The Fieldwork Research Project

Movie Collecting: The Art of Archiving Classic and Contemporary Films

“I'm not fooling myself into believing that it was as dangerous as a drug addiction, but what it did to my financial situation dominated my life for way too long”(Moffitt, Brockway, Poisuo, Franklin, Brown & Cheese, 2015). But even among the negatives there are positives when collecting movies. Movie Collecting is the focus of my research project for the Capstone class because I have recently caught the bug of movie collecting too. Although some people would argue that it is a waste of money and time because of streaming and digital distribution there are reasons people collect to express themselves. I will be using my collecting history, the interviews that I have conducted for this project and then the observations that I have made when I was observing my fieldworking location to argue this.

“I like the idea of liking as a project or practice that one might actively pursue, a talent that could be developed, learned, and practiced...” is very much how I view collecting movies because I have learned so much about film and I have barely scratched the surface. If I was to keep digging and learn more about film then I will be able (Flatley, 2010). I began actively collecting movies just a couple months ago in December 2016 when I went to a pawn shop in my home town during Holiday Break and saw that they were having a deal where you could buy up to twenty bluray movies for $2 each. I bought almost their entire shelf and they quickly took down the sign saying that the sale was going on. I guess I would say that I have been collecting ever since I got my first blu ray. I cannot even remember my first blu ray purchase. Movie collecting is a fun little hobby to me because I get to collect movies that are important to me and that I want to share with everyone. I want to collect as many movies as possible but I want to make sure that I practice patience. I cannot just go out and blow all of my money on movies. I have to take my time and use a budget to make sure that I do not lose all my money. One of the best aspects about collecting is finding the best price for movies that I have been looking for. One example is that I was looking for an out of print movie called Cannibal Holocaust in which it was banned in over forty countries so it is pretty important to the film industry. It is also part of the Video Nasty list, a list made by the British government in the 80’s and 90’s of all the films that are banned in the country, of which I am trying to obtain all films on that list since I am a sucker for controversial films. Either way I found it at my local Edward Mckays and it was only twenty-five dollars, while some prices I have seen have been in the fifties. I was unfortunately unable to buy it as I did not have enough store credit since I keep myself accountable with a system.

The system that I use, that I appropriated from a fellow movie collector and an amazing professor Will Dodson, is that since I have a sizeable collection now of about more than fifty movies, I have to trade something in for store credit and then use that store credit to buy what I want. The place that I buy most of my movies from is Edward Mckay’s Used Bookstore on Battleground Avenue. Their trade in policy is very user-friendly. I love the simplicity of turning in a movie and then as they process that sale, which takes around fifteen to twenty minutes, I look around the store to see what I want to use the store credit for. As Will Dodson said, “If I want something then I have to turn something in.” I will talk more about this later but basically Will Dodson was telling me about this during our interview in February and it amazed me how good that system worked and how simple it was and yet I was unable to think of it. But I am finding that the more I turn movies in for other movies the more I find that I have less to trade in. I will probably have to go to a pawn shop soon and pick up a bunch of movies for really cheap and then sell them straight away to Mckay’s. Originally I was going on a budget but I was always undisciplined and would go about twenty bucks above and soon enough I had just enough money for about five gas refills so I had to stop buying movies with my own money. On movie collecting itself, I learned a lot by doing the interviews that I did for this project and reflecting upon the answers that I was given by the interviewees.

Interviewing a moderator of Reddit’s “DVD Collection” community gave me more insight and proof that people collect to express themselves. Some of the interesting answers I got were, “First off I should say that I'm probably one of the cheapest collectors I know. If I don't get a good deal, I generally won't buy it (with a few exceptions). I'm lucky enough to have a few local pawn shops and secondhand stores to purchase movies from. Then I use certain websites to get alerts when harder to find movies are available at lower costs. As for the justification? Ultimately I'm a pack-rat and a huge movie fan. If all of these movies were readily available on streaming and I always had reliable internet... I might not collect. But those things will never happen. The best way I know how to ensure I'll be able to watch what I want, when I want... is to own it”. which was in response to the question “What is it about collecting that makes the amount of money invested worth it?” I really liked this answer because it really proves my argument that people collect because the focus of his response was himself so he doesn’t collect to preserve film. He collects because he wants to ensure pleasure with movies that he knows he will like rather than having movies he will not enjoy. I especially like the last sentence because that seems to be the general attitude towards collecting.

