5 Mar 2024

Chelsea Peretti’s Closet Picks

The comedian, actor, and director talks about loving the relatable weirdness of Grey Gardens and the compulsive passion of Crumb; praises Miranda July’s singular, offbeat voice; and shares how The 400 Blows (a Natasha Lyonne recommendation) evokes empathy for the pains of growing up.

Chelsea Peretti: everything they reached for, and whose taste is nearest

choices

11

10 single, 1 box set

single films

10

chosen on their own

box sets

1

one choice, many films

films reached

15

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.

1055 Girlfriends 1978 1026 Me and You and Everyone We Know 2005 1204 Trainspotting 1996 123 Grey Gardens 1975 533 Crumb 1995 1173 Hollywood Shuffle 1987 139 Wild Strawberries 1957 SET The Red Balloon and Other Stories: Five Films by Albert Lamorisse 5 The 400 Blows 1959 957 Mikey and Nicky 1976 91 The Blob 1958

single film, with its spine number box set

	Chose	Director	Year	Taken by
1	Girlfriends	Claudia Weill	1978	6
2	Me and You and Everyone We Know	Miranda July	2005	3
3	Trainspotting	Danny Boyle	1996	7
4	Grey Gardens	David Maysles, Albert Maysles, Ellen Hovde, Muffie Meyer	1975	10
5	Crumb	Terry Zwigoff	1995	7
6	Hollywood Shuffle	Robert Townsend	1987	5
7	Wild Strawberries	Ingmar Bergman	1957	1
8	The Red Balloon and Other Stories: Five Films by Albert Lamorisse box set, 5 films			2
9	The 400 Blows	François Truffaut	1959	10
10	Mikey and Nicky	Elaine May	1976	8
11	The Blob	Irvin S. Yeaworth Jr.	1958	6

How far across film history it reaches

Where this haul sits in film history single films 1957 to 2005, box sets 1951 to 1965

The Red Balloon and Other Stories: Five Films by Albert Lamorisse

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 15films run 20.5 hours. The median visit runs 19.2 hours, over the 375 whose every runtime is on record.

That is 111.6 minutes of film for each of its 11 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 11 choices had been taken by 5.91 visits each on average, counting a box set as one thing. One of them has been taken by nobody else. The least-picked was Wild Strawberries, taken by this visit alone.

This visit reached the work of Danny Boyle, through Trainspotting and Terry Zwigoff, through Crumb, who have been in this closet too. Not one of those reaches is returned.

On Vimeo · On criterion.com