The definitive case for buying more DVDs
On a much overdue return to physical media
I have a habit of doing what I call “going down director rabbit holes” — meaning, whenever I love a movie, I work my way through the rest of a director’s filmography. After watching Ferrari, Collateral, and Heat, which is seminal text for American cinephiles (if you haven’t seen Heat, stop reading this and go watch it), I got bit by the Michael Mann bug and resolved to see the entire repertoire of Mann movies that I’ve yet to watch.
I sat down one evening to begin my quest with The Insider, but first I Googled “the insider streaming” as these days, it’s impossible to know if a movie is on Netflix or Amazon Prime or Peacock or Paramount+ or Showtime or Apple+ or MGM+ or Hulu — you get it.
Google told me it was available to rent on Prime. Cool. I flip to Prime, search for The Insider, and find out, lo and behold, it’s not available in the U.S. Deeply annoying and quite stupid, but whatever. I have another movie I’ve wanted to watch for a while: Margin Call. It’s not a Mann movie, but as a Plan B, I knew I could do a lot worse. I give it a Google, and I’m in luck! It’s streaming, buuuut it’s licensed to FuboTV, which means I can’t watch it without commercials — and there is never a situation in which I am willing to watch movies with commercials.
General lack of availability of content due to whatever licensing jiggery pokery is going on is not the only issue. Streaming services are pulling content to save money on taxes and royalties. Max, the artist formerly known as HBO, is the biggest offender, removing dozens of popular titles like Zack Snyder's Justice League and Westworld to reportedly save millions of dollars.1
I’m not sure which straw broke my camel's back (though it was probably The Insider — I’ve wanted to watch it for months. Months!! ) but over the holidays, I took matters into my own hands. I bought a 4k DVD player and started building my physical media collection, from the Sicario 4k special edition steelbook to Die Hard in 4k to Under the Tuscan Sun.
Physical media is the only way for me to ensure that I am not beholden to digital platforms, where ownership is a squishy concept. To wit, even if I “buy” a movie on Amazon Prime or another platform, I don’t own it — I am purchasing a license to watch it “indefinitely.” But if Prime decided to remove a movie I bought, I’d be shit out of luck.
Ownership isn’t what you think it is
Across modes of consumption, digital platforms have upended the traditional idea of ownership, in that nowadays, we don’t really “own” anything.
This concept is most apparent for consumers streaming movies and TV, but it doesn’t end there. If Amazon discontinued access to Kindle’s library, we would lose all of the beloved books we’ve purchased. If Google decided to shutter Gmail and Google Drive, I would lose, more or less, my entire digital footprint. If Substack shut down, my essays would no longer live online. Your photos in Apple’s cloud? At risk. TikTok is possibly, maybe going away soon (The Constitution be damned), so those who’ve spent countless hours cultivating and monetizing an online presence on TikTok are screwed (for the record, I don’t oppose the TikTok ban as it's CCP-controlled, but that’s a topic for another day).
A cessation of control regarding ownership of digital creations is our new reality — and some of it is inescapable. Setting up a homegrown server and email service is nigh impossible or unfeasible for 99.9% of the population, so we’re stuck with Gmail. I am not going to start printing and distributing a physical magazine full of my essays, so Substack it is.
But for some things, a return to physical media is viable. And it’s better.
Print and frame your favorite photos and put them around your house (Keepsake Frames is a nice, affordable option I use). I recently decided to frame a few pictures of my fiancé, parents, and friends, and I now see these pictures more than any photos languishing on my camera roll or posted on Instagram, and they genuinely bring me joy.
Read paper books. Experience the magic of a local, independent bookstore. Nestle yourself in that new-book smell and feel the pages as you dive into worlds and stories you couldn’t have ever imagined. Eventually, you might have a library like mine:
Buy more DVDs. With Hollywood as the undisputed, global epicenter of film, American movies are responsible for the evolution of the medium, from the introduction of sound in The Jazz Singer to never-before-seen special effects in Star Wars and Jurassic Park. Monocultural events like Titanic or Avengers: Endgame are still possible through film, and despite the growth of prestige TV, there is still something special about movie magic. From a crisp, tight story in a couple hours to the smell of buttered popcorn; from the best directors and actors to the crème de la crème of cinematographers, production designs, composers, and costume and set designers, film is still the peak of visual storytelling. And physical media means you can capture a bit of that magic in your home.
The real world is just that: Real. Modernity isn’t Ready Player One , where we live each day with VR headsets strapped to our faces to escape the cruel reality of the physical world in favor of a curated, digital one (yet).
Physical media is yours, and there is value in its permanence. The history of visual storytelling — the history of humanity — has evolved from drawings in caves 30,000 years ago to IMAX today. Physical media is an opportunity to hold a small slice of our shared narrative in your own hands. When you partake in the wonder of physical film, you’re joining people around the world to celebrate stories from the late 19th century onward — without being beholden to digital platforms.
I hope you’ll consider embracing it, one DVD at a time.
Shoutout to Emily Ann Hill for providing feedback and editing this essay. Check out Junetail Creative to see how Emily can help improve your writing and, for small businesses, develop an unforgettable brand experience.