Paris. We landed here yesterday at midday, and after a quick stop at our hotel, executive producer Fumiko Takagi and I headed straight to the offices of TF1 and Canal+ in Issy-les-Moulineaux for meetings. Issy is not what you think of when you think of Paris. For starters, it's not old. The part of Issy-les-Moulineaux we were visiting is essentially a newly refurbished commercial district on the southwestern outskirts of the city—big buildings of glass and chrome and marble with vaulting lobbies and impressive security arrangements. At one stop we received plastic identity cards with bar codes on them just to pass through the turnstiles in the lobby; we returned them, one hopes for recycling, on the way out. These companies are modern media powerhouses, and lest one forget it, the architecture is there to remind you.

We are here to meet with our licensors, the people who ultimately make our work possible by granting us the rights to work on their films. The mostly black-and-white classic films we're here to discuss are hardly the core of their business plans, but they are a critical part of what the French refer to as their patrimoine, their heritage, and especially with these big companies, handling these films is not just a matter of profit and loss, it's also a matter of honor and identity. We have brought with us a copy of the Essential Art House box set, our own patrimoine box set, our own patrimoine, along with a selection of the press we've been receiving for it, and I think it makes a difference to know that our association with these films is a matter of such pride to us as well. As we talk about emerging marketplaces, downloading, the HD disc format war, and the state of retail in America, it becomes increasingly clear that in the end, what we're really talking about is something much more personal to all of us: how to keep the classics alive for a new generation.

Today, the setting was quite different. We spent the day in the eighth arrondissement, well-known to tourists for the Arc de Triomphe and the Jardin des Tuileries and of course the famous Champs Elysées, which runs right through its heart. The architecture is pure Parisian, classic nineteenth-century facades with balconies and shutters running along the wide diagonal boulevards for which the city is so well-known. The area is known for its fine hotels and haute couture, but it is also a mecca for a tourist of a different kind, because this was home base for François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard, for Eric Rohmer and Barbet Schroeder, for Claude Berri and Roman Polanski, to name a few. To this day, countless producers, both large and small, maintain their offices here. Outside the big wooden doors of the buildings are discreet brass plaques, sometimes two and three together, bearing the names of companies that were responsible for so many films that have stood the test of time, films that are now a part of the Criterion Collection.

We visited our friend Christine Hayet at Pathé, then joined Florence Dauman, daughter of the legendary French producer Anatole Dauman (Hiroshima mon amour; Masculin féminin), and Roissy Films' Raphael Berdugo for lunch. We ended the day with a visit to Alain Vannier, a great French producer (founder of Roissy Films), a dear friend of Janus’s, and effectively part of its founding team, starting when he brought Jules and Jim to the company in 1962. He sat flipping through the Essential Art House book, stopping every now and then to remember how the audience had walked out on L'avventura when it premiered at Cannes, or to tell of the day that filmmaker and producer Pierre Braunberger asked Alain to go see a Polish film and help decide if it was worth releasing—the film was Knife in the Water.

Visiting these offices is humbling in a much different way from the much more outwardly imposing buildings of Issy-les-Moulineaux. While the buildings are impressive with their gracious inner courtyards, sometimes lined with knobbed chestnut trees, and their ancient, tiny elevators running in cages up through even more ancient staircases, what is inescapable here is that this was the capitol of the golden age of international art-house cinema. These offices have the homey feel of apartments, ramblings suites of rooms with old plaster walls and windows all around. At Criterion we talk about trying to make a good home for films, but this is where so many of the films we love were actually born or brought when they were first discovered, and in that sense this is their true home.

PS: We recently moved from a small building, where for the last year we were the only tenant, to a much bigger building where they have security in the lobby and we have to show our ID and our guests have to sign in and put on name tags. It drives us all nuts. Maybe that's one reason I'm fixating so much about the idea of home. Can it really be home if you have to show ID to get in?

