Re-Connected live every Thursday: a conversation with Ryan Verrill (part two)
Ryan Verrill (pictured above) launched his live show Re-Connected in 2021, and since then, it has become an essential part of many people’s weeks (Ryan included)
In the second part of our conversation, Ryan and I discuss his weekly live show Re-Connected, in which he covers every physical media announcement from the previous week. Ryan has hosted this show live every Thursday (except once) since August 2021. Read on to find out why he missed that one show, plus a whole lot more!
What's the Idea: Moving the conversation to the live show, Re-Connected, how did that start?
Ryan Verrill: I never had any ambition to live stream. That wasn't something that was on my mind because I wanted the control of an edit. I was doing those educational guides and somebody said, “There's all these announcements coming out every week and you're posting them online, but we're not aware of all of them and we're missing them. It would be great to have one show where you cover them and literally go through every single one so that we would know about it.”
“At first, it was literally just me in a corner of my movie room... Four people tuned in live that week and I was like, whoa, there’s four people in the world hanging out at the same time and listening to me and commenting on some things. This is so cool.”
I didn't think that this was ever going to happen, so I was just like, “If I get to 500 subscribers, I’ll do it.” This was such a dumb goal to make, it was very small. Two months later, it happened, and I was like, okay, I guess I’ve got to do a live show. So, I did the first one in August of 2021.
At first, it was literally just me in a corner of my movie room. I didn't even cover all of them because it was only me. I felt I was going to come across as very boring, so the first one is less than 35 minutes. Four people tuned in live that week and I was like, whoa, there's four people in the world hanging out at the same time and listening to me and commenting on some things. This is so cool.
Over time, it just grew. By the end of that year, I would come back upstairs after we were done and my wife would be like, “So, what's the highest number you got tonight?” and it would be 12, which was a busy week. It was awesome.
What's the Idea: How did you keep building your audience?
Ryan: I was starting to give up that control of the edit, and it took off a little bit. After a handful of months, I went, "Yeah, this is great, but it’s just me. Why would people want to keep coming back to this every single week to hear me say the exact same thing?” I thought maybe I could find somebody that would want to hang out and do this live show with me.
At the time, I had started purchasing a lot from Orbit DVD, and a lot of people had still never learned about Orbit DVD. I wanted to do one of these videos about them as a retailer, so I thought, maybe I could have the owner from Orbit DVD on the live show. We could do a little mini-interview and talk about some of the things that I was going to talk about anyways and get people to his store. I had people go, “You got Orbit DVD. I've heard of these guys. I'm going to tune in.” I had 30 people watching that night. That was huge at the time.
Eventually, it was just like, it's Tuesday, I’ve got a show coming up on Thursday, and I need to find somebody to be on this week. I didn’t want it to be just me because Orbit was great. I got Brad Henderson, who was at Vinegar Syndrome at the time, to do one of those early ones. There were some weeks when I still didn't have a guest, but over time, it became this sort of crazy institution.
Miss-Connected and Ryan (pictured above) enjoying a night out at a baseball game.
As of two weeks ago, it has been four years straight of doing it live every single Thursday night. I've only missed one show in that entire time, and that was because I was hanging out with a fan of the show who, as it turns out, has gotten quite famous worldwide in the last year and a half: Mr. John DeMarsico, who is the broadcast director of the New York Mets. I was in Los Angeles for a very short trip, and the Mets happened to be playing the Dodgers. John messaged me and said, “Hey, I'd love to meet up with you, and if you're free that night, you can come hang out in the broadcast van. I'll get you tickets to the Dodgers–Mets game. You can do whatever you want, so just come chill.” I was like, “I've never missed a live show, but I'm not missing this opportunity.” I grew up in southern California and somehow had never been to Dodger Stadium. I went to the Dodgers game and hung out with John that night and had just a life-changing experience. I loved doing that.
What's the Idea: By that point, I’m sure you had built up enough goodwill that the audience would understand and forgive you.
