Surely every soul must have a DVD player by now, just as every video store has reduced its VHS section to a slim rack. The digital video disc is the king of all media. Where the laser disc snagged a few adventurous buyers and then collapsed, the DVD has made itself a future in this home-entertainment landscape -- not just on dedicated DVD players but on computers and game machines.
The major studios have captured the family with Shrek 2 and Star Wars Trilogy, and the boutique labels Kino, Criterion and Milestone have issued hundreds of more esoteric titles. Such giddy popularity can only mean one thing: Companies are already devising new, incompatible formats (see DVD Tech, far right). But for now, DVD rules, and this year has thrown thousands of discs and its multiplicity of extras at a receptive public.
In this, the final week of the year, we take stock of the past 12 months and consider what, exactly, we learned from the DVDs of 2004. Here's a modest sampling:
Now You Know Why W. C. Fields Said Never Work With Children or Animals: In Meet the Parents, a cat takes a piece of bacon from Robert De Niro's mouth. On the DVD, animal trainer Dawn Barkan explains how. "Robert De Niro allowed me to soak the bacon in sardine oil and put it in his mouth so the scene would work. That's going the extra mile."
So, I Guess Tongues Are Right Out: Kim Hunter, one of the apes in the original Planet of the Apes, recalls kissing Roddy McDowall's ape while wearing a sponge-rubber mask with lots of give and no feeling. "We have to really work hard to make it look as if we were properly kissing each other without squishing the appliances."
Buy Early, Buy Often: Only when they opened the two-disc "special edition" of Hellboy did purchasers learn that there would be a " Hellboy Director's Cut DVD coming soon." The disc offered a $5 mail-in rebate.
Mind You, At Least Kaye Could Have Managed a Decent Cockney Accent: Walt Disney originally suggested Danny Kaye and Bette Davis for the parts played by Dick Van Dyke and Julie Andrews in Mary Poppins. He was talked out of it.
Before I Was So Rudely Interrupted: Christopher Lee, whose climactic scene as the evil Saruman was lopped from the theatrical release of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, saw his scene restored on the four-disc DVD of the film.
That's Good. I Think: Worried that the ultra-recognizable Tom Cruise might be an awkward fit for the role of a hit man who never attracts notice, Collateral director Michael Mann had Cruise take an assignment as a FedEx agent delivering a parcel to a diner. Nobody recognized him.
Mel Gibson, Eat Your Heart Out: The two-disc DVD of Pier Paolo Pasolini's 1962 drama Mamma Roma, in which Anna Magnani plays a prostitute trying to steer her son to success, includes Pasolini's 1963 half-hour film La Ricotta (after the cheese). Orson Welles, playing a director and dubbed with a disconcertingly high Italian voice, attempts to direct a scene of Christ being crucified while the film extra playing Christ eats too much cheese and dies on the cross. Pasolini was tried for contempt of religion on the strength of that one.
Al Jolson, Your Act Is Calling: The limited-edition Mickey Mouse in Black and White Volume 2 (1928-1935, 175,000 copies) includes a couple of racially insensitive cartoons preceded by critic Leonard Maltin's dutiful lecture on how times change. Mickey's Mellerdrammer has Mickey and Clarabelle the Cow in blackface in a stage production of Uncle Tom's Cabin. Black makeup is applied by an exploding stick of dynamite.
One-Stop Shopping: The gift set of Legally Blonde and Legally Blonde 2 contains an Elle Woods notepad, a pink pen and refrigerator magnets that let you spell "all new shoes bend" and "she needs a lucky object." The gift set of Barbershop and Barbershop 2 contains a headband with BS on it and cards illustrating four hairstyles: the mohawk, the mullet, the afro and the high-top fade.
Well, Sure, But You'll Miss Out on the Pink Pen: The DVD of the Scottish slacker film Late Night Shopping comes with notes by critic Jason Solomons. "Tap Late Night Shopping into the IMDb (The Internet Movie Database), and under 'If you like this title, we recommend . . .' section, you'll discover one of the most ridiculous bits of film association ever: Legally Blonde. The plight of a peroxide law student at Harvard is so far from our four slackers . . . as to be on a different cinematic planet."
