Speaker 1: Ephemeral as a protection of My Heart Radio. Last episode,
Speaker 1: we trace the rise and fall of the video rental
Speaker 1: store with Dan Herbert, a professor of media studies at
Speaker 1: the University of Michigan and author of the book Video
Speaker 1: Land Movie Culture at the American Video Store. Today, we're
Speaker 1: going to take our own field trip to an independent
Speaker 1: video store that, despite the ever changing media market, has
Speaker 1: continued to thrive in its local community. Later, the Ephemeral
Speaker 1: team will chat with two of our favorite podcast hosts,
Speaker 1: Lauren Vogelbaum and any Reese of the podcast Saver about
Speaker 1: some of our best video store memories. But first, a
Speaker 1: few more words from Dan on the ephemeral experience of
Speaker 1: selecting a movie from a wall of titles. One of
Speaker 1: the things that I think was awesome about video stores
Speaker 1: is that they put things into shelves and aisles, and
Speaker 1: that those shelves and aisles had a logic that spatialized
Speaker 1: a bunch of notions about taste and value related to movies.
Speaker 1: What I mean by that is that they put labels
Speaker 1: on them, like action or adventure, or romance or horror.
Speaker 1: Different stores created these categories to lump movies together, and
Speaker 1: they put that into a physical space or there was
Speaker 1: a physical space associated with that category, just the same
Speaker 1: way you walk down an aisle in a grocery store
Speaker 1: and you're like, oh, this is the space with baby
Speaker 1: food and baby diapers, and now there's pet toys. What's
Speaker 1: that about. I just think that, like, retail spaces are
Speaker 1: really interesting in general, and video stores were interesting because
Speaker 1: of the way they plumped things together that the corporate
Speaker 1: stores like Hollywood in Blockbuster. Generally, those stores put things
Speaker 1: into very broad, generic categories because those stores were really
Speaker 1: driven by new releases, so the biggest section of the
Speaker 1: store was not based on a genre or a commonality
Speaker 1: among the movies, but rather the temporality of the release.
Speaker 1: The kind of broad categories found at a corporate store
Speaker 1: imply a kind of openness and a kind of democratic
Speaker 1: attitude toward individual taste. That you didn't have to know
Speaker 1: much about a movie, or about the history of movies,
Speaker 1: or about film art or aesthetics to figure out where
Speaker 1: you should be in the store to get what you want.
Speaker 1: And then with independence stores you find all sorts of
Speaker 1: quirky categories. Sometimes these are kind of because the person
Speaker 1: is educated about film history and film art. Sometimes it's
Speaker 1: just because there was like a quirky video store owner. Right,
Speaker 1: So like various small town stores had these great sections
Speaker 1: like movies with people with mustaches or like bald in
Speaker 1: times days movies, so like a subcategory of romances. Right,
Speaker 1: Whereas the corporate store had everything in these big umbrellas.
Speaker 1: The independent stores generally find more sections and more kind
Speaker 1: of fine grained criteria for putting movies together. And then
Speaker 1: there's those stories that really went to town being very
Speaker 1: particular about why some movies were in some sections. And
Speaker 1: they have tons and tons of sections, so it's not
Speaker 1: just a matter of putting things into like documentary, but
Speaker 1: you have sub sections for historical documentary, political documentary, concert films,
Speaker 1: et cetera. And then foreign films might be divided by country,
Speaker 1: by director, or by both. Right, those kinds of stores
Speaker 1: display in physical space a kind of more formally educated
Speaker 1: approach toward film, not necessarily a better education, just a
Speaker 1: more formally trained It's like, oh, somehow we should all
Speaker 1: think about where a movie came from, what country, and
Speaker 1: we should all think about what director. That isn't necessarily
Speaker 1: the case, but if you've been to film school, that
Speaker 1: is the case. So those stores are a little i
Speaker 1: would say, less democratic, because you can't navigate those spaces
Speaker 1: unless you know one that directors matter and that countries matter,
Speaker 1: and two you have to kind of have a more
Speaker 1: kind of intellectual rather than emotional approach towards selection, meaning
Speaker 1: that it's like, Okay, if I want to feel scared
Speaker 1: at eight thirty PM, that might mean me actually going
Speaker 1: to the documentary section or getting something by Louis Bunuell.
Speaker 1: Those are the three categories. Is like the corporate store
Speaker 1: with its bland, general, emotion driven generic categories, the indie
Speaker 1: stores that were often quirky and had more sections, and
Speaker 1: those sections often revealed kind of the odd ball thinking
Speaker 1: of the individual owners. And then there's those specialty stores
Speaker 1: that really did organize things according to a very kind
Speaker 1: of formal and formally edging hated approach toward film history
Speaker 1: and film art. But everything came to a head at
Speaker 1: the checkout counter. Rather than appearing like a movie concession stand,
Speaker 1: early video store checkout counters like look like hardware repair shops,
Speaker 1: because that's really what they were doing, is they were
Speaker 1: they were renting these tapes and these VCRs with three
Speaker 1: paid rentles from Blockbuster Video, get a free to linear
Speaker 1: bottle of diet Coca Cola, and then you have Blockbuster
Speaker 1: and other stores like that really did transform the checkout
Speaker 1: counter into a movie concession stand. So you weren't just
Speaker 1: getting the movie, but you know all of the kind
Speaker 1: of things that we attached to movie consumption from movie theaters,
Speaker 1: you know, candy, soda, whatever, things like that. The checkout
Speaker 1: counter is this kind of amazing space in general because
Speaker 1: all of that contemplation, wandering, browsing, selecting, discussing, all that
Speaker 1: gets kind of condensed down to this business transaction at
Speaker 1: the counter. Right, So on the one hand, there's the clerk,
Speaker 1: and maybe the clerk is somebody that you would talk
Speaker 1: to and make recommendations back and forth. Maybe the clerk
Speaker 1: isn't that kind of person. But in the end, it's
Speaker 1: a business transaction. It can be fraud because it is
Speaker 1: a business transaction, like do I have late fees? Right,
Speaker 1: Like the number of times people are surprised by having
Speaker 1: late fees or feigned surprised by having late fees like
Speaker 1: oh no, I had no idea, And then the bizarre
Speaker 1: negotiation that would happen between the clerk and the customer
Speaker 1: of like, well, you owe thirty bucks, but I guess
Speaker 1: you know I can. I can let you off for fifteen.
Speaker 1: It's like, what do you mean you're gonna let me off?
Speaker 1: You're not a cop? And who determined like the value
Speaker 1: of a late movie anyway, Like there's no fixed price
Speaker 1: on on latenus. I mean there is at the store,
Speaker 1: but it's still such a strangely ephemeral or bendable kind
Speaker 1: of thing here in Atlanta to We're fortunate to have
Speaker 1: Video Drone, a rental house that's continuously operated since. Videodrome
Speaker 1: exemplifies much of what Dan values about the in store
Speaker 1: rental experience. It's a place that has something to offer
Speaker 1: anyone that walks through its doors, and has been able
Speaker 1: to adapt to two decades of change, including weathering a
Speaker 1: global pandemic. Inside, you'll find a vibrant culture of people
Speaker 1: from all walks of life seeking out about film, with
Speaker 1: stacks of DVDs in their arms. Owner Matt Booth and
Speaker 1: the proprietors of Videodrome were gracious enough to invite us
Speaker 1: to chat about their history, take a look around, and
Speaker 1: point microphones at unsuspecting customers. I'd like to just collect
Speaker 1: and watch as much as I can, especially during quarantine,
Speaker 1: and there's a lot of stuff that isn't online, and
Speaker 1: video Drome has been like the only source I could
Speaker 1: find for so much stuff. There's this myth that like
Speaker 1: in the age of the Internet, like you have access
Speaker 1: to everything, but it's not. It's just somewhere between thirty
Speaker 1: and forty thousand movies. And like if you take Netflix, Hulu,
Speaker 1: Amazon and combine their entire just film libraries, not counting
Speaker 1: the television, I think it edges out to like nine
Speaker 1: or ten thousand. My name is Ian Deaton. I'm a
Speaker 1: low budget film composer, and I also work part time
Speaker 1: a video drme, drabbing things off the shop that we
Speaker 1: would have never found. Especially I'm like a big like
Speaker 1: horror and exploitation fan, and that's probably one of the
Speaker 1: most like lost genres of film. Like you could probably
Speaker 1: find like things that are considered like classics, but like
Speaker 1: you can't find most of them unless you like either
Speaker 1: buy a physical copy from someone for like a hundred
Speaker 1: dollars or just come here. You know that amped up
Speaker 1: a lot during quarantine. I moved back to Atlanta from
Speaker 1: Athens in now would come probably like twice a month
Speaker 1: whenever I could get down here, like I would try
Speaker 1: to just like walk around at least brows because I've
Speaker 1: never seen something so detailed and cataloged. It was enthralling.
