Fifteen years ago, when director Guillermo del Toro was scheduled to drop by Criterion’s New York office for a project, a casual email from the social media team sparked an unexpected tradition. On a whim, someone floated the idea of snapping a photo of the director inside their office closet—a quirky little nook where guests on business, as a courtesy, were invited to pick out a couple of films as a parting gift. Knowing how generous the Pan's Labyrinth director was, Peter Becker, Criterion’s president, figured del Toro wouldn’t just be game—he might even let them film the whole thing. Hell, maybe folks on “the Facebook” would get a modest kick out of watching him rummage through their spine-numbered treasure trove of films.
And sure enough, Guillermo got back to them, saying, “Sure, let’s do it!”
“He totally understood what we were doing, and he understood why we were doing it.” Becker told me, still sounding amazed nearly two decades later. “He generously went through, picked a whole bunch of stuff in very little time, saying just a few words about each thing he put in his bag.”
And just like that, what started off as a one-off video of del Toro rifling through a closet of movies served as the blueprint for Criterion’s most beloved ritual: the Criterion Closet Picks video series.
Over 300 videos later, Closet Picks has become cinephiles’ version of unboxing therapy meets NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert. Featuring everyone from Willem Dafoe to Hideo Kojima, Cate Blanchett to Janelle Monáe, all whispering sweet nothings about their favorite films while raiding Criterion’s curated stash of classic and contemporary films like kids in a candy store. All the while, putting thousands of viewers onto the next film to queue into their backlog.
To celebrate those fans, Criterion took the closet on the road last year, allowing fans to line up in multiple cities across the United States—as well as Canada for TIFF—to live out their own star-for-a-day fantasy picking out films, posing for a Polaroid, and walking away with their physical media finds like it was 2005.
For its 40th anniversary, the mobile Criterion Closet made its seventh stop in my hometown of Chicago, just in time for the Chicago International Film Festival. Naturally, I joined the dedicated Criterion fans waiting in line since 9:30 a.m., despite a light drizzle and a head full of questions for Becker, whom I had bumped into the day before when he broke the bad news that the line had closed hours earlier on the Friday before. At the time, I didn’t realize I was casually chatting with the president of the whole shebang.
While waiting for my own pilgrimage into the hot commodity mobile closet, I met back up with Becker, who recognized me from the day before, and he agreed to my blog-brained inquiry for an impromptu interview. The first was what even inspired the idea to film people cherry-picking their favorite movies from their closet.
“We found that some of the best conversations we had with people—even if we had just interviewed them for two hours beforehand—happened in the closet at the very end of their visits,” Becker said. “People are relaxed and they’re looking up and they’re being reminded of movies that they love and it triggers memories.”
While del Toro had served as the blueprint for what the Criterion Closet Picks are today, Becker told me they were pretty shy about asking more creatives to do a video with them because they didn’t want to create collaborators on the spot for what was ostensibly marketing their products for them.
“We were pretty sparing about who we asked, so the earliest closet videos are some of the people who were closest to the company—personally, emotionally. People that we can turn to when we’re trying something new,” Becker said.
The earliest of Criterion Closet’s visitors included the likes of Emmy award-winning actor Bill Hader and French director Agnès Varda. Unlike today’s Criterion Closet format, where the camera stayed in a fixed position as its guests perused the shelves, they were boxed in between on either side of their shoulders and backs. Becker says the old format had metal shelves, and the camera was in the wrong place. Mainly, he didn’t know where to put it while he himself was recording guests raiding their closet. Meanwhile, Becker tried his damnedest hand-holding the camera while trying to get out of people’s way. After a while, the tide turned, and guests started asking Criterion to shoot them browsing their closet.
“We’ve always aspired for Criterion to be a hub in film culture—a common place that can be shared by filmmakers, audiences, restorers, scholars, and critics,” Becker said. “To be a meeting place for people who are coming to movies for all kinds of different reasons.”
