History Daily - Saturday Matinee: The Long Rewind

Episode Date: September 12, 2026

On today’s Saturday Matinee, we explore the rise and cultural impact of the video store during the 1980s, a place that was far more than just a way to rent movies. Link to The Long Rewind: https://open.spotify.com/show/2CJ7Qn6odXDBeocDQxI7eE Support the show! Join Into History for ad-free listening and more. History Daily is a co-production of Airship and Noiser.Go to HistoryDaily.com for more history, daily.

If you're of a younger generation, Gen Alpha, Gen Z, even a millennial, please allow me this indulgence because I'm going to wax on about the wonderful Gen X ritual of renting a movie. Once upon a time, before Netflix, before DVDs, before the Internet even, there were VHS cassettes available to rent in brick-and-border store. What were these like? Well, imagine a small library with rows of shelves displaying these cassette tapes in plastic boxes with laminated covers, organized by genre,

with other sections for new releases, kids and family, or staff picks. You would drive to the store, find a movie you want to watch, hopefully, because on a busy Friday night, they can go fast. Then you take it to the counter. After that, just like in the library,

you hand over your membership card. They log your rental into their database, you pay a few bucks, and then you drive home. That's when you slide the cassette into your VHS machine, tune to Channel 3. or maybe switch an input on your TV, and then hit play. But you're not done preparing yet. You have to first fast forward through a bunch of FBI warnings

on how illegal and dangerous it is to copy a movie. Then you fast forward through a bunch of coming soon trailers, which might already have been out for years. Only after all of that, do you finally get to enjoy your movie over the next two or three days, at which time you need to rewind the tape and return it to the store or face fines. All of this, the drive to the store,

the browsing the aisles, the checkout, the drive back home. Well, it took about the same time it takes me now to find something to stream. I just didn't need to grab my car keys or ride my bike as I did back in 1988. Anyway, the video store was an amazing place that was far more than just a way to rent movies. It shaped film discovery, influenced viewing habits, and became an essential part of movie culture, until all of a sudden it didn't. And that's the history we're covering today with an episode from the podcast, a long rewind. I hope you enjoy. While you're listening, be sure to search for and follow the long

rewind. We put a link in the show notes to make it easy for you. In this podcast, two Gen Xers are taking a trip down memory lane, revisiting and reflecting on the cinema of the 1980s. We'll look at the hits and the flops, the studio blockbusters and art house indies, the critically acclaimed, and the universally reviled. The series is hosted by me, Lisa Molinelli, a writer and librarian, And features Dustin Morrow, a filmmaker, author, and professor of film. So pull on your leg warmers, crank up your boom box, and hop in the DeLorean. It's time for The Long Rewind. Welcome to The Long Rewind.

I'm your host, Lisa. With me as always is Dustin. Hello, everybody. And today we're going to talk about video stores in the 1980s. So, yeah, where should we start here? Well, what was your own experience of video stores? Well, I guess I'm probably going to have to move a little beyond the 80s to talk about my video story experience only because I, you know, I was 11 at the end of the 80s. And that didn't mean we didn't rent videos on occasion.

But we also didn't have, as I recall, we didn't have a VCR for until a little bit later. So I think we were just a little late to all of that. and I didn't really have my own transportation or much of my own money to speak of, you know, until much later. So I wasn't frequenting video stores quite as much in the 80s proper, although I did go to a few. And I think a lot of my 80s experience was probably at the library renting videos. We rented a lot of EHS from the library.

And that was true in the 90s as well. But I think most of my experience comes from the chains, going to Blockbuster, going to Hollywood video. Those are the two I remember being able to access from my hometown. But I loved it. I mean, when I could go, it was like an outing. I think I've talked about this maybe in other episodes, but it was going to the video store was like almost entertainment in itself to me.

It was like, you know, that was part of your Friday or Saturday night. activity was going to browse the movies and pick one out. Like that was part of the whole experience. So that's certainly not all of my experience, but I did love the browse. That's probably the thing I liked the best about video stores was just being able to pull things out that seemed interesting and look at them and, you know, take a chance sometimes. Yeah. Well, we'll talk about all that and we'll talk about how things have changed.

