My passion. My secret shame. My movie collection.

My passion. My secret shame. My movie collection.

I started buying movies in 1999, when I was a freshman in college. My roommate and I had two TVs. There was no cable in the dorm rooms but I had a 13” with a decent antenna, so we got to watch Conan (O’Brien, not the Barbarian) every night. The 13” sat on top of Travis’s larger TV which we hooked to my VCR. It’s hard to believe that at one point I was buying new movies on VHS at Walmart at twenty bucks a pop. I hadn’t seen many R-rated films as a kid. My parents were strict about the kinds of things that we were allowed to watch (a fact that I do not resent. In fact, I’ll probably be just as strict with my children, if I ever have any; although, I have no idea what i’m going to do with my movie collection when and if I ever do have kids.)

The great thing about not having seen much is that if you set out to see all of the great films that everyone should see, you get to experience a continuous string of the kinds of highs that you feel when you see a great film. This experience for me reached its peak in 2004/2005 when I was in grad school. It was during that time that I discovered both Netflix and the monstrous collection of VHS at the Cleveland (TN) public library. At this time I was watching two to four new movies every day.

I never really intended to become a movie collector. I had been purchasing movies for six or seven years and had somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 films when I finished grad school. Then one day I stumbled across a Movie Stop that was liquidating its VHS inventory at a rate of 5 for $3. I’m not proud of what I did that day. I started walking up and down the alphabetized racks and saw movie after movie that I loved, at prices that I couldn’t pass up. By the time I hit the letter “C”, my arms were too full to carry any more. I went to the counter and asked if they had carts. They handed me a basket. I filled it and asked for another. I bought over 120 movies that day. I almost felt that I need to rescue them. They were like cute dogs at the pound, except they were all films to which I had already established an emotional attachment.

I’m going to pause for a minute and give you some of the statistics.

Total films that I own: 579

On DVD: 332

--This includes:

Two copies of Shaun of the Dead (I started watching it with a friend who hadn’t seen it and my first copy froze, so I went and bought another so we could finish).

One copy of the Sting: Special Edition (I hope to get this back from Lucas, but I won’t take it back until he watches it.)

One empty box that contained my criterion collection copy of Rushmore which has inexplicably disappeared. This is the second copy of Rushmore that I have lost. The other copy was on VHS and was stolen from my freshman dorm room.

On VHS: 237

The first thing that anybody says when they see my collection is, “Wow, that’s a lot of VHS!” I’ve replaced some of them, but I can’t really afford to replace them all. Maybe some day.

On Blu-ray: 10

I just got a player this Christmas. I’m a fan.

I also own two TV mini series:

John Adams on Blu-ray. You should see it if you haven’t.

Ken Burns baseball on DVD. It’s 18 hours long, and I watch it once a year, in April.

Then there’s the TV series on DVD: 87 seasons on DVD, plus 6 on my computer from iTunes.

This is starting to get upsetting.

Here’s a short statistical breakdown of the movies that I own.

Best Picture Oscar Winners: 39

Hitchcock films: 4 (plus the box for Psycho. I bought it at a Blockbuster closing and was upset to find that it contained the Gus Van Sant remake.)

Woody Allen films: 12

Tom Hanks films: 14

Jack Nicholson films: 13

Coen Brothers films: 11

Philip Seymour Hoffman films: 17

Spielberg: 13

Scorsese: 10

Bill Murray: 15

Kevin Bacon: 5 (?!)

I also own 44 movies that I have not seen.

I don’t really know why I’m so obsessive about movies. I think that maybe it’s just the collecting that I love. Everybody needs a hobby, right? I do love movies, but I never really had a burning desire to make movies (although the ideas of writing and/or acting do appeal to me). I don’t think that I’m visually oriented enough to direct. I don’t know if I’d be a decent film critic, because while I do enjoy analyzing and comparing films, I think that being forced to pick them apart would take most of the enjoyment out of it for me.

Yes, I do read books.

Anyway, if anyone has any questions about my collection, I’m more than willing to answer. If you want a recommendation, I’ll give that too, but as always...

I promise you nothing.