Becker’s favorite Closet Pick videos are the early ones—mostly because he was behind the camera for them. But his standout moment came when Rose Byrne, fresh from her Criterion closet experience, chatted about it on Late Night with Seth Meyers. The two laughed over the charming absurdity of the fact that it was, true to its name, “just a closet.” For Becker, seeing their shared enthusiasm reflected in everyday fans attending their roadshow was a gratifying reminder that the love of cinema can bridge even the insurmountable gap between stars and audiences.
“We honor the filmmakers every day with their work, but the audiences that care about movies the way that we care about movies, sign up for our streaming service, and buy our discs, we couldn’t do this without them,” Becker told me. “So the mobile closet was built as a tribute to them.”
The mobile Criterion Closet itself was a snug squeeze—about two and a half shoulders wide, which Becker assured attendees was a faithful replica of the genuine article, minus the ceiling height (a concession to van physics). Not that anyone minded. Each time a group would emerge from the back of the van, they did so like Russell Crowe in Gladiator, hoisting their film picks overhead and basking in the cheers from the line like they’d just won the Cannes Palme D’Or in New City’s mall kiosk parking lot.
Having waited in line for more than five and a half hours, Becker highlighted that the true essence of the mobile Criterion Closet wasn’t the spectacle of the truck (or the 40% discount for attendees)—it was the line itself. For Becker and the Criterion team, bringing the closet to Chicago wasn’t about mimicking the celebrity experience. It was about transforming a queue into a conversation, encouraging spontaneous community. It was about film lovers stepping out from behind their screens, connecting in real time, and forging bonds over a mutual passion for cinema.
“When we started the mobile closet, we didn’t realize how much the line was going to be the point,” Becker said. “What happens in the Closet videos often is that people are reminded of movies, and often, they’re reminded of who they saw them with, who recommended them to them, or who has always wanted to see this movie they haven’t seen. We really had come to understand that film is a mode of connection, and we hadn’t anticipated the degree to which that was going to be true at this event, too.”
Because hundreds of people turned out to the event, Criterion folks quickly recognized they couldn’t handle the Closet Picks individually. Instead, they grouped people up. And from there, they unconsciously fostered icebreakers amongst folks who’d be spending hours waiting together to talk about their shared love of films.
“It gives people permission to talk to each other and compare notes,” Becker said. “The mountain of cinema is enormous. There’s a million pathways, a million trials that people have taken. So it’s a chance for people to compare notes about the things that they’ve discovered on their own journeys—their own adventures as moviegoers—and for us to hear from them too.”
Proof that the line was the load-bearing half of the magic: my partner and I became fast friends with our queue comrades, Kato and Dan. Between swatting away bees drawn to our collectively enticing shampoo-coffee aura, we immediately swapped Letterboxd and Instagram handles like business cards at a mixer. Over the course of our wait, we strategized our three film pick titles each, with military precision—plus back-up plans in case our top choices got snatched. Deep cuts like William Friedkin's Sorcerer and Gina Prince-Bythewood’s Love & Basketball earned mutual nods of respect.
One of the most rewarding parts of the event for Becker was seeing people naturally form groups—be they clusters of three or five—and bond over their favorite films. After spending hours in line together, it became hard for him to tell who had arrived as friends and who had become bosom buddies while waiting in line.
“There’s a sense of community. I think that’s fairly special—to feel like you’re fostering a sense of community among people. As we get older in life, it’s increasingly rare to find ourselves surrounded by complete strangers with whom we know to a certainty we share a passionate interest,” he said.
He continued: “Everybody here really loves movies in a way that is important enough to them that they're willing to sacrifice some of their precious time and freedom to be here and wait in line. We may all have more in common with these strangers that we're in line with than we do with some of our good friends and relatives, who we love and certainly wouldn't trade them for strangers in line, necessarily. But it is really nice every once in a while to be surrounded by people that you're like, ‘Ah, I see you. I can feel what you're feeling about that film,’ or ‘ I’m grateful for you sharing your experience with me for these movies.’”
