“But I think we pulled it off” and other DVD audio commentary inanities (1 Viewer)

[Ken_McAlinden]

WB did this with Jack Lemmon's commentary on "Mr. Roberts", too. It is a great idea.

BTW, while I am usually fairly well entertained by Joss Whedon's commentaries, mainly because I like his sense of humor (even if he is putting on airs) and he is good at explaining his creative motivations, I do make an exception for many of the ones he does with cast members. For instance, on the one he does with some of the other writers/producers and Seth Green, I get the feeling that JW (and the other participants) is (are) showing off and he comes across like a teenager trying to be the funniest kid in class when the coolest kid in class is hanging out with him.

Perhaps my favorite commentary moment ever is on the Criterion Hard Boiled LD or DVD after Dave Kehr goes into this lengthy elaborate explanation of the symbolic and psychological significance of the paper cranes and then John Woo comes in and says that he just liked the way they looked.

Regards,

 

[Hans M.]

That is an excellent example as to why filmmakers cannot be expected to offer insight into their films but scholars like Dave Kehr can. Just because Woo says he only liked the way the paper cranes looked does not mean they do not have a significant role in the film's impression (one interpretation is offered by Kehr).

 

[Colin Jacobson]

Even better, for Accidental Tourist, the Geena Davis commentary skips ahead for you! I really appreciated that, especially as I sat through the ENORMOUS number of dead spots during both the cast/crew and Jerry Goldsmith commentaries on the new Planet of the Apes. (Despite what some reviews might tell you, the Goldsmith track does NOT offer an isolated score - it just provides about 10 minutes of his comments over 112 minutes of movie!)

 

[Gordon McMurphy]

The region 2 edition of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning from the BFI has a superb commentary by film historian Robert Murphy, writer Alan Sillitoe and cinematographer Freddie Francis. Murphy brilliantly puts the film in context, explaining where British filmmaking was at in the late Fifties and how the culture bore the British New Wave. It's an extraordinary film and it one of the few commentaries I have thoroughly enjoyed for a long time. I think the best commentaries are found on films that are difficult to understand or have layers of subtext or are based on a real person or incident and the actual history can be elaborated upon.

The commentaries on most Criterion releases are essential listening.

Werner Herzog's commentaries are superb. He is one of the few living filmmakers who can talk about his films with great passion and without pretention.

Alejandro Jodorowsky's commentary on the region 2 edition of Santa Sangre is brilliant - hilarious! In fact, every extra feature on this 2-disc set are great with Jodorowsky coming across as a visionary artist with an outrageous sense of humour and rich humanity.

Worst commentaries?

Any recent film, really. Most commentaries on recent films are either filled with innocuous observations, pretentiousness, insincere back-slapping or silence. Oliver Stone is one of the few exceptions, he just tells it like it is; JFK's track is excellent, as is Salvador, Platoon and so on.

The late John Frankenheimer had the knack. The Manchurian Candidate, The Train, Seven Days In May, Seconds, French Connection 2 - all superb, in my opinion.

I'm not a fan by any means, but man, I cannot wait to hear Mel Gibson's commentary on The Passion Of The Christ! Can't wait to see theatrically, either.

 

[DavidPla]

I remember reading an interview with Tim Burton when "Planet of the Apes" was just being released into theatres where they asked him about doing a commentary track for the DVD. He said he was TERRIBLE at them and then asked if the interviewer ever heard his commentary track on the "Sleepy Hollow" DVD. I guess the studio got him to do it anyway. Atleast he knows. Then again, when he's teamed up with an actor, Paul Reubens, it's actually quite good in the case of "Pee-wee's Big Adventure".

 

[Brian Thibodeau]

One director with a gift for verbal slight-of-hand is Elias Merhige, who’s high-minded blather on Shadow of the Vampire can fool even the most seasoned commentary track buff into thinking he’s saying something important. Almost. He speaks with the hushed reverance of the most high-brow critics, but it takes no time at all before he starts drooling praise over virtually everyone in the cast in the crew as “absolutely, wonderful, wonderful” people. His commentary quickly devolves into subtle narration in which he points out the most obvious of thematic elements as though his film might be too deep for us to fully appreciate. Puhh-leeeease! I loved the film, don’t get me wrong, but it was really just a glorified genre picture with a neat twist on established events. Original, kinda, but hardly worthy the awe with which Merhige wants us to view it. Not the worst comentary I’ve ever heard, if only because it SOUNDS more pretentious and deep than it really is, but it’ll never be heard again.

