This week got away from us a bit -- or got us away from the blog, anyway. There was a lot of quick-hit travel going on. Jonathan, Kim, Susan and I had a chance to see what goes into picking, packing and shipping one of our DVDs on a one-day trip to Chicago. Abbey Lustgarten and Alex Mabilon reported back on their interview with Claude Berri ("short and sweet"). And Sarah Finklea, who handles theatrical and television sales for Janus Films, sent word back from Sundance, accompanied by her buzz list:

Despite all the hype (or maybe because of it), it wasn’t that hard to get into the films I wanted to see. Standing on the last minute wait line worked for me every time, although that might say something for my film preferences. All the “bigger” films tend to sell out, but as many of them are going to come out in theaters at some point, I try to concentrate on the “smaller” films. So while a waitlist of forty people were turned away from an afternoon screening of The Ten (think Kieslowski’s Decalogue made by the guys from The State) I saw a lovely documentary/tone poem/travelogue called Acidente about twenty towns in Minas Gerais, Brazil, all with evocative names like Caldas (Juices), Olhos d’Agua (Watery Eyes), and Entre Folhas (Between Leaves).

Despite the new Sundance motto, “Focus on Film” (on buttons everywhere, which I couldn’t see without picturing Robert Redford glaring at attendees until they put down their martinis and dutifully marched back into the theater), the reason most people go, me included, is to socialize and catch up with other people in the industry. There are arranged lunches; parties that start at 4 pm, at 6 pm, at 9 pm, at midnight; and the bar scene, if you can get in.

The social aspect of the festival feels just like summer camp, particularly if you are into skiing. There are scores of people that I only manage to see at film festivals, and the more often you attend various festivals the more likely you are to bump into the same people again and again. Same level of exhaustion too. I don’t think I have been this tired since I attended “Night Owls” Girl Scout sleep-away camp, where they forced us to stay up until 2 am every night, so that we could learn about the wonders of the forest in the dark. But at least I’m not a counselor.

I spent a lot of time tagging along with some friends who work in major distribution and fundraising and several friends who work in publicity. They had all the good invites, naturally, but I have never seen crazier work schedules. I would like to dedicate a Robert Redford-glaring “Focus on Film” button to these brave souls who face a week at the festival with very little sleep, can’t put down their cell phones ever, will barely get to see a single film, and feel guilty complaining about it when they get back because “at least they got to GO to Sundance.” Enjoy that martini, ladies and gentlemen.

—Sarah

P.S. Films about which I heard good things (I won’t add descriptions, but you can go to imdb or http://festival.sundance.org/filmguide/ to check them out):

Crazy Love (Picked up by Magnolia Pictures)
Everything’s Cool (Doc about global warming)
My Kid Could Paint That (Will get distribution, not sure who)
White Light/Black Rain (Saw this one. Wrenching doc about the aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the price of atomic warfare. Good companion piece to Imamura’s Black Rain)
Son of Rambow (Can’t describe)
Broken English (Picked up by Magnolia Pictures)
Grace is Gone (Picked up by Weinstein Company)
A Very British Gangster (Doc about real life British crime family)
Once (Irish musical)
The Devil Came on Horseback (Doc about Darfur)
The Unforeseen (Doc about sprawl and environmental sustainability)
Zoo (About human/horse sex. Picked up by ThinkFilm, I think)

This just in from Criterion senior producer Susan Arosteguy:

This week, Border Radio was released on DVD. The film is the post–UCLA film school project of first-time directors Allison Anders, Kurt Voss, and Dean Lent. Yesterday, we got a note from a fan who wrote a really thoughtful, personal piece about the film and its place in his cinematic adolescence. He talks about growing up at his dad’s video store, which specialized in hard-to-find, not-so-mainstream films. Reading this made me very nostalgic for my own time growing up and working in the local mom-and-pop stores (four of them!) and for what a great, eye-opening cinematic experience it was for me. Ultimately, it led me to Criterion.

Jon’s experience growing up watching movies on 16mm in his attic is a world away from my discovery of films. The choices were few and far between for a teenager raised in Colorado in the 1980s. Firstly, my mom and I didn’t have cable or even a VCR, so we had to rent a machine from the local Albertson’s that came with its own convenient handle. No big deal not having cable; the only thing I felt I was missing was Night Flight on USA . . . So I’d have movie binges that mostly revolved around renting cult films. Repo Man, Liquid Sky, Quadrophenia, The Hunger, and any Monty Python were all on heavy rotation on the somewhat sketchy videocassette recorders I rented. But it shaped me into one of those kids who knew every line from Repo Man, which I’m sure still irritates people to this day—after all, the more you drive, the less intelligent you are.

