Best Movies about Vinyl record

Movies about Vinyl record

Any­one over 30 remem­bers a time when it was impos­si­ble to imag­ine home video with­out phys­i­cal media. But any­one over 50 remem­bers a time when it was dif­fi­cult to choose which kind of media to bet on. Just as the “com­put­er zoo” of the ear­ly 1980s forced home-com­put­ing enthu­si­asts to choose between Apple, IBM, Com­modore, Texas Instru­ments, and a host of oth­er brands, each with its own tech­no­log­i­cal spec­i­fi­ca­tions, the mar­ket for home-video hard­ware pre­sent­ed sev­er­al dif­fer­ent alter­na­tives. You’ve heard of Sony’s Beta­max, for exam­ple, which has been a punch­line ever since it lost out to JVC’s VHS. But that was just the realm of video tape; have you ever watched a movie on a vinyl record?

Four decades ago, it was dif­fi­cult for most con­sumers to imag­ine home video at all. “Get records that let you have John Tra­vol­ta danc­ing on your floor, Gene Hack­man dri­ving though your liv­ing room, the God­fa­ther stay­ing at your house,” booms the nar­ra­tor of the tele­vi­sion com­mer­cial above.

How, you ask? By pur­chas­ing a Selec­taVi­sion play­er and com­pat­i­ble video discs, which allow you to “see the enter­tain­ment you real­ly want, when you want, unin­ter­rupt­ed.” In our age of stream­ing-on-demand this sounds like a laugh­ably pedes­tri­an claim, but at the time it rep­re­sent­ed the cul­mi­na­tion of sev­en­teen years and $600 mil­lion of inten­sive research and devel­op­ment at the Radio Com­pa­ny of Amer­i­ca, bet­ter known as RCA.

Radio, and even more so its suc­ces­sor tele­vi­sion, made RCA an enor­mous (and enor­mous­ly prof­itable) con­glom­er­ate in the first half of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry. By the 1960s, it com­mand­ed the resources to work seri­ous­ly on such projects as a vinyl record that could con­tain not just music, but full motion pic­tures in col­or and stereo. This turned out to be even hard­er than it sound­ed: after numer­ous delays, RCA could only bring Selec­taVi­sion to mar­ket in the spring of 1981, four years after the inter­nal tar­get. By that time, after the com­pa­ny had been com­mis­sion­ing con­tent for the bet­ter part of a decade (D. A. Pen­nebak­er shot David Bowie’s final Zig­gy Star­dust con­cert in 1973 on com­mis­sion from RCA, who’d intend­ed to make a Selec­taVi­sion disc out of it), the for­mat faced com­pe­ti­tion from not just VHS and Beta­max but the cut­ting-edge LaserDisc as well.

Nev­er­the­less, the Selec­taVi­sion’s ultra-dense­ly encod­ed vinyl video discs — offi­cial­ly known as capac­i­tance elec­tron­ic discs, or CEDs — were, in their way, mar­vels of engi­neer­ing. You can take a deep dive into exact­ly what makes the sys­tem so impres­sive, which involves not just a break­down of its com­po­nents but a com­plete retelling of the his­to­ry of RCA, though the five-part Tech­nol­o­gy Con­nec­tions minis­eries at the top of the post. True com­pletists can also watch RCA’s video tour of its Selec­taVi­sion pro­duc­tion facil­i­ties, as well as its live deal­er-intro­duc­tion broad­cast host­ed by Tom Brokaw and fea­tur­ing a Broad­way-style musi­cal num­ber. Selec­taVi­sion was also rolled out in the Unit­ed King­dom in 1983, thus qual­i­fy­ing for a hands-on exam­i­na­tion by British retro-tech Youtu­ber Tech­moan.