Ryan: It really was eye-opening because afterwards, I felt immense guilt, and I missed the show. The fact that I can look back and say it's still the only one that I've ever missed… I've done the show with COVID-19. I had crazy fevers. I've done this thing while I was on a family vacation. I’ve done this show in four or five different states because I vowed to literally never miss it. It's important to so many people, and I don't want to be one of the reasons somebody has a bad week. And I know how I look forward to it. The fact that these people are genuinely my close, personal friends and they look forward to it, I want to be there and support them the way they support me. I will literally turn down opportunities because I am busy every single Thursday until it doesn't work anymore or until I physically cannot do it.
I'm booked out months in advance. People are dying to be on the show and be a part of it. They know going into it that it could be anywhere from a 90-minute show to shows that were almost seven hours long, which is incredibly stupid in hindsight.
What's the Idea: What’s the format of the show?
Ryan: We cover literally every single physical media announcement that is English-friendly in the world every single week. We cover every announcement from Australia and Germany to all over the U.S. and Canada. The last couple weeks, as of this recording, there have been over a hundred announcements each week. Physical media is alive, and I feel like my show has grown in part because of that.
There are weeks where I have multiple hundreds of people watching live and then, in the first couple days after, more than a thousand people watch the replays. It also goes out as an audio podcast, and a thousand people download that in the first couple days.
I don't really pay attention to stats ever, but to see that many people literally giving it their time is why I keep putting so much into it. The announcements are a big part of it, but the people that I put on are one of the reasons why I don't ever want to stop doing it. Most of these people are never seeking to promote anything, but I will spend some of the early part of the show grovelling over their work, telling them what I love about what they do.
After all these physical media announcements, that's not even the end of the show. We then cover some aspect of film because I always want it to come back to that. Collecting is fun and cool and important, and I'm not against that idea of collecting, but the reality is all these plastic cases house a disc on the inside, with very important things on the disc, so I want to bring it back to the films.
We’ll talk about things as varied as ranking a director's filmography to the top five of a very specific niche genre. We just did underrated Shudder original pictures a few weeks ago. The topic we’re doing for this week's show is a fascinating one: We're doing the top five characters from film whose wardrobe you would love to steal. I don't know of many other shows that have that variety of discussions and really make it about focusing on what you're watching and the culture behind that and the importance of the context behind these films.
And then on top of that, it's also educating myself. We're talking about hundreds of movies every week, and I've seen maybe 5 to 10 percent of them. I'm still learning so much, and without all of this, I wouldn't have the knowledge to say, “Let's go look up this random Czech film from 1972 that I have never heard of.” My guests have this huge range of knowledge. I get film professors, other podcasters, people that know one genre more than anything else in their life, and I learn so much from them.
“I pride myself on being accepting of everyone. I try to harp on the importance of accepting everybody because I have spent many weird periods of my life not being accepted. ”
I also get filmmakers. I get people that run these labels. I get people that have been collecting longer than I've been alive, so they've got history with these things that I just gush at and want to absorb everything they possibly can share. It's amazing. I have been so thrilled to do it, and again, I’ve made genuine friends literally just because they've been on a couple episodes of a silly live show broadcasted out of my house. It’s mystifying to me that people care.
What's the Idea: That sense of community seems to be an important part of this industry. With your show, the audience is listening to you and a guest like Will Dodson talk for around four hours every week. When you spend that much time with people, I'm not surprised to hear that people come to rely on it and that they're looking forward to it.
Ryan: I pride myself on being accepting of everyone. I try to harp on the importance of accepting everybody because I have spent many weird periods of my life not being accepted. I was very heavily bullied as a child. I was raised in a home with a narcissistic stepmother and an abusive father and raised in a church that hurt me in so many ways. There were countless times that I have felt othered. I want to do everything that I possibly can to not make anyone else feel that way.
Sometimes I’m bringing on guests that are maybe terrified of doing a live show, and I will spend months trying to say, “Listen, I will make you feel comfortable. I just want people to understand that you exist, and you deserve to be heard as well.” I’m bringing on people that are part of the LGBTQ+ community that maybe would not be able to break through to certain fan bases. I want to make sure that they are here and able to be heard.
