Diversions
DVD Trends: Airing the Fans on DVD Sets
Listening to a director yap about setting up a shot gets old. And actors often seem to barely remember being in the movie. But fans have minute details from every scene committed to memory, can rattle off dialogue, and have altered their lives to honor their favorite TV shows and films--which is why they're being drafted to take part in the DVD.
The latest case is Moonlighting: Seasons 1 and 2 ($50), the 1980s Cybill Shepherd/Bruce Willis pas-de-deux detective series. The fans behind Moonlighting21.com lobbied for disks of the series, meeting with studio execs to plead their case. Their zeal was so impressive that the producer decided to put some of them into "The Moonlighting Phenomenon" featurette. "You'd want to see how far they'd push it," explains fan Pamela G. Hardin about the couple's chemistry during the featurette. "Every episode they'd inch it along a little further."
Fans are even getting the chance to record their own commentary tracks. Last fall, Jennifer Garner's spy saga Alias: The Complete Third Season ($70) pioneered the concept. Red Dwarf: Series V and VI ($70) followed this spring with commentaries featuring eight fans selected from 600 applications sent to the show's website. The British sci-fi comedy's producer Doug Naylor says the passion of the fans was an asset. The commentary yields offbeat remarks like "For some reason, haddocks are funny" and "The hair in this episode is fantastic."
While fans of Star Wars aren't featured on the movies' DVD s yet, they do play a key role in the Trivial Pursuit DVD Star Wars Saga Edition ($45). Mixed in with the other questions are 20 clips of queries from devotees, including Ken "Elvis Trooper" Tarleton. He dons his custom-made stormtrooper outfit along with an Elvis cape and glasses to perform a scene from Return of the Jedi . Try getting Harrison Ford to do that.
Aiming High For a Coach
Locking his team out of the basketball court until they honed classroom skills was initially an unpopular move for Richmond High School Coach Ken Carter. But as a result, his California students became champs and scholars. Coach Carter , the movie based on his life and starring Samuel L. Jackson, is now on DVD ($30).
How did Jackson do?
You mean Mr. Samuel L. Jackson. I spent a lot of time with him. When he's coaching in the movie, he's not acting.
That accurate?
The movie is 98.5 percent correct. The names of some of the players and schools were changed, but we really dealt with drug dealers, gangs, teen pregnancy.
Any sequel chances?
There could be a follow-up four or five years later to see where the team is, where I am. Getting Coach Carter made could be a movie itself.
This story appears in the June 27, 2005 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.