So, I became a film nerd in training. Then I landed a few jobs at record stores and began down the path of music geekdom, which served me well until I went to college in Boulder. Where could I work nights and weekends to make money for bills and pitchers of 3.2 Miller Genuine Draft at the local new-wave bar? Luckily, CU Boulder’s film faculty (which consisted of Stan Brakhage, Bruce Kawin, Marian Keane, Jerry Aronson, and others) and their incredible yearly International Film Series guaranteed a vibrant film fetish in the community, and there were plenty of video stores in those days, and I worked at most of them. But the Holy Grail was a store called The Video Station. Everyone wanted to work there. The staff was cool, friendly, and most of all, knew their shit. You could go in and ask for the most obscure title, or even describe something (“It has that blonde woman in it that was in that sixties spy movie, but it was in black and white and had little dialogue—do you know what it is?”), and they would find the right employee who would know it immediately. Remember, there was no internet in the early nineties, and we would refer to the bible of movies, the Videolog, a paperbound notebook that was updated monthly, for all our info. Wow! I want to work there! I can watch everything for free, all the Alex Cox, Cocteau, Twilight Zone episodes, Bruce Conner, Paul Morrissey, Hitchcock, Buñuel . . . anything!!

So I toiled away at lesser stores that never did any business, and would watch anything interesting I could find, in between renting out copies of The Hunt for Red October. The Video Station was in a superdingy strip mall and was packed to the ceiling with video boxes divided by director, country, genre . . . Did any other store do that? No! They boasted they were “the best video store in Colorado, with over thirty thousand titles.” (I believe now they are up to fifty thousand.) Anyway, I went in for my first job interview maybe a little too cocky for my own good. The catch was, when you applied for a job you had to take a written test. Mostly it consisted of naming five of something: Fred Astaire films, neorealist films, silent-era starlets, noir titles, Bergman films, etc. Things that now seem like cake but at the time stumped me. I didn’t get the job. I gathered my pride and tried again in a few months, when they moved to their new two-story location, and was successful.

What a scene . . . This was when there was a debate about VHS or Beta. Which was better? The Video Station had around three thousand titles on Beta and about twenty customers who rented them. We held on until the death of the format and sold them off to the loyalists. Sound familiar? (In my opinion Beta was better, but the machines were too expensive and didn’t come with a handle.)

My bosses, Scott Woodland and Ivory Curtis, started the store in 1982 to satisfy their cinema obsession and ran it until 2003, with as much love and dedication as a parent would give to a child. They treated us with as much respect too. They were the first in Colorado to rent laserdiscs, in 1988, and would even have weekly viewings of Criterion laserdiscs in the store’s screening room/reference library. It was here that I first discovered Criterion.

We had classic Tuesdays, when any American film made before 1960 would rent for ninety-nine cents; cult night, when we would watch films like Shack Out on 101, Detour, Carnival of Souls, and The Honeymoon Killers; and most importantly, customers were allowed to reserve titles. No one else did this. We got to create weekly employee picks, which built a following of customers who would come to a specific person for recommendations and lead to lively discussions. The lead singer of the Dead Kennedys, Jello Biafra, is from Boulder, and his mom, a librarian at CU, would come in. Sheryl Lee (Twin Peaks’s Laura Palmer) signed my VHS copy of the film when she was home between movies. Film students would clamor to rent films they had missed in class. (By the way, this included Trey Parker and Matt Stone, who worked at CU’s film equipment rental desk and would hog all the good 16mm cameras for themselves, but I digress.)

Perhaps the most ridiculous part of the job was when you had to work upstairs (complete with a pneumatic tube to send tapes up and down) to man the adult films alone. The counter was covered in notebooks in which we placed the video boxes for the adult titles. People (mostly men and occasionally drunk sorority girls) would come in and flip through the pages, picking out their choices, writing down the numbers assigned for each title (number 69 was always rented). This eliminated the need for them to say, “Hey, is Thanks for the Mammaries in?” I was thankful for the embarrassment this saved all parties.

Not to be corny, but the hours I first spent poring over Criterion’s North by Northwest laserdisc changed the direction of my life. I could do this . . . I need to do this! Through the lucky alignment of the stars I befriended Sean Anderson, who was pretty fresh off the boat from England. He delivered pizzas at Pizza Shuttle (known for their two-toke-cripplerweed 3-for-1 special) with Morgan Holly, who was also a student but whose mom, Aleen, and stepdad, Bob Stein, just happened to be two owners of Criterion at that time. Sean did summer internships out in Santa Monica, California, for the company and regaled me with stories of free Friday lunch and even the day they all had to hand assemble the scratch-and-sniff “Odorama” cards, which came free in the Polyester laserdisc. Again, I could do this. I need to do this!