I try to focus on interviews that are highlighting things that people generally don't even want to talk about. I just interviewed Kristen Lopez, who is a disabled film critic, and we talked about the representation of disability in film because she has a book coming out on that. I not only wanted to talk about what is important in her book, but also how that works behind the scenes, because there are things like studios not making their premieres disabled-friendly. Stuff like that is something no one in the press is talking about. It's not something that is going to get clicks or anything, but it's important to mention that these people do exist. I see that as an important part of the mission.
I really hope that people can look at the show and say there’s not a single guest I could think of that he won't have on there. As long as they aren’t a bigot or coming on here with the Nazi flag behind them or something like that, I would never hesitate. Female representation is something that is a big problem in this industry. Thankfully, since about 2020, we've been able to see a lot more female contributors allowed in, but before that, there was a lot of gatekeeping. Even the scholars on Criterion discs were mostly white middle-aged men providing audio commentaries to these obscure boutique releases. That is appalling.
Even when I'm producing stuff behind the scenes and hiring people, I'm doing my best to raise voices and include people that likely never would have had an opportunity to contribute literally anything unless I was trying to help.
What's the Idea: It really requires people to make that specific effort. As I was discovering the boutique labels as well as exploitation film and some of the deeper cuts of cult film, I was surprised—and kind of unnerved, to be honest—by the amount of rape revenge movies being released. A lot of these movies need thoughtful commentary to put them into context.
Ryan: That's why people like Alexandra Heller-Nicholas are so important. I mean, she literally wrote the book on rape-revenge films, so for many of those movies that need that context, she's asked to be on the extras. Granted, she does a lot of work on extras nowadays.
Though the variety of movies that Ryan works on for companies like Terror Vision and Deaf Crocodile is diverse, he brings integrity and a journalistic approach to all his work. (Photo taken by Matt Long)
Will Dodson and I did the audio commentary for The Nail Gun Massacre, which came out from Terror Vision. That disc is my baby. I did all the interviews on that disc. I'm on the commentary. I'm literally friends with the top billed person from that film now. I still talk to him every so often. He calls me up out of the blue because he's this lonely old man that just wants to hang out and I give him that time of day.
But that movie, for those that have never seen it, opens with a really crazy construction area gang rape scene, which is wild. I don't even think there's any nudity in it or anything, but it's clearly a troubling scene. And this was, I don't know, maybe our third audio commentary that we'd ever recorded. And when I say opens with, there's not even credits or a title screen. It is fade in from black to gang rape. Will and I are on the commentary, and the first thing we say is “Hello. We'd normally be introducing ourselves, but as you can see right now, there's a brutal scene happening.”
That sets the tone for what you're about to talk about. And when it's two middle-aged white men discussing that scene, it’s like, “yeah, I've heard this perspective before,” so we try to bring a different approach to it. But the reality is I think they're important movies to talk about because that is such a shared experience. That's a terrifying thing to say, and it's an appalling thing to have to say, so it's important to contextualize, but also to validate that they've happened, and that they need to be looked down on.
What's the Idea: With the live show, the amazing variety of guests is a huge part of the appeal. There are so many people involved with making movies, so many companies to speak to. For me, it kind of parallels a rejection of the auteur theory in that it takes so many people to make these things happen, which you’re highlighting. As a movie fan, it’s fun to share in your sense of excitement about the releases. It's great to hear that you don't know all the releases because knowing the movies being discussed feels like an intimidating part of being a guest on Re-Connected.
Ryan: First, we'll get you on the show at some point because I think your work needs to be highlighted. But the thing is, when you listen to the show, a lot of the time I'll post an announcement for some obscure film from 1978. I may recognize one of the names, but I've never seen this movie. I never even had an opportunity to watch this movie.
I was mostly raised in a small town that had a Blockbuster. For a while, there were two local family-owned video stores, but one of them closed fairly soon after we moved there, so there was the Blockbuster and one family-owned video store. Because it was such a small town, they weren't even able to support things like The Evil Dead. It was literally—pardon the pun with the name of the company—all blockbusters. The deep cuts were Oliver Stone movies.
