People with the potential of playing back a laserdisc ought to do themselves a great favor and find this amazing Criterion release of this movie; the commentary totally warrants this. It's amazing, and really no surprise why directors like Paul Thomas Anderson have raved about it. If you're interested in what makes a director formulate his decisions, how a script gets developed a certain way, or why certain actors on this film teased each other but still got everything right on the first take, then seek out this fabulous commentary!

What can I say... with my calculations, you get 50 minutes of SOLID filmmaking discussion out of 81 minutes of the film's length. This has been on laserdisc FOREVER and they have not released this on any subsequent DVD's. But thanks to the internet, and good people - it's been ripped from the LD and uploaded online. You can now find a condensed version of it (down to the most essential selections, no filler or outdated bits) on http://filmschoolthrucommentaries.wordpress.com/2012/12/17/john-sturges-schools-you-on-filmmaking-part-i/ - this commentary is what every commentary should aspire to be. Break it down; 1) storytelling 2) filmmaking. No filler, or how "wonderful" your actors were, etc. Talk about the things that MATTER. How do you tell a story in the given genre? how do you go about filming it or make decisions to tell that story? PTA wasn't wrong, this commentary delivered ten-fold. Obviously Sturges talks about all aspects of