It’s 2022 People – Have You Started Your DVD Collection Yet?
Monday is movies. And sometimes TV. Today is a holiday, so I'm nerding out about my new/old DVD collection.
I have started a DVD collection. Probably the most un-2022 thing to do. But it’s happening. And I love it.
To be fair it was always happening, I started buying DVDs in earnest 20 years ago when they started flooding into retail stores and were the thing to own. “I’ve got it on DVD” was a trump card when anyone mentioned This Is Spinal Tap or The Last Waltz or The Godfather or whatever. That badge of ownership the honour bestowed on the uber fan. Or something.
And I was in pole position, running a music store that was making the pivot to DVDs big time, even renaming themselves from the fairly unimaginative The CD Store to the all-encompassing The CD & DVD Store. So I was tossed the odd freebie from a scene-making sales rep, given staff discount, and then – eventually – as a freelancer, I started to review a few DVDs so they started to quickly pile up in the house alongside the CDs, books and records.
We moved house, tried to get a bit tidier, welcomed a son into the world, and then the big blow for the DVD collection was the ability to have and keep films on your computer. Hard drives full of stuff we would never watch but all because someone had hooked us up. And then the streaming services…
My DVD collection was maybe close to 1000 units at some point. And I use the words units because when I really considered myself any sort of collector, I was also a retailer.
In recent years I’ve been lucky enough to live very near the last video store standing. Where I am an enthusiastic patron, paying the monthly one-off fee for unlimited rentals. And I’ve tried out most of the streaming platforms once or twice at least, a few of them I’m signed up to for life.
I still review DVDs – here and over on my site, Off The Tracks.
But the review copies don’t always last in the collection, for space, and taste. Though I never made it down to zero. I still love the ritual of putting on a DVD. I still need a working player for the times when a review copy arrives, and I am still getting around to watching some of the titles I bought many years ago on a whim. Also, in the last year or so I’ve actually started to buy more DVDs than ever before. As with my tame midlife crisis of buying CDs again it kinda snuck up on me, and it also involves re-purchasing things I once owned, then ditched, and have now decided I need again.
I am okay with this. It’s only money. And only small amounts of money. And as much as I have spent across my live on physical media, I have been blessed (and cursed) to a large run as a reviewer where I didn’t pay for everything I consumed, and where I almost had a kind of extra currency happening, by using new releases to trade for older, cheaper options.
Back in the early/mid-00s I was trading in boxes of one-watch DVDs for records at Real Groovy and Slow Boat. It was a fun way to kill a Saturday morning.
Now I’m digging through second hand stores and garage sales to find $2 copies of Labyrinth or Best In Show for a buck. Mostly I’m further supporting Aro Video with their awesome sale bins, $5 gems galore.
There’s some rhyme and reason to my newly (re)built collection. Although not a whole lot at this stage. But I’ve learned over the years that the best way is to stockpile the bargains, hunt for the holy grails and then prune the collection down into a shape.
I’m buying old horrors and screwball comedies, some documentaries, martial arts films and a few examples of classic dramas and thrillers from across the 70s, 80s, 90s and 00s. I have to have films like The Big Chill and Heat and 12 Monkeys and The Insider.
But I do not need any Star Wars or many of the big franchises actually. Save for a few of the great slashers.
Anyway, as with all things of such privilege, it’s a bit of fun and it’s not hurting anyway.
So my long weekend job was to finally try and make sense of the now 230 titles I have.
I took them all out of the cabinets and looked through, made some assessments as to what stays and goes now, after so many clean outs over so many years. And I found only one double-up (two copies of 12 Monkeys, interesting, both of them bought in recent months I’m guessing). And then I made use of the fact that on my Letterboxd account I could make a list of them all. I’m a devotee of Goodreads (for books) and Discogs (for my records and CDs) so, as I said here recently, I’ve been trying to log every film I’ve ever seen on Letterboxd.
I’m up around 7,500 films watched, though there’ll be many lost in the cracks of my memory.
But the cool thing with all this nerdery is that the list of 228 films which I’ll add and subtract to over time, tells me that so far I’ve only seen 58% of them. Meaning I have a few titles to get to.
This is my next lockdown. This is my “bunker” experience. This is the insurance policy for when the streaming sites all blow up, or I finally admit to myself that they are a time suck of unnecessary shit. This is the start of the dream curation for the imaginary holiday home, or home theatre, or um, mancave (I’m sorry I even used that term – hideous). This wee list and wee, weird collection is one of the things that isn’t hurting anyone at all. That makes me feel happy on some tiny but very important level. That is just a bit of harmless fun, and a connection back to my earliest thrills loving, and loving, and loving movies.
If you’re interested you can check out the list here.
https://boxd.it/iN93E
Any of you collecting movies still? Or did you give that up so long ago? Any of you keeping records or spreadsheets like a boss-nerd?