One of the people that inspired me so much over the years is Howard S. Berger, who's literally now a close friend of mine who I've met in person multiple times. He'll say things like, “Yeah, this random movie that you just brought up, I watched that when I was four years old on my mother's lap in a theatre, and I still remember the day we doubled it with this other Mario Bava film.” I'm like, “Howard, you saw this at four? How do you know that, first of all? But also, that’s just not fair. I never even heard of this movie until I was 34. I will literally be playing catch up for the rest of my life.”
So I'm learning alongside everyone else on these announcement shows. When we mention an announcement of Mario Bava’s, I've still only seen, I don't know, four, maybe five Mario Bava films. He did a lot more than that. Maybe the guest doesn’t know the movie, but I don’t need to highlight that, so I'll say, “Have you seen any Bava films? What do you think of Bava?” or “Are you a fan of the Gothic style of film making?” or something like that, and we'll talk about it for 20 seconds, then go to the next one. However, if it's a pretty popular film, I'll say, “Have you seen this one, because I'd love to talk about it?” If it's something that I've seen, I want to make sure that their voice is heard, so I'll ask them something first. I really try to make it as comforting and as comfortable as I can.
“Because of the integrity aspect and the community aspect, the people that are in the chats are just as esteemed as the guests. I get people watching that are major collectors that will say ‘I first saw this in 1978. The LaserDisc was uncut and this is a cut version,’ and we’re all learning because of this chat comment.”
What's the Idea: How do people watch the show?
Ryan: The show is broadcast across four places every single week. It's live on YouTube, Twitch, Facebook, and Twitter all at the same time, and I get comments coming from all four of those. We have conversations across all these platforms, and we respond to those comments and highlight some of those comments. Because of the integrity aspect and the community aspect, the people that are in the chats are just as esteemed as the guests.
I get people watching that are major collectors that will say “I first saw this in 1978. The LaserDisc was uncut and this is a cut version," and we're all learning because of this chat comment. It's amazing. The people that are there are enthusiasts. They are professionals.
I've found out throughout the years that labels are watching these things live every single week. That surprised me. A few times I've gotten messages on the next day that said, “Hey, I was watching you live last week,” and they'll correct something, or they'll share “We're working on this film, just don't tell anybody yet. You said you wanted a release of it, and it's coming,” or something like that.
It's so crazy that they're watching and paying attention. It's amazing to see the people that are there responding in the chat and doing it in a way that is robust. One of the comments that I always get after the show from people that have their own shows is something to the effect of “I love doing your show. Your chat is so talkative, and everybody's just so engaged.” And it's like, if they weren't, I don't even get what the point would be.
Sure, we're covering these things, but we're literally having a conversation. It's me, the guest, and these 140 people that also have opinions. And sure, they're not all great. A handful of them can end up being rude and snarky and stuff, but I don't highlight those. I get to make that choice. That's where it sort of turns into a big production. I mean, I'm literally talking to somebody, looking at a chat, and sharing Instagram posts live on a streaming platform all at the same time. It's a lot of information to absorb all at once.
What's the Idea: The people listening are super passionate. They’re the label heads, along with the artists themselves like Sean Baker. Your show creates a great space for smaller companies to come out and promote themselves and also benefit from the wealth of knowledge amongst the community.
Ryan: I'm certainly not lamenting not being bigger. Probably the best way to say it is I feel like these are engaged friends. I don't even have 4,000 subscribers on YouTube, but all of those people I can count on to probably watch at least one of the videos every month and hang out in the chat every month.
Deaf Crocodile released the Lithuanian musical The Devil’s Bride (1974) in 2025, one of the many physical media announcements covered by Ryan on Re-Connected (and one of the best physical media releases of 2025). (Photo taken by Matt Long)
One of the most popular areas of the physical media side of the YouTube world is horror, and I'm not just focusing on horror, which means I can't just get the horror community, which is huge. If I wanted to, I could, believe me, because 90% of what many of these boutiques put out is horror because it sells, so I could focus on that and probably have many more subscribers. But no, we get to talk about these random Lithuanian musicals that are also important. We get to talk about these random movies that are literally a part of the fibre of certain cultures. And sure, you may only like horror, but there's 97 other pieces of media that got announced this week, and those deserve the exact same limelight.