Prince of Darkness? No, Prince of Dankness: Frank Langella, recalling his suave portrayal of Dracula in the 1979 film of that name, also recalls the downside of appearing in a cloud of fog. "We had to loop [dub in]almost all the dialogue because the dry-ice machines were making so much noise."
Grand Delusion: National Lampoon Presents Dorm Daze, a lame, farce-by-numbers university comedy, was issued on DVD in two separate versions: a 96-minute "rated" film and a 97-minute "unrated" film, the only apparent difference being an audio commentary on the "unrated" version in which the producer-directors and the editor speak of their movie as a masterpiece. "One thing we were going for directorially was a certain heightened level of reality. . . This movie has very much of a Molière-farce, Shakespearean-farce kind of feel."
Yes, We Have No Delusions: Stephen D. Burrows, who wrote, directed and played the lead in the diverting low-budget film Chump Change, has a clearer sense than the Dorm Daze auteurs of where he went right and wrong. "This is another example early on of a scene that was somewhat poorly written. Probably should have cut it, but story-wise I guess we needed it. If you listen carefully, you'll see most of these lines make no sense whatsoever, but we needed a little scene of these two bonding together."
Assisted Seuss-cide: The promotional material for the DVD of Dr. Seuss' The Cat in the Hat contained a rhyming synopsis. Among the lines: "Go grab the remote, it's now time to get loose/ Like only you can when you're with Dr. Seuss!/ 'Cause The Cat in the Hat who goes by that name/ Is played by Mike Myers of comedy fame!"
Sleepy, Bashful and Litigious: Unable to use any of the dwarf names copyrighted by the Disney studio, the makers of Happily Ever After, a forgettable 1990 animated sequel to the Snow White fairy tale, took a different tack, as outlined in the promotional notes. "Snow White escapes and sets out to vanquish Maliss, with help from the delightful Dwarfelles, female cousins of her other dwarf friends." Irene Cara, as Snow White: "But the seven dwarfs live in that cottage." Carol Channing, as a Dwarfelle: "Not any more. They opened up a new mine over in the next kingdom."
There Are Some Aches Even a Couple of Oscars Can't Soothe: Sally Field, on the commentary for Stay Hungry, the body-building film in which she co-stars with Jeff Bridges and Arnold Schwarzenegger, says: "I always wanted to be able to burp on cue. I can't do that."
Desk, Set and Match: On the commentary track for the 1957 comedy Desk Set with Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, co-star Dina Merrill recalls that Hepburn and Tracy would rehearse all night and then come in and tell nominal director Walter Lang that this was how they intended to play the scene. "He did nothing there. He didn't have a chance to do anything." (Bill Richardson's eclectic CBC Radio show Bunny Watson is named after Hepburn's character in this film.)
And You Thought Rodney Dangerfield Got No Respect: Pamela Franklin, Maggie Smith's schoolgirl foil in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, notes on the commentary track that she later decided to leave the business after being referred to simply as "the girl" while being ordered around the set of the TV show Hawaii Five-O.
North Korea Is Furiously Taking Notes: Our Friend the Atom, a 1957 TV show included on the Disney DVD set Tomorrow Land, illustrates a nuclear chain reaction by firing Ping Pong balls into a room full of set mousetraps.
One Day You May Have to Know This: The notes for Robocop 2 say the film had the second-highest body count among movies released in 1990. "It killed off 58 people, following Die Hard 2's 162."
Stop Shouting! There may have to be a moratorium on exclamation points in titles before the supply is exhausted. Cf. Oh God!, Good Boy! and Bandolero!
And Then They Went At Each Other in a Room Full of Mousetraps: Penny Singleton provided the voice of Jane on the animated TV series The Jetsons, and Janet Waldo voiced Jane's teenage daughter Judy. On the commentary, Waldo says their voices were in the same range, so she suggested that Singleton go a bit lower. Singleton said no, so Waldo pitched her voice higher -- and Singleton followed her up.
Worst Prediction Ever: From The Jetsons, looking into the future from the 1960s. Jane: "Hello, honey. Bad day at the office?" George: "Yeah. Those three-hour work days are killing me."