Speaker 1: Any kind of physical storefront in like this era is
Speaker 1: kind of like practicing a traditional routine in a weird way,
Speaker 1: especially something like a video store. It's like a reflection
Speaker 1: of something maybe people associate with the past, but like
Speaker 1: actually has a lot of usefulness. It's just fun. It's
Speaker 1: like and then the conversations you have, you know, it's great.
Speaker 1: Another thing I'll say is that coming over here and
Speaker 1: just being able to talk with some of the staff
Speaker 1: while I like brows has been a welcomed human interaction,
Speaker 1: just like being inside all the time. It's like around people,
Speaker 1: it's just like but it's just so relaxed and like,
Speaker 1: I'm not even the number one fan in my friend group.
Speaker 1: It's Dan Clifford. He paid someone to do an embroidery
Speaker 1: of their low Go for a Christmas president room sweet Drome.
Speaker 1: So I mean, he'll probably come in today, usually comes
Speaker 1: in on Friday. So I think the most important thing
Speaker 1: is curators, like because that's what this story is even
Speaker 1: though it's there's an insane amount of films and television
Speaker 1: shows in here, Matt and everybody else that works here,
Speaker 1: because it's kind of like a collective, we really try
Speaker 1: to curate this stuff. That's one of the reasons why
Speaker 1: it's split into all these crazy sections and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: All of us that work here have Hulu and Net.
Speaker 1: It's not like we're opposed to that. We want to
Speaker 1: see the films, however, then we can get our grubby
Speaker 1: little hands on it, and this just happens to be
Speaker 1: the most direct way to do it. A lot of
Speaker 1: times you get weird information you didn't know before that
Speaker 1: you're not necessarily Like if you pull up Rolling Thunder
Speaker 1: on Netflix, it's not going to tell you that Paul
Speaker 1: Trader was unemployed for six months and an alcoholic and
Speaker 1: almost got kicked out of his house and got fired
Speaker 1: by Pauline while he was writing the movie. And that's
Speaker 1: why it's so you know what I'm saying, like, don't
Speaker 1: learn stuff like that. And we also have a lot
Speaker 1: of people that work part time on and off in
Speaker 1: the film industry that work here, like Tommy has done
Speaker 1: construction on sets, Donnie barely comes here anymore because he's
Speaker 1: a full time editor on television shows and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: I worked as a p A and a camera p
Speaker 1: A for like years until it bashed my childhood dreams
Speaker 1: into nothing and I had to run away screaming to
Speaker 1: this wonderful place where movies are real. And yeah, there's
Speaker 1: there's other stories too, but but it's nice because we
Speaker 1: get to like kind of bring that kind of stuff
Speaker 1: into the store to talk to the customs about. And
Speaker 1: most importantly, everybody, I think most of the people that
Speaker 1: will actually sit and talk to you have a basic
Speaker 1: love of cinema and most importantly storytelling. It's extremely important
Speaker 1: to all cultures and always has been. And if you
Speaker 1: look back, there's even examples in like I don't know,
Speaker 1: I want to say thousands or twelve hundred in the
Speaker 1: Middle East where they were doing projected plays with candlelight
Speaker 1: and like stuff like that, like literally proto cinema, like
Speaker 1: a long time ago. And it's like it's obvious that
Speaker 1: this ritual of human beings sitting around some kind of
Speaker 1: white to tell them a story, whether that's a someone
Speaker 1: speaking or behind a screen or on the stage or
Speaker 1: what you know, it's like it just keeps coming up
Speaker 1: over and over again. We can't seem to shake that
Speaker 1: mode of people sitting around telling us something about ourselves.
Speaker 1: I know it's I'm going way out there, but but
Speaker 1: but still it is important. And I've recognized that so
Speaker 1: many times working here, I'm like, where is the common
Speaker 1: denominator between all this? And it's like, oh, yeah, when
Speaker 1: I was five and my grandpa tells me a creepy
Speaker 1: story about when he thought he saw a UFO, you know,
Speaker 1: standing in front of the fire, it's literally the same
Speaker 1: same thing. I just loved DVDs. I know it's silly
Speaker 1: and everybody's gone to streaming and all this other kind
Speaker 1: of stuff, But to me, this is like opening a book,
Speaker 1: holding a book in your hand. You're you've got the
Speaker 1: DVD and it's I don't know, it's just something special,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. Then everything else, it's truly
Speaker 1: stringing string passion. And besides, these guys are fantastic. They
Speaker 1: know every movie ever made, every everything. If there's anything
Speaker 1: you want to know, I mean, they know it so
Speaker 1: and to me that just means a lot. I come
Speaker 1: once a week, truly, because I don't always know what
Speaker 1: I want to watch me be able to browse the
Speaker 1: shelves is exciting and honestly, talking to these guys are
Speaker 1: always recommended me something that somebody who thinks that I
Speaker 1: know a lot about movies, then you come here and
Speaker 1: you realize you know, the diverse uh stuff that they
Speaker 1: know about and recommend is just it just makes it
Speaker 1: better than than any other options, you know, streaming or otherwise.
Speaker 1: So I'm Dan, Dan, your reputation preceded you. They were
Speaker 1: talking about you before you got That's very cool. I'm
Speaker 1: very excited about that. I've been coming here for a year.
Speaker 1: On a is my one year anniversary of coming here
Speaker 1: every week. Because they gave him a rental history a
Speaker 1: while back and I was like, I don't want to
Speaker 1: find out what the like the exact day is. This
Speaker 1: is the best story in the damn world. It's like
Speaker 1: the only space sale on myself to go to. I
Speaker 1: really don't like algorithms is one part of it, but
Speaker 1: like this store. What's great about it is like they'll
Speaker 1: give you off the wall recommendations about something that you'll
Speaker 1: never even think to look for. You can dig really
Speaker 1: deep in an obscure sub genre in a way that
Speaker 1: you can't even via streaming, Like we watched fifty three
Speaker 1: Hong Kong movies this summer or something. We were able
Speaker 1: to because of these guys. You know, they know that
Speaker 1: Hong Kong section is a legendary. It's just the the
Speaker 1: ability to like drill down into a sub genre or
Speaker 1: get something completely random that generally speaking isn't on streaming.
Speaker 1: You know, the knowledge base of like what like twenty
Speaker 1: years of collecting is unparalleled. It's hard for me to
Speaker 1: put into word, frankly, how much I like this place.
Speaker 1: Then I want to point out, because the microphone doesn't
Speaker 1: capture this, that you're wearing a video drum mask. Uh,
Speaker 1: I'm not wearing one video drumask. I'm wearing two and
Speaker 1: the Ladies snowblood shirt. I figure I look like the
Speaker 1: picture of the client going a cassette tape earring too.
Speaker 1: It just it all tracks. I'm well, And you've been
Speaker 1: coming here for what like the last year, You've been
Speaker 1: coming longer I've been coming before, Like we had our
Speaker 1: pretty much day to day ritual. Um, yeah, probably about
Speaker 1: two or three years now. Yeah. Yeah, there's a Hollywood
Speaker 1: video on Highway forty one. Thought we would go to it.
Speaker 1: Was pretty big. It's now an auto zone. I think
Speaker 1: that's much more exciting. Yeah, and then there was like
Speaker 1: a really strange I feel like I just remember the
Speaker 1: smell where it wasn't it doesn't smell like mothballs would
Speaker 1: have just smelled very like dingy. And that one was
Speaker 1: closer to us, but we didn't go there as often.
Speaker 1: It was as much smaller, but I don't remember the
Speaker 1: name of it. I think it was just like independently owned.
Speaker 1: I also went to school in Athens, so I went
Speaker 1: to Vision Video and Athen's a bunch and that kind
Speaker 1: of like that's howaing what got me into watching movies
Speaker 1: was going to Vision Video. What are you gonna rent today?
Speaker 1: You have any idea? No? No, That's why I came
Speaker 1: in here all excited. Cond there's unlimited possibilities. So far.
Speaker 1: I have Night of the Demon from seven haven't seen it.
Speaker 1: I'm very excited. And then recommendation from him was Rolling Thunder,
Speaker 1: Paul Schrader. I love Paul Schrader. Mishima first reformed. He
Speaker 1: wrote Taxi driver, you know, and Flash Gordon smooth talk.
Speaker 1: A lot of stuff that I haven't seen that I
Speaker 1: feel like I should have seen already mixed with a
Speaker 1: new release let him Go, because I'll admit to me
Speaker 1: and like Kevin Costner fanboy, we're looking for something very doom,
Speaker 1: so we might get Freddie Got Fingered or Encino Man
Speaker 1: because we just got vaccinated, so we're trying to watch
Speaker 1: something as stupid as possible. Today, I'm actually buying a
Speaker 1: VHS tapes are producer Tremor. I found a lovely copy
Speaker 1: of Pink Floyds at the wall. Dude, I've seen that.
