Why You Should Pay for This Substack

I appreciate everyone who has purchased a paid subscription to my Substack. The first time someone did that, I was shocked. At that time, everything I shared here was free. Even now, nearly everything is still free to all, with only a handful of video posts reserved for paying readers. So again, THANK YOU to each and every one of you who pays for this Substack!

This morning I asked myself why someone would pay for this, and I believe the reason is kindness— a desire to reward my efforts even when I haven’t asked for any reward. With that in mind, today I want to highlight the (few) perks that come with a paid subscription. I’m also including a “subscribe” button for the first time, in case anyone who reads this decides a paid subscription is worth it.

There you go! My first ever “subscribe now” button! Now then, what are these perks?

The main benefit of being a paid subscriber is access to the list of films I’ve created I’m still in the process of creating. When I came up with the idea for All the Movies, I spent the better part of an afternoon listing films I believed should be included. At that point I had close to 1,000 movies on my list. After four years, and much research, I’ve expanded that list, which now contains 4,685 films as of this writing. I don’t honestly know if I’ll be able to watch them all before I run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible, but that’s the plan.

The list is shared as a Google spreadsheet, and can be sorted by title, director, release year, release date, and in some cases genre. If you care, you can also see if I own the film, as I use it keep track of what I have, and how I have it (Blu-ray, DVD, VHS tape, mp4, etc.)

You’ll also get clues as to what I’m working on next, as I’ll sometimes create additional sheets where I list films that may or may not become a part of a future post.

If you’ve ever wanted a master list of all the great (and not so great) movies, this is the list to beat all lists.

My podcasts will always be free. So far, all my written articles have been, too. To date, all video posts have been paid-only. There haven’t been that many, and honestly, they aren’t all that great. Many are me showing recent physical media acquisitions. I think in one I covered how I organize my movie collection. There ain’t much to see there. Yet.

The first time I pondered creating video posts, I thought a good idea would be to offer a guided tour through my library of books on film. It’s nothing spectacular. It takes up perhaps four shelves, and it skews towards old Hollywood. However, if you are a book lover, or a film scholar, it should be fun to watch me play show and tell with my books for an hour so.

I guess that’s it. That’s the only upcoming post I have in mind. I know as soon as I send this email, I’ll remember many other ideas I have for video posts, but at least for now, that’s the one. I’ll get cracking on it soon, especially as all the new paid subscriptions roll in after this enticing email!

I think it would be a lot of fun to watch a movie as a group, via the internet. You see, my dream job has long been to own a movie theater, at which I'd play different movies every day. Until I can afford such a thing, i.e. never, the next best thing might be to create a virtual “watch party,” followed by a rousing discussion via Google Meet or Zoom or one of those things. If that sounds fun, well, you saw the button. Scroll up, baby!

I guess that’s about it. It’s time I got to work on my next podcast, in which I am going to praise silent comedy pioneer Max Linder. Spoiler alert, he’s awesome. See you there!