Dear Mr. Studio Executive
Remember a few years ago when DVDs came out? Good times, right? Apparently we started with Gladiator and started to convert the rest of the vast archives of cinema on a chronological basis. Well guess what? You fucking forgot a few of them. I’m talking about some stellar films like the venerable Speed Zone! and the stylish If Looks Could Kill.
I get that you had to prioritize. Start with your newer titles and your big grossers. Then move on to the sci-fi and action movies with the great sound, and then the cult classics that you can package with extra features and sell to rabid fans for $40. (By the way, what made you think you could sell a special edition version of The Rock for $40? It’s not like it’s Evil Dead II.)
But eventually, you know you have to do every title, right? It’s kind of your responsibility. How much could it possibly cost to put a movie on a DVD and manufacture a couple thousand copies? Can’t be that much because the technology is readily available for me to do this myself. Rule no. 1 in technology is that if a person can do it himself, it’s really cheap for a company to do it in scale. Are you worried it won’t sell well? Call it a limited edition and double the price. The eight people on the planet that want that movie will gladly fork it over. Are you worried the movie is a piece of crap? Guess what, they’ve been putting pieces of crap on DVD for years.
My issue is not your negligence or sense of self importance, it’s that you are robbing history of these movies. VHS players are no longer being manufactured, and copies of these movies on tape are becoming scarcer and scarcer. Soon, there won’t be any way to watch Speed Zone! That’s a crime. That’s cinemacide. You’re erradicating a piece of culture that seven, maybe six people hold near and dear to their hearts. What gives you the right to say that Speed Zone! cannot live on in the digital age? Do you realize what you’ve done? You’ve cut every John Candy Movie Marathon short by ninety minutes. You’ve robbed the world of one of Eugene Levy’s great performances. How could you actively, consciously abridge the lifespan of a contribution to annals of culture? Do you think Plautus intentionally destroyed the ending of Aulularia? The five people who love Speed Zone deserve to have their needs addressed. Hell, you made three other movies based on the same idea, starring mostly the same people, and those are on DVD!
This is bullshit. You’re bullshit. Put Speed Zone! on DVD so that I can rent it from Netflix and rip it for free.
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