Speaker 1: Just my dad has an Yeah, I could not pass
Speaker 1: at up. How do you pick something? I mean, you
Speaker 1: just divine it. You hear about stuff naturally. It just
Speaker 1: just like advertisments and everything else. But a lot of
Speaker 1: times this can't sound silly, but I just walked in
Speaker 1: and whatever jumps out at me, and usually that's better
Speaker 1: than what I had heard or planned on getting. To
Speaker 1: begin with, my name is Matt Booth. I'm known or
Speaker 1: video drum moved Atlanta, n I kind of worked in
Speaker 1: video stores on and off in high school, and I
Speaker 1: didn't really have a lot of job opportunities after college,
Speaker 1: and I just started picking up shifts at a video
Speaker 1: store that at that time it was called Video Update,
Speaker 1: and it was at real Mall, which is doesn't exist anymore.
Speaker 1: It was a kind job where people came and go
Speaker 1: a lot, so if you just showed up on time,
Speaker 1: you became the manager pretty quickly. And I got moved
Speaker 1: over to the little Five Points location. I wasn't the
Speaker 1: head person that store, but I was a manager, and
Speaker 1: I just got to know people in the neighborhood and
Speaker 1: realized it was a kind of neighborhood that like people
Speaker 1: were looking for more than just what corporate stores were,
Speaker 1: and that was like the heyday video stores. That was
Speaker 1: like nice six nine seven. They were so common at
Speaker 1: that time. That's the only way people got entertainment on
Speaker 1: Friday and Saturday besides going to the movie, So it
Speaker 1: didn't seem ridiculous to open another video store. I had
Speaker 1: a friend at the time who also worked at the
Speaker 1: Store's name was Jeff Sutton, and we just started looking
Speaker 1: for locations, and we convinced the landlord here too in
Speaker 1: the summer to let us have this space. And we
Speaker 1: took a combination of our own VHS collections and what
Speaker 1: we kind of drove around and scavenged how to do
Speaker 1: amount of money to put some orders in and started
Speaker 1: the store with the maybe like five HS. There's been
Speaker 1: a lot of changes in this industry, so we were
Speaker 1: all VHS and we moved to DVD slowly, and now
Speaker 1: we're kind of moving to Blu ray and there's been
Speaker 1: some kind of lost formats in between two. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Blu Ray's working really well. It's a really good Format's
Speaker 1: got tons of great companies played out, really special editions
Speaker 1: of things, perfect restorations. It's a really impressive kind of format.
Speaker 1: So I'm hoping it's days. I mean, we've had our
Speaker 1: ups and downs too. I mean, and we started, like
Speaker 1: I said, we were more of like alternative to the
Speaker 1: corporate store, so we were concentrating on the genres. We
Speaker 1: liked Italian horror and Hong Kong movies and anime and like,
Speaker 1: we had new releases, but they were just like the
Speaker 1: indie stuff for the foreign stuff. We didn't mess with
Speaker 1: big Hollywood releases at all. As we became the last
Speaker 1: video store, we've become more mainstream in a way, and
Speaker 1: we get kind of something for everybody. And our selection
Speaker 1: really just evolved with our customer base what they're looking for,
Speaker 1: and with our employees what they're asking for. Our customers
Speaker 1: are really knowledgeable. They fill us in all the time
Speaker 1: on things that if we miss it, they loves, and
Speaker 1: I put a great stock in like personal recommendations. So
Speaker 1: for me sitting around and talking to customers all day
Speaker 1: about what they're watching, what they like, they've turned me
Speaker 1: onto so much stuff. You know, it's not just me
Speaker 1: turning some o the things. We have a new a
Speaker 1: new release Fall and you know that does have new
Speaker 1: movies that you categorize as things that just came out
Speaker 1: on DVD and Blu Ray, and it also has a
Speaker 1: lot of like special releases, special editions of things that
Speaker 1: are new to Blu Ray for the first time, So
Speaker 1: it has a lot of older movies on it, but
Speaker 1: it's the first time they've been on Blue Ray or whatever.
Speaker 1: And then if you move along the store, we have
Speaker 1: an anime section from Japanese animation to adult swim to
Speaker 1: like theatrical animated features. A TV section over in that corner.
Speaker 1: That's one thing that's really changed since we've been opened.
Speaker 1: TV was terrible when we first started, and now that
Speaker 1: whole genre has gotten better. And then it kind of
Speaker 1: moves into some foreign stuff. We have like a Scandinavian section,
Speaker 1: Eastern European, German, Spanish, South American, Central American, Italian, big
Speaker 1: French section with some of the big French directors carved
Speaker 1: out sort of kids section, and above that there's like
Speaker 1: a young adult section that has like the Harry Potter
Speaker 1: and Star Wars and that kind of stuff too. And
Speaker 1: then when you go around in that corner, they'll be
Speaker 1: like a Japanese section, which is sort of mainstream Japanese movies,
Speaker 1: and then the classic Japanese section that has more like Curasawa,
Speaker 1: and then a bunch of Samurai and kind of Chuza movies.
Speaker 1: Southeast Asia some of the countries that don't have a
Speaker 1: ton of movies, but we have a half a shelf
Speaker 1: or so of each of those. Yeah, yeah, Taiwan is big.
Speaker 1: Now there's a bunch of great Taiwanese films. China with
Speaker 1: big Hong Kong section nineties. Hong Kong cent is one
Speaker 1: of the favorite like genres of our store. So then
Speaker 1: there's some generic kind of comedy, British drama, action, thriller.
Speaker 1: We have an eighty section with a bunch of eighties favorites.
Speaker 1: We call it we keep wanting to a ninety section,
Speaker 1: but there's no room right now. But we're getting to that.
Speaker 1: We only have room for about forty five thousand movies
Speaker 1: in this whole story, and some of that it's multiples
Speaker 1: of certain you know, we might have five copies of
Speaker 1: certain things. So that's actually one of the things we're
Speaker 1: doing now to make more room for Blu Ray. We
Speaker 1: have about seventy rays right now. We're going back pulling
Speaker 1: some DVDs that we had three and four copies of that.
Speaker 1: We don't need three and four DVDs of that anymore,
Speaker 1: dropping down to one or two. We just only have
Speaker 1: the shell space for a certain amount of movies. So yeah,
Speaker 1: it's usually anywhere between forty and forty thousand. You want
Speaker 1: to see the stacks are a little type back here, um,
Speaker 1: but you can see the numbers back here. They go
Speaker 1: somewhere into the thirty thousand. Back here. We have different
Speaker 1: color codes for differ tags for us that we can
Speaker 1: organize it a certain way. It's a labyrinth of shelves basically,
Speaker 1: so we had to add rolling shelves. Um add shelves
Speaker 1: on top of shelves. I don't know. It's just a
Speaker 1: system to get as made distant here as possible. They
Speaker 1: originally built the whole vhs. The newer shelves stock to
Speaker 1: be is big because they hold DVDs and blue rays.
Speaker 1: And then you've just got every title in like a
Speaker 1: generic case with like a serial number you made up
Speaker 1: in the title of the movie, like handwritten on the outside. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not the dewy desibl system. It's basically every movie
Speaker 1: in the order that we got it, essentially that it
Speaker 1: came into the store. Yeah. I when're talking about new movies,
Speaker 1: like this is the desk, that's small desk we used
Speaker 1: to work on stuff. This is the movies that come
Speaker 1: out next week. And you've got your glamorous shout of
Speaker 1: Tommy why so looking over you know he was here
Speaker 1: one time he signed his movie for us. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is where we've been collecting vhs that we sell. I
Speaker 1: like set up appointments with people coming by vhs sometimes
Speaker 1: or we have it for We've had some vhs like
Speaker 1: events where we've sold vhs at events for us that
Speaker 1: we just want to be a part of the community.
Speaker 1: We want to be part of the film community. We
Speaker 1: like to put on screenings. We have to do events
Speaker 1: at like bars and restaurants. We like to have people
Speaker 1: in the store, and as long as we have customers
Speaker 1: and they're into us, will be here essentially the past.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, are you for real? Dude? I love
Speaker 1: your podcast just like, wait, holy I was just on Ephemeral,
Speaker 1: but you will be I was literally like two days
Speaker 1: ago looking up to see if y'all were doing new stuff.
Speaker 1: I mean, like, I feel like I just walked on
Speaker 1: the set of a One Car one movie accidentally, or
Speaker 1: some like wow and see, oh man, that's another extremely
Speaker 1: stupid movie. Yeah. In preparation for this pair of episodes,
Speaker 1: we wanted to talk with friends who also came of
Speaker 1: age in the heyday of the American video store. Here,
Speaker 1: Annie Reese of the podcasts Savor and Stuff, Mom Never
Speaker 1: Told You and Lauren Vogelbaum of Saver and brain Stuff
Speaker 1: join Ephemerald producers Trevor Young, Max Williams, and myself for
Speaker 1: a roundtable discussion on growing up with movie stores. First
Speaker 1: of all, and I told some friends of mine that
Speaker 1: we were doing this who were older than me. They
Speaker 1: were like, you don't know video stores? Did you have vhs?
Speaker 1: Like I love that level of like automatic, you're too
Speaker 1: young for that. But my family, we did love movies,
Speaker 1: and my dad especially like he even taught a movie class.
