I was always a movie fan, but as college beckoned a few older friends were helping to evolve my cinematic sensibilities. They pointed me in the direction of the western, the gritty urban drama, the sly satire and the moody horror film, genres that were trampled under by the popcorn blockbusters I was reared on. A whole new world was opened up to me and I spent a lot of time and money tracking down old films I was told I should see.
Somewhere along the line came the knowledge that these films were not being presented as they were originally intended. I can’t remember the first time I heard the term “letterbox” or “pan and scan,” but I do remember the first time I viewed a widescreen laserdisc, and the world changed.
In the late summer of 1990, a good friend took me to the library of Nassau Community College, which had a small laserdisc collection, to see the Criterion Collection edition of Blade Runner. It was projected on a large wide screen, with black bars visible at the top and bottom. I can’t remember for sure, but the disc might have contained a demo that compared a widescreen image with one that was panned and scanned. I was immediately enamored of its glorious 425 lines of resolution.
At that moment all I knew was that I had to have one.
In the pre-Internet age I had no idea how to find them though. However, almost by divine providence, I discovered a small chain of stores that exclusively sold laserdiscs (and laserdisc players) about two miles from my house. My fate was sealed.
With my first credit card burning a hole in my pocket I ran to Laserland, slapped it on the counter and bought a $1000 Pioneer laserdisc player, along with the Criterion Blade Runner as well as Star Wars. My Mom was not pleased. My Dad thought it was cool.
Two friends (including the one who introduced me to the format) bought players within the next few weeks, and it seemed like we were in a race to see who could buy more. We scarfed up every new release, but the real treat came when the classics were released in widescreen for the first time. By this time I had seen the original Star Wars trilogy, the Star Trek films and the Bond films countless times, but seeing them letterboxed was like seeing them for the first time.
Around this time, I became involved with the Television Club at St. John’s University, and met several like-minded individuals who were also rabid film fans. I preached the gospel of laserdiscs to them and they needed little prodding to jump on the bandwagon. Although one friend in particular (and you know who you are) had to watch a side-by-side comparison of a scene from Return of the Jedi before he would believe that letterboxing was “real.”
The proprietor of Laserland was a shrewd customer. If you purchased an LD player from him he gave you .18 rentals for one year, which encouraged a lot of “try before you buy.” In my case, I needed very little provocation, and rented a disc a day and copied them to VHS so I could repopulate my collection with the widescreen versions of films. It meant nothing to me that it was a non-recordable format. Lasers were meant to be bought.
The medium grew ever so slightly, but it was never anything more than a niche market. Letterboxing never caught on in the VHS world. Most consumers refused to accept the black bars at the top and bottom of the image, either refusing to acknowledge (or not caring) they were getting more image, not less. They wanted every inch of their 4x3 televisions taken up with a soft, hazy image.
The seeming ignorance of the everyday consumer produced a sneering condescension in us laserphiles. We were the true film fans, the upper echelon of cineastes. We were watching films they way they were intended to be seen. We were privy to their secrets as we listened to audio commentaries, ingested exhaustive documentaries and discovered never before seen deleted scenes. We felt like a secret society that knew better.
Somewhere around the mid-nineties the home video world started buzzing about a new format: DVD. Apparently they were smaller, cheaper, held much more data and provided greater resolution than a Laserdisc. And they spelled the end of our secret society.
DVDs caught on fast and devastated Laserdisc in their wake. While the first offerings didn’t light the world on fire I could see the handwriting on the wall. DVDs were penetrating the mainstream market. They demolished lasers and soon toppled VHS. They were sold in Wal-Mart. ‘Nuff said.
Before the advent of high-def TVs there was still a potent letterboxing backlash and many DVDs were released with a pan and scan version. That all went away when the flat screen 16x9 aspect ratio eventually became the industry standard.
I still miss the days of Laser. It was a heady time when we felt as though we knew something everyone else didn’t. We were doing it right and the rest of the world was doing it wrong. The format pulled back the camera on a medium we dearly loved, exposing all its secrets to us, making us love it even more.
Lasers were bulky, cumbersome, expensive, but they were the purview of a chosen few, and in their own way they helped forge and strengthen the geeky bond we still enjoy today.
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