Closet Land
In which Norm goes shopping.
I’m not really at TIFF this year, either as a programmer or a journalist. I’m doing a couple of things for Someone Else’s Movie and having a few meetings with people while they’re in town, and I’ll go to a couple of cocktails because it’s nice to see everybody, but this is the first time since 1988 that I haven’t been fully immersed in the festival. It’s weird, sure, but I have other stuff going on … and you know what? I’ve spent nearly two-thirds of my Septembers doing that. It’s nice to have one back.
That said, I still got up early and went down to Festival Street (ugh) this morning because I was invited into the mobile Criterion Closet, a replica of the legendary Park Avenue stockroom that the Criterion Collection has ingeniously turned into an exclusive celebrity film salon over the last few years with a really fun social-media approach.
(How exclusive is it? I went to the Criterion offices about a decade ago to swap out some defective Blu-rays, and the nice receptionist politely declined to even acknowledge which side of the office it was on.)
Built inside a Freightliner MT45 step van, which is a fun thing to say, the mobile closet is not a precise re-creation of the New York space, but an incredible simulation. Per Criterion’s FAQ: “The Criterion Closet in the Criterion office is a few inches narrower, and the ceiling is slightly higher, but the contents and arrangements of the two Closets are identical.” Titles are lined up by collection number rather than alphabetically or by filmmaker, which is not the way I would do it but no one asked me.
I brought some props, because I am That Guy: Criterion laserdiscs of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Halloween, Lawrence of Arabia and Pulp Fiction, all of which were never replicated on DVD or Blu-ray as Criterion no longer holds the rights. There’s an outside chance they’ll eventually release Close Encounters and/or Lawrence someday, especially since Sony’s already released those titles in 4K, but various licensing roadblocks prevent Halloween or Pulp Fiction from ever happening. And that’s why I’ve held onto the LDs all these years: You can’t always be sure the supplements will turn up anywhere else. The Halloween commentary track featuring John Carpenter, Debra Hill and Jamie Lee Curtis ended up on various Lionsgate discs, for instance, but it’s not on Shout Factory’s otherwise comprehensive 4K set.
The assembled staffers from Criterion and Blue Fox Entertainment were delighted to see the laserdiscs – and I was delighted right back to meet Peter Becker, the president of the Criterion Collection, who told me about recording Carpenter’s contribution to the Halloween track in a reconfigured voiceover booth in 1994.
My Ghost subscription doesn’t let me post video clips, so here is the Instagram reel of my visit. I don’t think I made a total idiot of myself. They were out of stock on the Edward Yang double-bill that came out last month, but I’m happy with my choices: Blu-rays of Roma and Marriage Story – two Netflix films I wanted to have before they go out of print – and the 4K edition of Lost Highway.
On some level, yes, a mobile version of the Criterion Closet is a marketing gimmick. As I was leaving, I ran into a colleague who scoffed at the idea of celebrating “buying more stuff” – and no, I am not identifying him because I don’t want people throwing cabbages at him in the street.
My counter-argument is that there’s always the Criterion Channel if you don’t want to own things, but the founding principle of Criterion was not just to showcase “important classic and contemporary” cinema but to preserve it; four decades later, the mission has become a brand, and brands are marketed, and it can only be a good thing for the world that people showed up to this particular marketing gimmick to buy those Edward Yang movies.
There were hundreds of people already in line when I got there, willing to wait for hours for their three minutes in video heaven. Some of them were there for the second or third visit. (Civilians get a 40% discount, which is a hell of a deal if you’re buying a box set. I would also consider lining up for most of an afternoon to get the Six Moral Tales BDs for a decent price.) The mobile Closet makes people smile, and being surrounded by movies, even for a short window of time, is a very pleasurable experience. Trust me, I know what I’m talking about.
The Criterion Collection mobile closet will be on its way home tonight, but it’ll almost certainly reappear at Lincoln Center when the New York Film Festival kicks off later this month. Keep an eye out for it!