The Cinematic Catalog of Steven Wright

One thing I don't want to lose sight of here at DVDExotica is coverage of rare and unique discs.  It shouldn't just be the same handful of boutique labels represented over and over.  So, to that end, I thought I'd make another post similar to our Cinematic Catalog of Josh Kornbluth entry, though this one is a little smaller.  I'm talking about celebrated stand-up comedian... and filmmaker Steven Wright.  You might just know him as the man on the couch in Half Baked or Stan Spielberg in The Muse, but this man has an Academy Award.

He won that Best Short Film, Live Action award for his first film, 1989's The Appointments Of Dennis Jennings, which he wrote and starred in.  He didn't direct it - Dean Parisot (Galaxy Quest) did - but he went on to direct his next one.  But here he plays a waiter, unsure of his relationship with Laurie Metclaf, so he goes to see a psychiatrist for help.  That psychiatrist is played by Rowan Atkinson, though, so you can image how well that goes.  Naturally, having Wright talk to a psychiatrist is often just an excuse to unleash his deadpan humor.  I assume some of this stuff is straight from his stage act.  But the film takes the opportunity to invent cutaways and imagery to tell jokes he couldn't do through words alone.

And yes, a story does reveal itself.  I mean, you wouldn't waste Atkinson as just a straight man, nodding along to Wright's stand-up, no matter how creative it is.  Wright is revealed to be a paranoiac, and his paranoia is proven to be correct in the most absurdist ways.  Like a Zucker Brothers film, The Appointments is packed full of every kind of gag: in the foreground, in the background.  When he picks up a newspaper, the headline's a gag.  And while a few of them are a little creaky, Wright's humor tends to be timeless, so most of them still play.  And the story itself is clever in its own right.

2000ish DVD.

I've seen this DVD listed online as an HBO release, but I think that might just be because this is an HBO Movies film.  Their logo isn't on the case or anything, and though it has a proper UPC, this otherwise feels like an independent product.  If you're hoping for extras, that'd be great, but forget it.  There isn't even a DVD menu.  The film itself is presented in 1.31:1, which is fine.  I'm sure it was made fullframe to air on HBO at the time.  But the picture's fuzzy like the transfer came from a tape, and yep, it's interlaced.  The 2.0 mono track is very basic but fine, and of course there are no subtitle options.

Ten years later, Wright returned to the movie camera, this time not just to write and star in his second film, 1999's One Soldier, but to produce and direct it as well.  This used to play on IFC all the time.  I swear, though, they used One Soldier and Tex, The Passive-Aggressive Gunslinger to balance out their time slots every single day.  Fortunately, both are ingenious delights, so it never bothered me.

Anyway, One Soldier's a little artier than Appointments.  Both flicks are only about half an hour, but this one's in black and white with slow, static shots, wistful Ken Burns-style voice overs, a gentle score and just a generally slower, less gag-packed pace.  But it's still full of Wright's distinct humor.  It's a period piece, set immediately after the civil war, with Wright playing an accordion-playing soldier who's fallen into an existential funk.  It's not as crowd pleasingly comic as Appointments, but it's a more interesting, mature work.  A little bit anyway.  Wright certainly achieves a distinct, absorbing mood here that makes you wish he'd continued to pursue filmmaking.

2009ish DVD.

One Soldier looks to be another home brew disc with similar art layout.  Again, it's presented in 1.31:1, and though the source is 16mm, the image actually looks sharper and clearer than Appointments.  It's still interlaced, though, which is a bummer.  And once again, it just has the basic 2.0 mono track with no subtitles (except for a few that are burned into one scene), no menu and no special features.

misframed version

I ordered The Appointments Of Dennis Jennings off of Amazon back when they carried it, and I got One Soldier direct from Steven Wright's website, both back around 2000.  I've just checked and, surprisingly, both DVDs are still available on his site as of this writing.  It's worth noting that One Soldier is also included as an extra on the 2007 Image DVD of Wright's stand-up special When the Leaves Blow Away, but there the film is incorrectly framed at 1.75:1, matting off a good chunk of the top and bottom of the picture.  So you should really stick to the original disc.

I'd love to see both films get restored in HD on blu; they could really use it.  But I bet if a Vinegar Syndrome partner label or some such picked them and restored them as a double-feature, it'd sell.  Maybe they could get Gunslinger, too.  But I really don't see any of that happening anytime soon, so I'd grab those discs from Wright's site while you still can.