Blogocentric Formulations

The Burned DVD

"30-Day Blogging Challenge ON HIATUS"  | May 6

Prompt ▼

Write about an object you own that has negligible monetary value, but is priceless to you.

I own a burned DVD. You know, one of those blank DVD-R discs that someone exported a movie from their computer onto, so that it plays on DVD players. For those of you who are a little on the younger side, this was in the Before Times when you couldn't just stream everything you wanted to watch. We actually had to buy physical discs and put them into a physical disc players connected to our televisions with (and here's where I really start to date myself) component video, s-video, or even composite cables.

But I digress. To paraphrase the immortal words of the Rifleman's Creed of the United States Marine Corps (and the cast of Full Metal Jacket), "This is my DVD. There are many like it, but this one is mine. My DVD is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as--"

Okay, so really, it's just like the first two sentences of the Rifleman's Creed. The rest gets a little too "affectionate" and while I love my homemade DVD, I'm not that attached to it. Anyway, the reason why this particular burned DVD is so important to me is because it's the first copy of a movie I've ever received that has a writing credit that bears my name. It's a rough director's cut of the film, which they sent around for notes early on in the process. The movie has since been available on the Hallmark Channel, PixL, and occasionally ABC Family I'm told, so it's not like the movie isn't available anywhere else, but after spending so many years in the entertainment industry seeing products with other people's names on them, it was really something special to get a disc in the mail with the words, "Here's a copy of your movie."

I've since loaned that disc out to dozens of friends and family, but always insist on getting it back because the physical disc itself holds an enormous amount of sentimental value for me. Even though, at the end of the day, you can actually catch the movie on a streaming service or regular old television from time to time. Yet I still hold onto the disc... even now that I've resigned the DVD player to cold storage in the garage. I couldn't just pop it in anymore even if I wanted to, but I keep the disc around for sentimental reasons.

In a lot of ways, I suppose that's not so different than an author hanging on to hard copies of their books, or a journalist saving a clipping from their first published news column. But since I'm primarily a screenwriter and someone who works in the entertainment industry, I guess this simple little burned DVD that just has "The Right Girl" written on it in Sharpie is my version of a physical piece of art that I've created.