Selec­taVi­sion last­ed just three years. Its fail­ure was per­haps overde­ter­mined, and not just by the bad tim­ing result­ing from its trou­bled devel­op­ment. In the ear­ly 1980s, the idea of buy­ing pre-record­ed video media lacked the imme­di­ate appeal of “time-shift­ing” tele­vi­sion, which had become pos­si­ble only with video tape. Nor did RCA, whose mar­ket­ing cen­tered on the pos­si­bil­i­ty of build­ing a per­ma­nent home-video library in the man­ner of one’s music library, fore­see the pos­si­bil­i­ty of rental. And though CEDs were ulti­mate­ly made func­tion­al, they remained cum­ber­some, able to hold just one hour of video per side and noto­ri­ous­ly sub­ject to jit­ters even on the first play. Yet as RCA’s ad cam­paigns empha­sized, there real­ly was a “mag­ic” in being able to watch the movies you want­ed at home, when­ev­er you want­ed to. In that sense, at least, we now live in a mag­i­cal world indeed.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, kniha The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

18 documentaries about vinyl and record collecting

Although there are numerous great shorts floating around on YouTube focusing on vinyl culture, digging and record collecting, here is a list of some must-see feature length documentaries and mini-series that capture all that it means to be a vinyl fanatic and look at record collecting from every possible angle.

Records Collecting Dust (2015, 57 min)

Written and directed by San Diego based musician and filmmaker Jason Blackmore, Records Collecting Dust documents the vinyl record collections, origins, and holy grails of alternative music icons Jello Biafra, Chuck Dukowski, Keith Morris, John Reis, and over thirty other underground music comrades. «. a documentary film about the music and records that changed our lives»

Vinyl (2000, 180 min)

A documentary by canadian filmmaker and record collector Alan Zweig who investigates the wacky world of record collecting and tries to get to the bottom of his obsession. In the film, Zweig seeks not to talk to people who collect records to discuss music, but rather to discuss what drives someone to collect records in the first place. Zweig spends a large portion of the film in stylized self-filmed «confessions», where he expounds on his life in regard to record collecting, feeling it has prevented him from fulfilling his dreams of a family. Between others, collectors who he taks to include a car wash employee who claims to own over one million records and claims to have memorized the track listing of every K-Tel collection he owns, a government employee who refuses to organize his collection because he doesn’t want people to come over and a man who threw out his large record collection rather than sell or give it away because he didn’t want anyone else to own it.

Sound it Out (2011, 75 min)

A documentary portrait of the very last surviving vinyl record shop in Teesside, North East England. A cultural haven in one of the most deprived areas in the UK, the film documents a place that is thriving against the odds and the local community that keeps it alive. Directed by Jeanie Finlay who grew up three miles from the shop. A distinctive, funny and intimate film about men, obsession and the irreplaceable role music plays in our lives.

Our Vinyl Weighs a Ton: This Is Stones Throw Records (2013, 94 min)

Our Vinyl Weighs A Ton is a feature-length documentary about avant-garde Los Angeles-based record label Stones Throw Records. The film weaves together rare concert footage, never-before-seen archival material, inner-circle home video and photographs and in-depth interviews with the artists who put Stones Throw Records on the map. Our Vinyl Weighs A Ton gives an exclusive look into the label’s left-of-center artists, history, culture, and global following. The film features exclusive interviews with Kanye West, Snoop Dogg, Common, Questlove, Talib Kweli, Mike D (The Beastie Boys), Tyler the Creator, and many more.

Scratch (2001, 92 min)

Directed and edited by Doug Pray, the film explores the world of the hip-hop DJ from the birth of hip-hop when pioneering DJs began extending breaks on records, to the invention of scratching and beat juggling, to the more recent explosion of turntablism. Throughout the documentary, many artists explain how they were introduced to hip-hop while providing stories of their personal experiences. While Scratch is not a movie about vinyl collecting, it’s a definitive chronicle of the history, theory, and practice of turntablism.

I Need That Record (2008, 77 min)

A documentary feature by Brendan Toller, examining why over 3000 independent record stores have closed across the U.S. in the past decade. Greedy record labels, media consolidation, homogenized radio, big box stores, Ecommerce, shoddy «stars» pushed by big money, and the digital revolution all pose threats on the very well being of our favorite record stores and the music industry at large. Will these stores die? Will they survive?

