Spoilers Ahead by Rajeev Masand: Dear world, can we have a recycle bin?
We’re going to be shifting home soon and the folks have been insisting for months now to get rid of anything that one doesn’t need
We’re going to be shifting home soon and the folks have been insisting for months now to get rid of anything that one doesn’t need. You know, that thing about clearing out the junk to make space for newer things that one will inevitably discover one doesn’t need.
While there is no question that a half dozen or so chargers for mobile phones that probably aren’t even manufactured anymore have to go, it’s hard to dump the old cameras and dictaphones that bear witness to many a memorable holiday taken and so many revealing interviews recorded. But off they go into the junk pile.
What’s been especially hard to dispose of is a sack full of DVDs that I’d scoured the globe for, building a collection bit by bit of rare documentaries, award-winning foreign language films, prized anthologies that are no longer in circulation, and movies that I had the good fortune of getting autographed by legendary filmmakers like Steven Spielberg and Ang Lee.
Close encounters
I’ll never forget the look of genuine appreciation Lee gave me, when I mentioned (shortly before interviewing him while he was in India promoting Life of Pi) that one of my favourites of his films was Taking Woodstock, the mostly underappreciated indie he made in 2009 about a young kid’s role in helping organise the first-ever Woodstock music festival. It’s a charming little coming-of-age story set against all the behind the scenes drama that went into staging this massive rock concert in a small town that clearly wasn’t prepared for it. It’s one of those films I wish I could live inside, I remember telling him. And he spent a few minutes talking about it, and about how its failure broke his heart, before signing my DVD. How could I possibly chuck that in the junk bin?
Or my copy of Saving Private Ryan, which Spielberg happily signed for me when I met him on his trip to India some years ago. Over the years I’d read many accounts of how he politely turns down fans’ requests to sign posters or DVDs of Schindler’s List—he considers it his most personal film, having lost family in the Holocaust—so I chose instead to bring my SPR disc when I saw him. My most prized possession that he autographed that morning, however, is my copy of Jaws: Memories from Martha’s Vineyard, a paperback tome packed with anecdotes from the making of that shark classic. As it turns out, Jaws is one of the films that changed my life, and also instilled a lifelong fear of the sea. I told Spielberg that, so while signing my copy of the book, he jotted down an apology for scaring me off the water. That book is coming with me everywhere I go.
Slipped disc
But what does one do with the rest of the stuff; particularly the films? I don’t own a functioning DVD player anymore. Haven’t needed one in a few years. Streaming changed everything. I know of filmmakers like Anurag Kashyap and Sanjay Gupta who refuse to junk their discs because most were carefully sourced and exorbitantly paid for over the years. But, unlike Kashyap, who has an entire room in his home stocked wall-to-wall with Criterion Collection titles, us working class folk just don’t have the space.
Plus, frankly, it’s hard to find some of these films on the streamers. I treasure my copy of Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, this terrific documentary about the life of pioneering comedienne Joan Rivers, who speaks candidly about everything from her many (botched) plastic surgeries, to how she remembers so many jokes, to just why she believes implicitly in the power of comedy. The film’s most powerful moment is a bit in which she’s booed by a man who has a deaf son, after she makes a Helen Keller joke at a gig. Far from apologising or backing down, the fiery Rivers goes on to scream at and shame her heckler, insisting that the job of comedy is to make everyone laugh and to deal with things. “My mother is deaf, you stupid idiot,” she yells at the man, then adds: “Think of 9/11—where would we all be if we didn’t laugh?” This one goes with me.
Goodbye to all that
There are other films, books, and odd ‘junk’ that are going to be hard to get rid of. Many come with memories attached, and binning them feels like erasing a piece of one’s life. Alas, as you may have guessed, none of these romanticised notions of nostalgia tend to hold much water with practical-minded partners who only want to lug fewer cartons when moving. So, hold on to the good stuff, but brace yourself for what will soon be gone.
Formerly a film journalist, Rajeev Masand currently heads a talent management agency in Mumbai
From HT Brunch, January 21, 2023
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