The Projector #59: The Incredible Disappearing Movies, Pt. 2 (Patreon)

 by Keith Phipps

Last week I wrote about movies that have fallen through the cracks in the streaming era, and how their unavailability can take them out of the larger cultural conversation. I asked both readers and my co-hosts for examples and received some interesting responses. One response on the reader front pointing me toward a movie I’d never hard of before, The Double McGuffin, a Hitchcock-by-way-of-Disney inspired 1979 thriller directed by Benji creator Joe Camp. Check out this cool, Saul Bass-designed poster:

And check out that cast: Ernest Borgnine, Elke Sommer, George Kennedy, NFL stars Ed “Too Tall” Jones and Lyle Alzado. Also, Dion Pride is singer Charley Pride’s son. (He now works as a singer-songwriter himself.)

Another pointed out that the only way to watch Jan Svankmajer’s Alice is to buy the Blu-ray put out by the British Film Institute (which is thankfully all-region). In fact, best I can tell, all of the influential Czech animator’s work are only available on physical media. Anyone’s who’s heard the show knows I’m a physical media fan, but I’m also a fan of great movies being accessible. 

It’s not just indie (and indieish) films that meet this fate, either. Here’s Tasha on another half-vanished movie:

“As Keith is putting together this newsletter, I'm working on a big content package for Polygon about near-future science fiction and how people's ideas about life on Earth have changed over the decades. Which really has me wondering why it's so hard to watch one of my favorite near-future movies right now: Kathryn Bigelow's moody Strange Days. Technically it isn't a future-movie because it takes place in the final hours of 1999, but its technology and troubles are near-future: the plot hinges on a black-market neural-access device that lets people record their subjective experiences, so other people can hook in and play them back, getting all the sensory input of the original experience. Strange Days is one of those science-fiction films that isn't about the tech, it's about how the tech weaves into everyday life — and in this case, in some eminently relevant-at-the-moment events involving racist police brutality, a coverup, and the protest movement swirling around it. It's also a moody breakup piece, as protagonist Ralph Fiennes moons over completely uninterested ex Juliette Lewis, while his friend Angela Bassett quietly holds her own feelings for him. It's a muscular, tough, swoony movie full of memorable characters, but it stands out as a kind of modern Chinatown, a movie where there aren't simple answers, easy romance, or happy endings. I love this film. You can get it on Blu-ray cheap, but it isn't streaming anywhere, and it really should be.”

There’s a particular stretch of films from the ’90s and early ’00s that seems especially vulnerable to falling through the cracks. Scott pointed toward Love and Death on Long Island and Owning Mahowny, two excellent films by Richard Kwietniowski as examples. Would more people be talking about Kwietniowski if they could see his films? There certainly wouldn’t be any less. And Genevieve was reminded of the 1995 Irish film Circle of Friends:

I don’t think I’ve seen the 1995 Irish film Circle of Friends since before the turn of the millennium, though there was a brief period following its theatrical run where this Maeve Binchy adaptation was a staple of the Saturday-afternoon cable movie circuit, during which it was a frequent comfort watch for me. It’s a movie I remember now more as a series of snapshots, both visual and emotional; my strongest association by far is Minnie Driver, who made her feature debut here as a “common girl” (the trailer’s words, not mine!) named Bernadette “Benny” Hogan who’s figuring out how her life at university, her relationship with her childhood friends, and her attraction to a popular rugby player named Jack (Chris O’Donnell in peak mid-‘90s heartthrob mode) all intersect. Rewatching the trailer is reminder of what an immediately engaging presence Driver was here, and helps explain why I’ve always had affection for her as an actress. Like a lot of movies of its era/type — mid-budget ‘90s literary adaptations centered on the emotions and relationships of women — it’s faded from the conversation almost entirely, and out of availability on both streaming and physical media, and mostly lives on in the misty memories of those who remember it fondly. But in writing this blurb, I just discovered that my local library has a copy available (on “videodisc”!), so if you’ll excuse me, I have a lazy Saturday afternoon comfort watch to plan.

I also found myself in a Twitter conversation about the original Dawn of the Dead this week. The George Romero masterpiece about survivors of a zombie apocalypse who take refuge in a shopping mall can’t be seen on any streaming service. It’s also, due to some rights issues, out of print on Blu-ray. There is a ridiculously expensive box set due to be released from England later this month that I splurged on, but it shouldn’t be that hard or that expensive to see such a great (and greatly influential) film.

Should we keep going with this. Any more examples?

While you’re thinking, be sure to give our latest episode on the terrific Dick Johnson is Dead a listen. (And let us know your thoughts on that movie and the divisive F For Fake.) You can also do some reading:

• Vulture, with some guidance from our own Genevieve Koski, compiled a massive, insightful list of the 100 sequence that shaped animation.

• For The Guardian, Scott Tobias wrote about the 30th anniversary of the Coens’ Miller’s Crossing.

• For Mel, Keith Phipps profiled Stephen Tobolowsky, a character actor with a sideline in storytelling.

• One of the saddest casualties of the coronavirus is Netflix’s terrific GLOW, whose in-progress fourth season will now never see the light of day. Vulture’s Jen Chaney sent it off with a “fond, frustrated farewell." And at Vanity Fair, Betty Gilpin, one of the show’s stars, said goodbye in singular style.

• At Polygon, Noel Murray reviewed Blumhouse’s new Amazon film series Welcome to Blumhouse.

• In The Atlantic, Jake Tapper wrote about A Face in the Crowd and its relevance to our current president.

• At Vulture, Mike Sampson took a not-that-rosy look at the near and far futures of movie theaters.