Let­ting a beloved film direc­tor wan­der through the aisles of a well-stocked video store feels like such guar­an­teed YouTube fod­der that it’s a sur­prise it real­ly hasn’t been done until recent­ly. But then I remind myself that the video store itself is a thing of the past, and to see one so well stocked, Library of Alexan­dria style, is news itself. For the above video, the direc­tor brows­ing the DVDs is none oth­er than mad­cap genius Ter­ry Gilliam. The video store is Paris’ JM Video. The chat as expect­ed is mar­velous. (Only 20 min­utes? I’m sure many of us could lis­ten to Gilliam rab­bit on about his favorite films for twice, thrice that.)

Along the way, here are some things we learn:

• Some of his favorite film­mak­ers are Stan­ley Kubrick, Lina Wert­muller, Fed­eri­co Felli­ni, and one of his cur­rent friends, Albert Dupon­tel, the French actor-direc­tor who has used Gilliam in sev­er­al of his films.
• He is thanked in the cred­its of Tarantino’s Reser­voir Dogs. Why? Because when Taran­ti­no was at the Sun­dance Insti­tute with his script, it was only Gilliam who imme­di­ate­ly saw the bril­liant screen­play for what it was, and encour­aged Taran­ti­no to stay true to him­self.
• He’s not a fan of Die Hard, but it was the scene where Bruce Willis talks to his wife while pick­ing glass shards out of his foot that revealed a vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty in the actor. It led to Gilliam cast­ing Bruce Willis in 12 Mon­keys. Sim­i­lar­ly, he was able to work with Brad Pitt and get him to flip his cool and hand­some demeanor on its head for the man­ic co-star­ring role.
• Gilliam stole the idea of mul­ti­ple actors play­ing the same title char­ac­ter in The Imag­i­nar­i­um of Doc­tor Par­nas­sus (after lead actor Heath Ledger died dur­ing shoot­ing) from Luis Buñuel’s
  That Obscure Object of Desire. In that film, two women play the same char­ac­ter inter­change­ably. If it’s good enough for Buñuel…
• Eisenstein’s Ivan the Ter­ri­ble (parts one and two) is a “dan­ger­ous” film, because it was one of Putin’s most watched movies. (Not that we should stop watch­ing Eisen­stein.) Gilliam’s way of pro­nounc­ing Putin as “pou­tine” is inten­tion­al, no?
• Being a fan of Mon­ty Python was a good way of get­ting cast in a Gilliam film. The direc­tor knows he would have not worked with Sean Con­nery (in Time Ban­dits) or Robert DeNiro (in Brazil) if both didn’t know his work on the clas­sic com­e­dy. (It also helps to have pro­duc­ers who go golf­ing with A‑list actors.)
• He diss­es Christo­pher Nolan (“tech­ni­cal­ly bril­liant” but then “the films become video games” with “no grav­i­ty”), and repeats a swipe against Spielberg’s Schindler’s List that he heard from Kubrick. (“It’s a film about suc­cess.”)
• He imag­ines a bet­ter clos­ing edit to Close Encoun­ters that ends upon see­ing the legs of the alien as the hatch opens. Then we would have had some­thing to talk about on the way home, he says.

There’s anoth­er video in the series fea­tur­ing David Cro­nen­berg, along with vis­its from Michael Bay, Asghar Farha­di, Audrey Diwan, Dario Argen­to, and many more.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ter­ry Gilliam Reveals the Secrets of Mon­ty Python Ani­ma­tions: A 1974 How-To Guide

Ter­ry Gilliam on the Dif­fer­ence Between Kubrick & Spiel­berg: Kubrick Makes You Think, Spiel­berg Wraps Every­thing Up with Neat Lit­tle Bows

Ter­ry Gilliam Explains His Nev­er-End­ing Fas­ci­na­tion with Botticelli’s “The Birth of Venus”

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

Since 1990, Mar­tin Scors­ese has devot­ed the non-film­mak­ing part of his career to film preser­va­tion, whether that means the clas­sics of Hol­ly­wood or world cin­e­ma. The over 900 restora­tions that he’s helped fund through the Film Foun­da­tion non-prof­it have been the sub­ject of Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion box sets, spe­cial anniver­sary screen­ings and fes­ti­val show­ings, and now a spe­cial month­ly online screen­ing room will give view­ers a chance to see some famil­iar and not-so-famil­iar films that have been saved from destruc­tion.