Things are different and what has perhaps been lost in the move from video store culture to the way we've currently consumed movies, which is predominantly through streaming. And we'll talk about what we lost. It's good and maybe what we lost that we don't miss. We'll talk about the nostalgia for video stores. There have been a flurry of pretty poor, in my opinion, documentaries. in recent years about nostalgia for video stores, which don't tend to get into anything

that I find really interesting about the loss of video stores and what they mean for movies and how we consume movies and think about movies. And so hopefully we'll do some of that in this podcast. And maybe hopefully somebody will make that documentary at some point in the future, something that asks a little deeper questions beyond what horror movies did you like to get

from video stores, which seems to be what most of these documentaries are really about. And so, yeah, I mean, we did an episode very early in the run of our show called, it was called, like, how we found movies or how we watched movies or something like that. And I encourage people to go back and listen to that if they haven't heard it, because it digs pretty deep into how we discovered movies in the 80s. And, of course, one of the ways that we found movies in the 80s, was through video stores. And in that episode, we each talked about our own experience with video stores.

I'll just reiterate mine really quick for people that maybe didn't hear that episode or have an interest. I grew up in a small town, unlike Lisa, who Lisa grew up in Long Island. I grew up in a very rural town, not even in the town, outside the town. But the town was like 1,000 people, 1,200 people. And so the nearest movie theater was half an hour a week. way. The nearest blockbuster video when it finally showed up at the end of the 80s was a half hour away. And so my access to movies, I didn't have cable because I lived in the country,

although people in town did. And so I was exposed to HBO through visiting, you know, like relatives in town and friends and stuff like that. But my access to movies was predominantly through the local mom and pop video store in my small town. which was called BJ's video, and also through the video rentals at the local grocery store, which had tapes you could rent, and through the video rentals at my dad's store. My dad was a pharmacist. He owned his own small town drugstore, and he was actually the first person to rent videotapes in this small town. And the way it worked was the system that he rented tapes through was very much like the system through which his store also.

sold magazines, paperback books, and audio cassettes, which is they contracted with a company that had a representative that would go around to all of these pharmacies and other, and like dime stores and stuff in these small towns and pull stock out and replace it with other stock, basically charging you for what you sold during that like week or month or however often they came, whatever that period of time was. So, for example, the way it would work is my dad's store had like roughly maybe 100 to 200 videotapes in any one time that could be rented. It's a very small amount, but that was a pretty decent size library back in that day when at the dawn of video rentals. We're talking early 80s here.

And this guy would come in like, I don't know how often it was every other week or every month or something like that. And he would see what was renting. and the stuff that was renting well, he would leave there, and the stuff that wasn't, he would pull and replace with other tapes that he had with him. Makes sense. So there was always this sort of new kind of... There was a refreshment.

There was turnover. There was like new films that were coming in. I can't remember what period of time it was, however often it was. And so that was exciting for me. But there were also this core amount of tapes that for some reason my dad ended up owning very early. And so you've probably, if you're a long time, time listener of this podcast. You've heard me refer to them as like the OG 100, which is how I've always thought of them in my head. It's like these hundred tapes or so that I just

watched, these are all the movies that I watched 12 million times when I was a kid because they were always available from my dad's at your fingertips. Basically. Once the video store moved in, that was literally a few storefronts down from my dad's store. And so I would go there. I worked at my dad's store. And after I got off work every day, I would walk down to that video store. and rent at least a couple movies and watch them that night. So I was probably, through all of my teenagerhood, I was probably renting about two tapes a day. Wow. Wow.

Yeah. I mean, they were two bucks a night. Yeah. So it was like four bucks a day. Yeah. So it wasn't, for a teenager, it wasn't no money. Right. So, yeah, it was a lot.

And they were, you know, on Tuesdays when the new movies would come out, I might rent like five that night. Wow. So, yeah, I was renting a lot of stuff. I can tell you the hottest tapes in my town's history, just based on my own experience of trying to get them, were the BMX bicycle movie Rad. Oh, wow. Which was almost never in.