I did learn, however, that his name is pronounced like “marriage.”

I have to share Stas T's opinion that if filmmakers don't have anything worthwhile to say, or aren't particularly known for saying worthwhile things when they DO speak, then they shouldn't be asked to do commentary tracks in the first place. We don't ask for it. The studios ask for it. Or the filmmakers themselves, sometimes, but that doesn't usually mean its the right decision. As Hans M states, commentaries, even bad ones, are simply supplemental features and we can take from them what we will, but far too often the digital medium (and the need to fill it with "extras") results in very mediocre ramblings that we, the audience, did not necessarily ask for yet will, by our very nature as cinemaphiles and completists, listen to simply for the benefit of the doubt. This mentality is what turned LD's into the first true home video "collector's" format and is what primarily justifies (at least to the studios) the inclusion of just so much junk on their discs. But when the amount time wasted hugely outweighs the amount of time enjoyed, it clearly points to a need to reign some of these people in so they don't become repeat offenders (like Tim Burton: if the man doesn't seem comfortable expounding on his "vision" because it's all up on the screen, don't put it in his contract!). Obviously, there are cases where just about ANYONE knows when to avoid commentaries, particularly on newer, lightweight boxoffice underperformers like Cabin Fever, where one commentary seems to be all you need and the others are just excruciating excuses for actors and crew members to make a little extra green.

As an aside, here's Michelle Rodriguez from the Resident Evil commentary:

"Oohhh, twat shot!"

Style, baby, real style.

 

[MarkHastings]

These are the kind of moments that I like in commentary tracks. Where they can almost make fun of themselves and not be so "Corporate" in their responses (like the typical "He's so great to work with" cliche)

 

[Jay Pennington]

To echo something someone else touched upon, I feel cheated when a commentary is edited from on-camera interviews, especially when those interviews are elsewhere on the disc. Just went through that with Gale Ann-Hurd's comments on Aliens in the quad set.

Cast commentaries are hit and miss, too. Like the comment about the American Wedding commentary, it can be disheartening to find an actor or actress you admire doesn't seem to have much on the ball. Kirstin Dunst's commentary on Spider-Man was a letdown, and Geoffrey Rush & Keira Knightley have WAY too much fun being cheeky in their Pirates of the Carribbean track.

Plus, one finds the cast members repeating stories you've already heard from the filmmakers on other tracks, and worse, they're telling them second- or third-hand and screw up the details. This happens on the LOTR discs.

Then there's Arnold Schwarzenegger, who in past commentaries (Conan), has little to say other than "that's right" or "exactly" in response to a co-commentator's statement. Perhaps he was chastised about this, for in his T3 commentary he goes on and on and ON describing what you're seeing on the screen, and says the same thing three different ways, all in a row. Verhoven does this, too.

I agree that being prepared is the key. Not OVER-prepared, though. The commentaries by the "Ian Fleming Foundation" guy on the Bond discs are way too scholarly. He's reading his own pre-written essays that probably look great on the page but are ill-suited for "conversational" speech. I seem to recall the Criterion Seven Samurai LD commentary sounding this way. In both cases, the information itself is interesting but requires one to concentrate a bit more than one might prefer outside a classroom.

I agree it was fun, at times, listening to Terry Jones' "person watching the DVD" track on Meaning of Life, but "joke" tracks that run the entire length of the movie (like the "alien" track on Galaxy Quest) make be bemoan the wasted bits that could've been devoted to the movie proper.

Point taken about how an individual's skills at self-expression might favor one medium or another. For instance, I can put thoughts to paper quite well, but articulating them verbally is quite another matter.

Even "bad" commentaries have something to offer, though. The only one I couldn't get through was the new restoration of Metropolis. When the writing title card appears in the opening credits, the German scholar on the commentary says:

"Fritz Lang and Thea von Harbou: different sex non-identical siamese twins, like their film."



I played that statement over and over in an attempt to understand but couldn't stop my brain from hurting.

I gave up on that one just a few minutes later.

 

[Ken_McAlinden]

The other sign of a doldrum-headed commentary is redundancy. Two good examples of this are Debra Hill on the commentary for "Halloween" and Spike Lee on the commentary for "Do the Right Thing". In both cases, there is a point that they very much wanted to make, and they kept coming back to it to the point of listener annoyance.

