On the Criterion Channel ... live, right now!
In which the 1985 film 'Smooth Talk' is an occasion for discussing the joys of live television.
Many of the things Americans take for granted when they enjoy films at home were pioneered by the Criterion Collection: Letterboxing, the director’s commentary track, multi-disc sets, and “special editions” of older films. Many readers here will no doubt be familiar with the company and what they do, but if not, the New York Times ran a good profile back in February.
A few years ago, they got into the streaming game with the Criterion Channel, which I subscribed to during the pandemic, enabling subscribers to have “important classic and contemporary films” from around the world at their fingertips. Unlike Netflix, no algorithm is at work; human curation reigns.
A couple weeks ago, the channel introduced a new service: a 24/7 livestream. I saw an article about it somewhere and forgot about it until last week, when I was logged into the channel and thought I’d try it out.
It caught me off guard.
I was pleasantly gobsmacked by the immense pleasure of turning to a "station" or “channel,” basically, and there's just something on. Not saved in your library being ignored, not chosen by algorithm, but a randomly selected film that is playing right now.
The odds are against you arriving at the precise moment a film’s title appears on screen (although that did happen once, with Tokyo Drifter) so you’re likely to land somewhere in a movie’s middle. That’s what happened when I stumbled into The Daytrippers, a 1997 indie comedy, and there was Liev Schreiber arguing with someone about politics and class, and even knowing nothing of the context or plot, the scene was somehow riveting.
There’s no schedule or trailers, and unlike TCM, no talking heads to introduce the next film. If you’re logged into the Criterion Channel and click on the “live” button, unless you’re already are familiar with the film, you probably won’t know what you’re watching; they don’t tell you. To find out what you’re watching, you need to go to Whatsonnow.criterionchannel.com, where the livestream displays the title and time remaining until the next film.
Streaming Criterion’s 24/7 feed, nostalgic feelings for what TV was when it was just TV — pre-Internet and even pre-cable — were palpable. Everything’s changed, and yet nothing has changed. Before it was possible to grab your cell phone when boredom struck and your brain was in need of instant gratification, you’d flip the TV on and flop down on the couch to watch whatever. Even when the number of channels was in single digits, surfing them was still possible.
But it’s a profoundly different experience to arrive in the middle of a 90-minute film than scrolling endlessly though dozens of Facebook “reels” of crap that last less than a minute. I’m as guilty of that as anyone. Facebook’s algorithm has determined that I’ll always hang in there for just one more Seinfeld clip, which I suppose is an improvement on endless video clips of wingsuit flying.
So anyway, the other night I checked out Criterion’s livestream and something quite unexpected happened.
They were playing the 1985 film Smooth Talk, featuring a pre-Blue Velvet Laura Dern, which I’d never seen. If you’d showed me the poster or video box cover, I might have recognized it, but otherwise I knew nothing about it.
The scene I stumbled into turned out to be a pivotal moment: A handsome young man who looked very familiar (Treat Williams, it turned out) was sidling alongside Dern as she attempted to maneuver her way back into her rural home. As Arthur Friend, Treat’s “smooth-talk” has a purpose that is obvious to both Dern’s character and the viewer: He intends to persuade her to get in his car so he can drive off and rape her.
I’d been sucked into a movie that just happened to be on. An actual movie, not a “reel” or YouTube video. This was something I hadn’t experienced in years, possibly decades. I tell you, the subject matter notwithstanding, there was something magical about it.
This slow, quiet scene is electrifying and presses on for twenty minutes—an eternity in the era of Tik-Tok videos. Arthur’s smooth talk, which eventually veers into more ominous talk as he threatens her family, prevails. Dern gets in the car and they drive off.
When they return (after a disconcerting shot of the empty vehicle parked in the sun-drenched wilderness of Northern California) Dern and Williams conclude the scene in front of the house with masterful ambiguity, right on the knife’s edge. It’s not entirely clear what happened. Maybe he did, or maybe he tried and failed. He probably did, but we never really know. The film, I later learned, is based on a short story by Joyce Carol Oates that apparently ends with both more finality and ambiguity: The young woman gets in the car and they drive off—The End.
Since then, parachuting into Criterion’s 24/7 stream has afforded other pleasures: The first twenty or so minutes of Slacker, right up to the girl with Madonna’s pap smear in a jar, before I realized I’d intended to go for a walk. Rene Laloux’s visionary animated film Fantastic Planet from 1973. The red-tinged phantgasmagoria of a tavern scene in David Lynch’s Fire Walk With Me. The giant attacking the ship in Time Bandits. And a mesmerizing scene in the 1996 film Basquiat where Christopher Walken as a journalist is interviewing Jeffrey Wright in the title role of the Brooklyn-born painter.
The rise of streaming video has ushered in a paradox: Now that virtually every film can be seen on one of a dozen or so major platforms, many of us will actually put off watching something we’ve been meaning to see. Because now we can watch it anytime. Just stick it in your “library” and it’s ready to go.
But more often than not, what actually happens is you forget about it. It’s like buying a book that you never read, but with less commitment. At least with a book, you have to open your wallet and carry it home. You have to find a physical space to put it. With streaming, you’ve already paid for the service. To click “add to library” costs nothing more, no additional investment. Click and forget.
So I’m trying to train myself to stop tumbling into the literally endless parade of Facebook reels. Criterion’s livestream makes that task a bit easier. At the very least, I feel better about burning time there than with Seinfeld bloopers and rooftop parkour videos.
I Am Reading/Watching/Listening No. 16
Not much of a list this week. One night last week I circled back to a book I’ve been trying to summit for a year or so, Samuel Delaney’s Dhalgren. Who knows how far I’ll get this time. Also, with my son, watched the terrific WWII film The Great Escape, during which I realized something I’d not picked up on before: Hannes Messemer’s plays the POW camp’s kommandant, Von Luger, to subtly imply that he not a fan of Hitler and that ultimately, his heart isn’t in this.
But primarily I’ve been spending a lot of time with the poetry of Valerie Witte, with whom I’m having a thoroughly enjoyable and stimulating correspondence about her work in preparation for an interview at Oregon ArtsWatch and here. Her latest collection is A Rupture in the Interiors, but what I’m currently obsessing over is an earlier work, The Grass is Greener When the Sun is Yellow, which is one of the most fascinating presentations of poetry I’ve seen in years. For my local readers, she’ll be the featured poet May 9 at the McMinnville Public Library’s poetry night.
Finally, I am totally digging a Substack I stumbled into, Chuck Rybak’s The Declining Academic. He and I are about the same age, and from reading just a few of his pieces, I sense we’re very much on the same page regarding a lot of things.