Accord­ing to the wel­come mes­sage at the Restora­tion Screen­ing Room, “Pre­sen­ta­tions will take place with­in a 24-hour win­dow on the sec­ond Mon­day of each month, along with Spe­cial Fea­tures about the films and their restora­tion process. Month­ly pro­gram­ming will encom­pass a broad array of restora­tions, includ­ing clas­sic and inde­pen­dent films, doc­u­men­taries, and silent films from around the world.’”

As of this writ­ing, the win­dow has closed for its inau­gur­al film, Pow­ell and Pressburger’s 1945 I Know Where I’m Going! but you can still click through to see the extras that come with the film: an Intro­duc­tion by Scors­ese; an inter­view with Scorsese’s long-time edi­tor Thel­ma Schoon­mak­er (who was also Powell’s spouse for six years until 1990 and who worked on the restora­tion); Kent Jones inter­view­ing Kevin Mac­don­ald, the grand­son of Press­burg­er and his biog­ra­ph­er; the Film Foundation’s Mar­garet Bodde inter­view­ing Til­da Swin­ton, a huge fan of the film; direc­tors Joan­na Hogg and Scors­ese talk­ing about the film; a before and after look at the restora­tion; an image gallery; and final­ly a links page called “explore” that is quite over­whelm­ing in its thor­ough­ness.

The 4K restoration’s next stop is the Cri­te­ri­on Chan­nel, so if you sub­scribe to that paid ser­vice, find it there. But the Film Foundation’s pre­mieres are com­plete­ly free and fea­ture a live chat on the screen­ing night.

In the com­ing months look for­ward to Fellini’s La Stra­da (June 13), Govin­dan Aravindan’s Kum­mat­ty (July 11), a dou­ble fea­ture of The Chase (d. Arthur Rip­ley) and Detour (d. Edgar G. Ulmer) (August 8); Sarah Maldoror’s Sam­bizan­ga (Sep. 12), Mar­lon Brando’s One Eyed Jacks (Octo­ber 10); John Huston’s Moulin Rouge (Novem­ber 14); and Jonas Mekas’ Lost Lost Lost on Decem­ber 12.

The site has no trail­ers, but we’ve got you cov­ered:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Art of Restor­ing Clas­sic Films: Cri­te­ri­on Shows You How It Refreshed Two Hitch­cock Movies

Icon­ic Film from 1896 Restored with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence: Watch an AI-Upscaled Ver­sion of the Lumière Broth­ers’ The Arrival of a Train at La Cio­tat Sta­tion

The Joy of Watch­ing Old, Dam­aged Things Get Restored: Why the World is Cap­ti­vat­ed by Restora­tion Videos

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

The excite­ment over Crimes of the Future, set to pre­miere next week at the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val, sug­gests that David Cro­nen­berg retains a strong fan base more than half a cen­tu­ry into his film­mak­ing career. But many of us who con­sid­er our­selves part of that fan base did­n’t dis­cov­er his work in the the­ater, much less at Cannes. Rather, we found it at the video store, ide­al­ly one that devot­ed a sec­tion specif­i­cal­ly to his work — or at least to his sig­na­ture genre of “body hor­ror,” which his films would in any case have dom­i­nat­ed. Fit­ting, then, that the new Cro­nen­berg inter­view above takes place among shelves packed with, if not the VHS tapes and Laserdiscs we grew up with, then at least DVDs and Blu-Rays.

This video comes from Kon­bi­ni, a French Youtube chan­nel whose Video Club series has brought such auteurs as Claire Denis, Hirokazu Kore-eda, and Ter­ry Gilliam into the hal­lowed halls of Paris’ JM Vidéo.

