Audio Commentary - Prolific Commentators

Prolific Commentators

• Hong Kong action cinema expert Bey Logan was a popular commentator for UK DVD distributors Hong Kong Legends and their sister label Premier Asia. He has recorded over sixty commentaries for Asian films, including Fist of Fury, Project A and The Young Master as well as modern hits Iron Monkey, Musa and Ong Bak. For the majority of his commentaries Logan was a solo commentator but occasionally he was joined by notable film makers and cast including Tsui Hark, Christy Chung, Donnie Yen and Maggie Q. He left Hong Kong Legends for The Weinstein Co. in early 2006.
• U.S. film historian Rudy Behlmer has recorded commentaries for many classics of American cinema, most notably Casablanca, Gone with the Wind, The Adventures of Robin Hood and Frankenstein.
• U.S. film critic Roger Ebert has recorded DVD audio commentaries for many films, including Citizen Kane, Casablanca, Floating Weeds, Crumb, Dark City, and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (for which Ebert also wrote the screenplay, based on a story that he co-wrote with Russ Meyer). Since losing his ability to speak due to illness, these recordings were also used to supply Ebert's collection of spoken words for his speech synthesizer since the soundtracks of his television show were too contaminated by background noise to use.
• U.S. film critic Richard Schickel has recorded DVD audio commentaries for many classic films, including Double Indemnity, Whirlpool, Side Street, Strangers on a Train, On the Waterfront, East of Eden, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Ryan's Daughter, Dirty Harry, The Big Red One, Once Upon a Time in America, and Unforgiven.
• U.S. writer and director Peter Bogdanovich has not only recorded commentaries for his own films (The Last Picture Show, The Cat's Meow, Paper Moon) but has also recorded commentaries for classic U.S. films, including Bringing Up Baby, Citizen Kane, The Lady from Shanghai, and Strangers on a Train. He also participated in the commentary for the pilot episode of The Sopranos.
• Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons, has recorded commentary on most episodes of the show thus far released on DVD — as of 2007, seasons one through ten — as well as every episode of his other creation, Futurama. As of May 2007, this totals over 250 episode commentaries. He has also provided commentaries on other Simpsons/Futurama related products, such as the music videos on The Simpsons: Season Two DVD. David X. Cohen, Groening's co-developer and occasional writer on Futurama, also provided commentary on every episode, as well as several installments of The Simpsons.
• Film directors Kevin Smith and David Fincher are notable fans of DVD audio commentary, and Fincher's "Platinum Series" release of Se7en was considered one of the most in-depth DVDs of its time, mainly due to the four audio commentary tracks, all of which feature Fincher, and cover the writing, the cast, the sound design and the cinematography. Another commentary for Se7en was included on the Criterion Collection laserdisc, which included cast member Gwyneth Paltrow, but this track has not been released on DVD. Smith's DVD for Clerks II features three audio commentaries, all featuring Smith, and he is known for bringing his stars, including Ben Affleck and Jason Lee onto his commentary tracks. Smith has recorded audio commentaries for all of his films except Zack and Miri Make a Porno, and also appeared on the Road House audio commentary after mentioning it on the 10th Anniversary DVD of Clerks. Smith has also appeared on the special edition Donnie Darko DVD, doing commentary with Richard Kelly. Fincher has recorded a track for all of his films except Alien 3, which he disowned after controversy over the production. Directors Terry Gilliam, Werner Herzog, Francis Ford Coppola, David Cronenberg, Paul Verhoeven and Steven Soderbergh are also highly respected as intelligent and informative commentators, often working with Criterion to create commentaries for their films. Soderbergh once said about DVD commentaries, "Would I, growing up, like to have had access to stuff on DVDs like this? Oh God, yeah! It's better than any film school, I think."
• Animation historians such as Jerry Beck and Michael Barrier regularly contribute commentary to selected shorts in DVD packages of animated shorts from the Golden Age of Hollywood, including the Looney Tunes Golden Collection series and the Popeye the Sailor DVD series.