A Serious Letter to my DVD Shelf

Dear DVD Shelf,

 

I know it’s been awhile since we spent some serious time together, and I just want to say, I’m sorry. When I changed apartments, I know it felt like we were turning over a new leaf, getting a fresh start at better organization, but, ultimately, I realize that I let you down.

For starters, I know you’re probably not happy about sharing space with my CDs, but they need a home too, and it's important to show some respect – after all they were around years before you arrived on the scene. I don’t even want to remind you of all the VHS tapes I got rid of; let’s just sleeping analogue dogs lie, shall we?

But I digress. I want to say I’m sorry for not properly organizing you, like I promised I would after I moved. I want to let you know that it was never my intention to let the genres get so mixed together. Your large horror section has become impure, I know. I don’t know how Superbad wound up next to Suspiria, but I can assure that it wasn’t some misguided attempt at alphabetization. And yes, I don’t recall how Body Snatchers and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake ended up sharing a corner with Neil Young Heart of Gold, The Incredible Hulk and that DVD of The Flock that some company sent me but we both know I’ll never watch.

I also realize there was a time when stand-up comedy had its own spot, but that era of order has passed; now the Sonny Chiba Collection, The Day the Earth Stood Still (hey, at least it’s the original, right?) and Tales From the Gimli Hospital have been forced into the same neighbourhood as The Pee-Wee Herman Show, A George Carlin disc and that Just for Laughs screener. And I’ll come right out and say that I’m well aware that my Aqua Teen Hunger Force seasons are not an appropriate way to separate the comedy and sci-fi films. But cut me some slack for Beastmaster being nestled beside Stuart Gordon’s Dolls and The Hammer Horror Set that I forgot to return to a co-worker – it may technically be fantasy, but it’s got monsters, after all. And it was directed by Don Coscarelli, my main who did Phantasm. Speaking of which, I’ve got his episode of Masters of Horror, "Incident on and Off a Mountain Road," tucked into the movie section. However, even though it’s an episode of a T.V. series, it is its own movie, even if it is only and hour long. Alas, quite frankly, I don’t even know where it belongs. There are grey areas in every relationship, dammit!

And please don’t be resentful that I’ve started stacking movies horizontally on that bottom shelf that has the extra clearance, but rejoice that my collection is growing as DVD prices drop. Even if I don’t watch the Denzel Washington movie Fallen for a while, how can you fault me for spending a mere $4.00 on it – new! Hell, I couldn’t rent it for that much. Ditto for the $3.00 Eliza Kazan noir Panic in the Streets. I also don’t feel it’s fair to moan and groan about Dracula: The Legacy Collection set I snagged for an insane $8.83 (before tax); it’s the best deal of the year. No, seriously, don’t groan under the weight of the discs, shelf – you came from Ikea, after all.

Now, before you criticize me for not getting around to letting go of that extra copy of Re-Animator or starting a western section, I’d like to remind you that, at the very least, I’ve always kept the Criterion Collection discs together in a nice, little segregated community. Among them La Haine, The Third Man, Days of Heaven, Onibaba, all those Wes Anderson films – surely that makes up for some of the disorganization. At the very least it makes up for the shame of having to bear the free copy of House of 1000 Corpses I’ve hung onto for no good reason. It does, doesn’t it?

I said it was free…

All I can do at this point is promise to thin you out and organize you by genre when I get time over the holidays. Although that growing stack of unwatched movies suggests I may just have other priorities. Besides, things could be worse. At least I’ve never knowingly forced you to hold a Bruckheimer movie, and that’s gotta count for something.

In closing, old friend, I want you to know that, although I could fit more of them on you, I have no intention in the immediate future of replacing your collection – I mean our collection – with Blu-Rays.

Please forgive my messiness, and thank you DVD shelf, for being so accommodating. Literally.

 

Yours truly,

 

-Dave Alexander