OTHER TECH

Knowing that DVDs give people a chance to see his movies under optimal conditions, Sonnenfeld always pays careful attention to how they're presented on disc. But he used to focus almost solely on the film transfer until some Sony executives opened his eyes with an amazing statistic. "I was shocked to discover that something like 70 or 80% of the people who buy a DVD view some of the extras. I assumed it would be 3%. I was doing commentaries for my own edification and joy, and for a couple of buddies who I thought would listen to them."

Now that he realizes the value of extras, Sonnenfeld is anxious to explore their possibilities. "In the future, we'll shoot video from the start of preproduction, because I think it's really interesting to see how certain decisions get made. Did they choose the location because it was the perfect place, or because it was close enough to town so you wouldn't have to put the crew up at night?"

It was surprising to hear, though, that Sonnenfeld doesn't have more control over the DVDs of his movies. "I didn't know until recently that there isn't a commentary on Get Shorty," he says. "When they bought the movie rights for the DVD, they didn't buy the rights to the commentary I did for the laserdisc. And there's a great deleted scene with John Travolta, Ben Stiller, and Gene Hackman that's an extra on the laserdisc, but it's not on the DVD." He didn't even know the Addams Family movies were coming out on DVD. "I wish the studio had talked to me before they released them. I would have done a commentary. I would have supervised the transfer."

Still, as much as he loves DVDs, there are things about them that get under his skin. "I want to turn on my player, put in a disc, and just see a simple menu. I don't want to watch a camera track down a hallway and hear somebody knock on a door and all that before I can get to a menu. A lot of that stuff is overproduced. I just want to watch the damn movie."

Sonnenfeld's also not a big fan of special editions. "Whenever I watch one, my reaction, without fail, is that you can see why they took those scenes out to begin with. The thinking is, 'All right, they bought the disc, they're sitting there at home, they're not going anywhere, so I'm going to put back all the crap I took out' - but that's unfair to the DVD viewer." Sonnenfeld points out that Joel and Ethan Coen took a characteristically eccentric approach when they put Blood Simple on DVD: "They made it shorter."

Sure, DVD has revolutionized how we experience movies at home, but few people are aware of its impact on how movies get made. "It's given the studios this huge source of income they didn't have before, so they get to make more movies. The net profit from the DVD and VHS sales of Men in Black II paid for the movie."

Two of the best-known sequences in the first Men in Black are only there thanks to DVD. "When we were finishing the movie, I needed a few million dollars to do some really great things with the special effects," Sonnenfeld recalls. "That includes the whole opening with the dragonfly and the last shot, which starts on Will Smith and Linda Fiorentino and then pulls back to other galaxies where you discover that our planet is just part of a marble game. One of the executives went to Ben Feingold at Sony and said, 'Sonnenfeld needs money to finish some shots.' And Feingold said, 'This is going to do well on DVD. We can pay.' Before DVDs, I'm not sure I would have gotten those two shots."

As a director, Sonnenfeld is especially grateful that DVD can give movies a second chance to find an audience. Consider Big Trouble, his breezy ensemble comedy about two dimwitted ex-cons who inadvertently smuggle a bomb aboard a plane. "It's not about terrorism, but the media decided it would make a better story if it was. So the day before it was supposed to open, I'm watching one of the entertainment shows, and they intercut my trailer with footage of the World Trade Center being destroyed. And it said across the screen, 'Is America ready for a comedy about terrorism?' " The bad publicity scared people away, which was especially painful for Sonnenfeld. "If I listed all the movies I've directed, Big Trouble would be near the top. It has wonderful performances, and I think that with time, when people forget about all the publicity and just get to watch it at home, they'll enjoy it."

Or consider his TV series The Tick, which lasted only nine episodes on Fox. It's recently come out on DVD, giving people a chance to savor its brilliant writing and extraordinary comedic cast, led by Seinfeld's Patrick Warburton. "The pilot is one of the best things I've directed, so I'm glad a few more people will get to see it now."

Given that he's done series from time to time, we ask Sonnenfeld if he watches much TV himself. "No, just sports." What about reality TV? "The only reality show I watch is the Weather Channel, which I like a lot. The women's outfits are always really terrible, and they're always pregnant."

As we're wrapping up, we ask Sonnenfeld what he's working on now. "Will Smith has a really fantastic idea for a Men in Black III, but there's no script yet." When we tell him we've heard that he won't make it if it's about aliens, he laughs. "I did say that." A Men in Black film without aliens? That would be very, very droll.