Production

Delays

First off, congratulations on the new site and your excellent column. I have been a long-time fan/supporter of Criterion since the very early days. I have always maintained that the best film studies one can receive is by watching Criterion Collections. I learned more about filmmaking in 4 months of watching lasers than I did studying 2 years at film school. Keep up the good work.

My question: Many times a title is announced and eager customers (myself included) wait patiently for the title to be released. However, often there are countless delays for various reasons. (The infamous Brazil is an excellent example--though rather extreme.) If you could, please summarize what it takes to release a laserdisc/DVD and why a title may take much longer to produce than others that carry similar "extras." If you would like to use Last Temptation of Christ as an example would be great; I have been waiting over a year for that baby!

Keep up the excellent work,
-- Steve Organ

 First off, let me begin by saying of the approximately 40 releases Criterion streets every year, the majority are on time. Generally, the delayed releases are the monumental discs, Brazil being the most famous example. How do releases get delayed? Let us count the ways. To start as requested with Last Temptation: We had the director on location in Morocco for much of our schedule, the composer in London, and other folks we had to interview in both New York and L.A. Add to this a transfer in need of serious attention, and you can probably do the math from there.

Most delays are unavoidable, despite several emailers who seem to take them personally. A filmmaker may require fine tuning of the transfer or commentary track. A studio's legal department may ask that certain things on the jacket be reworked. Original material that we generate for the supplements can take longer than anticipated. When, very occasionally, we choose to delay a title ourselves, it's always because we simply can't get the result we're after without a little more time.

We know that it can be frustrating to wait for a disc for a long time; our policy is we'd rather get the release perfect than rush something out that's less so.

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How do you pick 'em?

First off I would like to say that your laserdiscs are wonderful, I have several and plan on owning many more. When I see an annoucement for a title and the word "Criterion" appears after it, my day is made. Even my ton of non- laserdisc owning friends are excited to see that Criterion is doing a special edition, becuse they know I'll show it off to them the first few months after I get it.

My question to you is this: How do you pick which films get the "Criterion Treatment"? Do you guys see every movie that comes out and vote on it or something? Do the filmmakers present the film to you to review? And with older titles, do you guys just sit around and think of great flicks and go "Good idea, let's do it!"? Who decides which become titles or not?

Thanks for reading, please keep up the good work.
-- Philip Pomeroy

 Many of our fans seem to believe that we have access to every movie that's ever been made and that our releases are matters of personal taste. Of course, it's not this simple. We do believe that every movie in the collection can justify its existence as a Criterion title; there are also a huge number of titles to which we would love to give the Criterion treatment, but for one reason or another, we'll never get them. Our first priority is always the films that need us most: forgotten classics by master filmmakers desperately in need of care and preservation.

Now this brings us to a rather interesting conundrum. As you can probably guess, the two most blithely requested Criterion special editions of late have been Titanic and L.A. Confidential. Are these important contemporary films? Absolutely. Would they make great Criterion special editions? Yup. SO WHY THE HELL DON'T YOU GUYS DO 'EM? Well, as I've noted elsewhere, studios are currently doing first rate work to make their films available to home viewers in beautiful widescreen transfers with lots of extras. Titles from Paramount (Titanic), Warner Bros. (L.A.Confidential) and Fox (Home Alone 3 -- whoops, Nancy Bauer made me put that in there) aren't currently available to us; none of these studios has ever had a licensing agreement with us, and it's not very likely that they would begin one by offering us the biggest titles of 1997. But please don't take this as a discouraging word against your suggestions, which we take very seriously (see below); it's just that some are more realistic than others.


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DVD supplements

Thanks for your page on the Criterion site. I'm glad to see that there's finally a place to get a lot of these niggling DVD questions answered.
My first question is how are you deciding what supplementary materials to include on the DVD editions of previous LD titles? Are you simply providing what may have been on the prior LD edition with a glossy new coat, or are you planning on enhancing DVD editions with new material and capabilities? For instance, there are several titles where it might be fascinating to have three or four separate commentary tracks. These commentaries could give an expansive viewpoint of a film from scholars, stars, and production personnel. Also, any plans for use of the multi-angle feature, such as showing the storyboards for an entire film while the main film is playing?

As always, we plan our supplements on a case by case basis. For the most part, supplements for a DVD will be identical to those on the existing Criterion LD, although in certain cases, some reconfiguration is done. In general, DVD special editions will have a decreased emphasis on text; to that end, the upcoming edition of The Killer will not include the Woo filmography and Hong Kong cinema guide present on the CAV laserdisc.

Regarding commentaries: Over the years, we've found that rather than several loose interviews, we prefer a single, tightly-edited track with the strongest possible material. To give you an approximate idea, The Princess Bride rerelease special edition consisted of 12 hours of raw interview footage, approximately 4 weeks of inhouse editing, and a finished track of 94 minutes. We firmly believe that commentary tracks, like the movies they accompany, are best served by a judicious editing process, and a lot of stuff, which may be great, entertaining, titillating, whatever, ends up on the cutting room floor because it doesn't work in the context of what we're doing. Obviously we're not averse to multiple commmentary tracks, and several of our releases -- including This Is Spinal Tap, The Princess Bride, The Red Shoes, and most recently Monty Python's Life of Brian -- have them. When we get to the point where we feel the material warrants a third track, we'll do it.