Get Yourself a Shave

My earliest memories of Local Hero come from Golden Gate Video. The store's comedy section was pressed up against the back left wall, across from the mini fridge with the 50¢ sodas. For years, Local Hero's enigmatic VHS cover watched over me as I scanned across new Adam Sandler releases and middle-period Bill Murray fare, always registering but never quite prompting me to rent it. This lasted until late middle school, when I rented the tape on one of our earliest family vacations to the Stanford Inn by the Sea in Mendocino. All at once, the film's soggy, vaguely enigmatic cover art gave way to a subtle but fully realized little world, reflecting a foggy Northern California coastline with an almost uncanny accuracy.

I began to collect DVDs in 2001, after noticing a Tower Records ad for the entire first season of The Simpsons miraculously spread across only 3 discs. Counter to my Mom's concerns that the discs were audio-only CDs, I in fact discovered not only visual quality surpassing any home media I'd seen before, but supplemental features; creator commentaries provided precious new insights into The Simpsons, but also introduced me to a way of learning about the media I loved which I would never have dreamed of. I quickly learned that not all DVDs were created equal. Transfers, special features, and even cases varied substantially between releases, with lower profile releases slipping into stores without the bells and whistles afforded their more popular counterparts. So it was that Local Hero arrived to my home in a snapcase, accompanied only by its trailer with a transfer that barely surpassed the preceding VHS releases in quality (albeit in widescreen).

Local Hero stuck with me through the ensuing years like few movies ever have. I watched it repeatedly in 2004 after losing my vision, with Ferness serving a perfect getaway after appointments. I included a rip of the film in the care package I sent my wife as she studied abroad shortly after we started dating -- a choice which in retrospect seems to say as much about how highly I thought of her as vice versa. As the years went by, I became more conscious of the high grain transfer with successive viewings on TVs at home and mobile device screens I'd bring on planes. My archaic DVD slipped quietly out of print, and in the absence of an American market replacement version (save a similarly bare bones appearance in a Burt Lancaster 4-in-1 pack), I settled with an understanding that my much loved disc would have to be enough.

I bought my first Criterion Collection DVD in 11th grade and began collecting them in earnest in college. When I joined My Criterion, I entered Local Hero as the film I'd most like to see added to the Collection. More than a decade later, the June email announcing future releases arrived with Local Hero as a surprise inclusion, characteristically tucked away second from the bottom. Three long months later, my snapcase DVD could at last be retired, likely 18 years after its original purchase.

The upgrade justifies the wait. The transfer looks terrific, offering well deserved clarity to the film's beaches and the craggy faces of its remarkable character actors alike. The abundant archival material is accompanied by an impressive amount of extras from director Bill Forsyth, who's largely retired from the industry since my old DVD was pressed. Local Hero's soft-spoken personality has always belied both the nuance of its characterizations and its assured craftsmanship, and it was never going to clamor for a reexamination (let alone the princess treatment) on its own. I hope this rerelease can help to broaden the film's exposure and call attention to it as the Great Movie it really is. For me, it's wonderful after half a lifetime thus far to see Local Hero with some of the visual haze stripped away, but the foggy core ever intact.