Waiting for Netflix's Plot to Advance

Last year, for example, Netflix had a six-month exclusive on "This Filthy World," a film about a one-man show by Baltimore director John Waters.

Waters, who might be most famous at the moment for his flick "Hairspray," gave his parents a subscription to Netflix for Christmas last year and said he counted himself as a fan of the service even before the deal.

"When I was born, you had to go to L.A. or New York to see good movies," he said. "Now you don't have to leave where you were born to be cool."

The director, who is currently working on a children's film, said the selections at some theaters are low. Netflix is "making available films that you cannot see in your local theater, and that's incredibly important," he said.

Netflix's Washington area hub is tucked into generic-looking office space; it's possible to walk around the outside of the building without realizing you've arrived at the Netflix processing center, one of 46 such hubs across the country.

The company keeps the location low-profile because it doesn't want people wandering in to try to return the movie they just watched, which is exactly what I tried to do at the start of a recent visit.

On a typical day, the Rockville hub processes about 85,000 DVDs; Tuesdays and Wednesdays are the busiest because people tend to watch movies on the weekends. If a movie goes too long without a rental, it gets sent back to a central warehouse. But if a Washington area subscriber has a movie in his or her queue, it stays. The system relies on bar codes, machines and 60 or so fast-moving workers.

For Netflix to be able to offer films such as Waters's one-man show, it has to get the word out to members who might be interested in the film. Its ratings system collates 2 billion user-submitted reviews to predict which movies its subscribers will like.

It isn't always perfect. To show off some of Netflix's features, Swasey opens a laptop and connects to his own account. Based on his enthusiastic rating of "Champion," a moving documentary about character actor Danny Trejo, Netflix has recommended that Swasey check out a disc called "Ultimate Fighting Championship: Liddell vs. Ortiz 2."

"Interesting," he says. "I don't think I'm going to like this movie at all."

Which reminds me, for some reason, of behavior I've noted among some of my Netflix-using friends; sometimes you check out the movie you think you should see, even if it doesn't turn out to be the light entertainment you actually feel like watching when Friday night rolls around.

"Hotel Rwanda," for example. I had it on my coffee table for a few weeks before I ever got around to watching it.

"I've had it for eight months," Swasey confessed. "I just can't bring myself to watch it because I know it's going to be depressing."