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Collector’s Corner
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The Doctor is In
Star Trek: Voyager medic Robert Picardo diagnoses A Hard Day’s Night, In the Cut, Frida, 28 Days Later and several other notable DVD experiences.
Thursday, February 26, 2004
By Ian Spelling
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Actor Robert Picardo considers himself neither a DVD expert nor a DVD aficio~nado, but get him talking and he evinces more of a passion for and know~ledge of DVDs than perhaps even he realized he had. Likewise, pretty much every TV viewer and film fan is familiar with Picardo, who’s best known for, well, take your pick: Dr. Richard on China Beach, Coach Cutlip on The Wonder Years, roles in pretty much every Joe Dante film from The Howling to Gremlins 2 to Loony Tunes: Back in Action, and as the Doctor, the acerbic holographic medic on Star Trek: Voyager.
This week, Paramount Home Entertainment is releasing a five-disc Collector’s Edition of Star Trek: Voyager: Season One, which includes all 15 episodes, the show's two-hour pilot, behind-the-scenes documentaries, archived interviews and a few other goodies. “I’ve gotten the first one, and I watched some of the interviews with Kate Mulgrew and Rick Berman,” says Picardo, referring to the show’s star and executive producer. “And it was fascinating to see the scenes with Genevieve Bujold, who was first cast as the captain (but replaced by Mulgrew after just two days of filming), because I’d never seen them. Kate’s performance is so indelible and ingrained in my mind, and I love Kate and her work so much, that anyone else would look strange next to her.”
Q: When did you buy your first DVD and how many do you own now?
A: The first one was bought for me by my wife, and she got me The Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night. That’s one of my favorite movies of all-time. I’ve now bought it twice because I, of course, got the Special Edition. I’m sure that happens to a lot of people. They get hooked by the re-release with all the bonus features. How many DVDs do I own? Probably about 100 of them. We usually just rent because I’m not a great one for watching movies over and over again.
Q: What are your three favorite DVDs?
A: I have to say A Hard Day’s Night again, because it’s one of my favorite movies and I love the background material, the extras. They’re a lot of fun. There’s a lot of fun stuff on the Pirates of the Caribbean DVD. There are bloopers and some great behind-the-scenes stuff that I might not have watched, except my daughter is obsessed with the movie and so I’ve watched everything on it with her. And I’d go with a classic musical. How about My Fair Lady?
Q: What was the last DVD you watched?
A: I watched In the Cut. My wife rented it. I watched part of it. It didn’t grab, so I didn’t finish it. I’d worked with Meg Ryan all those years ago on Innerspace, so I probably just got uncomfortable watching her fooling around with her co-star. I still think of her as a little girl, because we did Innerspace at the beginning of her career. I felt like I was a little bit of a big brother.
Q: What kind of viewing environment do you have?
A: We have several DVD players. We have a Hi-Def Mitsubishi system with a Bose DVD player with built-in surround sound. And of course you can now get a system for a couple of hundred dollars that’s like 80 percent as good as the system I paid $2,500 for a few years ago.
We have a couple of surround systems, one up in the bedroom and one in the living room. We have a DVD player in our playroom and I have a portable player that I take on planes sometimes. And our PowerBook also plays DVDs. So we have a DVD player for every occasion.
Q: What elements of a film - i.e., sound, cinematography – do you think translate best to DVD?
A: I would say cinematography. If you see a really great shot you can stop it and play it again or slow it down. I’ll watch a great shot or a great cut a number of times. At the beginning of Frida, there’s this terrific cut that compresses time on Salma Hayek. I just loved that and I’ve watched it a number of times and very much admired.
Q: Do you own any DVD box sets or packaged collections?
A: We’ve had a spooky experience with The Exorcist Special Edition. We bought it and then could never find it in our house. We obviously have to have a séance to find The Exorcist. We’ve torn the house apart trying to find it and still haven’t found it. So we’re going to have to re-buy that.
The set I want that I still haven’t gotten is the box of Godfather films. That’s on my list. As far as laying down the big bucks to get a boxed set, the only one I’m looking forward to getting is The Godfather collection. I did just get the Voyager Season One set because Paramount gave it to me.
Q: Who or what - i.e., colleagues, critic quotes, the clerk at the video store – most influences your decision to view non-mainstream DVD titles?
A: I would say my daughter, my older daughter. I’ve got a 15-year-old who likes to watch Ethel Merman movies and Donald O’Connor movies. She’s into the re-issues of classics and interested in the odd older movie that most people have forgotten about because she’ll follow the career of a particular actor.
Q: Do you have a single favorite DVD extra?
| A: I would say the different endings to 28 Days Later. It’s like you can choose your own ending. I wasn’t crazy about the movie and I don’t even remember the endings, but I just liked the idea of seeing the alternate ways the movie might have ended. Actually, I’ve got another answer for your and I don’t know if it’s really a fair one because the movie hasn’t been released yet on DVD, but Loony Tunes: Back in Action will include in the extras a scene in which I’m wrapped head to toe in plastic wrap.
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That’s my punishment from my boss, Steve Martin, when I ask a particularly stupid question. These giant metal rods with big rolls of plastic wrap drop down from the ceiling and wrap me head to toe in about 30 seconds. The studio was afraid that children might do some sort of copycat thing and injure each other, so they cut it out of the movie. But it will be a DVD extra with, I assume, some sort of disclaimer like, “Don’t try this at home.” So I’ll get to see myself shrink-wrapped, which is an experience.
Q: There's a running debate about including deleted scenes and alternate endings on DVDs. What's your opinion?
| A: I think they should definitely be included. Let me put it this way: I’m a big Van Morrison fan. I’ve listened to his music for years and I’ve probably heard the song “Brown Eyed Girl” 20,000 times, because I have it on several of his collections. But when I got a CD that had an alternate take of “Brown Eyed Girl” that was 22 seconds longer than the version of the song I’d played 20,000 times, it was great to listen to it and imagine that he’d just done that take a few minutes before or after the one everybody’s been listening to for 30 years.
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Similarly, if you love a movie and you’ve seen it a number of times and remember virtually every scene in the movie and certainly every key scene, then to have the opportunity to see something the filmmaker shot, that the actors played, that never made it into the final version, is exciting. It lets you form a decision about whether or not you agree with the filmmaker about not including it.
And if there’s a commentary you can listen to the filmmaker talk about why the scene may have been cut. And then you can then decide if you agree with the filmmaker, if the film was better without it, or think about where in the film it might have been placed if the DVD extras don’t tell you where it originally was. All of those things are incredible grist for the imaginations of people who love a particular film. So, yes, I think they should be included.
| Now, the argument of whether or not a film should be re-cut, that’s interesting, too. If the primary vision of a movie was changed by concessions the filmmaker had to make either to the studio or the MPAA board, then a director’s cut is a great thing. I had the pleasure of sitting with Ridley Scott and talking with him about Blade Runner for about 20 minutes when I worked with him years ago. All of the changes he was forced to make on that movie altered his vision of it. The DVD let him get the movie he wanted people to see out there to the public.
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I think that’s got to be gratifying to him. And then, to have critics tout it as better than the movie we all saw, that’s another great thing. I could see the argument that it’s confusing to have two different versions of the same movie, but I think it’s fine if it’s a director taking advantage of the opportunity to restore his artistic vision.
[Twice a month, columnist Ian Spelling takes an insider’s look at the home video and DVD scene through interviews with some of the industry’s main players and those associated with the latest noteworthy new releases. To reach the author, please email ianspelling@filmstew.com.
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