We were all saddened to hear of Robert Altman's passing. He was a great and fearless filmmaker. Jonathan asked Karen Stetler, the producer who had worked with him most over the years, how she remembered him, and she sent us this:

"I first met Robert Altman in person in 1999, when I was producing a series of video introductions featuring contemporary directors discussing their favorite Janus films. Altman was the first Criterion director to respond to our request. We had sent a list of 100-plus titles, and he had promised to set a date quickly and make his selections. But for the next six months my discussions with his office yielded no progress, until finally they told me that he was not going to have the time to participate at all. This seemed a surprising change of heart, so Bill Becker (who had known him for many years) queried him at a Christmas party. Altman’s response was basically: 'I was planning to do it and then I looked at the list of films. All those foreign films, Bill! I can’t talk about those. I don’t really like foreign films….'

"Bill then asked me to check the list and try to suggest one specific title that Altman might potentially like. I came up with Rashomon, thinking he might be interested in the multiple points of view. I was surprised when he said yes immediately, and we shot the interview while he was working in L.A. Although he was busy, he had clearly spent some time preparing in advance. He gave us some lovely personal thoughts on the film, which typically led to his ideas about filmmaking and art in general. He also surprised me by mentioning Kurosawa’s direct influence on some of his own early work. It was clearly not really true that he did not like foreign films. (I think he was probably just reluctant to speak on someone else’s work, a concern for other directors in our Janus series as well.)

"I next saw him when we began work on the DVD release of Short Cuts five years later. He approached me in his office one day to announce quite firmly that he did not want to do solo scene-by-scene audio commentary -- he did not like to be tied to keeping up with the film and felt it was not his strength. (Having rented the DVD for Nashville I tended to agree.) For 3 Women I took his suggestion that we just sit and talk together, referring to the film directly only occasionally. It was a great but wide-ranging discussion, and I worried that it might be too broad and rambling to work as a commentary over the film. In the end, the edited track stands as one of my favorites. Altman at his best: witty, philosophical and with a rhythm in perfect keeping with the dream-like quality of the film.

"Although he could be intimidating I found him to be unfailingly generous of spirit. The last time I saw him, we shot him and Tim Robbins for our DVD release of Short Cuts. He seemed a bit tired and frail, but after a long day he still took the time to walk the room and individually thank each member of my documentary crew before he left. Each one of them told me later how impressed they were by this small but meaningful courtesy.

"It is hard for me to think about Mr. Altman without remembering my friend Geri Peroni, his longtime editor, whom we also lost recently. I knew Geri for many years, and she was exceptionally bright and challenging. She loved working with Altman, so I knew he must be an inspiring person long before I ever encountered him. It seems a great hole that they are now both gone."

It’s been a few weeks since Peter and I started this blog, and we are gratified that the response has been so positive. We debated for a while whether or not I should have hot-linked my email address last week, and I’m glad that I did. I received lots of feedback, all of which I tried to answer directly, and I’ve found the interaction interesting and informative. Also, we have to admit that we do check the forums (who wouldn’t read their own reviews?), and while the debate continues there, I’m happy to see that most people seem pleased.

I’ve gone back and taken a look at the letters addressed to Jon Mulvaney and me over the past couple of weeks and want to address some of them here. Topics that keep coming up ….


The new logo:
Some people like it, others don’t. Again, it was a very long debate in the office. We felt that we needed to make the change for several reasons, and here are a few. Many of the studios had adopted the top space on the box, and it was no longer unique to Criterion. The justified right bar was very hard to see in a small jpeg image online, and more and more people are shopping for DVDs that way. We wanted a mark that could easily integrate with our upcoming spring launch of the Eclipse line. The more time I spend with it and see some of the wonderful designs that incorporate the “C,” the more I like it. For the very few of you who have written that you’ll never buy another Criterion disc with the new logo, I think you’re missing some great movies.

