, Con Air)
Diane Venora (Bird, The Substitute)
Amy Brenneman (Your Friends & Neighbors, City of Angels)
Tone Loc (Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, The Adventures of Ford Fairlane, Ferngully: The Last Rainforest)
You can get in and out of Heat in any number of conceivable ways, and believe me when I say I'm scraping the tip of the iceberg with the likes of William Finchter and Xander Berkeley's film work. The same goes for Hank Azaria, Danny Trejo, Kevin Gage, and Henry Rollins. Or hell, play it safe and work from the top of the list. And what did I say about Bud Cort? See how he pops up in the oddest places?
Watching Heat is a who's who of "hey, that guy!", and movies like this keep "The Movie Game" interesting precisely because they open up more opportunities for others. It can get you out of a sticky situation when someone drops a really random movie that only one big "name" is in. Suddenly you can whip out Heat and save the day!
For you trivia junkies out there, I imagine you'll be studying the bottom of the list, and you'll have a lot to work with. I look forward to locking horns with you in the future...
Saturday, August 8, 2009
Cult Movies, Continued.
editor's note: I woke up to discover this, for some reason, hadn't been posted on Saturday evening when it was written. Apologies.
I was looking through some of the vintage pieces from the Blogorium "vault", and I realized while reading one about what classifies a "cult" movie that I suddenly had a serious problem with my premise.
The issue isn't so much about what is or isn't a "cult" movie but more about the nature of the cult movie phenomenon itself:
Does it still exist?
When I was in high school, in the early days of the internet (when you couldn't actually find anything if you didn't know exactly where to look), I was kinda/sorta doing some student teaching during an "independent study" period, and one of the students came up to me and said "I want to know what 'the list' is."
I wasn't sure what she meant, but it turned out she was talking about "the list" of books you're "supposed" to read that aren't part of the high school curriculum. As recently as ten years ago, this was something that someone brought to you: usually the cool kid who seemed wiser than their years or the outsider or whoever. The list itself had no origin that anybody knew of, existed as a meme or as viral content. One day you didn't know it existed; the next day you did.
Suddenly you knew that you needed to read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. You needed to read Catch-22, Brave New World, Naked Lunch, beat poetry, and other subversive-for-its-time literature. You would seek the books out and be able to recognize those who were ready to take a similar journey, but it was never thought of or referred to as "the list". It just was.
(The music industry figured out a way to capitalize and exploit this during the nineties in an all-inclusive banner called "alternative", and many of us drank the Kool-Aid in one form or fashion.)
For movies it was a little trickier, because you really needed someone who worked in a video store to steer you away from renting everything (something I discussed not too long ago). The other helpful method was to have (or read) one of those movie guides cover to cover and be dedicated enough not just to skip over something you didn't recognize. You had to spend a LOT of time getting past the lurid cover art to really discover something worth passing along, and the "list" of cult films was pretty short, even when I was in high school.
It went something like this:
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
The Evil Dead trilogy
Eraserhead
Escape from New York
Shaft
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Halloween
A Clockwork Orange
Meet the Feebles
Dead Alive
The Big Lebowski
eventually, in college, it expanded considerably, thanks in part to more access to film fans, video stores, classes, better independent theatres. Notice how few foreign films are on the list of "cult" films as I understood them in high school. Shit, notice how few films there are period, how many classics I'm leaving out (Polyester, for chrissakes!).
As the internet started to grow, and as people became more easily connected, suddenly more and more movies that had been lost in the shuffle got out there, and something changed to the "cult" movie phenomenon: more people new about them. Not only did they know more about them, but they could point you to where they heard about them in a concrete manner. It wasn't Dave at Carbonated Video, it was the Entertainment Weekly list of "Best Cult Films" or Cult Movie Watch*, or Videohound's Guide to Cult Movies You Must See Before You Die.
So I must ask: if almost anyone can tell you they know that Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn exists, and that they or someone they know has seen it, is it a "cult" film anymore? Does the film reach a point where it is so well recognized because of its presence online that it ceases to be something unknown and "discovered"?
I suppose then the followup question is "would that be such a bad thing?" Do we need to have the sense of discovering something to really enjoy it? When I saw Donnie Darko for the first time, no one I knew had seen it or heard about it. I read a review in the News and Observer that mentioned a giant bunny named Frank and then it never came out. Showing it to everyone I knew was like sharing a secret, and then about six months later everyone knew about it. It was all over college campuses and for some reason, things were less fun. It's weird.
Discovering movies is really hard now, because most of the time I hear about it all over the place online before I think about renting it. The last "discovery" I can think of was Primer, and that was after months of reading about the film. Word of mouth still happens, but it's usually coupled with "yeah, I saw that online" or "I read about that" The conversations about "Holy Fuck have you heard of this movie about puppets throwing up and killing each other?!" don't seem to happen as much. It's kind of a bummer.