Desperate Man Blues (2003, 52 min)

The documentary focuses on an eccentric record collector, Joe Bussard, who has devoted his life to preserving the raw music of the American South, including blues, hillbilly, bluegrass, gospel and jazz. In combing the region for masterpieces primarily from the 1920s and ’30s, Bussard has amassed more than 25,000 records. Bonus features include rare footage of John Lee Hooker performing «Never Get Out of These Blues Alive» and Son House with «Death Letter Blues.».

Vinylmania: When Life Runs at 33 Revolutions Per Minute (2012, 75 min)

A trip into the grooves, Vinylmania is a 75 minute feature length documentary about an object that has never lost its soul: the vinyl record. An epic love story, the film is filled with fascinating characters and internationally recognized artists including Philippe Cohen Solal (Gotan Project), Winston Smith (Dead Kennedys, Green Day record sleeve artist), Peter Saville (Joy Division, New Order record sleeve artist) and Dj Kentaro (2002 DMC World DJ Champion). Devotion, ecstasy, infatuation, agony — all feelings that the director of the film, Paolo Campana, has experienced from childhood and shares with like-minded record collectors, Djs, musicians and artists (the said vinylmaniacs) in the documentary. Set in 11 different cities worldwide, the director sets out on a global road trip to find out what role vinyl records play in the 21st century.

Last Shop Standing: The Rise, Fall And Rebirth Of The Independent Record Shop (2012, 50 min)

Last Shop Standing inspired by the book of the same name by Graham Jones takes you behind the counter to discover why nearly 2000 record shops have already disappeared across the UK. The film charts the rapid rise of record shops in the 1960’s, 70’s and 80’s, the influence of the chart, the underhand deals, the demise of vinyl and rise of the CD as well as new technologies. Where did it all go wrong? Why were 3 shops a week closing? Will we be left with no record shops with the continuing rise of downloading? Hear from over 20 record shop owners and music industry leaders as well as musicians including Paul Weller, Johnny Marr, Norman Cook, Billy Bragg, Nerina Pallot, Richard Hawley and Clint Boon as they all tell us how the shops became and still are a part of their own musical education, a place to cherish and discover new bands and new music.

When Albums Ruled The World (2013, 90 min)

A BBC documentary that tells the story of the long playing album — the unsung hero in popular music’s epic history. Between the mid-1960s and the late 1970s, the long-playing record and the albums that graced its grooves changed popular music for ever. For the first time, musicians could escape the confines of the three-minute pop single and express themselves as never before across the expanded artistic canvas of the album. The LP allowed popular music become an art form — from the glorious artwork adorning gatefold sleeves, to the ideas and concepts that bound the songs together, to the unforgettable music itself. Built on stratospheric sales of albums, these were the years when the music industry exploded to become bigger than Hollywood. From pop to rock, from country to soul, from jazz to punk, all of music embraced what ‘the album’ could offer. But with the collapse of vinyl sales at the end of the 70s and the arrival of new technologies and formats, the golden era of the album couldn’t last forever. With contributions from Roger Taylor, Ray Manzarek, Noel Gallagher, Guy Garvey, Nile Rodgers, Grace Slick, Mike Oldfield, Slash and a host of others, this is the story of When Albums Ruled the World.

Red Beans & Rice (2010, 60 min)

A film which tells of the world of record collecting as seen through the eyes of the collectors themselves. Listen as they share there thoughts on the subject of vinyl digging as you enter the realm of the last true culture where music is key and collecting is a part of life. Rather more upbeat immersion in stacks of wax as an array of hardcore diggers trace the roots of their vinyl love and show off prize obscurities while the camera lovingly pans across musty record-shop basements and apartment walls covered with floor-to-ceiling shelf units.

Red Beans & Rice 2: Audio Vibes (2011, 60 min)

The part two of Red Beans & Rice spins up another cool set of spine-tingling tales from the world of the record collector. Look. listen and learn from our latest bunch of vinyl addicts as they wax poetic over the captivating hobby known around the world today as «vinyl digging.»