Rereleases:
Why do we rerelease a title? What’s next, and are there rebate programs? I actually answered this in detail in the March 2006 newsletter. In short, we only rerelease a film if we can do a significantly better job with either the film transfer, the supplements, or hopefully both. We know there are a good two-dozen early releases (Andrei Rublev and Shock Corridor, to name just a couple) that need to be redone, and we’ll probably get to them at a rate of three to four a year. I tried to find a rebate program for customers who already owned the discs. We had one for Charade. It didn’t work. The participation was very low. The cost was very high, and we couldn’t effectively price the disc without competing with our retailers in a way we found uncomfortable.

Salò:
Have we been able to renew our rights? Well, here’s the answer you weren’t expecting. Yes. We’re working on a brand new HD transfer now. It’ll be a totally new release and be out in 2007.

HD, Blu-Ray or SD?:
Peter wrote a blog entry about this, but it’s still the most asked question, and when we have an answer—which will most likely come right after the big guys resolve their format way—we will let you know. In the meantime, all of our mastering continues in HD, and we’ll be ready.

Back issues of the newsletter:
When we launched the newsletter eighteen months ago, we wanted to have more direct contact with our customers. We wanted to pass along information that wasn’t generally available—stories we find out during the production of a disc, what we’re thinking with regard to a specific issue. We’ve increased our newsletter subscribers tenfold since we launched. If you’re not a member you can sign up here. Lots of you have asked about an easy way to access back issues; when we work on a redesign of the website next year, we’ll address this issue, but in the meantime, all of the back issues will soon be available on this blog.

Enough for now. One last thing about letters. We read them all—both the praise and the criticism, as well as the just well thought-out suggestions, but Peter, Jon Mulvaney, and I are highly unlikely to answer mail that’s abusive. If you send in such a letter, don’t wait for an answer.

Thursday is Thanksgiving, and I want to wish you and your families a safe, healthy, and peaceful holiday.

At the Museum of the Moving Image tonight, Peter Cowie is presenting his new book on Louise Brooks, Lulu Forever, and they are digitally screening our new Pandora's Box restoration with the Gillian Anderson score. I don’t think I’ve ever been so relieved to see a disc hitting the street. Pandora has been on the Criterion schedule since long before I started, but after thirteen years of laserdisc publishing and another eight years of DVD, we had never been able to come up with a version we felt was releasable. There was always something better just over the horizon: a better film element, a better version, a better restoration, a better score. In retrospect, I wish we’d put it out years ago in one of those more provisional versions and taken the heat for it, because even the versions we were rejecting were a good step up from the VHS tapes that were out there. At least I can say of the version that hits the street this week that we can’t make it any better than this—and just in time for what would have been her one-hundredth birthday. Happy birthday, Brooksie!

On Wednesday night, Isabella Rossellini and the Museum of Modern Art threw a birthday party of sorts for the centenary of Roberto Rossellini, complete with cake and cocktails at the Fendi store on Fifth Avenue and a MoMA screening of the newly restored print of Rome, Open City made by the Cineteca Nazionale in Rome. For Fendi, Isabella set up an extraordinary display of family photographs, taken by the likes of Cecil Beaton, Robert Capa, and Henri Cartier-Bresson, and they were giving out copies of her new book, In the Name of the Father, the Daughter, and the Holy Spirits. They were also showing the film she made with Guy Maddin, My Dad is 100 Years Old , on the huge, two-story wall of the staircase. Vintage Rossellini posters were everywhere. But the star of the evening was the new print at MoMA. All I can say is that it was a revelation. Everything I had always thought about the look of Rome, Open City turns out to be wrong. It is not gritty and grainy and mismatched. This print is smooth and even with tight, fine grain. There is only one dupe-y shot in the entire film. It seems impossible that Rossellini made such a professional, almost studio-looking image when working with mismatched stocks, short ends of leftover military film, and even some rolls (at least apocryphally) intended for still cameras. At the end of the evening, we were all marveling over what Sergio Toffetti and his team of restorers had done. “I have seen the film hundreds of times, but on this print I see shadows I never knew were there,” Isabella said. “Who knew that Italian neorealism would look so slick?”