Will Dodson even said so himself that streaming was not sustainable because once that movie is taken off of Netflix, that’s it. There is no way to watch that movie. The only way to have the means to watch that movie you’ve been itching to watch is by actually owning it. Another great response that I got, to the question of if there were any essential movies for collectors, was, “Realistically? No. Everyone has different tastes and who am I to tell others what they should own. But yeah, there are some things that people should consider owning because they're so damn good or influential. A few that come to mind are 12 Angry Men (Criterion), Shawshank Redemption, The Harry Potter series, Pan's Labyrinth, and too many more to count. But let's be honest, these are just the movies where if someone were to say ‘I didn't really like Shawshank Redemption.’ I wouldn't trust them as a person. They're probably awful.” I like this answer too because I have so many movies that I have seen that I do not care enough about them to actually own the movie. There are a lot of collectors out there and no collection is the same. Will Dodson expanded on this by saying that a collection is basically an extension of himself. That his collection is a way into his mind.

My second interview was with Will Dodson. Will has been the Ashby Residential College Coordinator since 2011. He teaches rhetoric & composition, literature, and media studies courses. His research interests include neuroscience and interactionism, film and new media, feminism, and literary theory. He has also been my professor for one of my classes which was Global Cult Cinema. He has over 5000 movies, as he told me in response to the question “How many movies do you have in your collection?”, and has all of the Criterion Collection’s movies so far. The Criterion Collection is a distributor of movies dedicated to restoring classic and contemporary movies with amazing quality and extra features. They have released over a thousand movies in their catalog since they were founded back in 1984 (Criterion, 2017). They are one of the best distributors in the world because of their dedication towards the film industry. One answer that backed up my thesis was when we were discussing the question of why we collect. Will asked me that question when we had finally settled down. I told him that I collect because I like to have movies that I love ready to show people and that I have had so many problems with the internet and getting movies I want to watch working that I finally had had enough. So now I buy them. I asked him why he collected and he said that he is compulsive and that he likes to have an archive/library that reflects who he is as a person. There were two very helpful answers that he gave me when I asked him if there were any essential movies for every collection. He responded with “Whatever is essential in your tastes,” which led up to “...If you’re a collector of horror then you don’t need Citizen Kane.” These were very helpful because it backs up my claim that people collect to make an archive and that that archive is an extension of themselves.

The final interview that I did was with Will again. We agreed that the first interview was very well done and that we wanted to talk some more as we had barely scratched the surface of collecting. We were unable to talk as long, but it was just as helpful. Some of the topics that we talked about was his system on buying and selling his collection. He mentioned it briefly the last interview, but basically if he wants to get a new movie he has this saying that is really simple yet very firm, “Something comes in, something comes out.” He explained that now that he has a wife and kids that he is no longer able to just buy movies that strike his interest anymore and that he has to be smarter about how he builds his collection. He uses Amazon mostly to sell because it is so easy for him to find buyers. He says that he came up with the system essentially when Amazon first came out around ten years ago. In terms of which movies he specifically sells he says he tries to sell those of which he already has the bluray for. He also said that if he finds out that he bought a movie that he doesn’t really like after watching it, that he will definitely end up selling it and getting a movie that he thinks he will like or one he does like but hasn’t had the chance to get yet. He specifically said that he will never own a Quentin Taratino movie because he doesn’t think that they are good and there is no reason to have them since he will never use any of the Taratino films to teach a class on movies. He has said that he will never sell Killer Condom, Frankenhooker, Cemetery Man, or Slumber Party Massacre 2. I asked him at one point if there were any movies that he ever regretted getting, as I have had many instances of that happening, and he said that he regrets getting Chasing Amy and any Wes Anderson movies. He really likes some of the packaging that has fun little extras like figurines, plushies and a very specific one he, well more like his daughter, showed me which was a wind-up Jack in the box thing but inside was a very creepy clown and as you wind it up it plays a sinister lullaby with the sounds of a little girl giggling in the background. He did say that when it comes down to it he really mostly cares for the movie itself. I also asked him about the claim by the public that the physical medium is dying out because of streaming and all that and he said that it was utterly untrue. He says that, and I completely agree with him on this, streaming and all that is great for collectors to really discover more movies and if they really like it then they will now have something on their wishlist that they can keep an eye out for. The final thing in terms of the way he likes his collection to look like comes from when I asked him about distributors putting multiple movies in a single case instead of having each movie having its own case. He said that it really depends on what it is and that it is really nice to have cases like that since having 5000 movies or more really starts to make it hard to limit the amount of room that his collection takes up. Once all of the interviews were done and I had written up the reports of those interviews, I decided that I should probably go and observe a location for movie collectors.