John Peel’s Record Box (2005, 51 min)

A documentary film made by Elaine Shepherd, for BBC’s Channel 4. It is about a small private collection of the British radio DJ John Peel who died in 2004 at the age of 65. His archive contained more than 100,000 vinyl records and CDs. This collection contains 143 singles — some of them doublettes — stored in a private wooden box representing some of his own favourites. According to the documentary, there are no singles by Peel’s favorite group, The Fall, because he kept them in a separate box. The film features interviews with John’s wife Sheila Ravenscroft, radio DJs and artists like Mary Anne Hobbs, Sir Elton John, Ronnie Wood, Roger Daltrey, Fergal Sharkey, Jack White, Michael Palin and Miki Berenyi.

Record Store Day: The Documentary (2011, 28 min)

In an age of digital downloads, the documentary looks at why fans still love and need to love vinyl records. The film uses archive footage and current interviews with leaders of music explaining an audiophile’s holiday and some of their favorite records and what Record Store Day means to them.

Secondhand Sureshots (2008, 30 min)

This documentary film by the dublab.com creative collective is an experiment in sound recycling. Secondhand Sureshots features four amazing, LA-based beat makers: Daedelus, J-Rocc, Nobody and Ras G in a secret mission to create new musical magic from the dusty remains of thrift store vinyl. Shot on location at Out of the Closet Thrift Stores and bedroom studios in Los Angeles.

Re-Vinylized (2011, 30 min)

The film celebrates the culture of independent record stores while examining the effects of downloading and the recent resurgence of vinyl record sales. The documentary profiles a number of Chicago’s independent record stores, and features interviews with store owners, employees and customers as well as insightful commentary from national music critics Jim DeRogatis and Greg Kot (of National Public Radio’s «Sound Opinions» program).

Crate Diggers mini-series by Fuse

The award-winning digital series by Fuse, profiles musicians through the thing they hold most dear — their record collections. New episodes every other Wednesday!

What’s In My Bag? mini-series by Amoeba Music

Award-winning series featuring artists and tastemakers sharing what they found shopping at Amoeba.

The 5 most compelling record collectors in film

Unlike most places, Hollywood never really lost its love for vinyl. It’s no coincidence that most of the film characters that follow belong to worlds set in the ’90s and ’00s, a time when the average joe was swapping records for CDs and iTunes. And today, contemporary cinema, TV and even advertising is filled with references to records and turntables.

Like collectors, filmmakers have always been lured in by vinyl’s warmth, tactility, and physicality. If you’re trying to portray passion for music, clicking an mp3 or slipping on a CD doesn’t quite cut it compared to the act of playing vinyl on a turntable. Records, from their hypnotic spinning grooves to the jolty needles that explore them to the curious rooms and shops that house them, are a cinematographer’s favourite musical friend.

Beyond its visual draw, the key reason for dominance of vinyl in cinema is wrapped up in the human part of vinyl, the collecting bit. One tradition is to use collecting to reveal illness: obsessive compulsives who use their object as a central organising focus in their lives, thrilled by lists and completism, divorced from society. The High Fidelity fans out there, buzzing off news of a soundtrack reissue, will know this all too well. But record collecting doesn’t have to be about compulsion, it can represent anything from nostalgia to cultural capital, from authenticity to personality, as the fictional characters below reveal.

Slova: Brid Arnstein

Film: Jackie Brown (1997)

Režie: Quentin Tarantino

Postava: Jackie Brown

Hrál: Pam Grier

Collecting type: Nostalgic old-timer

Quentin Tarantino wanted us to “hang out” with the characters of his 1997 film but Jackie Brown is a hard nut to crack. A key, intimate scene with Max Cherry lets music do the talking and tells us what our sassy heroine would never dare to admit herself:

I gave my heart and soul to you, girl
Now didn’t I do it, baby….didn’t I do it baby
Gave you the love you never knew, girl, oh
Didn’t I do it, baby…didn’t I do it baby