Speaker 1: And when I went to college, once a month he
Speaker 1: would send me a box of movies to watch. And
Speaker 1: when movie stores came out, when I remember going to them.
Speaker 1: First I was elementary school and every Friday we would
Speaker 1: get either pizza or Chinese food. And then I have
Speaker 1: two brothers and we have a very contentious competitive relationship
Speaker 1: with each other, and usually one of us got to
Speaker 1: choose the movie. Sometimes it was two and sometimes it
Speaker 1: was a video game. And I grew up in a
Speaker 1: really small town, so there was an option in town
Speaker 1: that was like fifteen minutes away, or there was a Blockbuster,
Speaker 1: which was bigger and had more options thirty minutes away.
Speaker 1: So we usually did that only once a month, and
Speaker 1: we we typically went to the one in town which
Speaker 1: had I love it. It was like a year behind
Speaker 1: and everything, and they only had one copy of everything.
Speaker 1: So like you at Blockbuster, in my experience, it would
Speaker 1: have like a copy of the DVD would bring up
Speaker 1: to check out right this place in my town, which
Speaker 1: I don't remember the name of, but it was just
Speaker 1: this really small hole in the wall. You would get
Speaker 1: like these little coins. You'd get them off the wall
Speaker 1: and there's only one for every movie or every video game,
Speaker 1: and you would take it up to to check it out.
Speaker 1: And it was the most exciting, like competitive, like you'd
Speaker 1: see somebody else going for a movie I don't know
Speaker 1: you would go for, especially because everything was a year behind,
Speaker 1: so there were certain titles that were just really in demand.
Speaker 1: And I loved it. I loved the excitement of that
Speaker 1: sitting around on a Friday night with my family and
Speaker 1: we would demo lights and we would eat whatever, like
Speaker 1: pizza or Chinese food. And even if I like, for instance,
Speaker 1: my older brother loves star check and I was afraid
Speaker 1: of aliens, I think he would always get star check
Speaker 1: movies like even that I would I would let it settle.
Speaker 1: I would let him win, and we would try to
Speaker 1: enjoy this experience together. That was very exciting to me
Speaker 1: as a child of like this new movie. I can't go.
Speaker 1: We can't afford to go to the movies the theater
Speaker 1: all the time, but we can do this and it
Speaker 1: was really special to me. Do you ever like getting
Speaker 1: certain he's a year late and like like to get
Speaker 1: a I don't know the matrix in like two thousand
Speaker 1: three or something. I actually have a very specific memory
Speaker 1: of the Matrix. Yes. The funny part is my hometown
Speaker 1: also didn't have a movie theater, except they had like
Speaker 1: a historic theater that was usually used for plays, but
Speaker 1: they also got movies a year late. So it's like
Speaker 1: the whole town was kind of isolated in that way.
Speaker 1: So if you stayed in the bubble, no one knew
Speaker 1: what happened. At the end of the Matrix. I was surprised.
Speaker 1: I was surprised about what happened in fight Club. But
Speaker 1: once a month we did go to Blockbuster, and that
Speaker 1: was that was like the almost the same as I
Speaker 1: don't know, a small town girl goes to big city
Speaker 1: or I'd just be like options, options, so big, everything's
Speaker 1: new and shiny, what about goodness. My very first video
Speaker 1: store was when I was a tiny child, maybe like
Speaker 1: a four to six years old, growing up in Ohio,
Speaker 1: up near Cleveland and down the block from my house,
Speaker 1: there was this little corner market that I believe was
Speaker 1: named Bordon Arrows or Borden Narrows. I was six, um
Speaker 1: and they had a single rack, like one of those
Speaker 1: little round spinny racks of vhs tapes, and my dad
Speaker 1: was a relatively early adopter of the home VHS player.
Speaker 1: I remember he would have gotten one in maybe like
Speaker 1: eighty six or something like that, you know, so not
Speaker 1: like it was one of the first ones. I remember
Speaker 1: him specifically showing off the features of rewinding and slow
Speaker 1: forward motion to one of his friends with Indiana Jones
Speaker 1: and the writers Little Lost Dark, and they were both
Speaker 1: like whoa and but so Bordinaros had this like one
Speaker 1: rack VHS tapes and uh. I occasionally would get to
Speaker 1: pick one out, and every single time I got Disney's
Speaker 1: Robin Hood, to the point that mother had to sit
Speaker 1: me down and have a very earnest conversation with me
Speaker 1: about what renting means and about how much it cost.
Speaker 1: And I think that was the end of my reign
Speaker 1: of terror with with Robin Hood from Disney and all
Speaker 1: those sexy sexy foxes. What kind of store was it?
Speaker 1: What was it like kind of like an indie store
Speaker 1: where there wasn't a lot of selection like any was
Speaker 1: talking about, or it wasn't primarily for for a video. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was this like small corner, grosser market kind of thing.
Speaker 1: Um that I just remember being so much in that
Speaker 1: color palette of the mid to late eighties where everything
Speaker 1: was kind of like that like rusty brown color, the
Speaker 1: floors where the shelving was the light sort of war.
Speaker 1: I was always excited because they had like the cool
Speaker 1: bubble gum, like big chew and stuff at the checkout.
Speaker 1: Not that my mom let let me get bubblegum, but
Speaker 1: I was like, oh man, I could pretend I used
Speaker 1: chewing tobacco, like what like what like why was that
Speaker 1: a thing in my brain when I was six years old?
Speaker 1: But yeah, it was extremely limited selection. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: other than Disney's Robin Hood, what I would have possibly
Speaker 1: been interested in at this place. Yeah, it's it reminds
Speaker 1: me and I sometimes forget this. Like they used to
Speaker 1: have like little video rental stores like you're describing in
Speaker 1: like grocery stores and like gas station Yeah. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: this one was just a little privately owned place. You know,
Speaker 1: you could pick up I don't know, spettios, drag goods,
Speaker 1: stuff like that, and yeah, pick out a video tape. Yeah. Actually,
Speaker 1: a couple of years ago, I was hiking near like
Speaker 1: an hour away from Atlanta, and I went to an
Speaker 1: Ingalls and I was delighted that they still had via rental,
Speaker 1: and I was like taking pictures and the people working
Speaker 1: there were like, what's wrong with you? It's a video.
Speaker 1: I haven't seen this in forever. Yeah. When I when
Speaker 1: I got older, um and we moved to South Florida,
Speaker 1: it was kind of, you know, that early nineties boom
Speaker 1: of video stores when they were making the transfer over
Speaker 1: into DVD, and so that's when I started going to
Speaker 1: like a Blockbuster and stuff like that. And Yeah, lots
Speaker 1: of memories similar to what Annie was talking about with
Speaker 1: hair Blockbuster experience, with just you know, like like walking
Speaker 1: in and you get that gust of just pure plastic
Speaker 1: scene in the air, and there's just all the bright
Speaker 1: and shiny displays everywhere, and they all really want you
Speaker 1: to watch I don't know, Silence of the Lambs or
Speaker 1: whatever it is, and they've got nine copies of that
Speaker 1: one DVD. And then I don't know, when you're like
Speaker 1: a little goth high school weirdo, you just kind of
Speaker 1: like shuffle quietly over to the horror section and look
Speaker 1: through because you couldn't google anything, you know, and so
Speaker 1: it was either what you knew about at the time
Speaker 1: or what you could glean from the box art and
Speaker 1: like the fonts and like whatever terrible marketing copy was
Speaker 1: on there, whether or not you really wanted to rent
Speaker 1: candy Man or whatever it was, Alex your Taron. Well,
Speaker 1: maybe Max and I can tag team because I don't
Speaker 1: know if you will know a Max and I are
Speaker 1: blood brothers. Yeah, were related to If you guys didn't
Speaker 1: pick up on that, I can't even tell the difference
Speaker 1: between you two. So yeah, I mean I think our
Speaker 1: video store experience is probably about the same in our town.
Speaker 1: I mean that we weren't too limited. I mean we
Speaker 1: had a Blockbuster. We had two Blockbusters and a Hollywood
Speaker 1: video actually, so I don't know what. We had two
Speaker 1: Blockbusters in our house was equidistant between them, you know.
Speaker 1: I remember in Royal Oak, Michigan, in the town when
Speaker 1: we were real little before we moved down south, going
Speaker 1: to I don't know what the video store was there.
Speaker 1: It was an indie video store there, but that would
Speaker 1: have been the early nineties, but I remember going there.
Speaker 1: Similar to both of your stories, Max, you gotta tell this,
Speaker 1: aren't you know. I gotta my my You know, my
Speaker 1: parents would be like, all right, I actually pick a video, Max,
Speaker 1: you pick a video. Max a little younger than me,
Speaker 1: and Max there was a series of videos than like
Speaker 1: thirty minute educational things called Road Construction Ahead. Each episode
Speaker 1: of Road Construction Ahead would focus on like a particular
Speaker 1: like piece of road construction equipment, like the back out
Speaker 1: or the crane or or you know, the bulldozer. And
Speaker 1: I remember my parents bargaining with him being like, Max,
Speaker 1: we've seen this, We've seen Road Construction Ahead bulldozer already.