Sean moved to L.A. after graduation. I stuck around at Video Station and its soul mate in musical geekdom, Wax Trax, for a year or so and eventually moved to San Francisco. After a year, the call came from Sean: “We’re moving the offices to New York. Bob is starting this Voyager CD-ROM thing, and Criterion needs people. Do you want an internship?” Well, it’s about time, um . . . YES! I put everything in storage, fully intending on returning. That was 1994, and here I am, thirteen years later.

The feeling of the Criterion family is so similar to that of the Video Station family. I knew I was in for the long haul. The opportunities, the films, the challenges never cease here. As previous posts reveal, this is a mom-and-pop outfit, too. Though I never really liked that term . . . This just seems like the way it should be. Being able to present films and filmmakers that can have an impact on people is, to me, an incredibly worthwhile pursuit. So think of this when you rent, or even download, movies from a faceless entity. Supporting each other is just as important as convenience.

I’ll sign off with some wisdom from the great character actor Tracey Walter as burnout Miller in Repo Man:

“A lot of people don’t realize what’s really going on. They view life as a bunch of unconnected incidents and things. They don’t realize that there’s this, like, lattice of coincidence that lays on top of everything. Give you an example, show you what I mean: suppose you’re thinkin’ about a plate o’ shrimp. Suddenly someone’ll say, like, ‘plate’ or ‘shrimp’ or ‘plate o’ shrimp’ out of the blue, no explanation. No point in lookin’ for one, either. It’s all part of a cosmic unconsciousness.”

Also: Check out The Last Record Store, a great film about Bill’s Records in Dallas, Texas.

Jon and I have been wanting to get other voices into the mix, and while we have been promised odes on expense reports and projectionists and the ones that got away, it only made sense to turn to Criterion editor Michael Koresky, that iron man of prose, to hammer out the first guest blog of 2007. Here's what he's been up to:

I just got back from an around-the-world trip to Minnesota, India, and Paris, and I did it all in about seven days. I’m not proud to admit that all of that traveling was actually done from the shabby couch in my Brooklyn apartment, while staring at a 27-inch TV screen. The “vacation in your living room!” approach may be a cliché at this point, but it’s also a rather fitting introduction to a body of work that did indeed transport me: Louis Malle’s documentaries, which we’ll be releasing as the second Eclipse series this Spring, and which have been somewhat under the radar over the past forty-odd years, certainly in comparison to his fiction films. So there was a great sense of discovery for me, as there will undoubtedly be for many—both for these underseen films, and for the places they capture.

And having consumed almost the entirety of Malle’s documentaries (which range from 1962 to 1987) in such a short period of time, I can’t help but notice the unity of spirit between them, of just plopping down a camera and seeing what will come of it (Malle often said he began each documentary without a set agenda). The films he shot in India are gorgeous, huge, maddening, and exhilarating, and the French docs from the early seventies, which survey the lives of everyday working-class people waylaid on street-corners or caught in mid-weld in an auto factory, are fascinating signs of the times—yet is it too obvious that I’m most drawn to Malle’s foray into the American Midwest, God’s Country, which meanders eloquently around the people in the farming community of Glencoe, Minnesota?

I don’t know how Malle was able to get such unadorned, generous clarity from these hospitable strangers, but his camera’s searching gaze absolutely dashes any stereotypes one may have about the narrow-mindedness of the heartland, even teasing out the liberal attitudes in many of these people. My favorite moment in the movie comes when Malle interviews a young office worker in her late twenties (whom he later dubbed the Madame Bovary of Glencoe when editing the film), who invited him back to her small apartment. An initial standoffishness gives way to an outpouring of honesty, and she begins to treat the camera as though a confessional booth, remarking upon the dashed dreams and compromises that come with living a provincial life. She doesn’t find herself attracted to the men of Glencoe, who all drip with a machismo she finds off-putting, and at age twenty-six, already acknowledges herself as something of an old maid. It’s a good thing Malle didn’t try to set her up with Glencoe’s “most eligible bachelor”: a sometime actor/ full-time cow-inseminator, often seen elbow-deep in bovine anus.

God’s Country was shot in 1979, and then in 1985 Malle went back and filmed his coda, which depicted the effects of the Reagan-era recession on the town’s economy. It’s now been twenty years since the film was first shown, and I can’t help but wonder if Malle would have revisited the town again, perhaps every decade or so (like Michael Apted’s Up films or Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise and Sunset), if he hadn’t died in 1995. There’s such an intimacy to the film that I would like to find out what all those Glencovians have been up to: Did farming equipment become too expensive to keep up with? Have many of the town’s workers been replaced by machines? How do they feel about Bush II? Do they have iPods? And maybe some Glencoe locals will buy a copy of the film Malle made for them and us in this DVD set we’re putting out…just that possibility is enough to bring me joy.

