Facets' Find

One of Facets' favorite filmmakers, the great Guy Maddin (The Saddest Music in the World, My Winnipeg), discusses his support of internet piracy, the evolution of his editing style and more in this illuminating interview!

VHS or Bust: An Introduction

Video. Home. System.

It’s unlikely JVC had any idea how prophetic their abbreviation for a home video player would be, but it couldn’t have been more perfect. When the VHS format first debuted in the late 1970's, the world of movies (and, more specifically, movie watching) was forever changed. Never before had mass consumers been given the opportunity to control when and where they watched a film. Movies were frequently shown on TV, of course, but the primary place of consumption was still the theater. VHS changed all that, and within a decade the home video market had become not only ubiquitous, but also affordable.

Rental stores were a booming business, with Blockbuster Video leading the pack, its clean white shelves lined four-deep with stacks of the newest releases. Who could forget those clogged strip-mall parking lots, and the noisy stores teeming with families methodically scouring the shelves? Mom and Dad circled the new release wall, while brother hoped to slip a rated-R horror flick into the pile without notice, and sister picked up her favorite puppy dog or princess cartoon again, much to the nonplussed chagrin of both Mom and Dad, who would be forced to sit by when it was her turn. The very letters "VHS," when strung together, automatically usher in a wave of nostalgia for millions of movie watchers. Ah.. yes.. This was the beginning. And as every hopeless romantic knows, it rarely gets any better than that.

Home video trends have continued to run in cycles, and format wars are now practically par for the course. But when JVC’s VHS format fought it out with Sony’s Beta-Max in the early eighties, it marked the first bloody battle of this ongoing war. Many a junk-heap graveyard has since been littered with the remains of other upstart format newcomers. Some never advanced beyond the pages of niche catalogs (HD-VHS? Video CD?), while others simply lost the bet (such as HD-DVD, which any XBOX 360 owner will roll their eyes at the mention of.) DVD and Laserdisc are the only real exceptions, formats that slid in and occupied the collectors market uncontested for a time, only to become passé in the shadow of a newer, sexier video format.

But VHS is the undisputed King Granpappy of them all. It’s the first one that WORKED, hook line and sinker, and it mapped the course for everything that would follow. Before VHS, home video as we know it today simply didn’t exist. Thus, for almost all cinephiles (or at least those who are old enough to have lived it) VHS played a significant part in their movie education. However, in the preceding years, VHS has fallen dramatically out of favor. By today’s content delivery standards, VHS is a rickety old dinosaur; a machine, with moving parts. Today, with as little as a mouse or remote click, a movie can be cued up and on your screen, often in higher resolution than it may have originally been shown. VHS was a contraption. It was heavy. It could break, and often, it did. And now, for most people, it’s history.

But let’s be realistic about this--It's no good pouring too much hollow nostalgia on a dead format. Nobody clings to their abacus when calculators are built into every cell phone, right? It’s the movies that matter, and as long as they’re all still around, everything is OK. But the fact remains that the death of a format inevitably leads to a decline in the availability of certain percentage of content. Video companies go under, rights issues get muddled, and before you know it, another title is lost forever to the dust bin. This can sometimes be the case even with major studios; their outputs are so voluminous that it’s easy (and often also in their financial interest) to let certain titles slide into obscurity and focus their efforts on better known, more well-loved properties instead. Though most of the big players are savvy enough to put out feelers and gauge demand on certain titles, none of them can say that everything in their back catalog will survive on video forever.

There was a time when this kind of video-bounty-hunting could be driven to levels of epic sport. Bootlegs were one thing, but to acquire a proper VHS of something like Lynch's Eraserhead, or Linklater's Slacker, or even hardcore nostalgia junk like The Garbage Pail Kids Movie or UHF, was something akin to spearing the white whale. Later, of course, the internet happened, and pretty soon nothing was sacred or un-ownable anymore. The sport was gone.

So now then: if vinyl records can mount a commercial resurgence on a wave of nostalgia, why not VHS? We’re already seeing some rumblings of this (such as when House of the Devil was released on VHS early this year.) Picture quality be damned! Pan and scan! Warts and all! I think it’s time for a critical re-evaluation of the format. Who’s with me??

So, I give you “VHS or Bust.” This series will highlight rare, unloved VHS orphans, which have no proper Reg. 1 DVD release (let’s not wade into the murky waters of import DVDs), all of which are available via the Facets Videotheque. I may even perhaps dabble with occasional forays into some of the history, stories, and tips & tricks behind the format. I’m here to make you a VHS aficionado, and the Facets Videotheque offers an amazing catalog through which to acquire tons of the many gems that have gotten left behind in the many format crossovers since.

Bottom line: there are far too many movies you may never get the chance to see unless you are willing and able to find and view them on VHS. So wipe the dust bunnies off that old girl and head over to Facets, where they've got enough great offerings to keep you occupied until well after the next format war is over. If you’re anything like me, you’ll be more than happy to sit this one out.

FIRST UP IN THE SERIES:

Candy Mountain (1987). Directed by Robert Frank from a screenplay by Rudy Wurlitzer (Two Lane Blacktop, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid).


WANT TO SUGGEST A TITLE? I’M ALL EARS. PLEASE SEND RECOMMENDATIONS TO: (emcflat at hotmail dot com)

RECOMMENDED READING: Total Rewind - An exhaustive history of the format through its many incarnations and its battle for home video supremacy, as well as a really nifty virtual museum of VHS curiosities and vintage machines.


