What
happened to video stores? I’ll admit
towards the end, I was not renting regularly at my local neighborhood shop,
Déjà Vu Video, in Albany. I’d make a
special trip to find some obscure art house gem. Other than that I had started
to use my cable’s on-demand service (in hindsight this was a mistake) but I
didn’t think video stores would disappear entirely.
It seemed
that one day video stores were here and the next they were gone. Not so long ago I was out at a restaurant that
had a Hollywood Video next to it. Now, I
refused to support the big, corporate guys, namely Blockbuster and Hollywood
Video. But at that point I could see the
writing on the wall, video stores were going the way of the dinosaur. I decided to go in, get a membership and rent
some videos, just so my son could experience something that had played such a
large role in my life.
Cut to:
Wayne and Garth waving their arms, saying dittle-lee-do, dittle-lee-do. I grew up in the age of video. I was eight years old when my family first
got a VCR. I remember the first film we
rented –“48hrs” starring Eddie Murphy and Nick Nolte. Yup, a nice R-rated film for family time. Anyway, I consumed movies and later on I
worked at some video stores, one being the dreaded Blockbuster. It was the age
of videotape, Sega Genesis and late fees!
I have a great affinity for this bygone era. Who wouldn’t love a place where you have
endless cinematic options? It was an
experience cruising the shelves in search of that perfect title.
There are a
few theories out there on what happened but basically it was a slew of bad
business decisions made by large corporations, who by that point controlled the
industry. At the same time new
alternatives like Netflix and on-demand services started to appear. Let’s be honest- just clicking with your
remote, going online or getting a DVD in the mail is easy! The result is we wake up one day and there is
no more video stores. The most
disturbing part of this whole story is no one seems to care. I can understand that they might not be as
popular as they once were, given the convenience and selection of the
alternatives but to have them gone and forgotten?
Now to tie
this back to local independent film, because that’s why you’re here,
right? Your local video stores supported
true independent film from the start. Not
only could you usually find a great selection of independent or hard to find
films but some indie filmmakers were able to market their film directly to
these video stores. The films could then get shelf time and were much more
likely to be rented and watched then someone finding it on the World Wide
Web! This was especially true in the
beginning when no one really knew where this video thing would go.
Basically
what I’ve come to realize is we’ve forgotten a portion of cinema culture as
fast as they’ve re-casted Batman!
Do we
realize what we’ve lost? Can we go back? Or is our media consumption and the Internet
forever tied together?
To be
continued...