We have always been a Mac shop. For us, it hasn't just been a technological choice. It's a state of mind. There is something about Apple that feels like home. Our companies were founded at the same time, and in a sense they both grow out of the same early efforts to explore what technology could mean for content and expression. Bob Stein, one of Criterion's founders, began introducing Macintosh computers to laserdisc players in the mid-1980s, developing Apple HyperCard-based databases that allowed viewers random access to the complete works of the Louvre, for example. For a long time, we published CD-ROMs and expanded books for the Macintosh, and when I started at what was then called Voyager, the big crisis was bridging the chasm between Mac and Windows, the search for the "cross-platform tool," something that would heal the divide and allow us to make wonderful things on our Macs and still sell them to people who used PCs.

So when Apple has a good day, it makes us all happy, and Apple had about as good a day today as any company could want. If you didn't hear about the iPhone they introduced at Macworld, you should just go to the Apple site and download the presentation. It looks amazing, transformative. This is a company that is not following anyone. They are asking really basic questions and not assuming that all the good answers have already been found. They are making things that are beautiful because they make sense. I can't think of another company that is so true to its mission, and in the end, that's what makes them so good.

As we get back from vacation, the e-mail boxes are full. Kim, several of the other producers, and I have been doing our best to get to it all, but it’s beginning to pile up. We’ve been pretty good about getting to mail regarding damaged discs, missing inserts, and Rohmer box replacements, but if we’ve missed yours, please let us know. If it’s a title suggestion or inquiry about when a title will be released, we’re reading it, but I can’t promise when we’ll get back to you.

I really enjoyed the wonderful HBO series From the Earth to the Moon. Al Reinert, who directed For All Mankind and who became a good friend of mine, wrote a couple of episodes. The series is the best document of that magical time when, despite all else that was happening, we were able to do what was in many ways unthinkable. The second episode deals with the Apollo 1 fire. When the Frank Borman character is asked why the astronauts were killed, he answers, “The lack of imagination. No one imagined that something would happen on the ground.” That has stayed with me ever since. It’s the same answer for every disaster. September 11: no one imagined that people would fly airplanes into buildings. The Titanic: no one could imagine an iceberg striking the ship in such a way as to damage more than two watertight compartments. On the other hand, it is because of very fertile imaginations that we dreamed of going to the moon, explore what’s over the next hill, or seek out the answer to the next question. As we enter this New Year, here’s to imagining all the possibilities.

Well, only a few people asked me about my New Year’s resolutions, and it’s not something I give too much thought to. Anything worth doing in January was probably worth starting last November or August or May. You get the idea. I love new ideas and thoughts—it’s what Peter and I spend most of our time chatting about in the office. And there will be some exciting new things at Criterion (in addition to Eclipse) happening over the coming year. Speaking of Peter, he’s away for a couple of days with lists and lists of movies. I have no doubt there will be the foundation of exciting Criterion and Eclipse schedules for the next couple of years when he gets home.

I’ve started writing this several times, and each time I’ve gotten diverted. Originally, I wrote about our troops in Iraq and the fact that we had sent along DVDs for the holidays, but I had a hard time equating our DVD donation with them putting their lives on the line every day. Our thoughts and prayers are with all of them as we hope for peace in 2007.

Another post idea had to do with New Year’s resolutions and imagination, but that will wait until Friday, because when I was in the midst of writing (about five minutes ago) I saw on Yahoo! that former Jerusalem mayor Teddy Kollek had passed away. My father died in 1986, and in 1987, the Jerusalem Film Festival was dedicated to him. I attended the festival, and the opening night screening was of Renen Schorr’s Late Summer Blues. The movie was very well received and became something of a cult classic in Israel. It was an emotional movie about high schoolers going off to war, and Mayor Kollek had to leave in the middle because it hit too close to home. I met him after the screening for nothing more than an exchange of greetings, but the moment has stayed with me for nearly twenty years. My thoughts are with his family tonight.

I also talked to my brother a little bit ago. President Ford was an Eagle Scout, and his family hoped that Scouts would attend his funeral. My brother led a troop of Eagle Scouts at President Ford’s memorial service at the National Cathedral today. They had to get up at 3:30 in the morning to get there, go through security, and be seated before the service began, but he said the experience was unforgettable. I admit I’m a bit envious.

Not much about movies in here today but lots of memories that will never be forgotten, and I guess in many ways that’s what the movies are all about.