Rarer and rarer are the days of something like Blood Car, a movie that came from a friend of Neil's that I'd never heard of before and, had he not brought it to our attention, I may well have never seen. The same goes for Terrorvision, which came from the memories of Major Tom. Both of those are "must see" movies, and they're pretty tough to find if you don't know where to look, but that ilk of movie is getting more and more difficult to find these days. Mrm.
* I don't actually know if that exists but if googled, I wouldn't be surprised to find it.
I was looking through some of the vintage pieces from the Blogorium "vault", and I realized while reading one about what classifies a "cult" movie that I suddenly had a serious problem with my premise.
The issue isn't so much about what is or isn't a "cult" movie but more about the nature of the cult movie phenomenon itself:
Does it still exist?
When I was in high school, in the early days of the internet (when you couldn't actually find anything if you didn't know exactly where to look), I was kinda/sorta doing some student teaching during an "independent study" period, and one of the students came up to me and said "I want to know what 'the list' is."
I wasn't sure what she meant, but it turned out she was talking about "the list" of books you're "supposed" to read that aren't part of the high school curriculum. As recently as ten years ago, this was something that someone brought to you: usually the cool kid who seemed wiser than their years or the outsider or whoever. The list itself had no origin that anybody knew of, existed as a meme or as viral content. One day you didn't know it existed; the next day you did.
Suddenly you knew that you needed to read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. You needed to read Catch-22, Brave New World, Naked Lunch, beat poetry, and other subversive-for-its-time literature. You would seek the books out and be able to recognize those who were ready to take a similar journey, but it was never thought of or referred to as "the list". It just was.
(The music industry figured out a way to capitalize and exploit this during the nineties in an all-inclusive banner called "alternative", and many of us drank the Kool-Aid in one form or fashion.)
For movies it was a little trickier, because you really needed someone who worked in a video store to steer you away from renting everything (something I discussed not too long ago). The other helpful method was to have (or read) one of those movie guides cover to cover and be dedicated enough not just to skip over something you didn't recognize. You had to spend a LOT of time getting past the lurid cover art to really discover something worth passing along, and the "list" of cult films was pretty short, even when I was in high school.
It went something like this:
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
The Evil Dead trilogy
Eraserhead
Escape from New York
Shaft
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Halloween
A Clockwork Orange
Meet the Feebles
Dead Alive
The Big Lebowski
eventually, in college, it expanded considerably, thanks in part to more access to film fans, video stores, classes, better independent theatres. Notice how few foreign films are on the list of "cult" films as I understood them in high school. Shit, notice how few films there are period, how many classics I'm leaving out (Polyester, for chrissakes!).
As the internet started to grow, and as people became more easily connected, suddenly more and more movies that had been lost in the shuffle got out there, and something changed to the "cult" movie phenomenon: more people new about them. Not only did they know more about them, but they could point you to where they heard about them in a concrete manner. It wasn't Dave at Carbonated Video, it was the Entertainment Weekly list of "Best Cult Films" or Cult Movie Watch*, or Videohound's Guide to Cult Movies You Must See Before You Die.
So I must ask: if almost anyone can tell you they know that Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn exists, and that they or someone they know has seen it, is it a "cult" film anymore? Does the film reach a point where it is so well recognized because of its presence online that it ceases to be something unknown and "discovered"?
I suppose then the followup question is "would that be such a bad thing?" Do we need to have the sense of discovering something to really enjoy it? When I saw Donnie Darko for the first time, no one I knew had seen it or heard about it. I read a review in the News and Observer that mentioned a giant bunny named Frank and then it never came out. Showing it to everyone I knew was like sharing a secret, and then about six months later everyone knew about it. It was all over college campuses and for some reason, things were less fun. It's weird.
Discovering movies is really hard now, because most of the time I hear about it all over the place online before I think about renting it. The last "discovery" I can think of was Primer, and that was after months of reading about the film. Word of mouth still happens, but it's usually coupled with "yeah, I saw that online" or "I read about that" The conversations about "Holy Fuck have you heard of this movie about puppets throwing up and killing each other?!" don't seem to happen as much. It's kind of a bummer.
Rarer and rarer are the days of something like Blood Car, a movie that came from a friend of Neil's that I'd never heard of before and, had he not brought it to our attention, I may well have never seen. The same goes for Terrorvision, which came from the memories of Major Tom. Both of those are "must see" movies, and they're pretty tough to find if you don't know where to look, but that ilk of movie is getting more and more difficult to find these days. Mrm.
* I don't actually know if that exists but if googled, I wouldn't be surprised to find it.
Friday, May 15, 2009
Blame the Book!
In order to cleanse my palate of the vile s. Darko, let's switch to more pleasant subjects.
One of the questions I get more often than anything else is "where the hell do you find these movies?"
