“Fuck DVD” is how Kevin Smith chose to begin the Criterion Collection LaserDisc commentary for his third feature film, Chasing Amy. At the time, heading toward the end of the 1990s, home video was in a state of flux, ebbing and flowing between the hoard of general consumers clamoring for sell-through-priced VHS tapes and ardent home theater junkies eager to acquire the latest and greatest technology to show off the superiority of their deluxe systems. Particularly closer to the end of the ’90s, with VHS, LaserDisc and DVD all competing for consumer dollars and retailer shelf life, the format war wasn’t one of which was better, but which would last. Decades removed from Smith’s ribald taunt at budding technology, we’ve traversed beyond DVD and into a new era saturated with Blu-rays and UHDs. This all had to start somewhere.

In 1987, Criterion re-released 1933’s King Kong on the still niche LaserDisc format. They had previously released the film on disc in 1984 but saw fit to bring it back with a new addition: the first ever “running commentary” over the feature as a separate audio track. Provided by late film historian Ronald Haver, he opens the track by stating, “Hello, ladies and gentlemen, I’m Ronald Haver, and I’m here to do something which we feel is rather unique. I’m going to take you on a lecture tour of King Kong as you watch the film. The LaserDisc technology offers us this opportunity and we feel it’s rather unique: the ability to switch back and forth between the soundtrack and this lecture track…”

That the reaction to Haver’s track was well-received by the home video collector community probably goes without saying. In the same year, Criterion included commentaries for Jean Renoir’s Grand Illusion as well as Mike Nichols’ The Graduate, the latter of which also contained both analog and digital soundtracks, a first for the format in the US (and arguably bumped its MSRP up to an eye-watering $99.95 USD, nearly $281 with inflation). Even if its target audience was home theater aficionados with deep pockets, one thing was immediately clear: the audio commentary was now a sought-after, soon-to-be essential aspect of home video packages for collectors.

Though the first commentary track was academic in nature and featured a noted historian, who rather fittingly referred to it as a “lecture”, the format left ample room for many other approaches. Directors would be given the chance to lay their inspirations bare, actors could discuss their craft before a captive audience, technicians who were rarely given a public voice found a platform (like Garrett Brown, inventor of the Steadicam, on the DVD commentary for The Shining) and film critics could dissect a picture in real time rather than after the fact. The possibilities were limitless, and many companies—boutique labels like Criterion and studios alike—sought to capitalize on this emerging technology that not only added value to their products but could bridge the gap between consumers, filmmakers and experts.

Personally speaking, the commentaries that are most exciting are those that stray from the expected approach and participants. Releases that bring in the real-life subjects that their films are about, such as astronaut Jim Lovell on Apollo 13 or cantankerous cartoonist Harvey Pekar on American Splendor, offer an insight that filmmakers and academics could never provide. Beyond that, stunt commentaries are also inherently intriguing, as we can see in comedian Carrot Top watching Roger Avary’s hedonistic adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’s orgy-fueled college romp The Rules of Attraction for the first time, having had nothing to do with the making of the film.

Comedies in general have proved ripe for offbeat commentary tracks, particularly when their creators are willing to push the bit as far as it can go, such as the one for Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, which was reportedly recorded in 2031 for the film’s 25th anniversary, or Tropic Thunder, where Robert Downey Jr. holds true to the line “I don’t drop character ’till I done the DVD commentary” by recording the entire thing as his character Kirk Lazarus. Fortunately, there is no shortage of major studios and boutique labels willing to take liberties with what a commentary track can be, many of which I’ve compiled in this Letterboxd list.

That isn’t to say that commentary tracks should always be loose and straying from saying something serious in nature—that they can offer many different, and unexpected, approaches is what has kept them viable for decades running. As with Haver’s track for King Kong, academic tracks are still commonplace in contemporary physical media. Samm Deighan, a regular contributor to releases from various niche labels around the world, states that “it does really require a specific skill set—it takes a lot of work and a lot of research goes into it”, which is something many listeners might not initially expect. The lines between academia and entertainment tend to blur when we listen to historians and film critics discuss our favorite films as if they’re in the same room as us, but in actuality, these experts are preparing reams of notes before recording a feature-length commentary track.

Samm notes that, in her opinion, “the best commentaries are like taking a class or going to a really engaging lecture on the film”, which furthers the common parlance of physical media, particularly in the extras-loaded editions from boutique labels, being regarded as “film school in a box”. Yet for some contributors, like Arnold Schwarzenegger, for instance, the last thing considered would be research. As many listeners have come to realize, and often delight in, Schwarzenegger (as do many other actors and even filmmakers) revels in simply describing what is happening on-screen in real-time, which is most apt on Total Recall’s commentary and makes viewing it an even more surreal experience than Paul Verhoeven’s trippy sci-fi saga already is.

With Criterion creating the audio commentary, other independent labels were quick to capitalize on it. In 1991, Pioneer Entertainment launched the Pioneer Special Editions line of LaserDiscs, similar to Criterion in that it licensed titles from various copyright owners. It launched with the bonkers Peter Yates film The Deep, a release without supplements, but in short order it would establish a reputation for packed editions, including the 1993 special-edition release of Terminator 2: Judgment Day, which, among other extras, would include an audio commentary. What Pioneer offered was a sort of genre flip side to Criterion, presenting more popular culture staples in editions with state-of-the-art audio/video presentation and attention to supplements whereas Criterion, by mission, focused its efforts more on revered art-house or historically important films. Between the two companies, LaserDisc found a robust output of a wide array of specialty film offerings, setting the market in motion for what would come with DVD just a few years later.

