The problem with being a film collector is that the technology on which films are preserved keeps changing. I’m not talking about abandoning my DVD library – although I’ll come to that – but my collection of LaserDiscs.
LaserDiscs were a forerunner of DVDs. They were the same size as LPs and you often needed two to capture a long film like Spartacus. The quality was significantly better than VHS and I held screening parties at my flat in Shepherd’s Bush for films such as Terminator 2: Judgment Day. I thought the fact that hardly anyone else had the technology was part of its appeal. But the failure of the format to take off in Europe meant it was quickly killed by the more affordable DVDs when they went on sale 25 years ago this month.
My DVD collection was a combination of classics such as His Girl Friday and lowbrow blockbusters. The reason for the latter is that I discovered a shop in Covent Garden that sold imported American DVDs of Holly-wood films that hadn’t been released in the UK yet. They were regionally encoded and you weren’t supposed to be able to play them on DVD players bought in the UK, but you could get your machine ‘chipped’ to override the encryption. In that way, I could watch Spider-Man 3 a few weeks before it arrived in British cinemas.
My collection really took off when I co-produced How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, a film based on my memoir of the same name, and became a member of Bafta. That meant that from mid-November each year, ‘screeners’ would start arriving in the post. These were DVDs of movies their distributors hoped would be nominated for an award that year, including plenty of big, prestige pictures that hadn’t been released yet.
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