The New Yorker Radio Hour - Richard Brody Makes the Case for Keeping Your DVDs

Episode Date: September 12, 2023

At the end of this month, after more than two decades, Netflix is phasing out its DVD-rental business. While that may not come as a surprise given the predominance of streaming platforms, it’s a great loss to cinephiles, according to the New Yorker’s Richard Brody. Streaming services routinely drop titles from circulation, and amazing films may be lost to moviegoers. “Physical media is what protects us from being at the mercy of streaming services for our movies and our music,” Brody says. “It’s like a library at home.” Brody gives the producer Adam Howard a peek into his own personal stash of films, and picks a few DVDs of films he would take with him in a fire: Godard’s “King Lear” (“the greatest film ever made – literally”); “Chameleon Street,” by Wendell B. Harris, Jr.; “Stranded” and “The Plastic Dome of Norma Jean,” by Juleen Compton; and a box set of five films by John Cassavetes. New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. This is The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. At the end of this month, after more than two decades, Netflix is phasing out its DVD rental business. Yes, it's DVD business. For a casual movie fan, this seems like just an inevitable step toward the ubiquity of streaming. But keep this in mind. streamers like HBO Max and Disney Plus drop titles from their platforms by the dozen all the time

and they don't give you a lot of explanation or warning. And so for real movie fans, that's not good. And they're taking the Netflix news hard. Hi, we're here for Richard Brody. Our producer Adam Howard went the other day to commiserate with the New Yorker's Richard Brody. Hey, Richard. Thank you so much for letting us invade your home.

Oh, please. Come on and welcome, you are welcome. Thank you. It's good to see you. Good to see you. Richard Brody writes our column, The Front Row, and as an obsessive cinephile, his apartment and his desk at work, I can attest, are stacked to the ceiling with DVDs.

So, as I'm sure you know, Netflix has decided to discontinue their disc rental service. I think for a lot of people, this news might be greeted with a shrug. But I imagine for someone like yourself who's a film critic and a film enthusiast, you might greet this news with a little bit more

concern. Well, Netflix's discontinuation of their DVD rentals is indicative of the overall demise of physical media. Physical media is what protects us from being at the complete mercy of streaming services for our movies and our music. It's like having a library at home.

And when it comes to physical media, is there an ideal form? I mean, some folks back in the day used to have laser discs. I was pretty excited when VHS came in because it didn't just mean rentals. In fact, VHSs were hardly ever meant for purchase, except for the wonderful knockoffs you'd find at convenience stores. That's how my, the first VHS I ever bought was Orson Wells of the trial, a complete and total bootleg.

It cost me $2 and the film wasn't really available in other forms. Where would you have found Orson Wells as the trial? Oh, Dwayne Reed, CVS. That was that a Dwayne Reed? Yeah. So you think it's fair to say that getting a DVD player or a VHS player is still like a worthwhile investment? Well, VHS, I don't know. Depends on what you've got.

I mean, I actually have, I had hundreds, maybe thousands of VHS tapes, most of which I had recorded off TV. But I got rid of them over time. The ones that I needed, I would simply copy from VHS to DVD, and then I gave them away. Or threw them out, depending. But DVD player, absolutely, because that format I think is going to be around for quite a while. Blu-ray, I don't know. I mean, Blu-ray has something almost hyper-realistic about it. Sometimes when I watch a Blu-ray, I feel like I'm seeing things that would never have been seen

had I been watching a movie in a theater. It's like watching a microscopic view of a movie. It's definitely making a lot of toupee's much more evident, which is unfortunate for a lot of people. One of the things I sort of miss is when I was a kid just sort of going to the video store and kind of just looking at the boxes and sort of taking a chance on something that look cool. And I'm curious, you know, how much you think has been lost from that transition, from sort of the experience of walking into a store and renting a movie or buying a movie, talking about it with your friends to just sort of sitting at home and scrolling. Well, it's funny how the idea of the communal has regressed. When home video came in and people started renting movies and watching them at home,

a lot of people lamented the fact that the communal experience of theaters were being lost in favor of people sitting alone or privately and watching movies at home. The first DVD I ever bought was also a convenience store knockoff. It was of the musical The Pajama Game, probably for $2. And the beauty of it was that this was a print that was put onto a DVD with no restoration. And I felt like I was sitting at the old Repertory House Theater, Aedianne St. Mark's Place,

watching a beautiful yet beat-up old print. I gotta buy me a dress. See, dress, the one that I have is such a mess. Small talk. Who will you vote for next election? How do you like the stamp collection? Small talk. Read in a book the other day

that Hallibut spawn an early May and horses whinny and donkeys bray. And furthermore, Richard Brody, Talking Film with the Radio Hours, Adam Hall. We'll continue in a moment. So, yeah, you mentioned some of your own collections. We wanted to talk about what your most precious items are. Theoretically, if there was horrific fire and you had an opportunity to save films from your apartment,

what films those would be and why? The first is a homemade. It's Godaac's King Lear, which I consider the greatest film ever made, literally. I think it made about 33 cents when it was released. I mean, I saw it, you know, three times the week it opened, and I think I, you know, multiplied its box office significantly. It's a great movie. You know, it has Molly Wingwald. It has Burgess Meredith.