One of your very favorites. That must have been galling to you to. The other one that was huge was Top Gun. Of course. Which my dad's store also had and rented like every night to some tween boy. I don't know what the girls were renting. But that's what we young men were after, rad and Top Gun. I'm a little surprised Top Gun wasn't more obviously popular with the ladies,

just because, I mean, it's also a ladies loved Tom Cruise in the 80s, maybe still do to some degree. So I'm surprised it didn't get more. Well, I ever tell you the story when I was at the, I was at like this weenie roast party and all the girls were inside. We were all hanging out. Everybody was like, we're all the girls. And they were all in the living room inside while we were.

were all outside. And I went in there and it was like 14 girls like as if they were in some kind of cult like trance staring at the volleyball scene. Yeah. From Top Gun. And yeah, it was, it was very strange. I mean, this is a part of, I think, video rental video store culture that you don't hear about in these movies is the way girls will rent movies like that to watch together and be in the trance and enjoy the cute boy they like. or whatever. I think you just don't hear about that as much. Yeah.

Grease, dirty dancing. Yeah. I don't know what the other. Off the top, I'm not sure either, but I think it's a thing. And I think it's worth mentioning. Yeah. Because you don't hear about it in these movies where people talk about video store and nostalgia as much.

So these movies, there have been a few of them. One was called Rewindness. It was one called Adjust Your Tracking. It was a more recent one that was actually just called the Mom and Pop Video Store. They're usually pretty amateurishly made documentary. in which they just interview a bunch of what looks like the same exact guy. And nothing against this guy.

There's a lot of these guys out there. And they fuel a lot of money into the industry of physical media and keeping physical media going. But they provide a very limited view on what video stores provided because these guys, almost 100%, I would say, of them are hardcore horror film junkies. Yeah. And as somebody who wasn't that, but who lived in a video store during his youth, I don't, I don't find that those guys and I have a lot to, I don't know that we'd have a lot to talk about. So it just feels very limiting to me to only think about video stores as these kind of providers of low budget horror films, which they were.

And certainly, if we want to talk about, and we probably should, like the idea of the video store box art. as being this thing that attracted people to rent certain movies. Yeah. Like the most notorious and sort of probably memorable box art from that era was in the horror film section. It was, you know, it's a genre notorious for having these sort of like, sorry, my phone just being, for having these like really sensationalist artwork. And then you'd get the movie and watch it and it would have like nothing that was on the cover of the video box would be in the movie. would be in the movie.

It would be completely misrepresentative of the film itself. It's a pretty strong tradition in that genre film anyway, right? With posters and whatnot. I mean, fantasy films are another one. Like, you look at these amazing sort of Frank. What's the guy that did the Conan illustrations? Oh, I don't know his name off the top. That guy, Frank something.

His, you know, the rip-offs of his artwork that adorned the... Amazing art. I mean, yeah, the door in the boxes of all of those like sword and sorcery epics. And they would look, you would get it home and it looked like it was shot on VHS, like with like some skinny guy with a rubber sword. And you look at the cover and it's like this unbelievable. It's like a tiger where you're going to fighting this muscular guy with like the fires of a volcano behind. And instead you get at home in the movie is like shot in the backyard.

Yeah. Some skinny guy with a rubber sword. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. It was rough. But what did we have to go off of, you know? Yeah, that was it. these movies were huge.

You couldn't pull your phone out of your pocket in the 80s and watch the trailer. And so if you're walking around, you're basing your choice of movie off of what, off of genre, off of who's in it, like if there's a celebrity on the front of the box or off of the box art. Yeah, I think for the most part, you know, unless you had heard of the movie before by seeing a trailer in the theater or on TV or something or heard a lot of the genre movies, which did not have big stars in them. Right. If we're talking about genre, absolutely. Any kind of, you know, chicanery that could to, like, get you to bring you in.

