23 Jul 2024

Bill Hader’s Closet Picks

The actor and director returns to the Closet, where he clarifies his feelings on Salò, or The 120 Days of Sodom; shares how much he learned about filmmaking from supplemental features on the Criterion editions of Barry Lyndon and Roma; and selects favorite films such as Real Life and Cold War.

Bill Hader: both visits, and whose taste is nearest

choices

15

13 single, 2 box sets

single films

13

chosen on their own

box sets

2

one choice, many films

films reached

32

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.

17 Salò, or The 120 Days of Sodom 1976 339 Yi Yi 2000 221 Ikiru 1952 897 Barry Lyndon 1975 1014 Roma 2018 1231 Real Life 1979 732 My Darling Clementine 1946 SET Essential Fellini 1005 Cold War 2018 228 Salvatore Giuliano 1962 650 A Man Escaped 1956 1181 Petite maman 2021 SET Eclipse Series 24: The Actuality Dramas of Allan King 847 The Asphalt Jungle 1950 833 Cat People 1942

single film, with its spine number box set

	Chose	Director	Year	Taken by
1	Salò, or The 120 Days of Sodom	Pier Paolo Pasolini	1976	11
2	Yi Yi	Edward Yang	2000	12
3	Ikiru	Akira Kurosawa	1952	6
4	Barry Lyndon	Stanley Kubrick	1975	10
5	Roma	Alfonso Cuarón	2018	9
6	Real Life	Albert Brooks	1979	3
7	My Darling Clementine	John Ford	1946	7
8	Essential Fellini box set, 14 films			16
9	Cold War	Paweł Pawlikowski	2018	5
10	Salvatore Giuliano	Francesco Rosi	1962	3
11	A Man Escaped	Robert Bresson	1956	8
12	Petite maman	Céline Sciamma	2021	5
13	Eclipse Series 24: The Actuality Dramas of Allan King box set, 5 films			5
14	The Asphalt Jungle	John Huston	1950	3
15	Cat People	Jacques Tourneur	1942	4

How far across film history it reaches

Where this haul sits in film history single films 1942 to 2021, box sets 1950 to 2005

Eclipse Series 24: The Actuality Dramas of Allan King

Essential Fellini

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 32films run 62.6 hours. The median visit runs 19.2 hours, over the 375 whose every runtime is on record.

That is 250.6 minutes of film for each of its 15 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 15 choices had been taken by 7.13 visits each on average, counting a box set as one thing. Every one of them has been taken by somebody else too. The least-picked was Salvatore Giuliano, taken by 3 visits in total.

This visit reached the work of Alfonso Cuarón, through Roma and Paweł Pawlikowski, through Cold War, who have been in this closet too. Not one of those reaches is returned.

On Vimeo · On criterion.com