I went out during one the spring break and observed the people at Edward Mckay’s but more specifically the movie section. The section is not very brightly lit and the bookcases they used were dark colored so if there was a gap in the movies then it would be very dark and you would have to take the movie out of the shelf to even see it especially if it was on the bottom of the shelf or had a dark case with a bad color scheme that made it hard to read. The entrance of the store is honestly very stressful to walk through for some reason. The entrance doors are very tight and when you walk in you have a small little square of about 5 feet by 5 feet where you can walk freely and observe some of their wares in the front, but then you turn right to get farther into the store and there are a bunch of doors only for employees and then the registers are on the right. Every time I have ever been in there I have had to squeeze by someone who is standing there for no other reason than to inconvenience whoever is walking past. Then you go down a ramp that is just steep enough that you feel like you’re going to fall if you make a misstep. There are a lot of bookcases to the left and a small children’s section to the right. In front of you are the movies and beyond that are the records and CDs. To the left of the movie section is the video game section. There was a nice couple of cushioned chairs that sit between the video game section and the movie section that I decided would be a nice place to sit at. I had a friend with me who I had a small mini interview with while making observations and, there was some helpful observations that we made. One of the first observations we noticed was that there were a lot of young couples and a lot of old people. The young couples would usually go up and down the aisles basically just pointing out various movies they liked and it seemed to me that they were there to just see the selections and buy whatever struck their interest the most. The old people would always go right to a specific genre and would thumb through the DVDs looking for a specific TV show from eras past. I was a little surprised after I left because I realized that the old people would not even look at the blurays. They would always go to the DVD section and never the Bluray section. I infer that they no longer have as good of eyesight as they used to so now they basically just grab the cheapest version of that movie because they won’t notice the difference anyways. Some other observations that I made while I was observing the store was that the employees were very in your face about wanting to help you. I feel like there was a reason behind this like that maybe they have been getting a lot of complaints from customers about how unhelpful the staff was, but now it’s a little ridiculous. They were constantly coming up to us and even though I told them what I was doing, they still wanted to know if we had found everything we were looking for. We left after an hour because it was in the middle of the day and there were not many people coming and going in the store.

With all of that evidence I thoroughly believe that people collect movies to express themselves because they only collect movies that they deem important and that they will be ecstatic to share with others. The interviews paired up with my own personal experiences as a movie collector helped me prove that that was the reason behind collecting. My observations were unable to help me prove my claim but I did learn more about the demographics of who goes to the store. My research shows that my, and others’, collections is not about quantity but about quality because we strive to make an archive of the movies that we are most drawn to and are interested in.

References

Wilson, E. G. (2009). The Most Dangerous Hobby in the World: Film Collecting in the

Digital Age. Virginia Quarterly Review, 85(2), 150-159.

Flatley, J. (2010). Like: Collecting and Collectivity. October, (132), 71-98.

Schauer, B. (2012). The Warner Archive and DVD Collecting in the New Home Video

Market.Velvet Light Trap: A Critical Journal Of Film & Television, (70), 35-48. doi:10.7560/VLT7004

Peters, J. (1977). Book collecting: a modern guide. New York: Bowker.

Spengler, S., Mess, F., & Woll, A. (2015). Do Media Use and Physical Activity Compete in

Adolescents? Results of the MoMo Study. Plos ONE, 10(12), 1-14. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0142544

Moffitt, M., Brockway, R., Poisuo, P., Franklin, A., Brown, A. T., & Cheese, J. (n.d.). 5 Ways My

Movie Collection Became An Actual Addiction. Retrieved March 20, 2017, from

http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-ways-my-movie-collection-became-actual-addiction/

The most awesome place for DVD and Blu-ray movie collectors. • r/dvdcollection. (n.d.).

Retrieved April 22, 2017, from https://www.reddit.com/r/dvdcollection/

(n.d.). Retrieved April 25, 2017, from https://www.criterion.com/about_us