So having this kind of amazing artwork on the boxes, it made a lot of sense. Well, I get the sense from watching some of these movies that there's a lot of love, A, for the box art and B for that, what's the word I'm looking for, for that juxtaposition of the, you know, the movie versus the art. I think there's a lot of love and nostalgia just for that to. Yeah, the box art. That's so interesting because I do, I certainly remember seeing the same box art over and over again and being intrigued by the box art even if I wasn't going to watch the movie or rent the movie. I think I've mentioned this before, but one of my favorites is the April Fool's Day box art with the gal. The hair looks like a noose. Yeah, she's got this long braid that looks like a news and that always intrigued me, but I was too afraid to watch the movie because I also, I mean, not only was I not interested in horror, I was like actively avoiding it most of the time.

So I was definitely one of those movie lovers who loved to rent and watch movies but would not go into the horror section. Yeah. I mean, I like toy movies. They just weren't. I mean, I think I realized even then as a kid that they were 90% terrible. And so it just wasn't, I only had, you know, two to four bucks to spend. And I just wasn't willing to risk it on what I assumed probably correctly. It was a really bad movie.

But I also remember, I can remember certain boxes for sure. audio boxes from the shelves, movies that I never saw, but I can still remember to this day what the box aren't looked like for sure, yeah. Well, that's an interesting concept you bring up to this idea that you had only so much money and you were going to spend it very strategically, which is maybe a little different from the way it can be now, depending on who you are and what you have access to. But like, you know, you weren't paying a subscription fee and then watching whatever. You had your two bucks and you got a movie for that.

And, you know, so you had to choose. Yeah. So this gets to something that I think you're getting to a key thing that is different. Now, about searching for something on streaming versus and selecting something in streaming versus selecting it in a video store, that the movie that you got from the video store was not only a financial investment in the way that streaming, I know you pay a fee for a streaming service, but you're not investing in each individual movie, unless you're renting it. from Amazon.

You might be renting a movie, but that happens less than people just watching movies on streaming services that they subscribe to. So when you go to the video store, you're not just investing your two or four bucks or whatever it is in that movie, but you don't, once you've rented it

and you're taking it home for the evening, like that's your movie. Yeah. Like that's what you've got. And if you put it in and the first 10 minutes are terrible and you hate it, you can't click over to another movie

with the push of a button on your remote in two seconds. And so whether you were more likely to give that movie a chance or not, I don't know. I was. If I rented something, I almost always watched it all the way through even if I thought within the first 10 minutes that it was crap. It was very rare that I would like not watch a movie I had rented. Yeah.

You'd sunk your costs and you were going to get. And so a couple things are lost there, right? One is that I think movies that can be very, that can be more challenging to their audience, probably get less of a fair shake from that audience. Like, there were movies that I think started out really bad that I watched anyway because it was the movie I rented for that night, and I didn't have anything else to watch, so I might as well watch it. That ended up being really good.

And so sometimes, you know, a movie can challenge you and a movie that kind of repel you at first might end up winning you over if you give it a chance. And I think that there's less chance of that happening now with people watching movies on streaming services. It's just so easy to bail on something that you don't, that you're not enjoying and go to something else. Or even if you're enjoying it, I think a lot of people, there's probably a name for this syndrome, this idea that there's something, there's always something better. Yeah, it's sort of like a fear of missing out, a FOMO, but not quite. I see, I know what you mean.

It's like, oh. Cynophilia version of FOMO. There's like something else I could be watching right now. Yeah. It's okay. It's pretty good, but there's probably something better. And so, I mean, this is how, I mean, and we've all heard this and maybe you've done it before you at home, I mean, where you just scroll through movies for like 20 minutes. And you're like, oh, I could have been watching something for the last 20 minutes.

And instead, I'm still scrolling. And you might find 10, 12 things that you're like, oh, I wanted to see that. Or, hey, that looks pretty good. but you keep scrolling anyway because there might be a better thing further down the list. And then maybe you end up with nothing at all. Like you end up not watching anything. You're like too tired to watch anything. Yeah, like the whole night's gone because you just spent the whole night scrolling through.

It's a phenomenon. And that doesn't happen to video stores. You don't spend the, you might spend a while at the video store looking for your movie. But you do eventually like pick a movie. Nobody spends the whole night at the video store and then goes, oh, I don't have time to watch a movie now. so I'm not going to rent anything. Well, so that was, that was going to be my question for you was, was there a similar phenomenon?