There’s a store called Stew Leonard’s near where I live. When you walk in, you can see the customer service rules hanging above the entrance. It’s simple—there are only two: Rule one: The customer is always right; Rule two: When in doubt, see rule one. About a third of the way through Citizen Kane, Kane publishes his declaration of principles on the front page of his newspaper, only to have it come back to haunt him years later. Ryan Air, an up-and-coming European airline, provides almost no customer service, happily standing behind its slogan: “You get what you pay for” (very little). So, what’s the right approach for Criterion?

I’ve always been the marketing partner, but as I wrote last time, Peter thinks a lot about marketing too, and we spend a lot of time talking about our customers. For years now, we’ve always been one step or more removed from them. We’d sell Criterion DVDs to wholesalers, who would in turn sell them to retail outlets, who would finally sell them to the Criterion viewer. Our contact was limited. In the early days, Jon Mulvaney would get mail with suggestions about titles and the occasional problem. More often than not, the mail went unanswered. Email changed all that. When Jon started getting mail online, we wanted him to answer every letter he got. This turned out not to be an easy task, as hundreds of letters would come in each week. Customer service took on a whole new meaning at Criterion. The instructions were to answer every email, except for the abusive ones. Problems with broken discs and missing inserts had to be answered quickly and with replacements. Criticism was to be shared with many people in the office in the hope of learning and doing better. Title suggestions, whether sent to Criterion under that heading or in a standard email, are all read, but maybe the least responded to. There’s not much to say to those except thank you. We look at all the suggestions and keep them all on file and go back to them. An interesting note: when we were trying to license Le samourai, the price for the film started to climb to a level at which we were not all that comfortable. We went back to the suggestions and searched for the title. We took some comfort in how many people had requested the title and finally upped our offer. I’m glad we did.

This past year with the launch of the Criterion Store, we’ve had more contact with you than ever. Hats and T-shirts have been a lot of fun, and we’ve still got an office pool going to see who’s going to run into someone unknown to the company wearing Criterion branded apparel. Also, the Janus fiftieth anniversary box set has been a wonderful project and has introduced a whole new set of customers to us. We hope they will become devoted Criterion fans as well.

We’re trying to bring our customer service up to the next level as well. In the past, Jon’s answers were a bit generic, and in an age where answers are so easy to come by on the Internet, we wanted to—and felt we needed to—do better. If you’ve written to us lately, you know that we’ve now got a team answering questions. I’m answering some, and others in Criterion who know a lot more than Jon does about specific subjects are trying to give definite answers to your questions. We try to get it right, and hopefully we succeed more often than not, but when we don’t, we’re trying to make it better. Sony left out the booklets from the first pressing of Clean, Shaven. We caught it before most left the warehouse, but we sent out hundreds of replacement books. We used the wrong die (it was 1/8th of an inch too large) for the Rohmer slipcase. We corrected it for the second printing and repackaged everything in the warehouse. Still a lot went out, so we’ve sent out hundreds of replacements for those as well.

What to look for in the future? Well, we’re certainly not Ryan Air. We do ask you to pay a lot for our discs, and you should expect top service. We try to deliver it, and if you’ve got suggestions on how to make it better, please e-mail me. We have a basic set of principles, but it has more to do with what and how we publish. It would be nice to say that the customer is always right, but in a very subjective medium there has to be room for more than one opinion. In the meantime, we’ll continue to do our best.

I’ll be back soon with some thoughts about growing up with a projector in my attic.

For years now, Peter has been the public face of Criterion. It’s great to have my partner fielding the brunt of the questions, sitting on the panels, and speaking poetically for all of us. We’ve been partners now for about a dozen years, and every once and while, I surface to the outside world. Most days start with a phone call between the two of us in which we lay out the day’s agenda. Peter is the editor-in-chief of Criterion; I handle more of the business side of things, but as we say to those we meet, we each know more about the other’s side of the business than we let on.

We discuss lots of things at Criterion. Whether it’s a major question (what titles to release in Criterion, the launch of a second line, when to start releasing DVDs in HD) or a small one (which hot movie to see over the weekend, salty snacks before lunch and sweet after or the other way around, McSteamy or McDreamy, Meredith or Izzy), there’s hardly anything we won’t discuss and debate.