What's the Idea: A cool part of the show is how it makes everything equal. You highlight the new studio releases alongside the new boutique releases, and you aren’t focusing on something like Barry Lyndon coming out from Criterion at the exclusion of everything else. Even just the idea of finding and highlighting 118 announcements in a week is pretty amazing.
Ryan: I'm genuinely proud that I'm able to keep up with that. It's kind of crazy. There are certain days where I have such a busy day that I can't post all the announcements as soon as I find them. Even the screen I'm looking at to speak to you, there's probably about 38 different tabs open in this one browser. A lot of it is stuff I need to go back to post, or I've got it open for a project. Certain things need to be shared with the world, and I seem to be the only account that shares all of it.
What's the Idea: What does your average week look like to pull off the weekly show? The logistics of the show alone, finding the announcement, booking guests, and so on, is a lot of work.
Ryan: What's funny is without the context of everything else I do, this is going to sound like a lot, and it’s not even the company and the magazine and everything else that we haven't discussed yet.
I sort of schedule the weekly show in bursts. Every two to three months, I will try to schedule for those next two or three months and get everything booked out. I make sure that these are people I trust and that I've known for a while, that won't drop out. It's very rare. In these four years, I've only had, I think, two cancellations in that entire time, which makes this doable.
Two weeks before or so, I'll check in and say, “Hey, you're still good,” which helps. I've got a lot of templates. That is one of the ways that I get this done. I keep templates for my scheduling email. I've got a little run through for my Re-Connected live show that says, “This is the format, here's the invite link,” so everything is in one place for them. I'll highlight their topic, just in case, and I'll even tell them who's going to speak first. That way it's not an awkward situation during the show. But even that started recently.
What's the Idea: How do you go about finding the announcements for the show?
Ryan: During the week, it's mostly just cruising through social media and updating certain websites periodically, along with having this insane ability to not forget things, which keeps this going in a good way. I know the patterns of certain labels. Some are very easy to count on. Vinegar Syndrome only posts announcements on the first of every month at noon Eastern [standard time] except for a couple sales during the year. That is so helpful. Thank you, Vinegar Syndrome, for being reliable as hell.
Some of these other ones are a little less reliable, but they have patterns, like Kino Lorber. Every single Saturday and Sunday at 11 Eastern, they're posting their announcement. So, I know I need to go in there about 3 minutes before, get my template ready to go so I can knock it out and then go about my business. I do that literally every single Saturday and Sunday.
For some of these other labels, I know which day of the month they're going to post, but I don't know what time. I'll have stuff ready to go that morning. I'll have their site open. I'm checking to see if there's been a couple leaks or anything that I can get, like some artwork downloaded.
The hard ones are the other 94% of the announcements, which I just happen to stumble across while I'm refreshing social media four times an hour. I've got a couple of websites where pre-orders pop up on things that companies that aren't going to announce. Studios like Universal Pictures aren't doing press releases for most of their announcements. They're just sort of quietly sending them to retailers and hoping people find out about them, which is, by the way, a terrible business plan. We could fix that. Let's use proper press releases.
Most of the time there's nothing new, so I don't have to do anything. But those times when there is something new, I've got it ready to go and I'll go post it as fast as I can. But even that is an arduous process. I'm posting every single announcement and pre-order and deal that I find across four different social media platforms. If I find something that was out of print and I want to share with the world, hey, you can go buy this now, it goes across four different social media platforms, which brings a lot of logistical nightmares that people probably don't consider. Some of these companies’ announcements themselves are 5,000 characters long. That's fine for Facebook because I think their limit is 10,000 characters. But on Instagram, it's only 2,200 characters, so I have to take out individual words to make sure I can fit everything.
“People all over the world are seeing that announcement and going, I have wanted this movie for years, and this is going to be the first disc release of this film ever. If I don’t order it today, I’m not going to get the best version of it.”
But then I go to Bluesky, where every individual post can only be 300 characters, so one announcement becomes 25 different posts responding to each other. That's when stuff turns into a nightmare.