Jackie invites Max inside, telling him to make himself feel at home whilst she fixes him some coffee. She wears one of those fluffy towelling dressing gowns and it’s the first time we’ve seen her out of her uniform, the first time we’ve seen her resemble anything remotely fluffy. Except that she’s not – she’s just got a gun and the milk’s off because she’s been in jail. As she rifles through her collection, Max asks her if she “ever got into the whole CD revolution?” Jackie tells him that she’s invested too much time and money in her albums, and she’s not interested in the new stuff. He watches in awe as Jackie lights a cigarette and positions the needle on the track – The Delfonics’ ‘Didn’t I (Blow Your Mind This Time)’. It is a change in tempo from her natural soundtrack – Roy Ayers’ ‘Brawling Broads’ — which plays at four different times in the film and is a nod to Jack Hill’s 1973 Blaxploitation film Coffy (in which Pam Grier also starred.) It certainly has an effect on Cherry, who goes out to the store and buys it on cassette.

Film: High Fidelity (2000)

Režie: Stephen Frears

Na základě: Nick Hornby’s novel of the same name

Postava: Rob Gordon (formerly Rob Fleming in Hornby’s book)

Hrál: John Cusack

Collecting type: Obsedantně kompulzivní

Where would you find him? At his record store, Championship Records in Chicago

What do they sell there? Barry will tell you: “A little of anything that matters. Rock, soul, R&B, punk rock, hip-hop, ska, new wave…”

What should you say? “Have you tackled the Great Reorganization yet?”

What shouldn’t you say? “They’re only records, and if one is better than the other, well, who cares”

Whilst vinyl often features in film to contextualize the world of the characters, as with Tarantino’s Jackie Brown, Pro High Fidelity’s Rob Gordon, it is his raison d’etre. Rob is the everyman of vinyl collectors, cataloguing his past relationships into top 5 lists, whilst failing to realize that his romantic shortcomings are a direct consequence of his collecting habits. He spends his days at his store Championship Vinyl with “musical moron twins” Dick and Barry squabbling over track names and chasing out customers with poor taste:

Barry’s customer: Hi, do you have the song ‘I Just Called To Say I Love You?’ It’s for my daughter’s birthday.

Barry: Yeah we have it.

Barry’s customer: Great, great, can I have it?

Barry: No, no, you can’t.

Barry’s customer: Proč ne?

Barry: Well, it’s sentimental tacky crap. Do we look like the kind of store that sells ‘I Just Called to Say I Love You?’ Go to the mall.

Rob’s vinyl collection acts as an archive for all past experience: “What I really like about my new system is that it makes me more complicated than I am. To find anything you have to be me, or at the very least a doctor in Rob-ology.”

As is evident, the relationship between Rob and his collection is not a healthy one: it keeps him in a kind of stasis somewhere between nostalgia and aspiration. It is only when he realizes that the fantasies music has allowed him to create aren’t real that he can start to live his life in the present.

Film: Hodiny oranžová (1971)

Režie: Stanley Kubrick

Postava: Alex DeLarge

Hrál: Malcolm McDowell

What would you find him listening to? Beethovenova Symfonie č. 9

Collecting style? It’s him versus the status-quo

You won’t catch Alex singing along to Goggly Gogol, Johnny Zhivago or The Heaven Seventeen (all fictitious). This droog favours the titillations of trumpets, trombones, and Beethoven’s “glorious” Ninth Symphony:

Then the disc on the stereo twanged off and out, and in the short silence before the next one came on, she suddenly came with a burst of singing, and it was like for a moment, O my brothers, some great bird had flown into the milkbar and I felt all the malenky little hairs on my plot standing endwise, and the shivers crawling up like slow malenky lizards and then down again. Because I knew what she sang. It was a bit from the glorious 9 th , by Ludwig van.

