Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein Reveal Their Criterion Closet Picks

Two Portland Originals Entered the Closet and Started Trading Movie Obsessions

Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein walked into Criterion’s Mobile Closet as the pair behind Portlandia and immediately turned film collecting into another perfectly calibrated two-person bit.

Criterion brought the traveling version of its famous movie closet to Portland, Oregon, where Armisen and Brownstein dug through the shelves, championed longtime favorites and selected films for one another. The result is part sincere cinephile confession, part friendship ritual and part reminder that these two can make even a discussion of Ingmar Bergman feel like somebody may break character at any second.

The Portland stop was part of Criterion’s partnership with PAM CUT, with the Mobile Closet stationed across from the Portland Art Museum from May 29 through May 31, 2026. Criterion also invited the longtime collaborators to record a live edition of its original series Adventures in Moviegoing at PAM CUT Cinema before a local audience.

That larger conversation now lives on the Criterion Channel, but the Closet Picks video offers its own compact pleasure: Armisen and Brownstein moving from title to title with the shorthand of people who have spent years building comedy, music and entire fictional versions of Portland together.

The Criterion Mobile Closet Finally Came Home to Portland

Criterion debuted the Mobile Closet in 2024 as a traveling replica of the famously tiny film library inside its New York office. By the time it reached Portland, the truck had already become a destination for movie obsessives who wanted three glorious minutes among more than 1,700 in-print Criterion editions.

Portland was the Closet’s eighth stop and an especially fitting one for Armisen and Brownstein. Their cult-favorite sketch series turned the city’s habits, contradictions, ambitions and beautifully specific oddballs into eight seasons of comedy. Bringing them into a densely packed movie truck in the middle of Portland feels less like booking talent and more like activating a previously undiscovered Portlandia location.

Instead of entering as characters, however, they arrive as themselves: two artists with deeply formed tastes, overlapping references and enough knowledge to move quickly from movie-star magnetism to directorial obsession without reducing the conversation to a list of respectable classics.

Their selections also reveal how friendship changes the way people recommend movies. A great pick is not simply a film the giver loves. It is a film that somehow recognizes the other person—one that says, “This belongs on your shelf because I know how your mind works.”

“Being There” and “After Hours” Meet in Their Shared Sweet Spot

Armisen and Brownstein share their love for Hal Ashby’s Being There and Martin Scorsese’s After Hours, two comedies that place seemingly straightforward men inside worlds operating by increasingly unstable rules.

In Being There, Peter Sellers plays Chance, a sheltered gardener whose simple observations are repeatedly mistaken for profound political wisdom. The satire is gentle on the surface and merciless underneath, allowing social status, television and projection to do most of the absurd work.

After Hours trades Washington influence for one long downtown Manhattan nightmare. Griffin Dunne’s office worker attempts an ordinary late-night encounter and instead tumbles through a chain of coincidences, misunderstandings and punishments that keep escalating long after common sense has left the building.

Both films make excellent Armisen-and-Brownstein territory. Their comedy has always understood how people create elaborate systems around themselves—and how quickly those systems become ridiculous when one person fails to follow the expected social script.

Ingmar Bergman Brings Out Their Serious Movie-Lover Side

The pair also compare favorite Ingmar Bergman films, opening the door to one of Criterion’s most extensively represented filmmakers. Bergman may be shorthand for severe European cinema in a thousand comedy sketches, but his work contains far more tonal range than the familiar image of a knight playing chess with Death.

His films move through faith, performance, marriage, memory, identity and the terror of other people seeing exactly who we are. They can be austere, intimate, cruel, funny and unexpectedly theatrical—qualities that make him an especially revealing subject for two performers whose own work constantly changes masks.

Armisen and Brownstein discussing Bergman also makes a useful point about their creative partnership. Their comic instincts may appear effortless, but both are careful students of rhythm, behavior and the tiny choices that make a scene turn. Serious cinema and sketch comedy are not opposing interests when the real fascination is how people reveal themselves under pressure.

“Moonstruck” and “Sid & Nancy” Become Friendship Gifts

The most charming part of the visit comes when they choose classics for each other, including Norman Jewison’s Moonstruck and Alex Cox’s Sid & Nancy.

On one side sits a romantic comedy powered by Cher, Nicolas Cage, family obligation, opera and the belief that love makes perfectly sensible adults behave like weather events. On the other sits a volatile punk tragedy about Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen, with Gary Oldman and Chloe Webb turning romantic self-destruction into something ugly, funny and difficult to shake.

The pairing sounds wildly incompatible until you consider what both films understand: romance can be irrational, theatrical and completely capable of rearranging a person’s life. One gives that chaos a full moon over Brooklyn. The other throws it into a damaged punk-rock room and removes the possibility of a comforting ending.

Giving those movies as gifts feels like an extension of the duo’s chemistry. Their best work has always lived in contrast—earnestness against absurdity, affection against irritation, cultural precision against total nonsense. Naturally, their movie exchange would need Cher and the Sex Pistols in the same breath.

Their Full “Adventures in Moviegoing” Conversation Goes Even Deeper

Criterion’s Portland programming did not end inside the truck. On May 31, Armisen and Brownstein joined Criterion president Peter Becker for a live recording of Adventures in Moviegoing at PAM CUT Cinema.

The full episode expands the conversation to the films they watch while touring, their favorite movies about bands that are not This Is Spinal Tap, and their admiration for stars ranging from Greta Garbo to Divine. It is less a formal lesson in film history than an invitation into the reference library that helped shape two careers in comedy and music.

That is what makes their Criterion appearance more than promotional content. Viewers get to see the cinematic ingredients behind the finished personas: the deadpan timing, the love of outsiders, the fascination with people trying to perform versions of themselves and the willingness to place high art directly beside pop pleasure.

Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein’s Criterion Closet Visit in Photos

The supplied gallery accompanies the pair’s Portland Mobile Closet visit and their exchange of Criterion favorites.

Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein browse Criterion selections during the Mobile Closet’s Portland stop. Images: The Criterion Collection / YouTube.

Some celebrity shelf tours feel like exercises in proving taste. Armisen and Brownstein make theirs feel like what movie collecting is supposed to be: a slightly chaotic conversation, a memory trigger and an excuse to hand somebody a film you cannot believe they have not watched yet.

Watch Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein’s Criterion Closet Picks

Criterion’s official video captures the Portlandia collaborators discussing Being There, After Hours, Ingmar Bergman and the classics they selected for one another.

Source: The Criterion Collection and Criterion Channel.