Jonathan Rosenbaum on the 6,000-Film DVD Collection He Sold to a Pediatrician, ‘The Brutalist,’ and His New Book

“In Dreams Begin Responsibilities” is the title of a new Jonathan Rosenbaum reader, culminating nearly six decades of never-before-compiled writing on film, jazz, and literature. The legendary Chicago-based film critic known for iconoclastic takes on the canon has been published everywhere from Cahiers du Cinéma to Film Comment, Sight and Sound, and, of course, the Chicago Reader, where he succeeded Dave Kehr as head critic starting in 1987. He retired from that post in 2008.

Rosenbaum, turning 82 this February, is in conversation this weekend at New York’s Metrograph with filmmaker (and friend) Michael Almereyda (“Hamlet,” “Tesla,” “Nadja”). They’ll discuss Serbian director Dušan Makavejev’s cult classic, erotically charged political comedy “W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism” (1971), controversial for its montage throughline between sexual liberation and communist revolution, as well as the wild corporate satire “Giants and Toys” (1958) from Yasuzō Masumura. Rosenbaum has long championed the sociopolitically charged works of the Japanese director, who trained under Visconti, Fellini, and Antonioni while a film student in Rome.

While the new book engages with Masumura, ripe for canon rediscovery, “In Dreams Begin Responsibilities” (Hat & Beard Press) also covers across 500 pages the works of filmmakers, writers, and jazz musicians. His subjects include the likes of Stanley Kubrick, Thomas Pynchon, Philip Roth, Vladimir Nabokov, Ahmad Jamal, Adam Curtis, Louis Armstrong, Chantal Akerman, and Kelly Reichardt. Rosenbaum estimates that, throughout his career, he’s published more than 9,000 works dating back to the 1960s. Most are available on his website, which he still maintains himself. He’s published books on Orson Welles, Abbas Kiarostami, Erich von Stroheim, Jim Jarmusch, and many more, with his teeth-cutting days as an extra for Robert Bresson and a script consultant for Jacques Tati continuing to inform his often irreverent cinematic close-readings.

While in New York City before this weekend’s Metrograph double bill, Rosenbaum spoke with IndieWire on the phone about those films, plus the encyclopedia-level DVD collection he sold to a pediatrician last year. But as the critic explains, the collection isn’t too far away from his home in Chicago, as he’s taken up a friendship (and a movie club) with the buyer.

This interview has been condensed and edited for length. Rosenbaum and I spoke over the phone the day before David Lynch died, so we didn’t get a chance to discuss him, though Rosenbaum has written extensively on Lynch over the years.

IndieWire: How were the essays for this particular book chosen?

Jonathan Rosenbaum: Basically, alright, the rules were, first of all, only pieces that haven’t been included in my other collections. In other words, I don’t repeat anything that’s been in my other books. That’s one rule. The other rule is the best pieces that haven’t been collected on film, literature, and jazz.

What’s your relationship with Michael Almereyda, and how were the Metrograph films chosen?

Michael Almereyda has been a good friend since he was 16. I’ve known him a long, long time. As for the films, originally, it was going to be “W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism” and “Vagabond,” by Agnès Varda. They had to make a last-minute substitution. The only downside is that both of the films are, in their own way, kind of grisly. It isn’t a pairing I would’ve thought of myself.

‘Giants and Toys’Courtesy Metrograph

One of your most famous pieces was a controversial essay on Ingmar Bergman, published in The New York Times shortly after he died in 2007. Some readers objected to that piece, in which you take on Bergman as a director who’s perhaps been over-emulated for the wrong reasons over the years.

I was asked by an editor of The New York Times to write an op-ed piece. That’s a piece that unfortunately, I’ve never reprinted or wanted to reprint in any of my books. First of all, I did think that Bergman was overrated. Well, I don’t know so much as overrated, but ranked high for the wrong reasons. In some ways, my favorite of all filmmakers is Dreyer, and I think Dreyer is a much more important filmmaker. I agreed to it, but then I had to rewrite the piece two or three times before the editor was satisfied with it. In fact, the title of the piece is not mine. What a lot of people hated about the piece was the title, “Scenes from an Overrated Career,” which is not what I would’ve called it. In all my earlier drafts, I mentioned how he should be ranked really highly as a theater director. The editor cut that out. It’s a piece that belongs to the Times. It doesn’t belong to me. It’s ironic but maybe the most read or famous piece I’ve written that has my name on it is not a piece I like very much.

Does “In Dreams Begin Responsibilities” contain any similar essays that go against the grain of the perceived canon?

