Consumer--or Consumed?

When I die, and my life flashes before my eyes, I pray that what I see is the digitally remastered wide-screen edition, with production notes, cast and crew bios, a behind-the-scenes documentary and, of course, an alternate ending. * This is what DVD has done to me.

I am not alone. There are thousands of us, buying five or 10 DVDs at a time, swapping and borrowing, clamoring for the latest releases, trying to pre-order films that haven’t even finished principal photography. DVDs are Pokemon cards for adults.

“From the moment they see that razor-sharp DVD picture, it’s almost like a drug addiction,” says Ron Epstein of Ocean, N.J., who runs https://www.hometheaterforum.com, a cyberspace water cooler where nearly 12,000 aficionados of fine home cinema discuss the latest developments. “You go out and want to buy more. And more.”

The seriously obsessed DVD collector owns a computer and spends hours on the World Wide Web, bookmarking DVD sales sites such as Amazon.com, Buy.com and Express.com, then surfing back and forth to compare prices. Devotees meet each other online and gather in various cities for DVD shopping sprees. Recently, Epstein and 70 of his cybermates visited L.A. for a DVD field trip, highlighted by a tour of DreamWorks.

Locally, stores such as Tower Video, Virgin Megastore and the Wherehouse have beefed up their stock as the DVD format has seized the public’s fancy. At Laser Blazer on Pico Boulevard, near the Westside Pavilion, looky-loos have reportedly included directors Quentin Tarantino and John Woo, Eric Clapton and Michael and Janet Jackson.

“We carry everything that’s available,” says owner Ron Dassa, who has added an estimated 5,000 DVD titles to his inventory in the three years DVDs have been out. Epstein’s collection contains close to 500 DVDs. But he says some people in his online forum have more than 1,000.

Since a DVD release can be delayed by contractual, economic or strategic concerns--only about 60% of the American Film Institute’s list of 100 greatest films have been released in the digital format--collectors have turned to intelligence-gathering. When are “Citizen Kane” and “The Godfather” coming out? What about “Lawrence of Arabia” or “The Conformist”?

It’s the “extra stuff” on a DVD, beyond the film itself, that devotees cannot do without. Otherwise, the world might never know that singer David Crosby’s dad, Floyd, was the cinematographer who shot “High Noon.”