MRH: One area that’s always interested me is the preparation of the special features that go into a DVD.

Taking for example a commentary track, it can be done very lackadaisical where the producer will gather a bunch of people together, but there’s no moderator or judicial editing, so often you’ll hear ‘how cold it was’ or what someone was wearing, or how someone kept doing this and that, but there’s nothing substantive. 

From your perspective, when you’re engaged to do a commentary track, what steps do you take to ensure the track is informative, entertaining, and educational?

JK: I have to say that I’ve been very lucky because every commentary track that I’ve done had Nick producing it, or I worked with another producer with whom he had a long-term relationship.

Nick is the best in the business for this kind of thing. Basically, he wants an educated conversation, and I think he feels the conversational style is more entertaining. You’ve heard these commentaries where literally these people are reading aloud from a prepared text, and those seem not so valuable to me. The tracks that you mentioned where people are just rambling on are at the other end of the scale, and seem trivial.

Nick is a superb moderator. He just knows how to steer the conversation, so there’s a constant flow of talk. Part of the skill of a good commentary producer is they will choose people who will strike sparks off each other and will be interested in each other; and he will look for a way to balance the conversation.

For example, he’ll have some of us talking primarily about the music, and then he’ll often bring me in for “literary colour.”  We did a commentary on Fox’s DVD of Jane Eyre (1943) starring Orson Welles and Joan Fontaine, and it was Nick leading the commentary, it was Steven Smith (who was the biographer of the film’s composer, Bernard Herrmann) discussing the music, and me for the literary background about the books.

MRH: A commentary track can also be a good resource, much like a book about a specific film or genre. When you assemble the right mix of people together, it can offer a lot of great information. The early benchmarks were made by Criterion, via edited tracks assembled from a vast array of talent.

JK: I’m actually a big fan of commentaries and I almost always listen to them, and one of the biggest disappointments for me in the last few years is how sparse and scare commentaries are becoming.

The studios just don’t seem to be interested in doing them for catalogue titles. They will sometimes port over pre-existing commentaries or interviews, or short films or things like that, but there was a period of time where wonderful supplements were being custom-made and produced by the studios, and that really seems to be a thing of the past; they’re just not willing to spend the money on extras even when they are willing to put out catalogue titles.

MRH: I really enjoyed Fox’s film noir series and it was nice to see recurring commentaries by Alain Silver and James Ursini; they were great together because they knew the genre and films inside and out.

JK: And again, those are two guys who had worked together before, were at ease with each other; the fount of knowledge between the two of them is huge, and particularly on that subject. They are the experts.

MRH: One of the more disappointing commentators for me is Richard Schickel. He’s been okay on the odd time, but often he sounds like he’s sitting in an easy chair, watching the film once, and just rambling off easy facts that come to mind. Often there’s a lot of dead space, and dead space is one of the worst things you can have in a commentary track. I understand why he’s hired, but unfortunately the end results tend to be really disappointing, and you get a sense the studios that hire him are relying on his name rather than fashioning a qualitative commentary track.

JK: I think there are too many people at the studios who just don’t give a damn. If you are going to participate in a commentary, you’d better really love that movie; you’d better be fond of it; and you’d better have some enthusiasm. If you’re bored, anyone can really hear it.

MRH: Perhaps an example of ideal commentary participants is on Twilight Time’s release of The Egyptian (1954).Ursini and Silver clearly loved the movie, and had a huge amount of information to say because they had researched the hell out of this film.

JK: Yes, absolutely, and I think that’s one of the reasons why it’s often hard to get a commentary that is that educative and that interesting. There aren’t that many people around who are willing to put out that kind of effort. Commentaries very often pay nothing – literally, nothing – so there are people who, if there’s not a financial incentive involved, they’re just not going to care. Plenty of people I know, though, will do commentaries, because they love the movies so much and they have information to convey. They have enthusiasm to pass along, and they want other people to love the movie!