Photo by Geoff Carter
By Geoff Carter
In the present-day wonderland of streaming movies and videos available on dozens of cable channels like HBO or Apple TV, old television programs on retro TV stations like MeTV or Cozi, and platforms with huge libraries like Amazon Prime or the Criterion Channel, it seems as if every possible entertainment want or desire of is just waiting to be fulfilled.
It wasn’t always this way. Back in the day, a favorite television show was on just once a week. If you missed an episode, you had to wait for summer reruns to see it. There was no digital recording option. There was not even an analog option. VCRs for home use were only a dream.
CBS, ABC, and NBC were (besides PBS), the only source of TV dramas and sitcoms, and—compared to the plethora of today’s high-quality TV production standards—the quality (and sophistication levels) of network television were generally not very good. But it was all we knew.
My wife and I recently spent a week up at the family cabin in northern Wisconsin. There is no internet at the cabin—and therefore no streaming, no cable television, and only minimal hotspot reception. Even our broadcast television is limited to only two channels. Thank God for our books–and for our very extensive DVD collection. Over the years, we’ve accumulated over four hundred discs. Family members have brought a disc here and a disc there and over the years they piled up. There’s a little bit of something for everyone.
We have classic films like Anatomy of a Murder (a great up north movie), Deliverance (another great wilderness film), Seven Days in May, Will Penny, and To Kill a Mockingbird. We also have modern classics like Juno, Three Kings, Milk, and Good Night and Good Luck.
Thanks to one of my brothers, we have extensive libraries of his favorite film noir pieces like Farewell, My Sweet, The Killers, Touch of Evil, Double Indemnity, and Suddenly!; war films like Fury, Saving Private Ryan, Master and Commander, and The Big Red One; classic drive-in sci-fi like The Giant Claw, When Worlds Collide, and (the original) The Day the Earth Stood Still. Like I said, something for everyone.
Sprinkle in a modicum of comedy (There’s Something About Mary), rom-coms (The Truth About Cats and Dogs), limited and extended series (Lonesome Dove, Six Feet Under, and I, Claudius) and westerns (True Grit and Unforgiven), and you have an unholy resurrection of Blockbusters.
So, the question is after a hard day of fishing, paddleboarding, or lounging on the beach with a Bloody Mary, what do you watch? For those of us who have turned to Netflix or HBO to pick out something to watch, but who still haven’t (after twenty minutes) been able to decide on anything, this may seem familiar. And it is—in its own analog way.
A lot of it depends on the mood. Rainy days are great for binging. Even though my wife and I have seen Lonesome Dove enough times to recite dialogue along with the characters, we’ll still watch it at the cabin. It’s almost become a tradition. Tremé is another great series, as are Six Feet Under, The Pacific, Band of Brothers, or—of course—The Sopranos. Seeing them again at the cabin is kind of comforting, like looking up an old friend.
The same is true of classic cinema like Notorious, Seven Days in May, The Apartment, or Psycho (another fun when you’re alone in the deep woods). They’re nice to revisit partly because they bring back good memories but mostly because they’re so damned good.
Back in the day, when we used to spend entire summers at the cabin, we would always look forward going to the Castle Drive-in near Minocqua, Wisconsin to see the latest horror or motorcycle or beach movie double features. Unfortunately, the Castle, like so many other drive-in theaters is now defunct, but we used to have great times watching B-movie horror and science-fiction films like Blood and Lace, Four Flies on Gray Velvet, Frogs, and other even more obscure titles. American International classics like The Pit and the Pendulum, The Oblong Box, or The Masque of Red Death were ideal drive-in fare. Of course, nothing beat the early seventies camp horror of The Abominable Dr. Phibesseries or some of the other Vincent Price potboilers like Theater of Blood (featuring the incomparable Diana Riggs).
So perusing the cabin DVD collection (with a glass of wine in hand) is an odd combination of nostalgia, discovery (people will bring new movies up every time they visit), and affirmation. It’s fun to revisit those horror flicks we saw on Saturday afternoons or those late-night programs like Svengoolie or Nightmare Theater. It’s heartening to relive Jack Lemmon disengaging himself from the corporate moral tar pit in The Apartment, or to see Jimmy Stewart going at George C. Scott in Anatomy of a Murder. Those are moments worth reliving.
Of course, after a couple of Scotches or some other libations, light comedies and concert flicks provide the perfect entertainment. Watching A Fish Called Wanda, There’s Something about Mary, Dazed and Confused, or Fast Times at Ridgemont High never gets old.
There’s something about Matthew McConaughey’s “All right, all right, all right” in Dazed and Confused that’s sort of comforting. It kind of immortalizes all those Friday night high-school parties of our misspent youths. Watching concert films like The Last Waltz or Stop Making Sense has sort of the same vibe; they connect us to our past while simultaneously enriching our present.
My wife and I bypassed all our old favorites the other night. We watched Francois Truffaut’s Small Change, a delightful growing-up movie set in a small French town. While our DVD collection is not only part of a short-lived and outmoded technology, it represents part of the (perhaps) outmoded and short-lived sensibilities of our youth.
The experiences we’ve had, many of them inextricably wound up in the television shows and films of a past age, are becoming passe. There are no more drive-in theaters (although they’re still cranking out cheesy movies) or Saturday afternoon kid matinees. TV series like Night Gallery or Combat don’t exist anymore. Coming to the family cabin and seeing the variety and sheer volume of DVDs is like looking at shards and starbursts of memory. They are who we were and have helped us mold who we are. Perhaps in the future they will still be part of what our next generations will be.
Or maybe not.