Speaker 1: Do you want to watch this cartoon? And he would
Speaker 1: be like road Construction Ahead there like do you want
Speaker 1: to watch like this film Road Construction Ahead? And so
Speaker 1: we just rented Road Construction Ahead from Max every single
Speaker 1: time we went, and then eventually my parents bought the
Speaker 1: whole series after they had, you know, sunk their lives
Speaker 1: sexings in to renting from this indy store. Well, that
Speaker 1: was the least surprising thing I've encountered today. Yes, uh,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm a person that when I really like something,
Speaker 1: I just you know why I change it up. I mean,
Speaker 1: Road Construction Ahead was amazing and I would love to
Speaker 1: trace it down. But yeah, I mean I was trying
Speaker 1: to think of the name of that video store as well.
Speaker 1: Like I was sitting here because I was gonn to
Speaker 1: tell that story as well, but I just cannot remember that.
Speaker 1: But i'd remember because you know, as Alex said, there
Speaker 1: was two Blockbusters equidistance. And this is by the time
Speaker 1: we'd move down here to Atlanta, which I was what six,
Speaker 1: and I think Alex was. We were what eight seven
Speaker 1: when we moved down here, so we were both pretty young.
Speaker 1: Like one of the Blockbusters, it was like point one
Speaker 1: miles closer. That was it. So that's why we went there.
Speaker 1: But there was one summer was when Alex was getting
Speaker 1: his learners permit. We got a like unlimited pass, so
Speaker 1: you can get as many movies as you want from
Speaker 1: that Blockbuster, like you could you have two at a time,
Speaker 1: but you can watch him return and watch him return them.
Speaker 1: And so we would go like honestly twice a day,
Speaker 1: three times a day. Sometimes just we just sit. It
Speaker 1: was over summer, just watched movies scene day. We watched
Speaker 1: virtually the entire selection, and trying to think of some
Speaker 1: of the movies we watched. We watched some terrible movies.
Speaker 1: I remember spending like an afternoon watching a like Stephen
Speaker 1: King four hour like marathon movie. And I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: it was bright outside, now it's dark. That's how we
Speaker 1: spent our day. That's how we spent our lovely summer day.
Speaker 1: It look you know, occasion we get something like really good.
Speaker 1: But I mean, I think the coolest part about it
Speaker 1: was by the end of the summer, like everyone, like
Speaker 1: I guess probably the manager there or floor manager whatever,
Speaker 1: they he knew us and he's like, oh, you guy
Speaker 1: should watch this movie. Kind of similar like how like
Speaker 1: our tip Deal video drum was where it's like, hey,
Speaker 1: to watch this movie, but you know, to a very
Speaker 1: much a lesser extent about it. So obviously I think
Speaker 1: of Roald construction ahead, and I knew Ox would tell
Speaker 1: that story because he's my older brother. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: really think about that that summer. I guess I don't
Speaker 1: remember what year it was, but when we literally were
Speaker 1: just at the Blockbuster every day. So the other person
Speaker 1: I would go to the video store with was my
Speaker 1: friend Michael, who's been on this show before. And Michael's
Speaker 1: grandparents of Jehovah's witnesses, and his grandfather is an elder
Speaker 1: in the in the Kingdom Hall. And I don't know
Speaker 1: what connection this has, but it had some kind of connection.
Speaker 1: He always had coupons for stuff. He always had so
Speaker 1: many coupons and gift cards that he got through some
Speaker 1: connection at his Kingdom Hall. I don't know, I don't
Speaker 1: know why. But so he would be like, your kids,
Speaker 1: stay out of trouble. Is his papa is his grandfather's name. Uh,
Speaker 1: you can stay out of trouble. Go to Red Lobster
Speaker 1: tonight and give us a fifty dollar gift card to
Speaker 1: Red Lobster. And he always had Blockbuster coupons where you
Speaker 1: could take a coupon and run a movie with it.
Speaker 1: And so Michael and I would go at least twice
Speaker 1: a week to the Blockbuster the other one in Dunwoody,
Speaker 1: And we didn't know the people in this store there,
Speaker 1: and we were little, you know, sixteen year old seventeen
Speaker 1: year old cinema snobs, and we would go there and
Speaker 1: argue about films with with the people behind the counter.
Speaker 1: Between those two that's where I watched all of my
Speaker 1: movies in my formative years. And can I can I ask,
Speaker 1: did y'all want to impress the people at the counters
Speaker 1: of these stores or for me? It was kind of
Speaker 1: an adversarial relationship, like because like I thought, I was
Speaker 1: so much cooler than them, and so like whatever they thought,
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, well, I'm glad you didn't like
Speaker 1: this woman, But did y'all have the opposite experience? I
Speaker 1: think it was kind of adversarial, to be honest. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Maybe it was different for different guys.
Speaker 1: I I wish I remembered them all a little bit more.
Speaker 1: Let's see, my video store experience growing up was kind
Speaker 1: of twofold. So I grew up with split custody between
Speaker 1: my mom and dad. My mom was in Austin, which
Speaker 1: is where I primarily grew up and lived, and then
Speaker 1: I would like visit my dad who lived in Dallas.
Speaker 1: So when I went to Dallas, my dad and I
Speaker 1: would get all the chains like Blockbuster. So that was
Speaker 1: kind of our thing we did when he had custody
Speaker 1: of me every other weekend or whatever it was. And
Speaker 1: then in Austin it was a little bit more of
Speaker 1: a like cinephile town, I guess, so it was much
Speaker 1: more of like a cultural institution kind of a thing,
Speaker 1: having a video store nearby, and the big one in
Speaker 1: Austin that we would go to was called I Love Video,
Speaker 1: the love part being just being like a heart on
Speaker 1: the on the sign, which I'm sure like some people
Speaker 1: have seen before because it's somewhat iconic, I guess, at
Speaker 1: least amongst video store ficionados. So I Love Video was
Speaker 1: like the really cool one that my mom would take
Speaker 1: me to. And there were always people with like green hair,
Speaker 1: you know, and like wearing like hippie off. It's there.
Speaker 1: It was like that kind of place, and it was
Speaker 1: like laid out really cool. There were like toys everywhere,
Speaker 1: like hanging from the ceiling by string, you know, like Godzilla's.
Speaker 1: It was like neon lit on the inside. It was
Speaker 1: really like just neat, hip place to be. I guess.
Speaker 1: So a lot of my video store experience growing up
Speaker 1: was like also like a cultural ussering. You know. It
Speaker 1: was like, this is Austin culture right here, incarnate in
Speaker 1: this little store, and if you want to grow up
Speaker 1: to be a true Austinite, you have to like absorb this.
Speaker 1: So I guess in my mind, you know, it was
Speaker 1: also kind of a place to find identity, you know,
Speaker 1: a video store. I can't imagine it's exactly the same
Speaker 1: for everybody, but I think everybody at least to some degree,
Speaker 1: you can relate to that. You know, like you kind
Speaker 1: of found out who you were a little bit in
Speaker 1: a video store, whether or not you wanted to. When
Speaker 1: you got to Atlanta and went into video for the
Speaker 1: first time, did it feel a little bit like coming home? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you could say that. I think Video Drome here in
Speaker 1: Atlanta does a really good job of capturing that same
Speaker 1: energy I was talking about, you know this like like
Speaker 1: love of movies and like making everything seemed really hip
Speaker 1: and cool around, like seeing and renting movies. I really
Speaker 1: hadn't experienced that, and like I don't know, god, like
Speaker 1: ten fifteen years since I lived in Austin, you know,
Speaker 1: when I was a teenager. It was like the last
Speaker 1: time I had really felt that. And so when I
Speaker 1: came to Atlanta, I like gravitated towards Video Drama immediately.
Speaker 1: I would like start going there regularly. You know. I
Speaker 1: never thought I'd like go back to like renting movies
Speaker 1: from a brick and mortar store, But there was just
Speaker 1: so much to love about, like the experience and kind
Speaker 1: of living out this you know, childhood memories and that
Speaker 1: feeling again that I've been a regular patron ever since Yeah,
Speaker 1: same when when I moved here. I moved here like
Speaker 1: fifteen or sixteen years ago now, and so so blockbusters
Speaker 1: in Hollywood videos and all that were still open, and
Speaker 1: it was still a thing that I would go because
Speaker 1: because it was it was like an event night, you know,
Speaker 1: like it would be that would be what you were
Speaker 1: doing with the night. You were going to this video
Speaker 1: store and renting a movie and taking it home and
Speaker 1: watching it, as opposed to whatever browsing that you do
Speaker 1: these days. But yeah, it felt like it felt like
Speaker 1: a grown up candy store. The first time I went
Speaker 1: into Video Drum, Like I just walked in and I was,
Speaker 1: you know, like like kind of like just bouncing around
Speaker 1: the quarters like I'm in heck and you know, Willy
Speaker 1: Wonka's chocolate factory. And I turned and there's just a
Speaker 1: whole wall it's as sex and splatter, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: I'm home, thank you, thank you forgetting me. Yeah, it's interesting.
