At this year’s South by Southwest festival, in Austin, film premieres weren’t the only major events. The buzziest affair, arguably, took place inside a truck: a facsimile of the Criterion Collection’s fabled office closet, bursting with select editions of its deep and idiosyncratic film catalog. For three minutes each, movie lovers could enter the Criterion Closet truck to rifle through the company’s expansive archive of canonical works, plucking DVD and Blu-ray copies to purchase and take home. Part of the fun is that the experience is captured on video, giving visitors their own personal installment of the beloved “Criterion Closet Picks” YouTube series, which features famous artists explaining their favorite selections.
The hundreds of festivalgoers waiting their turn suggest a draw beyond the physical pleasures of picking out and buying a handful of Criterion films, though. The real appeal of the Criterion Closet is emotional. It’s a place to let your movie obsessions—your obscure taste, your love of cult classics, your knowledge of directorial deep cuts—run wild and then be recognized for them.
Bob Stein co-founded the Criterion Collection in 1984 with the modest goal of releasing contemporary and classic films on home video. He dressed them up with stunning dust jackets and booklets, and they came with special features such as audio commentaries. Over the following decades, Criterion’s catalog expanded from a few hundred entries on LaserDisc to more than 1,600 across DVD and Blu-ray. The brand is now synonymous with an impressive swath of cinema: films that are challenging and avant-garde; that were once maligned but have developed loyal followings; that threatened to be lost to time.
At one point, the New York–based company needed storage for its growing stockpile. The discs ended up in a humble supply closet in the office, which has since become both an archival treasure trove and a destination for those in the know. In 2010, Criterion began uploading videos to YouTube of the most notable people to peruse the closet’s offerings: filmmakers, actors, other influential cultural figures. Viewers can now watch well-known names such as the director John Waters, the philosopher Slavoj Žižek, and the actor Zoë Kravitz gleefully traipse through this cinephile’s Candyland, given free rein to pick through the extensive library. As they talk about why a particular selection intrigues them, the famous visitors flash the disc covers at the camera. Inevitably, they leave with an armful of DVDs, composed of films they love and others they want to see; the complete list is revealed at the video’s end.
The “Closet Picks” videos have helped Criterion grow “from a more insular, cinephile-first cult favorite to a more mass phenomenon,” as GQ noted in a story about the series last year. The most popular installments garner hundreds of thousands of views and generate viral clips in part because of their savvy choice of featured guests. It’s not unusual for an actor or a director to appear while promoting their latest film, yet fail to mention it—they’re too dazzled by all the beautiful DVDs.
Instead, the joy of watching the series lies in the visitors’ authentic, unvarnished delight. Take the actor Ayo Edebiri’s entry, from July; the Bear actor’s love of film is well documented, and in her video, she buzzes with anticipation, immediately addressing viewers who she knows would feel similarly upon entering the closet: “I’m on these sales,” she says, referencing Criterion’s frequent discounts. “I’m getting these 50 percent off DVDs, just like you are.” Edebiri brings along a list of her intended picks, including the black comedy To Sleep With Anger and the heist thriller Thief—two wildly different choices that speak to her wide-ranging tastes. Hundreds of posters on Reddit and YouTube expressed how much they could envision themselves as the ecstatic star, right down to her outfit: “Between the prepared list on her phone and the Radiohead t-shirt I feel like this was the closest the comments section has been to having one of us in the closet,” reads one YouTube reply.
The videos, at their best, help transform famous figures into more personable ones. The directors Josh and Benny Safdie almost can’t get the words out quickly enough as they rhapsodize about Mike Leigh’s harrowing dramedy Meantime and recall how Charlie Chaplin’s silent-era masterpiece The Kid made Benny cry. Their trip to the closet, in a way, gives new context to the Safdie brothers’ work, as viewers realize that the makers of the stress-inducing black comedy Uncut Gems are in fact goofy, sincere film nerds.
Many guests also approach the Criterion Closet as if it’s a hallowed institution. The actor Gael García Bernal veers into philosophical territory with his choices; when he grabs the Italian neorealist triumph Blow-Up, he discusses how its themes of surveillance and paranoia resonate with him. He relates his yearning for the era before cellphones and the idle time that came with it, a wistful and humanizing admission.
The “Closet Picks” series lets these textured portraits emerge from visitors and viewers alike. The comment sections have cultivated a community of discerning movie lovers, filled with people sharing their takes on each guest’s picks. They mimic the warmth of video stores, those communal spaces where like-minded cinephiles could congregate and bond by debating the best Alfred Hitchcock movies or gushing over auteurs such as Akira Kurosawa and John Carpenter. The fervor around the video series and the Closet truck underscores, ultimately, how few offline places there are today for movie lovers to come together.
The Criterion Closet is, in some ways, an exclusive club; you need to be invited to the company’s office, which typically means being a recognizable figure in the entertainment industry. Yet “Closet Picks” manages to convey the thrill that comes with discovering great art, as well as those who share your love for it. The series does something potent with something very simple: When we see a person we admire geek out over cinema’s transformative power, they’re revealing how they came to see the world—and how we all might fit into it.