Plus, our collective anguish over Michael Bay’s Armageddon being sold out led to the real jaw-dropping reveal when Becker, keeping folks company while waiting in line, casually informed us that Kato’s would-be pick sparked an internal debate at Criterion HQ over whether it should join its catalogue. Fortunately, Bay maximalism prevailed, and the film proved to be so popular that it vanished within the first half-day of the Criterion Closet roadshow. Womp womp.
As a freshly minted Paul Thomas Anderson devotee and a lifelong evangelist for Kátia Lund and Fernando Meirelles’ 2002 drama film, City of God, I couldn’t leave well enough alone, having reworked my chicken scratch Criterion Closet Picks list and spiralling into mild despair over their absence from Criterion’s 1,200 plus titles, I had to ask: how does Criterion decide which films get invited to the cool kids table?
“We never wanted to be a housekeeping seal of approval for movies. It’s not that there aren’t great movies that are not a part of the collection. It’s not that every movie in the collection is beloved by every member of the Criterion staff. Film is a very subjective passion, so we’re constantly fielding—from within the staff and from the outside world—people’s passionate pitches for what we should release,” Becker said.
To give a look under the hood, Becker explained that Criterion has an internal acquisitions team that includes people working on theatrical, disc, and Criterion Channel programming acquisitions, as well as a curatorial advisory board that it calls upon anytime to learn more about a film and determine where it would fit in. This would include getting the lowdown about a film from a culture that staff aren’t well versed in, as well as curating a list of films that fit a certain vein they want to bolster in their library, and tracking down those hidden gems. As such, Becker told me that Criterion has a long list of films that we’re pursuing at any given time in addition to a huge, rolling backlog of movies it already has rights to that it hasn’t gotten around to releasing just yet. This would include films like Satyajit Ray’s Days and Nights in the Forest, which took 11 years for Criterion, in collaboration with Martin Scorsese’s Film Foundation and the Film Heritage Foundation in India, to combine forces and complete the restoration of the 1920s Indian Bengali melodrama.
Becker explained that bringing new titles into the Criterion fold can be a years-long process, especially when restorations are involved. Films with poorly preserved elements often require extensive work and patience, making some releases a slow but deliberate labor of love. That being said, some projects culminate quicker than others, as was the case with Sean Baker’s Mikey Madison-led Academy Award-winning film, Anora. Which, as Becker recounts, was a film Criterion was working on before it received all the awards because of its admiration for Baker’s work and belief in the film, which accelerated its physical release schedule from Criterion.
Becker added that Criterion’s selection process isn’t purely curatorial, because it is not just about being able to choose any film at any given time. Securing the rights and locating the necessary materials are just part of the equation. Even when they have the legal clearance, they might have to wait until a filmmaker isn’t busy working on a film to collaborate. Likewise, the path to a release often involves a complex mix of timing, logistics, and having the free time to partner up—all things Becker finds to be the secret sauce to what makes Criterion special.
“I think that’s part of what makes the whole collection so rich—it doesn’t reflect any single curatorial perspective. But it is the product of a bunch of genuinely engaged people who wholeheartedly discuss what the best use of our time right now would be,” Becker said. “We’re trying to make the best choices we can for an audience that has rich and eclectic tastes. So, we would never dump a whole bunch of releases from one filmmaker, or just because it was from one studio, all at once. We’re always trying to put together a mix of films, mixing up classics, contemporary, silent, sound, black and white, international, Hollywood, [and] independent, all together month after month, creating a varied diet for people.”
When I brought up my dismay that City of God and Magnolia hadn’t yet made it into the Criterion Collection, Becker graciously encouraged fans everywhere to keep sending in suggestions, reminding movie lovers that Criterion still has “plenty of work to do.” With any luck, taking the mobile Criterion Closet on the road will pave the way for long-overlooked gems and cult classics to finally earn their place in its spine-numbered pantheon.