Words to Live By: Desirée's mother in Ingmar Bergman's comedy Smiles of a Summer Night: "Solitaire is the only thing in life that calls for absolute honesty."
Words to Die By: In a commemorative booklet issued with the DVD of Saving Private Ryan, war historian Stephen E. Ambrose offers a chilling explanation of the advantage of young soldiers. "For a direct frontal assault on a prepared enemy position, men who have not seen what a bullet or a land mine or an exploding mortar round can do to a human body are preferable to men who have seen the carnage. Men in their late teens or early 20s have a feeling of invulnerability. . . ."
And They Can Call It Can-Can: Dustin Hoffman, commenting on the one scene in Runaway Jury he shares with Gene Hackman, an accidental meeting in a courthouse washroom: "I think the scene works . . . but I think over all what I felt strongest about was the desire to work with Gene, and not just in one scene in a bathroom. Maybe in a whole movie in a bathroom."
Et Tu, Danna? Jeff Danna, composer of the musical score for The Gospel of John, which builds to the crucifixion of Christ, is incautious in his wording. "I was excited to get a chance to have my stab at this genre."
All Right, Then, Just Mime It: Peter Brunette, who has written about the films of director Michelangelo Antonioni, caps off his unhelpful commentary track on Antonioni's Blow-Up by addressing the closing scene of merrymaking mimes. "There have been hundreds of commentaries on what they stand for, but no one has ever made any definitive point and I certainly won't be that person either."
We Had Some Tape to Use Up, So We Thought, Who Would It Hurt? The promise of "alternate angles" on the music DVD Cyndi Lauper Live . . . at Last turns out not to offer a choice between views of Lauper onstage, but rather the opportunity to watch out-of-focus tracking shots of streets and fields.
They Seek Him Here, They Seek Him There: Bruce Campbell, who plays an aged Elvis Presley living at the Mud Creek Shady Rest Convalescence Home in the cult horror film Bubba Ho-Tep, provides a dead-straight commentary track as the real Elvis watching the movie and audibly munching popcorn. "That's who they think is me, huh? . . . Can't tell whether this is a drama or a comedy. I'm not sure which way we're going here."
Plus, She Has a Keen Lasso: The DVD set of television's Wonder Woman includes a 1943 document by William Moulton Marston, the Harvard-trained psychologist who created Wonder Woman as a comic-book character. "The picture-story fantasy cuts loose the hampering debris of art and artifice and touches the tender spots of universal human desires and aspirations, hidden customarily beneath long-accumulated protective coverings of indirection and disguise."
Dr. Note: Actor Sean Connery, expressing reservations about the Irish songs he sang in Darby O'Gill and the Little People and noting the terror in being up there alone: "When I was doing South Pacific, there were 25 other guys to share the blame."
Well, Give Bruce an A for the Theory, Anyway: The History of Rock 'n' Roll includes a clip of Bruce Springsteen discussing the term soul music. "The normal definition for it would be it's black music, or black people singing music, or what have you, but I don't agree with that, because I just think that everybody has their own soul." Then the film cuts to a performance by Michael Bolton.
And Make the Music More Musical: On the first-season DVD of Showtime series Dead Like Me, score composer Stewart Copeland (one-third of the old pop group the Police) bemoans his lot. "For inspiration I descend into a dark hole down at the bottom of a pit. I descend and it gets darker and smaller and more claustrophobic, but there's a light there, and that light is the directive from the producer, who says: Make it happy-sad. Not sad-happy, happy-sad."
Next Stop, Berlitz: Christopher Doyle, director of photography on the martial-arts film Hero, says there was much discussion about whether the English-language version should be called Heroes or Hero. "I think that's an important choice. In China it doesn't matter because the plural and the singular are the same thing."
Regrets, I've Had a Few: On The Star Wars Trilogy, Carrie Fisher (Princess Leia) says she and friend Miguel Ferrer read the original script of Star Wars aloud "and we both wanted to be Han Solo." Director George Lucas sounds bemused that Star Wars fans have made a cult figure out of a minor character, bounty hunter Boba Fett, who died quickly and ignominiously in Return of the Jedi. "Had I known he was going to turn into such a popular character, I probably would have made it a little more exciting."