Speaker 1: When we did the tour, I think one of the
Speaker 1: things most people really enjoyed about it was like getting
Speaker 1: to have conversation, you know, they're like about movies and
Speaker 1: be around other like minded people about film and cinema
Speaker 1: and just like be able to like hang out there
Speaker 1: for forty five minutes, you know, chit chatting about whatever.
Speaker 1: I guess. You know, as a kid, I'm sure most
Speaker 1: of us were probably like this too, Like I don't,
Speaker 1: I guess we didn't really know enough about movies. Like
Speaker 1: I was happy with whatever. You know. It's like Spider
Speaker 1: Man movie was out at the time that like I
Speaker 1: didn't feel they need to like have conversations. But like
Speaker 1: when I started coming to video drum as an adult,
Speaker 1: you know, I got to really like discover that discover
Speaker 1: that feeling of like community around film that I, like,
Speaker 1: I guess I never really caught onto as a kid.
Speaker 1: You know, like I kind of felt it was there
Speaker 1: for the adults, but it wasn't until I was one
Speaker 1: that I could like do that. And I don't think
Speaker 1: that would have ever happened if video drum didn't exist,
Speaker 1: you know, can I ask? I've been talking to people
Speaker 1: about videos to as a jog my memory, because I
Speaker 1: think the last time that I was regularly going to
Speaker 1: a video store, I was like pre seventeen, to be honest,
Speaker 1: What were the sections in like a Blockbuster? Oh well,
Speaker 1: I can tell you about mine, please, Okay? So the
Speaker 1: way the Blockbuster in Dawsonville, Georgia was set up. You
Speaker 1: still remember like the order that you walked around the shop,
Speaker 1: don't you. Oh yeah, well so the key. The key
Speaker 1: was if you wanted a like new release, popular movie,
Speaker 1: they were on the outside edges, so you had to
Speaker 1: go to the back, and they were usually like a
Speaker 1: bunch of them, like a whole wall. That's one title, yes,
Speaker 1: and like multiple copies behind the cover. It felt so
Speaker 1: like such a success, especially for me because we didn't
Speaker 1: go to that place that often. If it was a
Speaker 1: really high in demand movie and it's only like one
Speaker 1: copy left, oh gosh, it's the best and maybe you
Speaker 1: didn't even want to see that movie. I think that's
Speaker 1: one thing, Lauren, that you touched on that is lost
Speaker 1: perhaps two younger folks who don't have this experience. You
Speaker 1: didn't have the internet. It was fun in that way
Speaker 1: of you know, this movie could be really bad, but
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna get it, like that Netflix of deciding
Speaker 1: for two hours what you're gonna watch and then you
Speaker 1: don't watch anything that wasn't a thing because you had
Speaker 1: your parents. In my case, my my mom being like
Speaker 1: we have ten minutes get something, and so you just
Speaker 1: had to get something. And then for in the Blockbuster
Speaker 1: where that I went to, it had in the store
Speaker 1: kind of like a library, like yeah, horror, Action, adventure, romance,
Speaker 1: all those big genre kendy and then usually like one
Speaker 1: that was foreign movies, and then one that was like
Speaker 1: in the movies with very small selection. And I did
Speaker 1: love horror from a very young age. And my form
Speaker 1: of altercation with a Blockbuster people was that me trying
Speaker 1: to convince them not to tell my mom will let
Speaker 1: me rent this rated arm which I sometimes succeeded in
Speaker 1: often I didn't because we did usually rent as a family.
Speaker 1: So would be like what did you get? And I
Speaker 1: would be like event Horizon, and then there would be
Speaker 1: a very long conversation Annie, how many of these movies
Speaker 1: actually gave you such terrible nightmares that like your parents
Speaker 1: were justified and not wanting you to see the film
Speaker 1: in the first place. Very very many, very many. Uh.
Speaker 1: And in fact, one of my one of my earliest memories,
Speaker 1: I had snuck in and watched Jurassic Park and I
Speaker 1: had a nightmare about raptors that night, and like woke
Speaker 1: up screaming, and my parts were like why did you
Speaker 1: have a nightmare about raptors? And I was like, no reason,
Speaker 1: no reason. It came out that I had snuck into
Speaker 1: the Jurassic Parks. So I have a very long history
Speaker 1: of yeah, pushing the envelope when it comes to that
Speaker 1: kind of thing, and my parents being like, stop it.
Speaker 1: I totally forget about ratings so that you can't just
Speaker 1: pick up whatever you want. Totally forgot about like our
Speaker 1: rated things when you were a kid, when we were kids. Yeah, man,
Speaker 1: oh yeah. I I consistently would like get a horror
Speaker 1: movie that was rated R and try to be like,
Speaker 1: just be cool. Just come on, man, I got the money.
Speaker 1: Any One of the things you talked about that I
Speaker 1: also wanted to talk about was the experience of like
Speaker 1: checking out and how like magical and an experience that
Speaker 1: was not only because you're getting this thing, but also
Speaker 1: because they had so much cool like I don't know,
Speaker 1: merch and stuff, you know, like you had like the
Speaker 1: candy you had sometimes they had like toys behind the counter,
Speaker 1: they had like plushies, you name it, And that was
Speaker 1: always a really fun thing for me. I would like
Speaker 1: always get something some sort of candy or what have you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was always trying to because my parents also were
Speaker 1: very frugal, and I was always after those free movie posters.
Speaker 1: If you waited long enough, they would give you, like
Speaker 1: usually pretty small movie posters. I really campaigned hard for
Speaker 1: cardboard cutouts. I never succeeded in that regard, but occasionally.
Speaker 1: I wasn't big into candy growing up, but there was
Speaker 1: something about I think the way we frame candy, like
Speaker 1: as a snack around movies in the US, Like even
Speaker 1: if I wasn't, I didn't want it necessarily. I did
Speaker 1: want it, like just the getting it. It was so exciting,
Speaker 1: and so I sometimes me and my brothers would come
Speaker 1: together and usually my older brother also he usually won
Speaker 1: these kinds of things. We would get butter finger babies
Speaker 1: because he loved the Simpsons and they were having that
Speaker 1: whole thing, and so that was like we would form
Speaker 1: an alliance over these butterfinger babies, even if it were
Speaker 1: watching Star Trek. What was the one that really missed
Speaker 1: me up? The one with the yeah Nemesis about to say,
Speaker 1: Tom Hardy right there, this is the moment where Tom
Speaker 1: already plays uh Patrick Stewart's twisty. I blocked that movie
Speaker 1: outlays Picard from the past, but also just the experience
Speaker 1: of getting that movie was exciting, like having that because
Speaker 1: a lot of times I did use my own money
Speaker 1: and I would check it out and just being like
Speaker 1: proud of being able to do that, but also excited.
Speaker 1: What's this gonna night gonna be? And what if I
Speaker 1: love this movie as much as I love Hocus Focus
Speaker 1: and it changes my life like that, like the possibilities
Speaker 1: in front of you when you would get a movie.
Speaker 1: And I was somebody who love libraries too, and that
Speaker 1: was a very similar experience of like, I'm so excited
Speaker 1: about this that could really really charge my imagination and
Speaker 1: perhaps like change how I view things or some be
Speaker 1: something that I love potentially. So I just that experience
Speaker 1: on top of the Butterfinger. I'll tell you what I've
Speaker 1: asked like three friends just about their video store, you know,
Speaker 1: video stores growing up and whatever. And the first thing
Speaker 1: all of them mentioned was the candy. The candy. I
Speaker 1: had forgotten all about it, but there was like candy
Speaker 1: and like very large quantities, like large portions of candy,
Speaker 1: or even if it wasn't large portions, it was in
Speaker 1: like the movie sized boxes. So it seems so. And
Speaker 1: they're all in these like day glow colors, especially in
Speaker 1: the nineties, and uh and and so bright and big
Speaker 1: and so in your face with the marketing, because I'm
Speaker 1: sure that, like in a movie theater, the up charged
Speaker 1: on those is tremendous um, so it's really worth their
Speaker 1: while to push it on you. I never had any
Speaker 1: pocket money as a kid, so when I would go
Speaker 1: and have a sleepover and have these video store experiences,
Speaker 1: I was never buying candy there, but I could. Usually
Speaker 1: Usually the video stores were in like a shopping center
Speaker 1: with a whatever the shopping store of of the of
Speaker 1: the day was, and I could trick them into being like, hey,
Speaker 1: can we go over to Publix and get some popcorn
Speaker 1: and candy? Yeah? Oh those checkout lanes. That was a
Speaker 1: what what? What a what a gambit of of of
Speaker 1: will willpower? It was terrible. Oh it was a cue too.
