Disney Plus launched recently and so
I did what anyone with too much time on their hands would do,
and scrolled through everything the streaming service
had to offer.
A little context, I fell in love with film at a very early age,
and that love never ended.
Every year I would watch hundreds of films.
I used to keep track on a forum, racking up
sometimes 150 plus movies in a month.
I went to college and studied film, and then I moved to NYC
and start to write.
As I was sitting there scrolling, as an adult,
scrolling through this list of movies and shows on Disney Plus
something borderline absurd occurred to me.
Every film that mattered to me on this service,
every film I wanted to re-watch of Disney's entire catalog,
was a DCOM.
And then my mind started doing this.
Here's a sentence I never thought
I'd be saying on this channel.
Disney Channel original movies are ridiculous,
but they matter so much more than I knew.
And Yeah, I'm kind of serious.
I know everyone remembers this moment.
The jingle that preceded the movies.
But I think what I recognized as a kid was
that this was the first time anyone made
a big deal about film for me.
Disney Channel turned films into an event.
See Disney Channel didn't air traditional commercials,
they use commercial breaks to advertise new shows, episodes,
charities, and DCOMs.
The idea was to keep kids engaged in the network
itself, instead of changing the channel.
Disney would spend months bleeding out hype commercials
for new films, showing teaser trailers, full trailers,
behind the scenes footage, interviews with the actors,
bumpers with them at Disney World.
They would take the entire press junket process of a big budget
studio film, and condense it into a giant red carpet
rollout for each DCOM.
The network built this immense hype around every new film
like it was a summer blockbuster.
Every Friday night was like a new Avengers
movie was hitting our screens.
And once it did, they'd air that movie all weekend.
The first time I stayed up past midnight
was on the release day of a film about drag racing.
Seriously, they played it like three times in a row.
Disney Channel managed to treat films like events.
They treated their movies like they were Oscar nominees.
And for so many kids this excitement over film
was the first time they'd ever be excited about the medium.
The first time they'd see the medium treated
with such enthusiasm it made films seem like an experience.
But DCOMs also managed to be much more important
for a more specific and sometimes strange reason.
I didn't know what drag racing was.
No idea existed until I saw Right on Track.
Johnny Tsunami is the reason I've
spent the last 15 years trying to figure out
if a move to Hawaii for the surf is the right move for me.
When I was in eighth grade I was about to start
at boarding school, a military school to be exact,
so I watched Cadet Kelly to make myself feel a bit better
about the change.
It didn't help.
Military school was awful, but Cadet Kelly was fine.
The Even Stevens Movie was my first exposure to reality TV.
And actually got me to watch The Truman Show, probably well
before I should have been watching it.
The point is for millions of kids DCOMs
were their entry point.
Their only exposure to so many things.
The amount of kids that got into roller
skating after watching Brink or writing
after watching Read It and Weep is surely an incredible amount.
Disney Channel set out to create movies that were about kids
and teens for kids and teens.
In the process they also set out to make
films that represented every possible hobby, sport, interest
imaginable.
Sure, things like Luck of the Irish, a basketball
movie about a kid slowly turning into a leprechaun did exist.
And was awesome, by the way.
But so many DCOMs were about bringing you
into totally foreign worlds.
Worlds that did exist.
An opportunity to see film as a lens for all sorts of people
and things.
They introduce you to horror to suspense to thrillers, dramas,
every genre you could imagine.
DCOMs were so many kids first exposure to these things.
The genres, these sports, these activities,
these family dynamics, they got kids
to want to try and experience new things.
And some of these movies were also
really important for much more substantive reasons.
This DCOM is called The Color of Friendship.
It's a movie about racism.
About understanding prejudice, and it's
about broaching those very difficult issues through a lens
that kids and teens could understand.
It's not a terrible movie.
Motocrossed, on the other hand, is a very strange film
that deals mainly with the issue of a girl trying
to break into a boy's environment on a dirt bike.
It's extremely heavy handed with his messaging,
but regardless, it's a fun movie that deals
with something that matters.
I was never exposed to some of the stuff
that DCOMs dealt with.
They were surprisingly unafraid to broach extremely sensitive
issues in a way that most networks, like Disney, normally
would have avoided.
Some of which taught valuable lessons
about how to deal with these things or people.
I was nine when Tru Confessions came out.
A movie about a girl with an autistic brother,
played by Shia LaBeouf.
Not only was it the first time I was ever exposed to autism,
but it was also the first time that I
understood that people deal with things that I had never
seen before.
And to this day I think that these more grounded films
are the very things that taught me that movies can teach.
Movies can help.
Movies are important.
Film can change you, and other people.
I still credit Tru Confessions as the film that originally
got me into movies as a medium in the first place, which
is insane to say.
You know, because it's a DCOM, but it's reality.
And sure, I sat through things like Wendy Wu: Homecoming
Warrior.
It was a movie, and it existed.
And at the time I enjoyed it, I think.
But for every Wendy Wu: Homecoming Warrior,
especially when I was younger, there was a Tru Confessions.
Yet I think that High School Musical is actually
a good encapsulation of what DCOMs ultimately
meant to kids like me.
This kind of changed film for a good couple of years.
High School Musical's international success
brought musicals back into the public eye in a very big way.
The combined success of American Idol and High School Musical
helped pave the way for things like Glee, which I admittedly
never watched.
And introduced millions of kids to theater, musicals, and even
Broadway.
When this movie came out, all of a sudden theater
was cool in schools all over the country.
The movie was everywhere you looked,
and it was a movie that felt personal.
Because I'd spent years watching every DCOM and suddenly,
one was on the world stage.
And it felt like validation.
Strangely, it felt like validation for film, movies,
as I knew them.
It felt like these things that I loved so much, these movies,
weren't just cool things where kids
win homicidal houses in online sweepstakes.
They felt like things that everybody could be a part of.
They felt bigger than Disney Channel.
And as I got older, I realized how big the art of filmmaking
was.
So much bigger than High School Musical.
What truly great movies look like.
What the art of acting at its best was.
And learn how important this medium was, as a medium
to make an impact.
To have your voice heard, to entertain.
This weird movie about mermaids happens
to be a big part of my life.
So it's this and this.
DCOMs matter, or they did because for so many
they're where people like me fell in love with movies.
And for that, these movies will always
be a part of so many people.
I think as we get older, we often say things like,
well Nickelodeon fell off or Disney Channel is not the same,
and that may or may not be true.
It's worth pointing out that today,
they are there to service and entertain
a different generation.
I just hope that networks like Disney,
like Nickelodeon, understand the importance of film.
I hope they understand the importance
of making real things as opposed to just whatever this is.
I haven't seen it.
I don't know if it's terrible or great.
But the point is that, while we've grown up
there are a bunch of people growing right now.
These things are a gateway into one of the greatest
artistic mediums that we have.
Kids need DCOMs, which is, again,
one of the strangest sentences I've ever said on the channel.
Because trust me when I say you don't
want to go back on Disney Plus and see
how some of these things aged.
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That is it for today's episode of Nerdstalgic.
I know a lot of you probably didn't
expect me to touch on something like this.
But I do think it's important.
And I think it's worth remembering, especially
now that I'm going back and seeing
some of these things for the first time in years.
As always, if you enjoyed this video
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| on your screen right now are two more episodes
of Nerdstalgic so you could see what I put out recently.
They are absolutely not about DCOMs, but about other things
that I think are interesting.
And I will see you guys in the next video.