The answer is in this book:
I may do a boatload of internet surfing in order to locate the new, obscure, or bizarre, but without Mick Martin and Marsha Porter's Video Movie Guide, I would never have begun the journey into cinphelia. I'm pretty sure I just made that word up, and it still sounds kind of pervy. Oh well, back to business.
The Cap'n decided it would be okay to share his trade secret with you, as having one of these bad boys in your house is guaranteed to help a young movie fan expand their knowledge of all kinds of movies. What I loved about these books (and at one time my family had every one of them from 1984-1993) was the way you could flip to any page and find at least one movie you'd never heard of. For example:
Within the guide was everything you needed to know about the title, from length, why it merited its rating, and that handy reviewing fashion: Five Stars to Turkey. And it didn't just say "Turkey", you got this:
Here are some more actual reviews, including one I excerpted a few weeks ago, but in order to prove the movie really existed in a published book:
I scanned a few of the titles so that you could get an idea of how the book operates, and while I would have loved to include more (like Quest for Fire, Polyester, Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn, Munchies, The Hills Have Eyes) that caught my attention as a youngster, the size of the book makes it difficult. Click on the photo below for two pages worth of quality obscura, including The Driller Killer, Equinox, Eaten Alive, Drive-In Massacre, Eegah, Duel, and Eraserhead.
Also handy is that for much of the run of these books (and they're about as thick as paperbacks of The Stand at 1580 pages) included cross listings of Every movie a particular star was in or a director's filmography so you could go looking for more titles. They also have an index of every single movie in the back with the corresponding page.
I'd forgotten about this but even though the book is a steal at 7.95, the particular copy I have came free with a membership to Carbonated Video, a long gone and much missed local video store from my youth. Without the guide, I might have overlooked movies based on lackluster VHS covers or simply not knowing where to find them in the store. It continues to be useful, even 19 years out of date.
Shilling isn't often my forte, but this book is essential for any cinephile's library. I can't imagine these books are hard to find, and while Martin and Porter continue to publish them (as Video and DVD Guide I believe), I highly recommend scouring used book stores for the tomes from the 1980s. In the early days of VHS, they had less titles to include, so the reviews were longer. After 1990, they began editing down some of the "Turkey" reviews, including many of the Friday the 13th sequels. It's not to say they aren't still good, but you can get more quality and more obscurity the earlier you go.
Blogorium readers, if you want to get an inside track on how the Cap'n explores the dark, dusty corners of cinema, this is a good start.
One of the questions I get more often than anything else is "where the hell do you find these movies?"
The answer is in this book:
I may do a boatload of internet surfing in order to locate the new, obscure, or bizarre, but without Mick Martin and Marsha Porter's Video Movie Guide, I would never have begun the journey into cinphelia. I'm pretty sure I just made that word up, and it still sounds kind of pervy. Oh well, back to business.
The Cap'n decided it would be okay to share his trade secret with you, as having one of these bad boys in your house is guaranteed to help a young movie fan expand their knowledge of all kinds of movies. What I loved about these books (and at one time my family had every one of them from 1984-1993) was the way you could flip to any page and find at least one movie you'd never heard of. For example:
Within the guide was everything you needed to know about the title, from length, why it merited its rating, and that handy reviewing fashion: Five Stars to Turkey. And it didn't just say "Turkey", you got this:
Here are some more actual reviews, including one I excerpted a few weeks ago, but in order to prove the movie really existed in a published book:
I scanned a few of the titles so that you could get an idea of how the book operates, and while I would have loved to include more (like Quest for Fire, Polyester, Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn, Munchies, The Hills Have Eyes) that caught my attention as a youngster, the size of the book makes it difficult. Click on the photo below for two pages worth of quality obscura, including The Driller Killer, Equinox, Eaten Alive, Drive-In Massacre, Eegah, Duel, and Eraserhead.
Also handy is that for much of the run of these books (and they're about as thick as paperbacks of The Stand at 1580 pages) included cross listings of Every movie a particular star was in or a director's filmography so you could go looking for more titles. They also have an index of every single movie in the back with the corresponding page.
I'd forgotten about this but even though the book is a steal at 7.95, the particular copy I have came free with a membership to Carbonated Video, a long gone and much missed local video store from my youth. Without the guide, I might have overlooked movies based on lackluster VHS covers or simply not knowing where to find them in the store. It continues to be useful, even 19 years out of date.
Shilling isn't often my forte, but this book is essential for any cinephile's library. I can't imagine these books are hard to find, and while Martin and Porter continue to publish them (as Video and DVD Guide I believe), I highly recommend scouring used book stores for the tomes from the 1980s. In the early days of VHS, they had less titles to include, so the reviews were longer. After 1990, they began editing down some of the "Turkey" reviews, including many of the Friday the 13th sequels. It's not to say they aren't still good, but you can get more quality and more obscurity the earlier you go.
Blogorium readers, if you want to get an inside track on how the Cap'n explores the dark, dusty corners of cinema, this is a good start.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)