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DVD Commentaries: Quality is All Over the Board |
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Tuesday, 18 April 2006 |
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By D.W. Odell
 One of the most frustrating things about the revolution that is DVD commentary is that the quality of DVD commentaries varies so much. When you have a true auteur passionately discussing his baby, it can be great; when you have a guest supporting actor being paid $50 to talk about an episode of a TV show he did twenty years ago, not so much. But when DVDs are released, none advertise “And with a droning commentary track by the actor who played the redshirt killed by the evil Vorlons!” What to do, what to do?
Luckily, technology has come to the rescue at RateThatCommentary.com. This invaluable website allows people to vote on the quality of DVD commentaries. A quality commentary track can be the difference in the decision between buying a DVD, or merely renting it. With commentary becoming an almost obligatory feature in DVD releases, someone has to separate the wheat from the chaff.
The gold standard of DVD commentary, in my opinion, is Roger Ebert’s commentary for Citizen Kane. Ebert doesn’t just drone on while the film plays; he ties his comments to the action on the screen, carefully pacing himself so he covers aspects of the film fully but never rushes. He talks about the film’s genesis, technical aspects of filmmaking, and the impact the movie had on film culture and movie production. He is clearly not ad libbing but is working off a carefully prepared script, yet his voice is fresh and engaging. It is a commentary worthy of the greatest film ever made. (By contrast, Peter Bogdanovich’s commentary on the same disc is entertaining, but almost all of the anecdotes begin, “Orson Welles once said to me, ‘Peter,’ Orson said, ‘When I was . . . .’”)
For TV commentary, no one is more entertaining than Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon. He has an almost eerie ability to anticipate what a fan outside of the show biz world would find interesting about the production of a TV episode (there was an episode of Angel that featured Amy Acker sprawled over a chair, and my first thought upon seeing it was, “Oh he’s just showing off her legs.” When the scene came up on the commentary track, Joss’s first sentence was, “Now the important thing about this scene, aside from Amy Acker’s legs, is . . .”). Given his skill as a writer it is not surprising that his commentaries are filled with funny one liners and wry observations. He is clearly trying to be both informative and entertaining.
By contrast, other writers for Buffy are less entertaining than Joss Whedon. Jane Espenson and David Greenawalt tend to start by describing the scenes that are on, which you can see for yourself (but when they get past this they both do make more cogent comments). I have heard several commentaries where the person commenting acts as if the viewer hasn’t already seen the film/TV show being shown (on the Network commentary Sydney Lumet says he wants to avoid giving away the ending for those who haven’t seen the movie), which is probably a silly assumption to make.
The commentary tracks for Hill Street Blues suffer from a problem common to DVDs of old TV shows – the memory of the people doing the commentary has faded over the years. James B. Sikking makes almost no comments other than, “This scene coming up is really funny.” (I have to give him credit for at least watching the show before doing the commentary; I have heard too many commentaries where the actor says, “Now I haven't seen this episode in ten years . . .". Is it too much to ask that they watch the episode before doing the commentary, instead of just ad libbing comments during a screening?).
Commentaries by film historians not actually associated with the picture they are commenting on are problematic. Film Historian Rudy Behlmer does a good job on some Warner Brother releases (Adventures of Robin Hood), but on some (Yankee Doodle Dandy , comes to mind) he focuses too much on the date a scene was filmed and on what soundstage.
TV directors are probably the worst people to do commentary. Writer/directors may have some artistic vision, but most TV directors make their bread and butter by working fast and staying on schedule (there are exceptions, such as Tommy Schlamme of The West Wing). The director of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode “Consequences” begins by complaining about how long it took to set up the first shot in the show—it’s a negative way to begin the commentary.
I especially like commentaries by people who worked on the film other than the director. Randy Newman has an excellent commentary on the Pleasantville soundtrack where he explains the technique of film scoring and why composing the soundtrack is about more than writing pretty melodies. Fight Club features a separate commentary track by the design team, as well as the director, the actors, and the writers. If you watch enough commentaries it’s like attending film school but without the cost.
RateThatCommentary.com is a fledgling site and a lot of commentaries don’t have many votes. But hopefully the site will grow and become almost as invaluable as IMDB.com has become.
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