I’ve tried my damndest to listen to a director’s commentary on different DVD’s, but there always so boring. I can sit through one if I’m watching a DVD of a tv show (e.g. Futurama, Red Dwarf), but I can’t do it through a whole damned movie.
There seems to be a pattern to most: give one interesting fact, then giggle like children for fifteen minutes, then repeat.
Can anyone listen to these things? Are there any exceptional director’s commentaries out there that I should track down?
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy seemed to have the right idea. The commentary was in the captioning. While watching the movie, interesting tidbits of info would pop up on the bottom of the screen. Kind of like pop-up video.
Pulp Fiction has a trivia track that captions interesting tidbits you might like that.
Donnie Darko helped me understand exactly what was going on in that movie. (my friends and I all had slightly different theories)
Evil Dead was pretty amusing. Just listening to them talk about the dirt cheap way they did the movie and how they had inches of dried fake blood on the floor near the end of the shoot was interesting.
I generally like commentaries though. The only one I ever shut off was Idenity because the director had a boring voice and spent all his time not talking about interesting things about the plot instead he’d just mutter about “Oh this was all shot on a sound stage.” “this was one of the few outside shots we had” “Oh this scene contains several clues” “This is a funny story. My wife is the one that got me to direct this film” NO IT WASN’T A FUNNY STORY! I don’t really care what’s a sound stage or what’s not. And I can see the clues please point out their exact meaning in case I missed something. Sheesh.
The way it breaks down for me is; If the Director him or herself is an interesting speaker then their commentary will be atlest passable. OR if the director is doing the commentary WITH someone who is an interesting speaker then it will be atleast passable.
Don’t listen to a John Carpenter commentary. He’s boring.
Listen to a Robert Rodriguez commentary. He’s interesting.
I find the process of film production fascinating, so even a mediocre commentary usually holds my interest. Some of my favorites have been Mike Newell’s on Donnie Brasco and the Idle/Palin/Cleese track on Holy Grail.
I’ve said this before, but as it happens I just watched a bit of it again the other night (someone said “lollygagging” in my presence, and it started me off down the path): Ron Shelton’s commentary track on Bull Durham is consistently interesting, at least to me. He’s very articulate, and he rarely if ever devolves into the “There’s <obscure bit actor>; he’s a really great actor. Oh, there’s <obscure bit actress>; she’s great to work with. I remember we all had lunch at this great sushi place the day we shot this” mode that so many directors and actors do in commentaries. Shelton talks about the technical aspects of movie making – how scenes were staged and blocked, the constraints imposed by budgetary considerations and their effect (or lack of effect) on the final product, the intervention of fate (e.g., how a light too close to a water pipe caused the pipe to burst in one of the locker room scenes, costing them the chance to shoot close-ups in a scene he believed would have benefitted from them). Bull Durham is a particularly interesting case, since it was Shelton’s first film as a director, and he’s able to look back with the benefit of hindsight and the experience of several films since then and comment on how he might have done things differently or might do them differently now. Since he also wrote the story and the screenplay, he’s also able to talk interestingly about the decisions he made in constructing the story: how he consciously wrote the film to maximize the chances it could be made economically (by limiting the number of locations, for example), or which bits were scripted and which were ad-libbed. But perhaps most importantly, he never seems to lose track of (indeed, he explicitly talks about) the fact that the purpose of all the technical stuff is to tell an interesting story, and he manages to make the stories of making the movie interesting as well. (Tim Robbins and Kevin Costner’s commentary together on the same film is mediocre at best).
I’ve come across a few other good ones in the same vein: director Steven Shainberg and writer Erin Cressida Wilson on the DVD of Secretary, for example. Theirs is an interesting counterpoint to Bull Durham, since Shainberg in particular seems much more concerned with bringing up the visual, rather than dramatic, aspects of the film. I was surprised at how much of the look of the sets and locations of the film was as it was by design or artifice, as opposed to happenstance or coincidence. There’s still an emphasis in their commentary on how the various elements of the film come together to tell the story, but I think Shelton mentions set design and related issues maybe twice during the entire commentary on Bull Durham, while it comes up again and again as Shainberg and Wilson talk about Secretary.
On the Pirates of the Caribbean disk, I couldn’t get enough of the track with Keira Knightley and Jack Davenport because they had great British accents and actually had interesting things to say. OK, I was mostly listening to Keira. The other tracks, even the one with Johnny Depp, didn’t interest me as much.
I also bought those Extended Editions of the Lord of the Rings movies. I barely have time to watch the movie itself, let alone the four commentary tracks.
The Mummy commentary was surprisingly interesting. If you have the movie lying around I recommend giving it a spin. Quite a bit more thought went into things than you’d expect.
I also liked the Armageddon commentary track. Horrible, horrible movie, but listening to Ben Affleck tear it apart on the commentary track was pretty darn funny.
Roger Ebert’s commentaries on Dark City and Citizen Kane are well worth the time invested. I haven’t heard his commentary on Floating Weeds, but I’m sure that will also be a winner.
In my experience, while most directors commentaries are pretty uninspired they can sometimes be well worth listening to. Sam Mendes commentary for the ‘Road to Perdition’ DVD is fascinating, as is Richard Schickel’s commentary to ‘Once upon a time in America’, and Kevin Smith’s commentary to ‘Jay and Silent Bob strike back’ is just fricking hysterical!
I have to confess that I’ve listened to all the commentaries on the extended editions. I listen to them on most DVDs that I buy, either because a) they’re interesting (and there were lots of interesting bits on the LOTR DVDs; or b) because I’m an insomniac and listening to a boring commentary helps me fall asleep.
The Spinal Tap commentary is the best I’ve heard so far: done in character by the actors as a retrospective look at the “documentary.” Almost as funny as the film itself!
The Lord of the Rings actor commentaries are hit and miss. The American actors are really boring. There’s only so many times I can hear people moaning about how good each others acting was. The British and New Zealand actors (especially Billy, Dom, and Bernard) were far better at telling funny stories about the shoots or just being silly.
Adam West and Burt Ward do a great commentary for the origional Batman movie.
Cheech Marin and Lew Adler do a nice job with “Up in smoke”
Mel Brooks’ commentary on Young Frankenstein is very good.
Jack Nicholson did a surprizingly good job on “Something’s Gotta Give”.
Director’s commentaries on DVD are one thing, but there’s nothing like a live, interactive commentary with the director sitting right next to you. A few months ago, I had the pleasure of meeting our very own anamorphic, and screening a copy of his newest feature-length movie, Stark Raving Mad. A very cool movie, enhanced of course by getting to ask the writer/director whatever you wanted.
I like to listen to Bryan Singer’s commentaries. He sounds like he approaches the commentaries with an agenda. He knows what wants to mention, and he usually will have someone else on with him, who keeps him on subject. It’s almost run like an interview.
Very enjoyable and informative, plus there’s practically no dead air while he’s looking for something to say.
I feel your pain. Ever try to listen to the commentery to Once Upon a Time in Mexico? Most boring thing ever. You’d think the person doing the commentary would have some idea of what people want to hear (I,E orgins of ideas, characters, stories of funny stuff that happened during the making of said movie), and not rant for an hour and a half about the technicalities about film making/shooting
And with that, JoeSki watched The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy with commentary on.
The other tracks, even the one with Johnny Depp, didn’t interest me as much.