The hottest event at this year’s New York Film Festival isn’t a film at all. It’s a van.
Parked next to Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, the mobile version of the Criterion Closet — a tiny space stocked with the prestigious DVDs and Blu-rays of films in the Criterion Collection — attracted a line that wrapped around the block.
It was a chance for festivalgoers to enact their own version of the Closet Picks videos, in which celebrities like Bill Hader, Ayo Edebiri and Willem Dafoe visit a product-filled closet in the company’s Manhattan office. They pick out their favorite titles and evangelize about their choices while not so coincidentally on tour promoting their latest projects. (Dafoe’s haul included Luchino Visconti’s “The Leopard” and the actor’s own “The Last Temptation of Christ”; Edebiri left with Wes Anderson’s “Bottle Rocket,” among other titles, and Hader’s selections included the western “My Darling Clementine.”)
For the company’s 40th anniversary, it adapted the experience to the inside of a delivery van and opened it up to the public, starting with the first two weekends of the New York Film Festival (which concludes Oct. 13). The next stop, scheduled for Oct. 26 and 27, will be in Brooklyn Bridge Park in collaboration with St. Ann’s Warehouse.
Visitors to the van are invited to film their own Closet Picks videos and pull titles from the shelf to gush about for the camera. Unlike the celebrities, they do have to pay for their picks, but with a 40 percent discount.
“It was something no one ever thought we could do,” said Rainna Stapelfeldt, 26, a Bed-Stuy resident who took home “Sid and Nancy,” “Midnight Cowboy” and “Memories of Murder” after a 10-hour wait in line.
“I loved when Willem Dafoe was talking about, ‘I’m actually in this movie,’” said her friend, Angelina Torres, 27, who selected “The Piano Teacher,” “Sex, Lies and Videotape” and “Funny Games.” She added, “I won’t have one of those moments, but I am obsessed with that.”
The van is an inexact copy of the actual Criterion Closet, which is a few inches narrower and slightly taller than its mobile counterpart.
The experience is an inexact copy, too. While some Criterion Closet alumni, like the Safdie brothers and Barry Jenkins, are known for walking out with large collections of movies, the haul in the van is more constrained: three picks, three minutes.
Those limits, and rainy weather on the opening weekend, didn’t deter participants. Over two weekends, more than 900 visitors made their way through the line and into the van. Famous festivalgoers, including the directors Ari Aster and David Cronenberg as well as the actress Isabella Rossellini, popped in, but did not have to brave the wait.
“I figured the only way I’m going to get in that closet is if I make something myself, and that’s not going to happen,” said Jake Lipson, 31, a software engineer who lives in Brooklyn and joined the line before 9 a.m. on Saturday. His own picks, after a six-and-a-half-hour wait, were “Black Orpheus” (1959), Robert Altman’s “3 Women” and “Metropolitan,” the 1990 Whit Stillman comedy.
Sarah Gray, 36, and Jon Early, 35, arrived at Alice Tully around 10:20 a.m. on Saturday to get in line. Gray prepared for the wait by bringing a camp chair. The two, who got married the week before, joked about wishing they’d had the van at their wedding.
They knew exactly what they were hoping to walk away with: for one, the box set of the director Richard Linklater’s “Before” trilogy, which each had quoted in their vows without the other’s knowledge. They also prepared for their closet video.
“I might have talked into the shower a few times today,” Early said.
Michelle Julian, 45, stood for eight hours in the rain to grab films for her brother on the first weekend, and returned the next week before 9 a.m. to wait six hours for her own picks: “The Virgin Suicides” directed by Sofia Coppola, Martin Scorsese’s “The Irishman” and a box set of films by Wong Kar-wai.
“Once you enter the van, it is extremely overwhelming,” said Julian, who lives in Manhattan but grew up in rural New Mexico and remembers making the three-hour journey with her brother to the nearest Barnes & Noble to browse Criterion releases. “I had to pinch myself and ask, ‘Is this real life?’”
Frequently checking in on the line was Peter from Criterion, who at first introduced himself as someone who had worked at the company for a long time. That was actually Criterion’s president, Peter Becker, who said it was both rewarding and “a little mortifying” to see people wait so long, at times in the rain, for the experience.
“We’re a company that makes things that people enjoy at home,” Becker said. “For us, this is super moving and gratifying.”
People waiting in line pored over pamphlets listing the titles to prepare for their three minutes. The closet wasn’t organized by genre or filmmaker, but by spine number, the sequential order indicating when Criterion released its versions.
But they didn’t need to worry about titles selling out, as Criterion staff members rapidly restocked box sets and individual titles in between visitors. The most popular closet picks, Criterion said, included the “Before” trilogy, Gregg Araki’s Teen Apocalypse trilogy and “Frances Ha,” starring Greta Gerwig.
Once people made their way into the van, they could record their own video via a cellphone mounted on the wall. Criterion staffers guided them to their selections while also keeping an eye on a red clock.
“It’s such a high,” said Valeria Rotello, a producer at Criterion and part of the team that makes the celebrity Closet Picks videos. “The worst part of it is having to tell people that your time is up.”
Gray and Early, the newlyweds, finally made it in a little after 9 p.m., when they picked up the screwball comedy “Bringing Up Baby,” the “Police Story” movies with Jackie Chan, the Holly Hunter romantic comedy “Broadcast News” and the “Before” trilogy. (Becker, the Criterion president, gave them the trilogy as a wedding present.)
“Not to be confused with ‘Divorce Italian Style,’” Gray said in their closet video, pointing to the 1961 Italian black comedy on the shelf. “That’s for the next visit.”
“Next time I make her wait in line for 10 hours,” Early said, “We’re getting divorced Italian style.”
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