Vinegar Syndrome announcement day is literally blocked off in my calendar because I'm going to be posting their announcements for two hours on the first of every month. It's silly. A lot of people are going to look at that and say, “It's not even that important. This isn't something that you need to post right when it's announced.”
But the reality is it is important for a lot of people. People all over the world are seeing that announcement and going, “I have wanted this movie for years, and this is going to be the first disc release of this film ever. If I don't order it today, I'm not going to get the best version of it.”
Granted, that gets into the argument about limited editions and the slipcover argument that I don't really need to get into. I know that a lot of people aren't on that side because the disc will stay in print for a while. I get that. But the reality is a lot of these people want the best version of it because it’s their favourite movie, and sometimes, especially with some of these Vinegar Syndrome partner labels, if you don't get it in the first 25 minutes, you're not getting the best version of that release, so I'm working my tail off the moment those go live. It is a lot of work. It is a lot of a headache sometimes, but I genuinely see it as worth it because I want people to trust my brand and I want people to count on that.
What's the Idea: Reliability and respect are such strong components of what you do. It goes back to your company name, Someone's Favorite Production, which acknowledges that every movie, every release, can be incredibly meaningful for somebody.
Ryan: I could easily save a lot of time with these announcements. I could just post a screenshot of the Vinegar Syndrome website and say, “Hey, new announcements are up,” and people could go check out what they are. For some people, that's enough, and I'm not taking away from that.
But that one release from Dark Star Pictures, for example, won’t get a lot of attention on a lot of these websites, and it is a film that hundreds of people worked on. It’s a film that is going to hopefully sell a thousand copies of a slipcover and a disc. They got people to work on that disc, to produce an audio commentary, to author that disc, to manufacture that disc at a plant, and to ship that disc. By the time that disc gets in your hands, it's not out of the realm of possibility that literally more than a thousand people contributed to what you're holding in your hand.
To me, that means that I want to highlight every single part of that announcement, including the synopsis of the film, who is starring in it, who is on the disc, what company is releasing it, the fact that they're associated with Vinegar Syndrome, and a link to be able to purchase it so that you don't have to do any more research.
One thing that I really try to do is, if I know something specific about this release, I'll put the word “note” under the first line and say something specific about it, because if somebody is just going to quickly glance at this, I want them to find out what's important before they dive deep. Or I’ll put these five well-known people associated with the film; that way that's more likely to be caught by somebody that loves, I don't know, Edward G. Robinson if they were Googling him. Maybe there's a 0.3% higher chance that this pops up for them, but if that's the case, I want them to be able to find it because maybe it's the first time that they would ever see that their favourite movie got a very respectful and contextualized release of a film.
What's the Idea: That sounds like an important way to possibly find new customers that don't realize things have changed since the DVD era. There are now amazing releases of so many different movies, and there’s an amazing moment of discovery happening now between the veterans like Criterion and newer companies like Deaf Crocodile. People like you and Chris Haskell are doing an amazing job highlighting the wilder releases happening.
Ryan: I've tried to make Disc-Connected an anti-gatekeeping brand. Everything that I do deserves the same amount of respect because sure, Criterion is giving a beautiful release to Kiarostami in November, but it’s the type of release that gets highly shared articles everywhere. That’s great, but something like Black Zero out of Canada that puts out only Canadian experimental cinema deserves the exact same level of hype and discussion, and they will never get it, so I try to put as much as I can into every single announcement. At least somebody can say that it got attention from me.
The conversation with Ryan Verrill continues in parts three through six.
In part three, we discuss his interviews along with how he started the Shelf Shock Rewind Awards.
In part five, we discuss his magazine The Physical Media Advocate.
In part six, we discuss Ryan’s podcast network Someone’s Favorite Productions.
Watch Ryan live every Thursday on Re-Connected, and follow him on your social media of choice, including Instagram, to keep up with everything he does.
The interview was recorded using Google Meet in August 2025.
The transcript was edited by Matt Long of What’s the Idea Professional Editing, with additional copy editing by Anthony Nijssen of APT Editing.
All photos are the property of Ryan Verrill unless otherwise noted.