"Something so intensely nerdy that it we can’t help but dedicate some serious time to it."

December 6, 2012 10:40 AM

Every Thursday, Film School Rejects posts things "learned from the commentary tracks of an iconic movie": Commentary Commentary

Index
Ace Ventura: Pet Detective
Alien
Aliens
Armageddon
Bad Boys
Batman: The Movie
Beverly Hills Cop
Big Trouble in Little China
Blair Witch Project
Boogie Nights
Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2
Boondock Saints, The
Bourne Identity, The
Cabin in the Woods, The
Cannibal! The Musical
Casino Royale
Cloverfield
Conan the Barbarian
Dark City
David Cronenberg's The Fly
Dawn of the Dead
Die Hard
Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
Edward Scissorhands
Elf
Escape from New York
Exorcist, The
French Connection, The
First Blood
Frankenstein (1931)
Ghostbusters
Halloween
Hard Candy
Host, The
Iron Giant, The
John Carpenter's The Thing
Kingdom, The
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
Knocked Up
Last Starfighter, The
Limey, The
Memento
Monster Squad, The
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
National Lampoon's Vacation
Night of the Living Dead
ParaNorman
Phantasm
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
Princess Bride, The
Prometheus
Proposition, The
Requiem for a Dream
Road to Perdition
Rocky Horror Picture Show
Royal Tenenbaums, The
Se7en
Shaun of the Dead
Spider-Man
Step Up
Terminator 2: Judgement Day
Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The
Thief
Total Recall
True Romance
WALL*E


Similar: Their Cinematic Listology entries. For fun: Drinking Games

posted by zarq (28 comments total)

How I feel right now. Damn you, zarq.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 10:49 AM on December 6, 2012 [4 favorites]

Heh. I look at it this way: reading any of these is a lot shorter than watching the movie with the commentary track running. ;)
posted by zarq at 11:01 AM on December 6, 2012 [1 favorite]

Whoa... and I've only clicked on the first one.
posted by infini at 11:06 AM on December 6, 2012

Admit it, MetaFilter: you clicked on the "Aliens" one first.
posted by fijiwriter at 11:25 AM on December 6, 2012

"Ghostbusters" first, then "Aliens".
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 11:29 AM on December 6, 2012 [3 favorites]

Wow!
posted by msbubbaclees at 11:35 AM on December 6, 2012

This one is best one
posted by shakespeherian at 11:56 AM on December 6, 2012 [1 favorite]

Casino Royale (2006):
2. The opening “prequel” to the film was shot in black and white to give it a film noir look. The scene that takes place in the office was meant to look a bit like The Icaras File with its retro tone.

They weren't kidding with the whole 'rejects' thing.
posted by specialbrew at 12:00 PM on December 6, 2012 [1 favorite]

These are good. Thanks for posting them. They remind me of one of my worse ideas for a screenplay. In it, a commentary track would play over a by-the-beats parody of an action movie. The actors would all play their characters in the parody and their characters in the commentary. All their commentary characters would hate each other - the movie has ruined their careers, their love lives, their relationships with God, etc.

Fortunately for my sanity, I don't know how to write a screenplay, and I don't know where to begin with this one.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 12:11 PM on December 6, 2012 [5 favorites]

I'm disappointed that Proyas doesn't talk about how much trucker speed he gave to his Dark City editors. Okay, not really.
posted by pxe2000 at 12:37 PM on December 6, 2012

Well that saves me from buying any DVDs...
posted by Artw at 1:01 PM on December 6, 2012 [1 favorite]

oh god, commentary tracks yes, cover me in them yes.
posted by The Whelk at 1:26 PM on December 6, 2012 [2 favorites]

It took Kurt Russell around a year to grow the famous beard and hair MacReady sports.

That's all I need to learn today. I'm done learning for the day.
posted by COBRA! at 1:54 PM on December 6, 2012

I actually can't listen to film commentary tracks for whatever reason (unless it's the Total Recall one) so this is a great thing for me.
posted by beaucoupkevin at 1:55 PM on December 6, 2012

If you're going to take the time to watch only one DVD commentary in your life, it probably should be The Thing.
posted by Artw at 1:55 PM on December 6, 2012

What, no Terminator 3 commentary?
posted by entropicamericana at 2:02 PM on December 6, 2012

If you're going to take the time to watch only one DVD commentary in your life, it probably should be The Thing.

Fixed that for you.
posted by beaucoupkevin at 2:49 PM on December 6, 2012

42 Things We Learned From the ‘Monty Python and the Holy Grail’ Commentary

I see what you did there.
posted by MiltonRandKalman at 3:45 PM on December 6, 2012 [1 favorite]

This one is best one

In the commentary for Point Blank, Soderbergh participates by asking questions and talking with Director John Boorman. It is a great commentary.
posted by P.o.B. at 8:27 PM on December 6, 2012

Seth Rogen, in the commentary for The Green Hornet, talked about how at a dinner with Nic Cage, who was up for the part of the bad guy, auditioned by doing the character with a Jamaican accent. At the restaurant.
posted by P.o.B. at 8:34 PM on December 6, 2012 [1 favorite]

Now I want to watch the Aliens commentary. I have all the dialogue memorized anyway, so it'll be just like watching the movie again with an additional layer of information.

Of course at lot if it I'll have got already from the awesome cast reunion.
posted by Artw at 8:49 PM on December 6, 2012

The Green Hornet is a sadly overlooked gem that answers the question: no seriously how would a way too rich douchebag fight crime?
posted by The Whelk at 9:16 PM on December 6, 2012

What no Ferris Bueller? That commentary (by John Hughes) is great. It revealed all sorts of stuff like they had to spray-paint the leaves every morning for continuity because it moved into autumn, the Ferris and Cameron had worked together on stage a lot before, that the 'never had a lesson' bit was was improvised, that Ferris' mum and dad were dating, that...

Hope they get round to it soon!
posted by DanCall at 1:56 AM on December 7, 2012

These are fantastic! Thanks for the post.
posted by flatluigi at 5:43 AM on December 7, 2012

Man, I wanted to like The Green Hornet more than I did, but something about it just didn't work, and I still don't know what. The script didn't satirize the rich douchebag quite sharply enough, or something.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 7:23 AM on December 7, 2012 [1 favorite]

Very cool.

Can someone ask James Cameron to direct one of the new Star Wars movies?
posted by BeeDo at 7:30 AM on December 7, 2012 [1 favorite]

They talk about the movie in another article...14 great moments of foreshadowing (WARNING Spoilers!), but the best commentary I ever watched is The Usual Suspects.
posted by tkappleton at 6:24 PM on December 7, 2012 [1 favorite]

Oh man, the Holy Grail one if fantastic (which, knowing other mefites, I'm sure everyone has read it already). This note near the end was my favorite:

It was initially supposed to be a stuffed sheep flung at King Arthur in the end scene. They didn’t have a stuffed sheep, but the assistant director found a dead sheep along the side of the road to work one day. They used that. Gilliam recalls how awful it smelled and how ecstatic the props master was to fix the dead sheep so they could use it on film.

This sounds like something just incredibly low budget and is perfectly in line with my imagination of how it worked behind the scenes with the Python gang. No plush animal? Roadkill works just fine. And then the weird crew member who is oddly enthusiastic about it, in probably a very creepy way.
posted by I am the Walrus at 9:04 AM on December 12, 2012