It has Peter Sellers, the theater director, playing William Shakespeare Jr. The 5th. It has Norman Mailer. It has Woody Allen. It's an insane cast. It's a great movie. What do you think will happen now? Before seven years have passed,

the Americans will lose everything they have in France, and a great victory, which God is sending to the French. I say this now so that when the time has come it will be remembered that I've said it. But it not only did not do well, but it got terrible reviews. It's sort of a film Modi, a film that its greatness is in diametrical disproportion to the reviews that it got at the time,

which is not available on DVD. Really? Not in any format. Not in any format. Okay. So how did you get it? I got it because it was broadcast on this channel that was called Uptown, and I recorded it on VHS, and then when I feared that the VHS tape was going to get old, I transferred it to DVD. So let's see what's next?

Well, one of the most important things about home video is that it makes available movies that are rarely available in any other form. One of them is Camelion Street, Wendellby Harris Jr.'s 1989 movie. It's a very loose adaptation of the real-life story of a man named Douglas Street, who was a famous imposter. He was a black man in Detroit who had an... enormous intellectual ambitions and was stuck working in his father's small business and made his escape by way of pretending to be a lawyer, a doctor, a student. He even performed surgery

successfully before he was caught. I'm so far ahead of you. I know what you're about to say. I know what you're thinking. I know what you're writing on those evaluation papers. I know that you're wearing an incredibly cheap toupee. I mean, I could sit here and punch all the right buttons and make you think you're a genius correctly analyzing this complex, exotic, notorious Negro. But notorious Negro, that'd be a good name for my autobiography.

I actually was introduced to this movie in college because of a VHS tape, because some friends of mine randomly bought it, I think they thought the box looked cool, they watched the movie, and then they were like, you should see this movie, because this main character reminds me of you.

They said this character reminds me of you, which is always a weird thing to hear. But then when I saw the movie, I was like, well, this character is very cool, so I'm excited about that. And I both love the movie and love the fact that it's available to me at my disposal on DVD anytime I want.

And also, I should add, that I had the honor of having this DVD inscribed to me by Wendell B. Harris himself. Yeah, that's an amazing choice. I'm very excited about that one. Okay, let's take a look at this next one. This is a set that came out very recently of another pair of American Independent films. The two films are called Stranded from 1965 and the Plastic Dome of Norma Jean from 1966,

which is also, by the way, the first film that Sam Watersden appeared in. The director is Julian Compton. Stranded is one of the great American independent films. I think that if I had seen it in a timely way, if I had seen it in my youth, it would have changed my life. Oh. For the better, I should add. Why do you say that? It's a movie that shows what an American filmmaker can do

with a particular European artistic sensibility in mind. It's essentially an American New Wave film, an American French New Wave film, with Compton herself playing the lead role as an American woman in Europe going from one adventure to another, very free-spiritedly. And can I see what the full collection is called? It's the title,

Cinematic Journeys, Two Films by Julian Compton. Yeah, I've never heard of her. Her work is virtual. unknown. And this only just came out. It's a fact that, you know, should change the future course of film history that people can readily see her films. Well, that's a lot of enthusiasm, so that makes me want to check it out. Okay, what else have we got? I'm a John Cassavetes freak. Sure. Yeah, I like him too. Cassavetes is, in effect, the quintessential American independent filmmaker,

someone who already made a career as an actor in Hollywood, but knew that he wanted to direct, and did so in unusual ways. His first feature, Shadows, was done with the 1950s equivalent of Kickstarter. He went on the radio and solicited funds. People would subscribe to the movie for $5. He would use the money that came in to make the film, and then because of their investment, they would have a ticket to see the movie. But Casavetes is a very personal director. Most of his great movies were made with his wife, Jenna Rollins, who is, in my opinion, the greatest living American film actor. Very personal films about domestic life, about family, life about the frustrated passions of American middle class men. And for the longest time, his

films were very hard to see. Criterion put out a box maybe 10, 15 years ago of five films, shadows, faces, a woman under the influence, the killing of a Chinese bookie, and one that was among the rarest opening night that never got a proper release. He released it himself. When it was released, it was not reviewed by any major publication, including the New Yorker. That is the profoundest film about the life of an actor, about the work of an actor that I've ever seen. It culminates in a spectacular sequence in which Casavetes and Rollins are on stage together,

doing a play that she doesn't want to do, and that she transforms improvisationally into a kind of psychodrama in real time. When was I? I used to be very funny. When? When? When I was a kid.

Yeah, that's a very intense movie in a good way. And the possibility that these films should be unavailable seizes me with terror. I would take these with me in a fire. This is a very random overshare, but true story, that box set was on my wedding registry. Because we had an unconventional wedding registry because we had more than enough pots and pans when we got married. So we put things on it like this. And so this John Kazavetti's box set was purchased for my wedding. So we have that at home.

Cool. Well, this is an amazing collection. I really appreciate you kind of giving us a little window into your world and sharing this sort of private stash with me. Oh, it's my pleasure. The New Yorker's Richard Brody speaking with producer Adam Howard. Netflix's DVD service officially ends on September 29. The company says that subscribers can keep their final batch of discs.

In fact, they probably insist on it. I'm David Remnick. That's our program for today. Thanks for listening. See you next time. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbes of Tune Arts with additional music by Louis Mitchell. This episode was produced by Max Walton, Brita Green, Adam Howard, Pallalia, David Krasnow, Jeffrey Masters, Louis Mitchell, and Gauphene and Putabwele, with guidance from Emily Boutin and assistance from Harrison Keithline, Michael May, David Gable, Amy Pearl, and Alejandra, Decker.

The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.