24 Jan 2019

Five Comics’ Closet Picks

Things got a little hectic (and hilarious) when New York comedians Jaboukie Young-White, Lorelei Ramirez, Fumi Abe, Nore Davis, and Tomas Delgado visited the Criterion offices.

Five Comics: everything they reached for, and whose taste is nearest

choices

19

18 single, 1 box set

single films

18

chosen on their own

box sets

1

one choice, many films

films reached

24

the same visit, box sets opened

Criterion's own upload · on criterion.com

This visit as a strip, a cell for each choice: paler the older the film, indigo for a box set, which is one cell however many films it holds. The order is the order Criterion's own page lists them in, which is probably but not provably the order they came off the shelf.

SET The Complete Jacques Tati 84 Good Morning 1959 52 Yojimbo 1961 681 Frances Ha 2013 100 Beastie Boys Video Anthology 2000 950 Some Like It Hot 1959 630 Rosemary’s Baby 1968 909 Night of the Living Dead 1968 629 Sunday Bloody Sunday 1971 838 Pan’s Labyrinth 2006 533 Crumb 1995 951 True Stories 1986 956 24 Frames 2017 481 Made in U.S.A 1966 165 Man Bites Dog 1992 938 sex, lies, and videotape 1989 221 Ikiru 1952 720 The Big Chill 1983 947 Shampoo 1975

single film, with its spine number box set

	Chose	Director	Year	Taken by
1	The Complete Jacques Tati box set, 6 films			19
2	Good Morning	Yasujiro Ozu	1959	5
3	Yojimbo	Akira Kurosawa	1961	1
4	Frances Ha	Noah Baumbach	2013	4
5	Beastie Boys Video Anthology	Various	2000	2
6	Some Like It Hot	Billy Wilder	1959	7
7	Rosemary’s Baby	Roman Polanski	1968	3
8	Night of the Living Dead	George A. Romero	1968	9
9	Sunday Bloody Sunday	John Schlesinger	1971	7
10	Pan’s Labyrinth	Guillermo del Toro	2006	3
11	Crumb	Terry Zwigoff	1995	7
12	True Stories	David Byrne	1986	7
13	24 Frames	Abbas Kiarostami	2017	1
14	Made in U.S.A	Jean-Luc Godard	1966	2
15	Man Bites Dog	Rémy Belvaux, André Bonzel, Benoit Poelvoorde	1992	5
16	sex, lies, and videotape	Steven Soderbergh	1989	5
17	Ikiru	Akira Kurosawa	1952	6
18	The Big Chill	Lawrence Kasdan	1983	7
19	Shampoo	Hal Ashby	1975	12

How far across film history it reaches

Where this haul sits in film history single films 1952 to 2017, box sets 1949 to 1974

The Complete Jacques Tati

a single film, at its year a box set, across the years of its films the collection, by decade

The axis is the same 1920 to 2030 on every visit page, so a haul that stayed inside one decade looks like one. A box set is drawn across the years of the films inside it, which is a range of release dates and not a claim about the set. Nothing here is in the order the choices were made: displayed position moves film year by a fifth of one percent of its variance, which is not a slope worth drawing.

How long this haul is

Its 24films run 41.6 hours. The median visit runs 19.2 hours, over the 375 whose every runtime is on record.

That is 131.4 minutes of film for each of its 19 choices, counting a box set as the one choice it was. Across the 375 visits with a complete total, the median is 136.4 minutes.

How unusual this haul was

Its 19 choices had been taken by 5.89 visits each on average, counting a box set as one thing. Two of them have been taken by nobody else. The least-picked was Yojimbo, taken by this visit alone.

This visit reached the work of André Bonzel, through Man Bites Dog, David Byrne, through True Stories, Guillermo del Toro, through Pan’s Labyrinth and Terry Zwigoff, through Crumb, who have been in this closet too. Not one of those reaches is returned.

On Vimeo · On criterion.com