Host Ira Glass talks with filmmaker Alan Berliner, who for six years collected old home movies he found at thrift stores and garage sales. He says that almost all of them document either rites of passage, like birthdays and weddings, or moments of leisure — the beach is especially big. They show our lives as we'd want them to look, but maybe not as they actually do. Alan Berliner's movie, which he made from his six years of collected video, is called Family Album. (6 minutes)

Act One. The Big Night.

This American Life producer Jonathan Goldstein made every girl he ever dated watch the home movie of his family's Rosh Hashanah dinner he made when he was 17. He hoped that seeing his family life on film might make the women more sympathetic to his shortcomings. In this story, for the first time, Jonathan shares the Rosh Hashanah video with a national audience. (13 minutes)


Song: " You Talk Too Much," Run-DMC


Act Two. The Kids Stay in the Picture.

From the time he was a little kid until the time he graduated high school, Darren Stein made movies with his father's video camera. The cast was composed of friends from his street, a suburban cul-de-sac in Encino, California. The sets were their various backyards. The production schedule was every day after school, and all day in the summer. They shot horror movies, action flicks, and even a musical called "I Have No Friends," which Darren wrote soon after being transferred to a new junior high school. Darren is now a real director with two Hollywood movies under his belt (Jawbreaker and Sparkler). Ira talked with him and his frequent childhood leading man, Adam Schell, about what the movies meant to them as kids. Darren and Adam just finished a documentary about their childhood moviemaking called Put the Camera on Me. (12 minutes)

Act Three. A Half-Million Home Videos Can't be Wrong.

The TV show America's Funniest Home Videos has an archive of over half-a-million video clips. Ira talks with Todd Thicke, the show's co-executive producer, and Trace Beaulieu and Mike Palleschi, two of the show's writers, about what all that footage tells them about Americans that the rest of us don't know.

Act Four. The Cinema of Upward Mobility.

Home movies usually don't have much of a plot — one of the many ways they differ from Hollywood movies. But reporter Susan Burton has a lifetime of home movies, which together describe a very Hollywood plot, about how she remade herself from a friendless nerd into a popular girl. (12 minutes)


Song: "New Life," Depeche Mode


Act Five.

David Sedaris tells a story about his mother who hated home movies, and how his brothers and sisters came to appreciate them. (6 minutes)


Song: "People Take Pictures of Each Other," The Kinks


Act Five.

David Sedaris tells a story about his mother who hated home movies, and how his brothers and sisters came to appreciate them. (6 minutes)
Song. "People Take Pictures of Each Other," The Kinks