Speaker 1: You walk through a que whether or not there was
Speaker 1: anyone in a lot. You couldn't just walk up to
Speaker 1: the counter. You had to go through a little zigzag
Speaker 1: structure that they had set up with them cordon. Only
Speaker 1: the fanciest in Hollywood video what what did the Blackbuster
Speaker 1: look like, was the carpet blue. I want to say, yeah,
Speaker 1: everything in there was that was that iconic, like blue
Speaker 1: and yellow, those like power colors, like you're in the
Speaker 1: middle of a Superhero title sequence. I remember everything being
Speaker 1: kind of like polka dot carpet, you know, it's like
Speaker 1: that really like flat thin carpet. It's like basically like concrete,
Speaker 1: and it was like kind of like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: weird crazy, like when I think like eighties design like
Speaker 1: Saved by the Bell, kind of like spotty, squiggily designs
Speaker 1: on the carpet. That's what I remember looking like. Well,
Speaker 1: my the one that was the small one in my
Speaker 1: hometown was really haphazardly put together. It was like imagine
Speaker 1: a really sad linoleum office and just like not very small,
Speaker 1: and the shelves didn't have many options to choose from.
Speaker 1: But I forgot to say, there was an ice cream
Speaker 1: store in the back, so on special days I could
Speaker 1: go back to to talk to Dan and get a
Speaker 1: scoop of ice cream. And that was a good day.
Speaker 1: That was a really good day. My next question for
Speaker 1: the group, it's kind of just when you kind of
Speaker 1: noticed that like video stores are going out of style,
Speaker 1: and if you ever really like consciously thought about it,
Speaker 1: like I never go to video stores anymore, Like were
Speaker 1: you happy to embrace like things like streaming and Netflix?
Speaker 1: And I didn't really lose that much until I don't know,
Speaker 1: you were an adult and had to think about it,
Speaker 1: if that makes sense. Our family was on the Netflix
Speaker 1: DVD rental plan very early. My dad, yeah, was on
Speaker 1: Netflix right away. I think the actually Blockbuster did the
Speaker 1: disc rent old thing to compete with Netflix early on.
Speaker 1: And then yeah, I left home when I was seventeen
Speaker 1: for college and I went to film school, and so
Speaker 1: I remember having to watch very specific films a lot.
Speaker 1: So I had a Netflix rental to get you know,
Speaker 1: these films that maybe Blockbuster wouldn't carry, and you know
Speaker 1: also like going to the library at school and screenings
Speaker 1: at school. Specifically, that was two thousands seven to two
Speaker 1: thousand eleven. I think that's basically the decline of the
Speaker 1: the video store was like happening when I was in
Speaker 1: film school. Does that does those dates make sense for
Speaker 1: your research? Triver? Yeah? Yes, I think Liketen was kind
Speaker 1: of like when they really started just disappearing, you know,
Speaker 1: when we started seeing headlines of Blockbuster declaring bankruptcy, closing
Speaker 1: tens of thousands of stories, stuff like that. It was
Speaker 1: just I was in my maximum film snobbery at that time,
Speaker 1: only watching foreign films. I wasn't helping anybody, but I
Speaker 1: jump in there. I mean, I feel like my stores
Speaker 1: could kind of slowery. So I left for college two
Speaker 1: years after Alex did. And you know, as I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: like my dad learned. Dad is pretty like you know,
Speaker 1: he's you know, pretty fiscally aware, and so he hated Blockbuster.
Speaker 1: He hate like the late charges, he hate like the
Speaker 1: limited things. He thought it was a massive markup. So
Speaker 1: as soon as he could jump ship from Blockbuster, he did. So.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't remember maybe like hanging out some
Speaker 1: friends on like a Friday night or something that would
Speaker 1: go to Blockbuster and good movie, but I don't remember
Speaker 1: really going to Blockbuster. After Alex left for college. I
Speaker 1: remember Blockbuster being the thing still when I was in
Speaker 1: high school. And then you know, by the I was
Speaker 1: like five and Alex and I didn't have a car either,
Speaker 1: so it wasn't like we could just get in a
Speaker 1: car drive to the Blockbuster stuff like that, Like you know,
Speaker 1: every trip to something that had to be calculated and
Speaker 1: figure it out, and it was just kind of like,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, there was one day it's like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: these things don't exist anymore for me. And I was
Speaker 1: kind of like, I mean, I I liked like the
Speaker 1: independent like movie rental stores are like Blockbuster. It's like
Speaker 1: there was kind of such an evil company that I
Speaker 1: didn't feel bad that they were gone. I mean, just
Speaker 1: to be just to be honest, I was just like,
Speaker 1: good riddance for them. But it kind of set out
Speaker 1: all the rest of them are gone though, So I
Speaker 1: don't know, that's I guess my take on it. Yeah, definitely,
Speaker 1: the community stores are the ones that probably gotta hit
Speaker 1: the hardest and needed the most help, and most of
Speaker 1: them didn't get it. But you know, I guess frankly,
Speaker 1: there just wasn't much of a market for it, you know,
Speaker 1: so of course they'd be the first ones to go
Speaker 1: for me. I think it kind of the decline kind
Speaker 1: of started with DVDs because we would buy some vhs,
Speaker 1: but for the most part, like vhs, we're like very clunky.
Speaker 1: They were primarily known as like rentals, there were a
Speaker 1: lot more expensive to produce, write a lot of more
Speaker 1: love more materials. So the cell throom market was not
Speaker 1: as as big for vhs, Like you couldn't really go
Speaker 1: to the store and buy vhs. I mean you could sometimes,
Speaker 1: like we had some vhs, but when t v t
Speaker 1: s came out, at least it was like way cheaper
Speaker 1: to buy your own movies. All of a sudden, it
Speaker 1: was like every Christmas, every Birthday, I got like five DVDs,
Speaker 1: you know. It was just like you can get a
Speaker 1: DVD for like ten bucks at Walmart or whatever. And
Speaker 1: so at that point, like the rental system just kind
Speaker 1: of started to collapse. I noticed, like I didn't find
Speaker 1: myself going to rent anything anymore because I could either
Speaker 1: get a disc for super cheap where I could rip
Speaker 1: it off lime wire at that point or something like that.
Speaker 1: You know, like ripping when you had a disk too,
Speaker 1: was like way more sophisticated. So you started to see
Speaker 1: that a lot more too. So in my mind that
Speaker 1: just became the future was like collecting my own physical
Speaker 1: media rather than renting. And that's why I stopped going
Speaker 1: to stories for the most part growing up. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think similarly, my dad did really love movies, so he
Speaker 1: just started buying a lot of movies. So it became
Speaker 1: we didn't have cable, we didn't have TV, we didn't
Speaker 1: have working internet. They didn't get all that stuff until
Speaker 1: I moved out and went to college, which still bothers
Speaker 1: me to this day, but that's just how things work. Sometimes.
Speaker 1: We kind of, or at least my dad's case, like
Speaker 1: we needed media or some kind of entertainment, Like we
Speaker 1: could just be renting something all the time, but we
Speaker 1: didn't have cable or TV, so we would buy movies.
Speaker 1: And I feel like it was also for me when
Speaker 1: DVDs came out in high school. When I was in
Speaker 1: high school, they became more ubiquitous. And then when I
Speaker 1: went to college, I did. My roommate um also loved movies,
Speaker 1: and she had this goal to watch the top one
Speaker 1: a f I movies, and so we would rent movies
Speaker 1: every week from the library and we did that throughout college.
Speaker 1: But that was probably the last time I've regularly rented movies.
Speaker 1: And it was lovely. I mean, I there's something about
Speaker 1: the experience, especially because of the library was free, where
Speaker 1: you just be like, yeah, let's get that. I don't
Speaker 1: know what this is, let's get it. Let's try it
Speaker 1: and having that night together being like, Okay, this wasn't
Speaker 1: really good, but we had fun. Yeah. Yeah, I'm I'm
Speaker 1: a I'm a couple of years older than the rest
Speaker 1: of y'all. Um. So I was in college from two
Speaker 1: thousand to two thousand four. UM, So by the time
Speaker 1: video stores were really declining, I was already uh grown
Speaker 1: up twenty something at any rate out in the world.
Speaker 1: And um, some of my friends did have Netflix DVD
Speaker 1: subscriptions at the time. I think my highest rental time
Speaker 1: was during college when some of my friends and I, UM,
Speaker 1: we're starting to get into weird indie films, UM and
Speaker 1: especially weird genre films, and um there were still a
Speaker 1: couple of local places that would rent out these just
Speaker 1: just wonderful, bizarre, uh scandalous, scandalous films UM and uh
Speaker 1: finding those either through these online subscription services or UM
Speaker 1: or uh in these local stores was just just just magical,
Speaker 1: just absolutely like the kind of things that you're you're
Speaker 1: just not even share why and how someone committed this
Speaker 1: object to film and suddenly you get to watch it
Speaker 1: in your house, uh twenty years after it was made.