It would be safe to say that, outside of the most rabid home video collectors of a certain age, most people immediately associate the audio commentary with the DVD format rather than LaserDisc. DVDs aren’t just more recent but, even in their earliest days, were imminently more affordable and took up much less space, with the physical disc size resembling a CD rather than the LP figure of LaserDisc. This, coupled with the studios finally relinquishing the rental window that held steadfast through the reign of VHS, made DVD a quick staple of home video collections large and small around the world. DVDs also allowed for more disc storage, making ample room for extras, with many top-line releases offering numerous commentary tracks for a single film.

As you could have gleaned from the introduction to this article, Smith immediately took issue with DVD but has since embraced current home video formats. The Blu-ray release of his often maligned major studio feature Cop Out allows viewers to experience the film in “Maximum Comedy Mode”, which pushes the technical specifications, and consumer expectations, of the commentary. This feature allows Smith to pause the film and appear on-screen, ESPN style, providing further commentary, and also allows the ability to queue up additional footage. It stretches Smith’s 108-minute feature to nearly three hours in length, offering plenty of behind-the-scenes anecdotes, deleted scenes and, perhaps most notably, face time with Smith. This innovative idea takes the audio-only approach to a commentary track and makes it distinctly visual, bordering on an interactivity that is rare in supplemental features.

Not all filmmakers are as eager to record a commentary track as people like Fincher, Smith or fan favorite John Carpenter, whom Deighan credits with the first commentary tracks she ever heard: “His great tracks with Kurt Russell for The Thing and Big Trouble in Little China were really my gateway drug.” It’s easy to see why, as the Carpenter and Russell tracks are akin to watching a movie with your best friends, only they happened to make it. Some filmmakers, though, may take some coaxing or don’t want to endure the process at all. In talking with sco Simeoni of Radiance Films, he mentions that “some [filmmakers] don’t like the format and don’t like picking apart their films and find the experience banal. I think sometimes filmmakers don’t understand that the things they find banal, fans think is fascinating” which is an interesting point to make as the fans are often left out of this conversation, even though they are the ones monetarily ing the media itself.

This can make navigating various versions of your favorite films an optical media minefield for those seeking a particular commentary track or other extra that hasn’t been ported over. Such is the case with the fan favorite commentaries for two Michael Bay films that amusingly found their way into the consecrated halls of the Criterion Collection: The Rock and Armageddon, neither of which have had their tracks ported over to any subsequent editions. That means only holders of the Criterion DVD can bask in the glory of Armageddon star Ben Affleck recalling how he questioned director Michael Bay as to why it made sense in the film for NASA to train oil drillers how to be astronauts rather than teach astronauts how to drill. Bay’s response? “Shut the fuck up.”

At the same time, some of these commentary tracks that only exist on specific editions lend themselves to a rewarding type of media archaeology, putting the package as a whole in a context and in conversation with the era in which it was produced. Many collectors want multiple editions of the movies that they cherish, as it further represents the lifespan of each film, showcasing different ways movies were marketed and championed over various decades. In the same way, we can see how films that seemingly didn’t warrant a deluxe treatment years ago can find it later on. Despite not being a commercial success theatrically, it didn’t take long for Fight Club to earn its lavish special edition with the aforementioned four commentary tracks, released only a year after its single-disc standard edition. But it took decades for David Lynch’s adaptation of Dune to get a proper home video treatment in 2016 from Arrow Video, which included two brand-new audio commentaries.

What remains most interesting about the audio commentary going on four decades from its inception is just how unpredictable it can be. The very nature of recording a commentary is to allow people to speak their mind as a film runs. This can allow for anything and everything to be said, which has led to many studios and boutique labels using disclaimers ahead of disc menus to make it clear that the views mentioned in any commentary track, or other supplement, don’t reflect those of the company releasing the product. The more freewheeling commentaries can include drunken tracks like on Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s Orgazmo, truly anything involving Abel Ferrara, the famed commentary featuring director Steven Soderbergh and writer Lem Dobbs on The Limey, or even Bruce Campbell beating Downey to the punch by staying in character as Elvis on the commentary for Bubba Ho-tep.

The Limey commentary, in particular, is the type of thing that immediately feels like a window into a closed room that we were never meant to bear witness to, featuring two creators vehemently at odds with each other yet made available on a mass-produced scale for all of us to take part in. Earlier this year, Thomas listened to the track and wrote that “checking off this iconic commentary track was a must. Lived up to the hype. Equally insightful as it is combative. Perfectly crystallizes the contrast between directors and screenwriters.”

Fortunately, the audio commentary is alive and well in 2024. Thriving, even. The majority of boutique label releases seem to contain at least one commentary, with some even reaching four or more tracks, like Sam Peckinpah’s Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia from Imprint Films, David Cronenberg’s eXistenZ from Vinegar Syndrome, and George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead from Second Sight. As with most things physical media at this point in time, it’s a real embarrassment of riches, much of which is due to the ever-increasing number of scholars, critics and enthusiasts who are seizing the moment and delivering astute, well-researched lessons on film bundled up as entertainment. Filmmakers are still very much a part of the proceedings, albeit maybe not quite as unruly and/or drunk as they were in decades prior, but the landscape has opened up for the audio commentary to be simultaneously didactic and amusing—or, as Paul Schrader posited, an “entertaining digression.”