There was probably no issue that we debated longer than the window-boxing of 4:3 films, and Peter will dedicate some more time to this soon. In the midst of the discussion, I brought home Forbidden Games, which I have to admit I had never seen. I wanted to see what it looked like window-boxed and figured I’d watch the first three minutes on several different sets. I started on an RCA 61-inch DLP set, and sure enough there was black all around. It didn’t really bother me—it only took me a couple of minutes to find out that I was hooked. Almost ninety minutes later I got up from the couch and inserted the disc into other players to see what it looked like on other TVs. I guess I realized that I didn’t have an answer to the window-boxing debate, although I’m happy with where we ended up, at least until we’re in an HD and not NTSC world. For me it was all about the movie. I had seen Forbidden Games, and it was great. If you haven’t, watch it. I’m pretty confident you’ll find it wonderful, too.

As for the other questions: Borat, sweet then salty (though now there’s a big push for healthy fruit), and when it comes to Grey’s Anatomy, I’m a big Izzy fan.

The New York Times ran a really nice piece about the Janus box this morning. It started on the front page of the Arts section and jumped to another half page inside. It featured big pictures from M, L'Avventura, Seven Samurai, The Virgin Spring, and Viridiana alongside an article by Dave Kehr that compares the set to Harvard's famous "five-foot shelf of books" and refers to the "central role Janus has played in American film culture." We couldn't have hoped for more. Kehr does a great job of articulating the purpose of the Essential Art House set and the role we hope it will play in continuing to introduce new audiences to classic cinema, but on a very personal level, what I like best about the piece is that it catches my father, William Becker, in his element, out at the American Film Market, looking for films.

My father has been at this since 1965, when he and his partner Saul Turell bought a prestigious but near-defunct company and started to build a film library. With Saul, and later Saul's son Jonathan (who started in 1981, not 1993 as the Times has it), he has devoted his life to Janus Films. It's been years since he's had to mind every little day-to-day thing in the company, but he is still very actively engaged in the life of the library. There is nothing that gives him more satisfaction than finding some lost treasure. At heart my father is a collector, and he is never so happy as when he is on the trail of something, and that's just where he was when the Times caught up with him.

When we set out to make Essential Art House, our main goal was to create an elegant single-volume reference for viewers who wanted the essentials of a certain kind of film literacy but didn't necessarily know where to begin. When the Times writes, "It is hard to argue with the historical importance and artistic significance of the great majority of the movies in this volume," it certainly helps to get the idea across. On National Public Radio's Fresh Air today, John Powers also helped to make the case when he called the Janus box "an invaluable introduction to foreign film literacy." There's lots more coverage coming, but for personal reasons this morning's Times article is going to be pretty hard to beat. I know my father is feeling very deservedly proud, and I only wish Saul were around to share this moment with him.

I don't know if it's the question we get asked most often or just the one that people ask with the greatest sense of urgency, but here it is: Where does Criterion stand on HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray Disc?

As you may have noticed, Jon Mulvaney has been under strict orders to duck the question, not only for reasons mentioned in Wednesday's post but also because, for the moment, ducking the question may be the only sensible thing to do. Consumers shouldn't have to take a stand in a format war. You shouldn't have to decide between a Casablanca player or one that plays Lawrence of Arabia. That either means buying two machines, which doesn't seem fair, or giving up on seeing some of the movies you love in HD, which doesn't seem like a good solution either. From Criterion's angle, the only answer would be to publish in both formats in order not to leave anyone out, but that would mean doubling our costs and keeping two sets of inventory, which would effectively make it impossible for us to publish the kinds of titles that, despite their modest sales, are critical to the Collection and its mission.

