10 hours in line for the Criterion Closet was worth every excruciating second

If you were looking for the nerdiest spot at this year’s New York Film Festival, it was parked outside of Alice Tully Hall at the Lincoln Center. To celebrate its 40th anniversary, Criterion packed up its famous closet collection and took it on the road in van form, opening its prestigious door to the public for the first time. The idea of joining a decade-plus-old tradition that has courted stars like Willem Dafoe, Bill Hader, or Winona Ryder drew Criterion fans out in droves, even if that meant spending 10 hours in line for three minutes in the van. 

The long lines from the first rainy weekend of the event didn’t scare away passionate Criterion fans; it inspired them to show up even earlier. The first person in line on Saturday, Oct. 5, arrived at 6 a.m., five hours before the truck opened. When I arrived, at 10 a.m., the line was wrapped around the corner, filled with well-prepared film lovers packing chairs, books, and games, ready to endure the lengthy wait to film their very own closet video. 

Criterion President Peter Becker was along for the ride from opening to closing, taking time to chat with the line, offering words of motivation, and profusely apologizing for the long wait. Like the rest of the Criterion staff, he was astonished at how many people turned up for the mobile closet. But with its popularity growing, especially over the last few months, as rising stars like Ayo Edebiri and Callum Turner—both of whom have massive social media followings—stepped into the closet, it’s no surprise that fans of the collection would want the chance to do something previously only available to famous actors and filmmakers. 

Criterion wasn’t in it alone. The Lincoln Center staff teamed up with them to entertain the line and satiate the movie fans with prizes from trivia and film games. Earlier in the morning, when everyone’s brains were slightly less fried, the staff walked around asking Lincoln Center-related questions to win a Criterion branded coaster—one of the stranger merch items I’ve ever seen. Later in the evening, they gifted movie posters to people who could connect actors in a Six Degrees of Separation-style game. Even with these much-needed distractions and some delicious snacks passed out sporadically, the line was still difficult to endure. 

By the middle of the 10-hour waiting period, delirium was running rampant. People in front of me were pounding High Noons, someone behind me was transfixed on their stopwatch, and my newly made friends were tracking the line movement by how many A Real Pain Kieran Culkin posters away from the closet we were—exactly eight of them, lined up outside Alice Tully Hall. Around this time, Becker stopped by my section of the line again to explain why we were waiting longer than the weekend before, when the average time was six to seven hours. Celebrity guests like David Cronenberg and Isabella Rossellini stopped by to take a turn, and the closet had a power outage earlier in the afternoon—an unfortunate setback that the New York Film Fest staff helped resolve. 

Later, around the eight-hour mark, Ari Aster sauntered past in relative anonymity, due, probably, to his unassuming height or the crowd’s general exhaustion. Producer and Research Director Valeria Rotella, a regular interviewer for the Closet Picks series, divulged that Aster was visiting the mobile closet because it was more spacious than the original he had already visited. In this aspect alone, we common folk lived in luxury for this experience. 

Finally, after 10 hours of camping on the corner of Broadway and 65th Street, I entered. Directly inside, Rotella was manning the three-minute timer while another staff member was behind Criterion’s continuously filming camera, capturing each visitor’s experience. The chaos of Manhattan subsided, and the shiny black lens of the camera pointed eagerly at me, awaiting my picks and film stories. In true Hollywood fashion, the closet was blasted with intense lighting, illuminating the roughly 1500 DVDs lining the walls in an impressively well-organized manner—precisely what you would expect from archive enthusiasts. 

The magnitude of the selection was extremely overwhelming, even with the handy guide to the entire collection the staff gifted each attendee, along with a Criterion branded tote bag, pin, and coupon for a free month for the Criterion Channel streaming service. The three minutes slipped away as I spun around in the closet to admire the work of legendary filmmakers across a dozen decades and (rightfully) gush about David Lynch. At the end of your time, you held up your choices for a complimentary Polaroid photo documenting your visit. My picks, after hours of contemplation: Mulholland Drive, Cat People, and The Watermelon Woman. 

Yes, this was all for three DVDs I could have bought online, and still had to pay for. Yet stepping into that elusive, exclusive closet transported me back to my younger self, who had aspirations of writing films and would binge-watch every director’s picks to try and absorb their knowledge. I endured that line for the version of me that would have given anything to be in that closet and stand where my idols stood. For her, it was worth every excruciating second.

Polaroid Courtesy of Olivia Abercrombie