And if not, why not? Was it, why do you think that is? Just because it wasn't as easy. It was harder to do. Well, yeah. I mean, you had limited funds and so you can rent everything in the store. Not everything was available, which is another thing we have to talk about, like access. Yeah.

And so, yeah, and just the idea of investing in a movie, not just investing your two bucks, but investing your time and the decision-making that you put into picking that movie, it was just different. And so it created like, it's small, but it created a relationship between you and the movie you picked for that night that's very different from just clicking on something on streaming. They created commitment, I think, in a way that maybe you don't always feel with streaming. Yeah.

Another thing that I think a lot of people have nostalgia for when it comes to video stores is the thrill of the hunt. Oh, yeah. And part of this has to do with the availability of new releases to be rented and the weird kind of level of competition that surrounded those. Oh, yeah. So in my small town, there were like not many people who were really into movies. I was probably, in fact, I can tell you for sure, I'm the person that was most into movies in that entire town.

But there were people that wanted to see the new releases right when they were. they came out and there was an unspoken competition. I knew all their names, all the names of all the people in the town that also wanted to get their hands on these movies in the first week that they were out or in the first days that they were out. Yeah. And so there was a real like timing. You didn't know when the movie was going to come in the mail, how soon they were going to be

able to get it unpackaged and on the shelf. You wanted to be there. Yeah. There was a thrill of the hunt. You know, even when Blockbuster came along. Oh, yeah. I mean, I had that too. One of the reasons that they were able to run so many mom and pop businesses out of businesses that they had, they just had so many copies of new releases.

Like a new release at a mom and pop store would get three copies of Blockbuster would have 80. And so it was more likely to be in when you went there. And so people preferred to go to Blockbuster because they were more likely to get the movie they wanted. But there was still a hunt. It was still a chance that it would be gone. And if it was gone, then you had to go find something else. So imagine a world for a moment where there's some big new movie, whatever it is, the biggest movie of the year is premiering on Netflix.

And Netflix is set up as a system where only the first 100 people who click on that movie get to watch it that day. And then the next day, you don't know when you might get to watch it. But at any point during that day, a copy of that you might be able to stream that film. The opportunity for access to that movie might just pop up. That's a completely different way of watching movies. I can tell you as a librarian, there are digital rental models that exist like that, usually only at libraries where they only make a certain number of copies of an item available. But yeah, that doesn't really exist out in the non-library world.

So that, yeah, it must be very hard to imagine what that would be like to not be able to get something. Although I know that there's been something I've wanted to watch. usually something a little older. And I try the streaming services we have, and it's not there. I can't get it. Yeah. So I do have, I mean, it's a different experience, but I, you know, I do experience that disappointment.

Yeah. Which is another question, which is access. So, but let's, before we go to that, I just want to say there's, I can still remember the glow of walking out with, of walking in and, you know, the mom and pop store in my town, which would maybe get at most two to three copies of a new release. Yeah. More likely one. Oh, wow.

That's true composition right there. Yeah. And it's the biggest movie, you know, Tim Burton's Batman comes out on VHS. Right. Everyone in the town wants to see it. There's one copy in town at this video store. I love this. To get that copy felt like getting the golden ticket to Willy Wonka's.

I mean, it felt like you were walking on air when you walked out of the video store holding that copy. Like, I would have like a glow on my skin when I got that copy. There was nothing like it. And I do miss that feeling. Of course. It made that movie feel more special. Yeah.

Because in part, it's not just that I got the movie. It's that then when I get home and I sit down and I put pop that VHS tape into the VCR. I know I'm the only one in town watching that movie tonight. I want to see this short. I just love the drama of this. You know all your competitors. You go in there, you get it. You walk out the door and the person you're competing against is walking in and you're

like, guess what I have? Oh, that happened. Did that happen? Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. I love that. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. You would pass them on your way out and you'd be holding the tape and that you would be, I mean,

and it happened and it's the opposite is as devastating as the triumph of getting the tape is. So that happened to you on the other end too. Oh, hell yeah. Of course. Yeah. I'd be walking in and I would see this. lady coming out and I'd be like, son of a bitch, I know she's carrying crocodile Dundee too, or whatever the hell of horrible movie was that I was dying to see, right?