“They have 50,000 movies, I think,” says the inter­view­er. “That’s too many,” replies Cro­nen­berg, “so you need to give me a few.” The direc­tor of Video­drome, The Fly, and Crash turns out to have no trou­ble spot­ting and dis­cussing movies of inter­est, and the list of his picks from the stock at JM Vidéo is as fol­lows:

• Fed­eri­co Felli­ni, La Stra­da (“the begin­ning of my entrance­ment with moviemak­ing”)
• Ing­mar Bergman, The Hour of the Wolf  (“a beau­ti­ful movie; very much a night­mare”)
• Roger Vadim, And God Cre­at­ed Woman (Brigitte Bar­dot “was incred­i­bly sex­u­al, beau­ti­ful — I was total­ly in love with her”)
• Jean-Pierre and Luc Dar­d­enne, Roset­ta (which the Cro­nen­berg-led 1999 Cannes jury select­ed in “the fastest vote for the Palme d’Or ever in the his­to­ry of Cannes”)
• Rid­ley Scott, Alien (some of whose ele­ments “are exact­ly like my very low-bud­get film Shiv­ers”)
• Paul Ver­ho­even, Total Recall (a project for which he wrote twelve screen­play drafts, reject­ed for being “the Philip K. Dick ver­sion” rather than “Raiders of the Lost Ark go to Mars”)
• Ken Rus­sell, Altered States (which “com­bined a strange group of peo­ple who, nor­mal­ly, you would­n’t think would make a sci­ence-fic­tion movie”)
• Abdel­latif Kechiche, Blue Is the Warmest Col­or (“a beau­ti­ful, sexy, inter­est­ing, intense movie with young actress­es who are real­ly very good, and giv­ing every­thing,” includ­ing Crimes of the Future’s own Léa Sey­doux)
• Olivi­er Assayas, Per­son­al Shop­per (“one of the movies that con­vinced me to ask Kris­ten Stew­art to be in Crimes of the Future”)
• Matthieu Kasso­vitz, La Haine (his intro­duc­tion to the “fan­tas­tic emo­tion­al depth” and “intel­lect” of Vin­cent Cas­sel)
• Julia Ducour­nau, Titane (a “very dan­ger­ous” genre pic­ture that nev­er­the­less won a Palme d’Or)
• Richard Mar­quand, Return of the Jedi (when asked to direct it, he said, “ ‘Well, I don’t usu­al­ly direct oth­er peo­ple’s mate­r­i­al,’ and they said, ‘Good­bye‘”)
• Bran­don Cro­nen­berg, Pos­ses­sor (“my son’s movie,” the prod­uct of “a strug­gle that remind­ed me of all the dif­fi­cul­ties I ever had mak­ing a movie”)
• Ed Emsh­willer, Rel­a­tiv­i­ty (the kind of film that showed him “you did­n’t have to go to film school, which I nev­er did, you did­n’t have to work in the film indus­try, you could make a movie your­self just because you want­ed to make a movie”)
• Kathryn Bigelow, Strange Days (“one of the movies that con­vinced me I should work with Ralph Fiennes”)
• Nico­las Roeg, Don’t Look Now (“a very, very strong movie, very strange, very much about death, but at first you’re not aware that that’s real­ly the sub­ject mat­ter”)

As not just a film fan but a film­mak­er, Cro­nen­berg has plen­ty of relat­ed sto­ries to tell about his own pro­fes­sion­al expe­ri­ences in cin­e­ma. Not all of them have to do with the pic­tures that inspired him when he was com­ing of age in the nine­teen-fifties and nine­teen-six­ties. In fact, even as he approach­es his ninth decade, he clear­ly con­tin­ues to find new ideas and col­lab­o­ra­tors in the work of emerg­ing direc­tors. Per­haps that’s one rea­son he seems uncan­ni­ly undi­min­ished here, much like this sur­vivor of a video store whose shelves he brows­es. Vive JM Vidéo, et vive Cro­nen­berg.

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Last Video Store: A Short Doc­u­men­tary on How the World’s Old­est Video Store Still Sur­vives Today

Time Out Lon­don Presents The 100 Best Hor­ror Films: Start by Watch­ing Four Hor­ror Clas­sics Free Online

Quentin Taran­ti­no Gives a Tour of Video Archives, the Store Where He Worked Before Becom­ing a Film­mak­er

A Cel­e­bra­tion of Type­writ­ers in Film & Tele­vi­sion: A Super­cut

John Lan­dis Decon­structs Trail­ers of Great 20th Cen­tu­ry Films: Cit­i­zen Kane, Sun­set Boule­vard, 2001 & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.