Don't get me wrong: we'd like nothing better than to have an HD disc marketplace emerge. We know how good our films can look in high definition, because we’ve been doing all our mastering and restoration in HD for years. I don't think any customer base will benefit more from the upgrade to HD than Criterion collectors with their discerning eyes, appreciation of the texture of the filmed image, etc. That said, I don't hear many people lamenting that they have no decent way to watch movies at home. No movie lover could keep up with the bounty of films that have been released on DVD, and most people I know still have plenty left to watch, whether in shrink-wrap on the shelf or waiting in their Netflix queues.

So in the end, while this is a hotly debated topic among consumers, it's not really a consumer problem. Whether it's a player that plays everything or a format that wins out or a compromise, any solution is going to have to come from the industry, and from much bigger players than Criterion. This isn't just a matter of quality or features. The format war has as much to do with patent licenses and pressing plants as it does with putting gorgeous images on your screen. At this point, any solution that would let consumers upgrade with confidence would be a step in the right direction, and as soon as that solution emerges, we'll be there. Meanwhile we are sticking to our knitting. There are too many important films still unavailable on DVD (more Mizoguchi, anyone?), and too many customers still waiting for those films, for us to spend time speculating. Just know that when Jon Mulvaney says, “As the formats continue to develop, we will decide which is the best way for us to proceed,” he's not avoiding giving an answer. That's the answer.

*

On a completely different note, congratulations to Albert, Gillian, Michael, Tanja and all our friends at Maysles Films on the success of the new musical inspired by their film Grey Gardens, which New York Times reviewer Ben Brantley writes, “opened last night like a full-blown, petal-dropping peony at the Walter Kerr Theater.” If you haven't seen the movie, you should. It will change your life and give you a hundred memories you'll be so happy to have in your head, you may never be lonely again. I haven't seen the show yet, but I'm going to get over there soon. Kim Hendrickson, who produced the Grey Gardens disc, saw it in its Off-Broadway incarnation, and she says Christine Ebersole is fabulous. Brantley in the Times calls her “ravishing,” and says that just hearing Ebersole's “da-da-da-dum” is “an experience no passionate theatergoer should miss” and that “any doubts that this show belongs on Broadway are sent packing." Bravo!

The obvious question is: Why are we doing this? And the only answer is that it just seems like the right thing to do.

The Criterion Collection is at an awkward age. By Variety and Hollywood Reporter standards, we’re not big (about forty people, most days), but we’re not as small as we used to be. When I started, back in the laserdisc days, we had one digital video deck and a bunch of analog equipment on a rolling rack with about 100 feet of tangled cords on the ground behind it. We moved to a new office a couple of weeks ago, and the engineer told me we had run 18,000 feet of cable for our audio and video rooms. Times have changed.

Over the last ten years Criterion has gotten a little bigger and a lot better. We’ve only grown by about twenty people, but as a result we can do so much that we could never do before. Today we’re an all-digital shop, doing high-definition restoration in-house, and pairing the best group of producers, editors, and designers we’ve ever had with some of the top writers, scholars, and artists in the world. When I started we could never have produced a disc set as complicated as, say, The Battle of Algiers. Just compare the old Seven Samurai to the new one to see what I’m talking about. It’s not that I want to go back. But I do want to make sure that we don’t lose track of the fact that we’re a small company doing something we believe in, and that we’re lucky enough to have an audience of people who care. That’s who this blog is for.

In the past, we’ve mostly communicated with our customers through Jon Mulvaney, the company’s legendary second-oldest employee. Maybe I’ll write more about him another time, but I know that Mulvaney has been a hit-or-miss correspondent over the years. We get questions all the time that Mulvaney has to leave unanswered, because his job, really, is making sure that when a customer has a damaged disc or a missing insert or the wrong slipcase, we fix the problem. One gap he’s never been able to fill—we’ve never let him—is about goings on at Criterion, what’s in the future, what our thoughts are. That’s what this blog is for.

As with anything Criterion does, it’s going to take some time to get this right. We’ll try to be regular about it. Check back on Tuesdays and Fridays (and maybe certain other days) for new posts by me, Jonathan Turell, and occasional guest bloggers from the Criterion staff.