Speaker 1: Just magic. But I felt the decline line of the
Speaker 1: big box video stores really viscerally because it was again
Speaker 1: like it was a thing that I would go and
Speaker 1: do with my friends and that was an activity that
Speaker 1: was a relatively inexpensive activity for the evening. And I
Speaker 1: was just like, well, but what what am I gonna
Speaker 1: What am I gonna do? Like what am I gonna
Speaker 1: do with Kai? Like what? Like what what are we
Speaker 1: gonna watch when we order pizza? If we can't go
Speaker 1: to the Hollywood video next to the pizza place? Like like,
Speaker 1: how is this going to work? And I don't know
Speaker 1: you even getting a DVD in the mail is is
Speaker 1: a different I think I think you're I think you're right, Trevor,
Speaker 1: Like there was something about vhs that lent itself to
Speaker 1: the lending process a little bit more economically or viscerally
Speaker 1: or something like there was something about the physicality of
Speaker 1: that tape and the way that it the way that
Speaker 1: it rattles, and the way that it even rattles in
Speaker 1: the paper sleeve in this very satisfying way. Um that
Speaker 1: even a DVD. Yeah, yes, I mean where do you
Speaker 1: guys think video stores are going from here? Do you
Speaker 1: think like video drome can still continue to exist? Do
Speaker 1: you think all these kind of you know, holdouts are
Speaker 1: going to be able to like make it happen. Are
Speaker 1: we just gonna lose that on this kind of piece
Speaker 1: of culture forever inevitably coming soon? I think that that
Speaker 1: you see it in kind of a lot of different industries,
Speaker 1: like a return to It's been a weird year for
Speaker 1: it obviously, but a return to like in person more
Speaker 1: kind of like boutique, yeah, like final or like record stores,
Speaker 1: you know, or whatever, Like you know, people getting away
Speaker 1: from buying everything on Amazon, doing all of their shopping
Speaker 1: and all of their commerce online. But it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: there are certain things that like I do actually want
Speaker 1: to you know, have like a personal experience going in
Speaker 1: choosing something like that. I mean, like what's more valuable
Speaker 1: than your time? Right? You know people is a little
Speaker 1: bit of a long winded of saying, but like some
Speaker 1: people might do it with you know, fashion or something
Speaker 1: like you don't want to buy your stuff online, you
Speaker 1: want to go into an actual physic cool store to
Speaker 1: do it. Like if if like your thing is watching
Speaker 1: movies and lots of you don't have to be a
Speaker 1: cinephiles quote unquote to be that person, right, Like if
Speaker 1: you like watching movies then like there's certainly a particular
Speaker 1: drive to go into a place where you can do
Speaker 1: it the most conscientiously. Yeah, I think I think so.
Speaker 1: I don't think they'll ever come back to like when
Speaker 1: the heyday of when we were experiencing them, but I
Speaker 1: do feel like there's been a return in a lot
Speaker 1: of ways of people have expressed like, what is that
Speaker 1: called entertainment fatigue? When you have way too many streaming options,
Speaker 1: are way too many things like the reasons we flocked
Speaker 1: to things like Netflix, which is convenience and it's just
Speaker 1: right there. I think that we are realizing like, yes,
Speaker 1: that's great, love it, but sometimes I don't want that thing,
Speaker 1: Like sometimes I want something else, I want a different option.
Speaker 1: And so I do think that I hope that there
Speaker 1: is a market for smaller boutique stores and people will
Speaker 1: continue to patron eyes them and that that number might grow. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I certainly hope that the that the small shops can
Speaker 1: hang on. And I love what Video Drome specifically has
Speaker 1: been doing in partnering up with other local businesses like
Speaker 1: the Plaza Theater, which is right around the corner, to
Speaker 1: do some film screenings of really interesting movies or they
Speaker 1: had a couple back when, you know, like live events
Speaker 1: were a thing. They had a few parties over at
Speaker 1: the Highland in ballroom. Um that we're always just a
Speaker 1: really fun time of you know, like people who are
Speaker 1: enthusiastic about a thing getting together in a space and
Speaker 1: being enthusiastic about it is a wonderful thing. And I guess,
Speaker 1: I guess, yeah, that that is what you're talking about
Speaker 1: when you're talking about that community of a film store,
Speaker 1: even if it's just you and the surly attendant, Like
Speaker 1: that is a community of two of two people who
Speaker 1: you know, are who otherwise might not ever have the
Speaker 1: opportunity to talk and can wind up getting into a
Speaker 1: really interesting conversation about yeah, like Cronenberg or whatever it
Speaker 1: is that it is like I think that videos stores
Speaker 1: that exist now have the potential to go on and
Speaker 1: that that they can get some support because they fill
Speaker 1: a need in their community, but also maybe especially because
Speaker 1: they feel like a really rare niche now that there's
Speaker 1: just not that there's so few of them, there's such
Speaker 1: a rarity. But like new video stores like people opening,
Speaker 1: do you think that's a possibility a new indie store
Speaker 1: in your town. I think it's possible. It would be hard,
Speaker 1: to be difficult to do, but I think it's possible.
Speaker 1: I think it's like more likely in very specific geographic areas,
Speaker 1: Like it's got to be somewhere that's like a little
Speaker 1: bit more Irvan. It's got to be somewhere, or it's
Speaker 1: got to be somewhere with like a big college, you know,
Speaker 1: like maybe Athens or somewhere. Would that would work, you know,
Speaker 1: where there's like enough young people. Yeah, just that kind
Speaker 1: of density. Yeah. One of the things that they pointed
Speaker 1: out when we were at Video Drome is that because
Speaker 1: they've it open for over twenty years, they've collected titles
Speaker 1: that aren't in print anymore that you can't really find.
Speaker 1: I mean they took all this they've taken all this
Speaker 1: time to build up inventory. All is be buying things,
Speaker 1: and that's one of the reasons when you go in
Speaker 1: there that their catalog is so incredibly diverse. I mean
Speaker 1: it's something close to titles now, and you know, they've
Speaker 1: got lots of they mean the stuff they opened in
Speaker 1: the nineties, they've got lots of like Indian sort of
Speaker 1: small release stuff from the nineties specifically that hasn't been
Speaker 1: reissued and isn't in print anymore. If you or your
Speaker 1: collection of friends or whatever had a deep collection of
Speaker 1: film titles already, then you can start a store. Starting
Speaker 1: a store brand new and just buying all this stuff
Speaker 1: would probably be the least exciting way to do it.
Speaker 1: And I feel like at this point you would start
Speaker 1: having to does a video drume to do this. Um.
Speaker 1: I feel like at a certain point, from Blockbuster or whatever,
Speaker 1: you could rent out VCR if you didn't have one. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, like I think that any new place that
Speaker 1: opened up might need to consider renting out the equipment
Speaker 1: with which to watch such a thing. I mean, you
Speaker 1: make a good point. You make a good point. I mean,
Speaker 1: who has DVD players anymore? Just you know, I don't know, Like,
Speaker 1: are you going to rent it on a thumb drive? Like?
Speaker 1: I like? Who? I will say, there are a couple
Speaker 1: of movies I can't find on streaming that I want,
Speaker 1: and I can't buy them anywhere, and I'm not willing
Speaker 1: to spend a hundred and eighty dollars on The Princess
Speaker 1: and the Goblin, which I think is probably not very good.
Speaker 1: But I liked it as a child. He had coarse
Speaker 1: Leashman in it, so that's the plus. Um, I feel
Speaker 1: like video drums that you should a video drume. I should.
Speaker 1: I have like four movies from my childhood that I'm like,
Speaker 1: I'm pretty when I watched Um, The Thief and the
Speaker 1: Cobbler is on there. I have a whole list from
Speaker 1: the same production Coveny or something, because that's something like
Speaker 1: the first one. Probably well, I can't get them anywhere,
Speaker 1: but I do think it's interesting the idea like in
Speaker 1: the post apocalypse times, we won't have well, well I
Speaker 1: don't know full around, but there will be like Internet necessarily,
Speaker 1: and there will you want these physical things. And there
Speaker 1: are movies that I remember watching as a kid where
Speaker 1: that they would have to act out like the adults
Speaker 1: that could remember the Star Wars like movies they would
Speaker 1: act them out for younger generations. But there is you know,
Speaker 1: maybe you don't want to think that way, but it's
Speaker 1: possible that we will need this physical media in the future.
Speaker 1: So that's something to keep in mind. This episode of
Speaker 1: Ephemeral was produced by Trevor Young and Max and Alex Williams,
Speaker 1: with big thanks to Dan Herbert. My colleagues Annie Reese
Speaker 1: and Lauren Vogelbaum of the phenomenal food and culture podcast Saver.
Speaker 1: And to Matt Booth and everyone at Video Drome for
Speaker 1: their hospitality in this production and for making Atlanta a
Speaker 1: great place for movie culture. We'll be back with something
Speaker 1: new in two weeks. In the meantime, you can find
Speaker 1: the fullest of Ephemeral episodes over on our website Ephemeral
Speaker 1: dot Show. And for more podcasts from My Heart Radio
Speaker 1: like Sabor, Brain, Stuff and Stuff Mom Never Told You,
Speaker 1: visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows. M. M.