Soapbox Topic #2: DVD Special Features (Or the Lack Thereof)

So last week I picked up The Cabin in the Woods on DVD, all excited not only to see the movie again but also to check out the special features on the disc. With a movie like this, and with the creators involved, I figured the extras would be tons of fun and super-informative. Feature-length commentaries are probably my favorite kind of DVD special feature, so I was stoked that both director/writer Drew Goddard and producer/writer Joss Whedon did a commentary for The Cabin in the Woods.

Problem was, their commentary sucked. It was god-awful terrible. They didn't talk about a goshdarn important thing and I was insanely pissed off the whole time I was listening to it. It was basically Goddard and Whedon (sorry to be crude) jerking each other off the whole time and then occasionally talking about what was on screen. No explanation or discussion about how they even came up with the concept for such an inventive movie, no talking about all the monsters in the cubes (which is still kinda hard to see on my smallish TV), no nothing that I wanted to hear about. Such a huge freaking disappointment - I really thought Joss would give me something better.

Is it really so much to ask for to have some features that actually, you know, add to the experience of the movie and stuff? If you're like me, you not only love movies, but you're also interested in the whole movie-making process. I want to know how the effects were achieved, I want to know about any fun incidents on set, the casting process, the production process, the editing process... I love that shit. When DVDs first came out (gosh, how old am I going to feel when I tell younger people that I was around when DVDs were invented?), the promise of getting to see all that behind-the-scenes stuff along with the movie was the thing that I was most excited about.

And while many DVDs have sometimes exceeded my expectations in terms of the extras (heck, my Gone with the Wind collection has four discs), I have been disappointed many a time by others. Who thinks that they can just slap on a 5 minute featurette, a ridiculous poster gallery, and a trailer and think I'll be satisfied with the DVD? Because I won't be satisfied, and in fact, I will feel very, very cheated. I don't know what goes into the whole DVD-feature-selecting-and-making process and I don't care. I don't care if you have to release the DVD a few months later to actually make it worthwhile. Have somebody film behind-the-scenes stuff during pre-production, production, and post-production and make something interesting out of all of it later. Check out what people are saying in reviews and stuff after the movie is released, and use that in commentaries and whatnot to answer any of their questions. It's a DVD! You have the disc space to fill it with tons of interesting tidbits, so goshdarnit, MAKE IT SO!

Anyway, this topic got me thinking about all the features on some of my DVDs that I have loved, and not just the usual stuff like commentaries and making-of featurettes, but those things that filmmakers put on the discs that are a little "extra" special. Here's just a handful of them:

Sin City (2005)

The All Green Screen Version

Robert Rodriguez is known to have lots of awesome features on almost all of his DVDs (though he seems to have really neglected The Faculty... hint hint, Robert) - the 15-minute film schools, the cooking segments - and to me this is by far the best one. This feature is the entire movie's raw footage in front of the green screen, and shows the viewer just how much work still had to be done after everything was shot. The footage is sped up so it takes less than 10 minutes to get through the whole movie, and it is very interesting to watch and see just how minimal all the sets are and stuff. Awesome!

Halloween (2007)

Michael Lives: The Making of Halloween Documentary

Rob Zombie's The Devil's Rejects also has a great making-of documentary that goes through almost day by day what was going on on the set, but this documentary goes way beyond that. Get this: it is freaking 4 and a half hours long. Yes, I have watched it more than once, and I love it. For those who have a fascination with filmmaking and how things are done... this won't really teach you much of anything, but behind-the-scenes stuff are always interesting to me and this feature certainly has plenty of that.

Shaun of the Dead (2004)

Edgar and Simon's Flip Chart

Okay, this picture is obviously of a different flip chart for a different movie (a possible third film from the duo). The flip chart they did for Shaun of the Dead was a pre-script version of the movie, and in the feature they go through most of the pages, sometimes making non-related jokes, but mostly they do a good job of showing all their initial ideas for the movie and how much thought actually went into the final draft. I think this is a good inspiration for anybody out there making a movie and shows a great way to get it done and put all your thoughts on (really big) paper.

Another great feature on this disc is the animated "Plot Hole Explanations."

I Spit on Your Grave (1978)

Feature-Length Commentary by Joe Bob Briggs

To any horror fan that doesn't really know how to feel about the 1978 rape-revenge movie I Spit on Your Grave, I will always recommend that they watch the movie with the commentary recorded by drive-in guru Joe Bob Briggs, found on the Millennium Edition DVD. I can't watch the movie without his commentary on. He uses his trademark wit to make the commentary interesting, but he also has some really insightful things to say about the movie, things that made me look at the movie in a different way.

Reservoir Dogs (1992)

Reservoir Dolls

Found on the 15th Anniversary Edition DVD, this short but amusing feature always makes me smile. I don't know who created it and I wish I did. Using the Reservoir Dogs action figures for Mr. Blonde and the cop Marvin Nash, they act out the ear-cutting torture scene frame by frame, with a little inset of the actual scene playing at the top of the screen. They even made a little set to look like the warehouse. Very cute feature and a nice bonus for fans of the movie.

What say you?! Been disappointed by some of your DVDs? Have any favorite special features that you'd like to share? Tell me!