Debra Hill just keeps saying over and over again that there is not as much on-screen sex and violence as everyone thinks, which is basically true, but the more she repeats it, the more she dances with undermining her point.

Spike Lee's axe to grind was with all of the people who couldn't understand why Mookie throws the garbage can and the riot starts. Between the commentary and the accompanying documentary, it seems like he makes the same points about his outrage at this lack of understanding about a half a billion times. The point is a valid one, but making it and re-making it ad infinitum does not make for compelling listening.

Regards,

 

[Colin Jacobson]

That'd be Keira along with Jack Davenport - Rush was off being cheeky somewhere else, I guess...

 

[Charles de Lauzirika]

 

[Chuck Mayer]

No slack, Charlie

Allow me to do a commentary, and I'll knock it out of the park. Even if I haven't seen the film. Especially if I haven't seen it.

Guaranteed My track would be legendary, even in Hollywood.

Take care,
Chuck

 

[Magnus T]

The problem as I see it is that 99% of the commentary participants doesn't even bother to prepare for the commentary track. They just come in and "wing it". Listen to an Oliver Stone commentary track to understand how it SHOULD be done! Numerous times during his sessions you can hear him turning pages.

 

[Jay Pennington]

Okay, but they definitely edited in comments from her interviews. I don't just mean she was saying the same thing, it was the same recoring of her saying the same thing!

 

[Alex Spindler]

I sense echoes of Blood Simple.

Also, it is kind of fun to listen to the commentaries posted on DVDTracks, which are fan submitted.

 

[Brian Thibodeau]

I'd knock a bunch of 'em out of the park if they were my movies. That's just the kind of guy I am! BUT, I'd insist my contract allow me to review my commentary at least twice before allowing it to go on the disc. I might even run it by some objective relation outside the industry immediately afterwards, so as not to tie up production too long. If it wasn't up to my usual standards, or I just felt I wasn't articulate enough, or if I felt it deathly paled in comparison to some of the best commentaries to which I've listened, I wouldn't allow them to release it. Then again, I guess since I'd obviously be a filmmaker coming from the ranks of cinephiles, I'd have all these crappy commentaries I listened to inspiring me to do something better. My advantage, I suppose.

Hell I could probably record better commentaries NOW for some films than the people who made them. Whoa, is my hubris showing? :b

 

[MarkHastings]

That reminds me of other tracks where you can tell that the commentator does NOT want to be doing a commentary track at all. The studio should never waste DVD space on tracks that are downright awful.

 

[Brian Thibodeau]

Just thought of ANOTHER thing that reeeeallly friggin' annoys me about commentaries, and I don't think it's been mentioned yet in this thread.

Commentaries recorded before the movie has played theatrically are irritating. And one can easily tell when they've done this because they make no reference to box-office performance, audience reaction, critical reaction, the old chestnut about sitting at the back of test screenings, etc. These tracks have the benefit of the freshest hindsight imaginable, but the participants are rarely able to place anything in context as the material is simply TOO fresh in their minds. Most of the time, they can't even formulate a bigger picture about what they've done because they're usually still in post-production when they record their tracks!

In fact, I remember at least two tracks (but not the films, unfortunately), where the participant(s) casually tell you what the date is at the beginning of the track, and in both cases it was several weeks or months before the theatrical release. Both tracks, if I recall correctly, had some technical tidbits, but for the most part were rather lumpen blobs of generalization and burbling praise. I think in one case, the film ultimately went tits up at the BO, but you'd never have guessed from the commentary (not that filmmakers would admit to that even if they DID know it before they recorded the track!) because the director seemed quite pleased with the fruits of his labours. Now if I could just remember the titles...

 

[Brian Thibodeau]

Are you sure they're not paid? I can't see any top-line Hollywood talent doing ANYTHING for free. I've long thought they were paid to do these things, even if it's rolled into their salaries. I'm sure even when smaller companies like Blue Underground and Anchor Bay dig up some old exploitation director or actor to record a commentary they probably pay them something for their efforts, even if it isn't very much. I'd imagine the big names get some kind of larger, perhaps predefined fee.

No way they're doin' it gratis...

 

[Casey Trowbridg]

One film where the track was recorded before theatrical release was Freddy Vs. Jason, because they mentioned that they were recording it the day the film opened. It was a good track because Robert Englund is so engaging IMO, but I can't help but think it would've been better done if they had related until after it had brought in the good box office numbers.

I'd love to record a track, but if I didn't know or remember the film well at all, I'd have to put in a lot of research.