I don’t think that my role as a critic is to counter certain things that I disagree with written by other people. It wasn’t my idea to even write a piece about Bergman. It was sort of like, here was the one chance I had to write for The New York Times, so I took it, but if I had to make that decision again, I would’ve said no. To me, writing for The New York Times proved to me that it was like signing a pact with the devil. One of the things I argue in my new book is that I am basically a cult writer or a niche market writer, and I like that. I also consider myself an artist, but if I were writing for a mainstream publication, I couldn’t get away with saying I was an artist. When you write for The New York Times, they brand you. When you’re a niche market writer, you can brand yourself.

You were polled for Sight and Sound on the best films of 2024. What were some of your favorites last year?

“Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell.” I liked Alex Horwath’s “Henry Fonda for President.” I have mixed feelings, but I was impressed by a lot of “The Brutalist,” especially by the performance of the lead, [Adrien] Brody. Because I’m not a working critic, I’m not writing for any specific place as a regular critic, I don’t have the same obligation to keep up. I’ve seen a certain number but there are a lot of films that might even be important to me if I saw them, but I haven’t. What bothers me about 10-best lists is they’re really kind of a form of promotion, which is doing it for the studios. Sight and Sound got me to turn in a 10-best list in October, I think, which becomes ridiculous because all these films come out after October and are supposedly the best of the year. There’s a kind of boondoggle involved in the whole practice, which makes me dubious about it.

Jonathan Rosenbaum as a teenager in AlabamaCourtesy Jonathan Rosenbaum

Why were you mixed on “The Brutalist”?

I read a review, I think it was by Michael Koresky [in Reverse Shot], which I agreed with, that the first half is much stronger than the second half. The second half, it changes its register in a way, where it becomes a kind of symbolic or metaphorical film rather than a film you can take literally. That’s partly where I think my ambivalence is.

There’s a lot of doom and gloom around the state of film criticism, especially as it’s become democratized by social media. It’s less rarified now. Where do you land on that?

The people who read me the most are young people, not people my own age. I track who goes to my website on Google Analytics, and generally, the people who like reading me the most are young people. Most people of my generation think it’s the end of film criticism, the end of film as an art form, I don’t think any of that. There’s a lot going on in film; there’s a lot going on in film criticism that I like. For example, I could mention two online film publications, neither of which come out anymore, but have come out in the past couple of decades, one of which was Rouge and one of which was LOLA journal. Those are superior to any film magazines that came out from anywhere during the supposed golden age of film criticism. There’s more of everything now. Films are much more accessible, but because there’s so much that’s available, a lot of the audience has become more conservative. They stick with the Oscar nominees. In other words, they basically stick with what the studio tells them are the most important films, which is not something I want to do.

Many critics, myself included, are under duress to file a review immediately after a festival premiere. Have you had to subject yourself to such a quick turnover in recent years?

That happened to me recently. Sight and Sound assigned me to write “Megalopolis,” and I had 24 hours in which to write it. I’m not crazy about my review, but it’s not something now I’d want to revise. Even so, I had to write in a hurry. Other times, when I’ve had to do that, for instance, one of the very best pieces in my new book is a kind of obituary on Godard, called “Godard’s Airplane.” From the time I learned about Godard’s death to the time I turned in the piece was 24 hours, and it’s one of my best pieces. I guess I’d already had enough thoughts worked out in my head, where I didn’t have to worry over it so much. It depends. That’s one way in which writing is like jazz a little bit, the improvisational aspect.

Last September, you posted your massive physical media collection for sale on Craigslist for $20,000. Who did you sell all those DVDs and Blu-rays to?

I did sell them all, and that was just because I needed the money. I sold them to a pediatrician in Chicago who has a screening room and is a big film buff. We’re becoming friends. He’s a very nice guy. I’ve only met a few times, but I like hanging out with him. Basically, what’s amazing is, I posted a thing on Craigslist and heard from him the same day. It was immediate. It wasn’t like waiting around, which I thought I’d have to do. In fact, we are starting a film club in which I pick favorites from, which used to be mine, and then we have about a dozen people come together to watch it and discuss it afterwards. I did it because I had to pay off a lot of debts, but in a way, I felt a little liberated after I did it. I’m kind of a pack rat, and because I’ve written a DVD Column for so many years for Cinemascope, I had a huge collection. It was like 6,000, 6,700, I can’t remember exactly. Part of one reason that made it easier is you can access so much now on the internet in various ways, so I’ve actually been downloading an awful lot on my hard drive of things I still want to have.

Someone actually quickly put the entire collection online via torrent or some huge downloadable folder.

I know the guy who did it. He basically stayed over three or four days in my apartment doing the registry.

“In Dreams Begin Responsibilities: A Jonathan Rosenbaum Double Bill” plays Metrograph on Saturday, January 18. Tickets are still available via Metrograph’s website here.