Soapbox Topic #1: That Idiotic Phrase I Can't Bear to Put in the Title

There are some topics having to do with the glorious genre of horror that I've wanted to talk about for a while. So I've picked a few Soapbox Topics that have been on my mind that I'd like to discuss with myself and with you. I already kinda touched on this topic with a post I did a way long time ago, but I think this one might be a bit more coherent.

This is Topic #1, obviously, and it's something that never fails to get my goat every time I see it mentioned. What is that idiotic phrase I can't bear to put in the title?

Torture porn.

I loathe this phrase with every fiber of my horror-loving being and I'd like to take the time to articulate why. Who knows, maybe I'll find out that I'm just overreacting. Probably not, though. I'm sorry if I piss anybody off right now, but I really don't have much respect for anybody who even uses this term when talking about a specific horror movie. Even if you say something like, "I guess this would be considered a part of the 'torture porn' category...", you're still making me angry. 

Let me be clear: "torture porn" does not exist. It just doesn't. To drive this home, let's look at where the term originated. As best I can tell from some quick internet research, the idiotic phrase was coined by New York Magazine writer David Edelstein, who wrote an article called "Now Playing at Your Local Multiplex: Torture Porn" in January 2006. It seems like he wrote it in response to seeing Eli Roth's movie Hostel and he went all boo-hoo over the recent trend in horror movies that made them much more graphic and bloody than they had been in recent years. 

And since this d-bag took it upon himself to misjudge not only an entire genre of movies, but also an entire group of moviegoers with this whiny article, 'torture porn' has been haphazardly assigned to many movies seemingly without thought as to what the phrase really means or at least implies. 

To me, what it implies mostly is an insult to those who consider themselves horror fans. What is torture? It is deliberately inflicting pain or injury on a person. What is pornography? It is images or words used to elicit sexual arousal or excitement. Put those two together and what you're saying about us (the "people who like to watch that sort of thing") is that we get some sort of sexual pleasure out of seeing people seriously hurt or killed onscreen - that the sight of blood and guts is akin to the sight of a naked breast or an erect penis.

Okay, I'm calm. Maybe implying that wasn't Edelstein's exact intention when he came up with the idiotic phrase, but he obviously doesn't understand horror fans in the least. I know that I do not have the right to defend all fans out there, so I'm just speaking for myself here. I think Edelstein is completely missing the point of what horror movies do for the viewer's psyche and emotions. Sure, some of them are about just doing the grossest, most disgusting things to the human body and don't have too much more depth than that, but there are plenty of movies out there that do it the right way. 

Here's a quote from Edelstein's article: "In the same way that some women cut themselves (they say) to feel something, maybe some moviegoers need to identify with people being cut to feel something, too. Maybe." I don't think Edelstein realizes that he almost answers his own questions with that statement right there. For me at least, the torture and violence in horror movies is not about getting off on the sight of gore, but rather about the emotions brought forth from going through these situations with the characters in the movie. A romance movie or a comedy or a drama brings about emotions that are often too close what I feel everyday and are therefore not as effective for me as what a horror movie can do. True fear and pain as depicted in such movies that Edelstein identifies as "torture porn" like Hostel and Wolf Creek actually give me more comfort in my life, as weird as that sounds.

I've never had to deal with real violence in my life. I've never had a serious injury or had my life threatened in any way. Those are emotions and experiences that I deal with by watching horror movies. They take these situations to the extreme - to such an extreme that you're pretty much stupid if you don't realize that a good deal of this stuff will never actually happen to you or anybody that you know. I'm never going to be tied to a chair and tortured and eventually horribly murdered by a person who paid a secret company for the opportunity. I'm never going to be captured by an elusive killer and forced to mutilate my own body in order to escape. Again, I can emotionally explore the possibility of these things happening to me through watching horror movies. And when I come back from these inward experiences, I'm relieved and grateful for my boring life. And I'm definitely not in my room jerking off to the depiction of a man cutting his own foot off or a woman getting a blowtorch to the eye.

Edelstein also talks about the movie Irreversible and specifically the "torture" he felt during the nine-minute rape scene: "I didn't understand why I had to be tortured, too. I didn't want to identify with the victim or the victimizer." Well, first of all, if anybody identified with the victimizer in that scene, then I don't want to know you. Like I said before, horror movies have always had the luxury of being able to take things to the extreme, beyond what most moviegoers can handle. They don't have to go that far to get the message across, but I've always felt that they are most effective when they do take it to a place that is outside my comfort zone. Sure, there's that old adage of "what is not seen is scarier than what is seen." But many times for me, I want to see everything. I want to feel like I am being tortured, too, because I want to completely give myself over to whatever emotion something makes me feel, whether it be outright horror, outrage, or even disgust. Those are all intense emotions that I don't deal with in real life, and are sometimes a necessary outlet for me that helps me deal with other emotions I might be feeling.

To sum up, "torture porn" is bullshit. Identifying a movie as such immediately takes away from anything the film might do right and tells the world that anybody who likes to watch it is basically a sick fuck. But we're not. We're alright. In fact, I think we're a bit healthier than people who don't like to watch these movies because we have that outlet. Maybe watching horror movies has saved a bunch of us from actually becoming serial killers, I don't know. I think if you can handle a "torture porn" movie and properly deal with what it has to offer you, you'll actually be a more positive and healthy person. And that is something that the detractors sadly have not and probably will not ever understand.