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Friday, March 22, 2024

Movie Commentary Tracks Are Back—and They're a Trivia Goldmine

Like most people, you’ve probably watched Get Out at least once. Maybe twice. But the best way to see Get Out is with Jordan Peele sitting right next to you.

Last spring, long before Get Out's eventual Oscar win, the movie was released on home video with a commentary track from its writer-director. A decade ago, in the pre-streaming era, this wouldn’t have been news: Back then, seemingly every movie got a commentary track, even Good Luck Chuck. Then the DVD market began to decline, and the commentary track went from a being standard-issue add-on to relative rarity. Even recent Best Picture nominees like Mad Max: Fury Road, The Wolf of Wall Street, 12 Years a Slave, and Spotlight were released sans tracks—bad news for anyone looking for behind-the-scenes intel on Mark Ruffalo's little-Ceasar haircut.

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In the last few years, though, several high-profile films—everything from Star Wars: The Last Jedi to Lady Bird to Get Out—have been released with commentary tracks. That means you can spend your umpteenth viewing of Peele's film listening to him talk about how he modeled the opening credits on those of The Shining, or how the film's title was inspired by a routine from Eddie Murphy Delirious. For casual movie watchers, such details may not be too thrilling. But for film nerds who absorb behind-the-scenes trivia and how-we-made-it logistics, tracks like the one for Get Out remain the cheapest movie-making education available.

I've listened to hundreds of commentary tracks over the last 25 years—a pursuit that goes back to the mid-’90s, when it was possible to rent a laserdisc player(!) and a copy of the Criterion Collection’s The Silence of the Lambs, and spend a weekend listening to Jonathan Demme and the film's cast and creators chat for two hours. That track remains a classic of the genre: Demme talks nuts-and-bolts filmmaking 101; Jodie Foster discusses story arc and character; FBI agent John Douglas talks about serial killers. It's like taking a half-dozen freshman-level introductory classes at once.

There are other classics of the commentary genre. Some are practical, like the Citizen Kane commentary in which Roger Ebert breaks down Orson Welles' various on-screen tricks, or the Aliens track in which Jim Cameron discusses the best lens for special effects. Others play out like their own mini-movies: On the track for The Limey, director Steven Soderbergh and screenwriter Lem Dobbs semi-gently spar over how the movie came out—a rare look at the messiness of creative collaboration. Then there are the all-purpose tracks that combine practical-moviemaking details, flotsam of trivia, and hang-out banter, like the crowded Fight Club commentary that covers everything from CGI explosions to Rosie O'Donnell giving away the film's ending on her talk show ("just unforgivable," star Brad Pitt laments).

The best commentary tracks don't bog you down with technical details or fill up dead air with dull plaudits: They footnote the movie experience, answering questions you may not have known you had about everything from casting to cinematography to marketing. "You can learn more from John Sturges' audio track on the Bad Day at Black Rock laserdisc than you can in 20 years of film school,” Paul Thomas Anderson once said.

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That might be true‚ but for years the commentary for that 1955 thriller was out of print and near-impossible to find. Eventually, it popped up on YouTube, which has become home to countless bootlegged commentary-track rips, some of them listed under fake titles (and some, like Get Out, are easy to spot). With minimal searching, you can also find MP3s archived on Tumblrs and old blogspot pages, in case you want to download and watch along—or listen to a commentary track while doing errands or exercising (maybe I’ve taken the hilarious, deeply non-informative Step Brothers play-by-play out with me for a long walks).

But there are also hundreds of digitally preserved commentary tracks available through legit means. On FilmStruck—the streaming service featuring older movies from the Criterion Collection and Turner Classic Movies—you can listen to Terry Gilliam discuss Time Bandits and Steve James talk Hoop Dreams. Indie powerhouse A24 has produced filmmakers’ commentary tracks that are bundled on outlets like the iTunes store, meaning you can listen to Paul Schrader walk through every step of his excellent First Reformed. And Disney has been releasing tracks for recent hits like The Last Jedi and Avengers: Infinity War. Only a few years ago, commentary tracks seemed all but dead; now, there are almost too many to keep up with—including the numerous fan-recorded ones available as podcasts and hours-long YouTube clips.

It’s telling that many of the filmmakers (and film lovers) now recording commentaries are in their thirties and forties—meaning they came of age in the first commentary-track era during the Bush/Clinton years. When Peele opens his Get Out track, he notes that it's a "surreal honor" to be recording it—a testament to how crucial these commentaries are for anyone looking to sneak behind the screen. And now, online, you can pretty much stay there forever.

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