Gregory Hess was born and raised in Chicago. He is a former video store clerk now in exile at Roosevelt University in pursuit of a career in journalism. His favorite movie is The Magnificent Ambersons and his favorite actor is Boris Karloff. You can find him elsewhere on the interwebs at http://bluecollarfilmscholar.blogspot.com and on twitter at http://twitter.com/emcflat. His VCR of choice is a GoVideo DVR4175 DVD/VCR combo unit.

Facets' Find

Our love for the "film school generation" directors continues with Martin Scorsese rapping on his criminally underrated film, New York, New York (1977)!

Facets' Find

Our look at some of our favorite film school generation directors continues with Robert Altman discussing casting and directing in a 1983 interview.

Facets' Find

Francis Ford Coppola predicts Youtube?

You decide...

Facets' Find

Spielberg on Truffaut. 1978!

Prepare Thyself for THE GATE

Tomorrow night, Facets Night School is throwing up the devil horns and getting wicked with "Open the Gate: Heavy Metal as a Gateway to Ritual and the Satanic Panic in The Gate," artist Terence Hanum's lecture on the '80s cult favorite about two teens who open a door to Hell with heavy meeeetaaaaal!

To prep for this gloriously awesome event (which hits at midnight at the Cinematheque-hint, hint), Terence was kind enough to pen some thoughts on required, pre-screening listening! Take it, Terence!


In celebration of lecturing on The Gate, I advise some essential listening from 1987. Though the two big references you can make out in the film are a Venom backpatch and an Iron Maiden poster, I want to point you to some great albums from that year. Most of them I came to later, since I was only 8 in 1987, but I think they all stand the test of time.

If you have them, then you know; if you don't, here is your homework.

1) Napalm Death - Scum

I still recall when my friend Kyle, who would later vanish into the Everglades, in middle school had this tape and played it for me. Nothing had the immediacy and fury of this sound. My favorite track was always the one with no drums, it was so bleak.

Listen

2) Death - Scream Bloody Gore

Living in Florida the Tampa Death metal scene really held its sway over me and my friends. This is, somewhat, where it all began. Amazing riffs. Though "Human" was my entry point, this album has so much to offer.

Listen

3) Candlemass - Nightfall

This album is incredibly beautiful and crushing, epic melodies and the thick syrup of riffs. And a Thomas Cole painting on the cover to boot. Epic.

Listen

4) Voivod - Killing Technology

This band has aged extremely well and continue to make good music but this album is perhaps the most interesting to me. Extremely experimental for the time and with great tempos. I've read that the late guitarist Piggy would write riffs for Voidvod by playing Yes backwards. I love Yes, and apparently so much so that I love it backwards.

Listen

5) Saint Vitus - Born Too Late

Sometime in the early 1990s I would hunt down these SST CDs at this used CD store in Virginia and this album always confused me, it sounded nothing like Black Flag or Sonic Youth who I was obsessed with. But it was like someone slowed down my Black Sabbath records. Seriously amazing and addictive.

Listen

6) Mayhem - Deathcrush

Not anywhere near what they would do on their opus "De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas" but the foundation was laid. The vocals are ridiculous and amazing, the guitars are filthy this is true black metal indeed.

Listen

7) Sepultura - Schizophrenia

I remember swimming in my friend Ben's pool and blasting "Arise" sometime in 1991, and immediately picking up everything I could by Sepultura. This record was a pleasant discovery. A frantic cross of melodic thrash and death metal.

Listen

8) Anthrax - Among the Living

Classic. Seriously.

Listen

9) Celtic Frost - Into the Pandemonium

Not only does an amazing slice of Bosch's "Garden of Earthly Delights" grace the cover but here is perhaps the most interesting cover of "Mexican Radio". Amazing drums and a groundbreaking experimental work.

Listen

10) Bathory - Under the Sign of the Black Mark

Epic and intense, completely grandiose Viking metal with hellish vocals--set a standard. Enter the Eternal Fire!

Listen

We Heart Our Members!

Facets members! Please join us for a special Members Appreciation screening of The Living Wake, this Sunday, July 18th at 3pm!!

Bizarrely hilarious, The Living Wake stars Jesse Eisenberg (The Squid and the Whale; Adventureland) in a smartly scripted film with clever dialogue and quirky characters that shows off his talent for comedy.

The film follows eccentric, egotistic writer K. Roth Binew (comic actor Mike O’Connell), who insists he’s going to die and wants to hold a living wake before he goes so he can build his legacy and orchestrate his legend. Eisenberg costars as his young protégé who follows him around on his last day, documenting every pearl of wisdom.

"If the members of Monty Python scripted an adaptation of Don Quixote...it might look something like (this) willfully absurd tragicomedy...played with euphoric abandon by stand-up comic Mike O’Connell." (Scott Foundas, LA Weekly)

So, what makes this screening so special for our Members, you ask?

Director Sol Tryon will be here in person to present his film and for a post-screening Q&A! That's right--talk to the filmmaker, ask him what it was like to work with the burgeoning young star Eisenberg, see what makes him and his lovely little film tick!

Once again, that's this Sunday, July 18th at 3pm at Facets Cinematheque, 1517 West Fullerton Avenue, Chicago, IL 60614!

Members! Be there!

Facets' Find

Facets Features can't quite let go of World Cup fever, so we're keeping it alive with non-stop viewings of Alejandro González Iñárritu's World Cup Nike commercial. Goal!

Facets' Find

Yeah--it's a Spaceballs kind of day.

Did you know that the film was developed into an animated series on G4?! Me neither! The internet enhances the mind so.

Facets' Find

Happy birthday, America!

Yours, Kim.