My Sunday sermon ("DV De Profundis") seems to have touched a nerve. It prompted a surprising volume of feedback for a Sunday, when WatchBlog attendance is usually at a weekly low. The following is just a sampling of the response, and makes for interesting reading.
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From Darren Gross:
I must say, I've just gone through all those questions myself and do regularly, as I just moved to a new apartment and the amount of stuff accumulated (mostly DVDs, VHS off-air tapes, film magazines, etc.) in 10+ years was impossible to fathom, and after 4 days of lugging back-breakingly heavy boxes across town, the idea of throwing them all in the dumpster and starting new was intoxicating and very tempting. It felt like each box, each magazine was a brick with which I was walling myself in...."I've had this tape for over 10 years and haven't watched it? So why is is here?" Once I watch some of these saved tapes they're going right in the trash. I don't want all this junk any more. Its a distraction from my daily enjoyments and kills spontaneity.
Conversely, I've always pondered the questions (especially since I spent years working in video stores until 2000, and my partner has worked at video and bookstores through to this day) is "Why do I want to turn my home into a video store or a book store? I hated being at work at those places, so why amI replicating that environment at home."
I have to feel part of it is the price and marketability of DVD. It's created a compulsion that CDs couldn't even touch, and I would like to free myself from it.
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From Wayne Schmidt:
I really enjoyed this column. It's relevant to where I'm at . . . . after much initial anguish I've been selling off titles (admittedly only a few at a time) on Amazon and other places where I won't take a bath (unlike trading them in at record stores).
My epiphany came when I moved from Los Angeles to Portland. You can't get away with the sloppy packing techniques used in moving inner city; everything has to be expertly boxed and cataloged. I'm a native Angelino and had never been through this traumatic experience before (and boy, was it ever). I now peruse my reconstituted vault which takes up one walk-in closet, making note of titles I hauled with me that are still shrinkwrapped after a number of years, titles that were "blind bought" that I didn't care for and most likely will never watch again, and the most difficult kind that you pegged perfectly with the example of CITIZEN KANE: acknowledged classics and great films that, alas, I've seen so many times probably won't revisit until Blu-ray or the next innovation on the technology ladder comes along. So why own it now?
From a collection of 800 store-boughts (not including DVD-Rs - they're cheap and don't take up much room) I could probably lose a quarter of that number and never seriously miss them. There are so many intriguing films I've never seen that revisiting these titles again seems regressive.
One of my closest friends is Glenn Erickson, whom you know. With the website reviews Glenn receives a lot of free DVDs and has a substantial library. When I lived a few miles away I'd avail myself of his "lending library" and found that quite satisfying, especially for fringe titles I wanted to see again from childhood but couldn't really remember their overall merits. Most of the time I saw no reason to buy a copy for myself after watching them. These days I use Netflix as a substitute and again, it quells the "must buy" urge quite nicely most of the time.
I've gone the "film print / VHS / Laserdisc/DVD" route, making huge investments in each. I never had any childhood traumas I could trace the collecting bug back to as you have. Lack of spending cash which forced me to pass on many mouth watering goodies is as close as it gets. But since the inception of your VW column-turned-magazine I do have you, Mr. Lucas, to blame for much of it! If you mentioned a rare or uncut variant of some title that sounded intriguing, off I'd go in search of the latest Holy grail. Many of those are the ones that won't get the chop as I prune the vault. Even so, it comforts me to know that Mr. Watchdog reflects on this obsession now and then!
I was the individual who put the announcement on DVD Maniacs about the Sony sale at DDD, but so far haven't actually ordered anything myself. Does that make me a reformed addict, now a pusher?
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From Adrian Horrocks:
You hit the proverbial nail. And Disney doesn't help - deleting titles so quick it makes me paranoid. Have you seen the price of THE LITTLE MERMAID on eBay?? And film censorship here in the UK meant we spent years grabbing stuff before it was withdrawn, recut etc.
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From Eric Yarber (who I think hits the proverbial nail with his closing sentence):
God knows both of us could probably use a 12-step program (DVDA?) when it comes to those maddeningly multiplying discs, but I think you should know that the very fact you're writing about the subject is probably a sign you're going to find a balance on the matter eventually.
One thing that affected my conditioning was that I was in the first wave of DVD buyers. I had just gotten my first job in Hollywood, and [a friend] tipped me off months in advance that this new format was going to wipe out all others. Once the discs began to trickle into stores, it seemed easy enough to keep up with everything as it was released. Sometimes I'd even pick up stuff I wasn't that keen on just to keep the momentum up. It wasn't long before such omnipresence became impossible, but the idea of keeping on top of the entire format was fixed by then. For me, ironically, it was the horrifying prospect of having to buy everything all over again in a new format that made me begin to taper off and begin wondering what I needed as opposed to what I wanted.
There's also some relief in the time you find to finally get around to those discs you bought out of mild interest and never cracked open, (not to mention all the unread books and albums I grabbed while the getting was good). There's an aspect of compulsive collecting that I think of as the "rainy day" notion, the idea that you're salting entertainment around in case you're not able to afford or find such things later. A lot of the "new" stuff that's fascinating me the most these days are discs I've had on my "to-watch" pile indefintiely. It feels like cashing in a time account that has grown to an impressive amount.
I still buy new stuff here and there, but in going over my receipts for tax purposes this weekend, I'm astonished on how much I used to spend only a year ago, and how diffuse my purchasing was. Maybe it's just a sense of beginning to realize how limited our time is in life, and how trying to hang on to everything for unlimited viewing may be a denial of that reality.
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Further response is welcome, of course -- I know that some of you are just seeing yesterday's blog today.
By the way, there's a postscript to my Deep Discount DVD Sale misadventure of yesterday. I logged on this morning to find an e-mail from DDD awaiting me, saying that my orders hadn't gone through because of some CC information I'd typed in that didn't jibe. I went into my account information and found the typo that stopped the orders. I hesitated, looking over the 27 (!) titles I had ordered. ("But six of them were free!" a whiny inner voice protests.) This was exactly the opportunity my blog had been begging for, was it not? A chance to reconsider my purchase!
So reconsider I did, long and hard...
They should all be here within 5-10 days.