One scene sees Alex nonchalantly saunter through a record store, barely engaging with the bestseller lists that flash in multi-colour as he makes his way to the counter to ask for his record that he ordered two weeks ago. Kubrick plays a visual game with us here, putting himself into his own reflection on popular culture: just visible in the front display is the distinctive outline of his 2001: Vesmírná odysea soundtrack. At the counter Alex meets micro-boppers Marty and Sonietta, who suck lollipops to match the bestseller lists.

These girls will consume whatever culture dictates; despite the multitude of choice that the cavernous store seems to present, its customers’ decisions are bound. Alex asks the girls: “What you got back home sister to play your fuzzy warbles on? I bet you got little save pitiful portable picnic players. Come with Uncle and hear all proper. Hear angel trumpets and devil trombones.” Sure, it’s a chat up line that ultimately leads to a threesome, but Alex has a refined taste and his collecting habits are a sound indicator of his determination to maintain his free will, whatever the consequences.

Film: Lidský provoz (1999)

Režie: Justin Kerrigan

Set in: Cardiff, Wales

Postava: Koupit

Stáří: 20-něco

Collecting type: Wheeler dealer and would-be DJ

Zatímco High Fidelity’s Rob, Dick and Barry are self-confessed vinyl snobs, Human Traffic’s Koop is a bona-fide pusher, selling wax like it’s the ecstasy his mates will be ingesting that night at the club. This is ’90s British rave culture, where disposable fun reigns in the place of nostalgic preservation. In the daytime, he’ll be found in his store spinning yarns for a quick sell, where the more ignorant the customer the better:

But in the privacy of his bedroom, Koop pretends to scratch to Mad Doctor X’s ‘Puffin da Herb’ and tells himself he’ll only make the grade when he can scratch like X.

Whilst life on the party circuit appears to be fun and games, etch away at the surface and Koop represents a lost generation. A brief yet intimate scene showing Koop’s father living in a fantasy world under psychiatric care goes some way to suggest that Koop’s perpetual living for the weekend gives him a new kind of order amidst uncertainty. Viewed in this light, Koop’s vinyl habits, as with his drug habit, seem less like harmless pastime than an indication of a life leading nowhere.

Film: Přízračný svět (2001)

Režie: Terry Zwigoff. The film is a collaboration between Zwigoff and cartoonist Daniel Clowes, who created the comic strip of the same name

Postava: Seymour

Stáří: Někde uprostřed

Hrál: Steve Buscemi

What does he collect? Traditional Jazz, Blues, Ragtime

Collecting style: Hoarder / loner

If Rob Gordon thought he’d had rough luck with the ladies, then who knows what he’d have made of Ghost World’s Seymour. Seymour is ο movie archetype of record collector/loner, at odds with an increasingly commercial world that doesn’t seem to accommodate him or his collection. But this is a reductive view, one initially shared by the film’s sardonic teen protagonist Enid and her best pal Rebecca. It isn’t until Seymour lends Enid his copy of Skip James’ ‘Devil Got My Woman’ that she realizes he’s exactly the opposite of the corporate sell-out that she loathes. Beyond the beige clothing and void sense of humour is a like-mind.

Perhaps it is through Enid’s eyes that we can best understand Seymour. To her, his collection is the accumulation of experience from a world beyond the town in which she lives. He keeps his records like inpatients in a sanatorium, holding a dedication to his 78s that borderlines obsessive compulsive. But whilst this is not necessarily strange behaviour for a vinyl enthusiast, Seymour’s main problem isn’t himself but the society he’s wound up in. In a 2001 interview, Zwigoff said that “For me, art, music and design all came together in the late ‘20s [….] In 1929 you could go see the latest Picasso exhibition and then go see Jelly Roll Morton play at a nightclub. In 2001, you can go see either ‘N Sync or the Backstreet Boys. There’s no comparison.” Whilst Zwigoff is being a little dramatic here, it’s with good reason. Every modern culture is afflicted with the same predicament – the presence of the ghosts left over from a seemingly more authentic past.

• a clockwork orange
• film
• svět duchů
• vysoká kvalita reprodukce zvuku
• lidský provoz
• jackie hnědá
• sběratelé rekordů
• stanley kubrick
• tarantino

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