Last month, my ‘Movie Guy’ License got suspended, and I’m still kind of reeling from it.
I’ve spent most of my adult life doing what you’re supposed to do to stay in good standing with the movie dork community, so I walked into my review hearing with the confidence of an Oscar winner.
I submitted my film school transcripts. Listed the documentaries and narrative shorts, the awards, the festival programs where they spelled my name slightly wrong. I talked at length about my years behind the counter at Blockbuster in the mid-2000s, watching physical media die in real time. I found the perfect movie for people who wanted “something funny but serious,” or “horror but not scary.” I took late-fee rage from a grown man returning Patch Adams four days overdue and didn’t blink.
One examiner asked if the Blockbuster years counted toward the license. I said they should count double, considering the psychic toll.
He didn’t write that down.
Then we got to the collection, and the mood shifted.
I own thousands of DVDs. Not “a lot of DVDs.” Thousands. They’re alphabetized by director, then in chronological order of release. I brought photographs and a printed Excel document cataloging the entire setup. The chairman flipped through it without expression.
I quickly mentioned the hundreds of promotional VHS screeners. The Gummo screener alone will run you over a hundred bucks. And the LaserDiscs, dozens of them. I don’t have a working player, but it still counts, in my opinion.
I even brought up Criterion before they could. Twice a year, The Collection runs its 50% off flash sale, and something happens to me that can only be described as a semi-annual minor psychotic episode. I start behaving like a crypto bro watching a meme coin crash, except the coin is a boutique home video label, and I’m the whale buying The Third Man for the fourth time.
Somewhere around hour two, another copy of a movie I already own stops feeling like a purchase and starts feeling like a civic duty. I told the board this was ‘estate planning.’ My kid has no idea any of this is happening, but one day she’s going to inherit five editions of Yojimbo. That has to count for something.
For one second, I thought I was in the clear.
Then the chairman asked me to finish a line from Jaws.
Not a deep cut. Spielberg. The first blockbuster. The one everyone alive has seen.
He said, “Farewell and adieu to you…”
And something in my brain quietly clocked out.
Somewhere behind my eyes, a small man threw up his hands and left the building. I couldn’t finish the quote, but I immediately told them the mechanical shark was nicknamed Bruce, for what that’s worth.
They were already writing something down.
The room changed after that, the way a room changes right after a wedding toast goes poorly. I tried explaining that movie-quote people and movie-collection people are two different species. Quote people can run whole scenes from memory. Collection people spend forty dollars because the color timing is one percent closer to the original print, which maybe four people on Earth can actually see.
They moved on to Taxi Driver. I knew there was a mirror involved.
The Godfather. I said something about an offer and immediately hated myself.
Casablanca. Only the lines everybody knows.
I asked if any of this was multiple choice. It was not multiple choice.
Could I explain the ending of 2001? No.
I’ve seen that film more times than I’ve seen most of my extended family. I own it in four formats. If Kubrick rose from the dead right now and walked me through the ending personally, using hand puppets, I would nod, stay completely lost, and start wondering what to get for dinner.
I brought up four years of film school, most of which I spent convincingly faking comprehension of weirdo art cinema in front of professors who clearly knew I was faking it and let me pass anyway. Film school taught me that if you don’t understand something, wait three seconds and say, “I think the ambiguity is the point.”
The board’s official position was that faking it well is not a credential.
If anything, they said, it was evidence against me.
They didn’t revoke the license outright, thank Christ. But I’m no longer allowed to call a film “criminally underrated.” Can’t open a sentence with “The thing about early Jarmusch is…” Recommending double features is off the table, effective immediately.
For the next six months, I’m required to call them “movies” instead of “films,” even when discussing Bergman.
And until further notice, I’m barred, in writing, from claiming I fully understand anything David Lynch ever made.
I’m not even going to fight that last one.
On my way out, I passed a kid waiting for his turn – A24 beanie cap, a full Cassavetes box set tucked under one arm. He couldn’t have been older than twenty-two. He was explaining Stalker to the receptionist.
Somebody offered him water. Nobody offered me water.
In five years he’ll be running the place. And he’ll never know what a rewind fee felt like in his soul.