Welcome to Dust On The VCR

Friends, family, acquaintances, strangers, enemies: Welcome to Dust On The VCR, my new writing project.

Let me start by saying: I like writing about movies. I started writing about movies a lot in college. I’ve written about movies occasionally for newspapers and magazines and blogs. And for years, I’ve been doing my own movie marathons (and fundraisers!) in October where I write daily recaps—very unchecked, stream-of-conscious kinda writing where it’s just conversational reactions in lieu of focused analysis, because that’s quicker and more fun.

For a while now, I’ve been wanting to do something like that on the regular. Something more often than just in October (because that isn’t very often), but also less often than every day (because that is exhausting). Maybe a weekly thing where I just pick one movie and talk about a particular aspect of it that interests me, and one that I hope will interest (or at least entertain) others.

So that’s what this is!

I’m calling it Dust On The VCR. It’s an homage to the old gospel country song “Dust On The Bible” originally written by the Bailes Brothers but recorded most prominently by the likes of Hank Williams, Wanda Jackson, Roy Acuff, Kitty Wells, and someone named Sleepy LaBeef (what a name!). It also stems from my somewhat recent reignited love of VHS tapes, which I do still watch every few months or so!

The concept took shape from there—particularly the notion of focusing on old(er) films. Everybody writes about new films these days! There are so many terrific film critics out there like Matt Singer and Katie Walsh and Alison Willmore and Mark Harris and Wesley Morris and Adam Nayman and Hunter Harris and Scott Weinberg and Brian Tallerico and Kristen Kim and, well, you get the picture. Why does the world need me to add to that? There’s so much new “content” and so many people capable of recommending it to you who do that sort of thing for a living.

But what about the classics that you wish more people talked about? Or the older films that you’ve always meant to watch? Or the retro oddities that you never knew about but are excited to discover? There’s less of this kind of stuff going around, seems like. So maybe I can add a little bit to that space.

Truthfully, though, it’s a symbiotic thing. I’ll be seeking out films that are readily accessible through streaming and VOD services so that these “conversations” can be two-sided, should you choose to engage in them. (And I’ll be dropping them on a Friday morning so you’ll have a movie rec for your weekend.) But I also have way too many blindspots to consider myself a “cinephile” or a film savant, I think. So a regular writing assignment—given to me by myself—on the many worthwhile films I may have missed over the years or from before my time feels like the kind of thing I’d like to commit to.

And when I say “and (slightly) beyond,” well, I originally thought that limiting the scope to the 20th century made sense. But then again, we were mass-marketing videotapes up until 2005! That happened to be the summer that I worked at Movie Gallery, during which I witnessed a liquidation of videotapes from the store’s shelves, all marked down to a dollar or two as the store converted itself to discs only. (And yes, I bought several of them myself.) So perhaps I’ll throw in some early 00s titles as well if the spirit moves me.

Lastly, about this subscription model: I don’t really care about making money off of this endeavor, because I am fortunate to have a full-time job. And I don’t want to pressure any of you into paying for this kind of stuff either. But if you like paying for this sort of thing, maybe I can do some good with it. So I’ll have a $5 per month option (or a $30 per year option), because those are Substack’s minimums. (Really, Substack? In this economy?) It won’t unlock anything exclusive, but anyone who chooses the paid option will get to request a film for me to cover, so that’s pretty neat, right?

Anyway, I’m gonna redistribute those dollars to some film-friendly avenues. At the end of the year, I’ll break it down something like this: 25% will go to a video store that’s still keeping the dream alive; 25% will go to a film festival that’s near and dear to my heart; 25% will go to some sort of educational outreach in the film space; and maybe I’ll spend the last 25% on boutique film and merch companies and give away some gift cards to the paid subscribers. Yeah, that sounds pretty good.

Lastly, quick shouts out to John Hammontree for editing my words and Garon Bailey for whipping up these header graphics. 🤝

Thanks for reading this not-so-quick introduction. First piece drops this Friday. I hope you like it! ✌️