Home Movies

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. (5 minutes)

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 in Hollywood. Ira talked with him and his frequent childhood leading man, Adam Schell, about what the movies meant to them as kids. Darren and Adam made a documentary about their childhood moviemaking called Put the Camera on Me. (12 minutes)

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)