I mean, I suppose there's a degree to which that elevated certain less than worthy movies in one's head that experience. But that's really great. I just like, I definitely didn't have that. I'd had the thrill of the hunt experience. Like, I mean, you know, I would go to Blockbuster and maybe other people remember this. I think it's come up on other episodes. It's the idea of haunting the returns bin.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Hoping that the new release would be in the, and the glow of finding it in the return. Yeah. I definitely had that experience. Because even, again, most of my experience was probably with the bigger chains. Even there, as many as they'd get, you'd go,

and they wouldn't have the thing you, like Batman, for instance. You know, they wouldn't have it. Most of the mom and pop stores had deadlines for return. I can't remember what it was. It was like 4 p.m. or something like that at the... Oh, you mean? Oh, interesting.

Because they had to be able to, they had to have an opportunity to rent it back out the next day. They didn't want you bringing it in five minutes before closed. This was a business situation for them. Yeah. Absolutely. And so, so I would stand around in the store and find things to do. I mean, I could never be bored perusing the same 20 million videos that I had already looked at. Absolutely.

So it wasn't really a problem for me. But I remember, like, how much longer do I stand here? It's 20 till 4. Yeah. Are they going to bring it back in time? Should I wait for it? Like, I remember having that experience. But all of this is to say, as a professor who teaches filmmakers, I've said this before,

and you and I have talked about this, both on, mic, and off before that. One thing I find strange about my students is that they just don't have the passion for, They don't view films the same way that I did and that my friends did when I was a film student. They just don't seem to have like the love and affection for their chosen art form. And I think that is, I think there has been a generational shift in, and it's not just movies, but in kind of the relationship between people and media, that part of it is that it's no longer, physical media, that it's not a tactile thing, that it's this like ephemeral thing that kind of goes in and out of their lives and their consciousness. But also it's things like that that we just

talked about that where if it's, if it's tougher to get your hands on something, then your investment in it is going to be innately greater. I'm sure there are studies done on that, both economic and psychological, I would imagine. If I have instant access to something just with the push of a button through my phone in my pocket 24-7, 365 days a year, then I think it's impossible for that thing

to not feel less... It's less valuable. Less valuable to me. Yeah. And we certainly saw this... I mean, this happened with the music industry first, right? When Napster came along and we shifted towards MP3s

and then there, you know, it was especially, bad for the music industry at first because everybody was getting their music illegally. And so it literally devalued the media. But even when we shifted towards the Apple Music Store, iTunes, and people got a little better about paying for that music, they were paying for individual songs instead of buying albums. And so there's been a lot written about this from music historians and in music theory about the sort of drop of importance of the complete album. And that vanishing really of the concept album, period.

Like there are no concept albums anymore. And how it's sort of made, especially young people who've grown up knowing nothing else, it's made music feel less, I don't know what the word I'm looking for here. There's less longevity in their loyalty to it or like they don't have. It's more throwaway. I mean, it's like, yeah, kind of. Maybe that's not the word. I mean, it's clear that, like, there's still musician, I mean, Taylor Swift is

evidence that there's still these profound relationships between people and the artists that they follow. But I think in general, and I, and I, that's what I feel like I see in my students is that they don't, they don't watch movies on TVs very often. Like in the, in my straw polling of them, I, they almost always say, like, a laptop is the biggest screen that they watch movies on. And if you're watching a movie on the same device where you do your work, then that's going to change your relationship to how you think about the movie, too. The movie either becomes work or it becomes less entertainment or everything kind of folds

together and becomes this sort of wishy-washy, like your whole life is there. And this is just one more kind of, you know, bleeding, fuzzy aspect of it. So, you know, it was, all of which is to say, it just felt like a bigger deal back then than it does now when you had to go to the store and rent the tape. Yeah. Yeah. It did. So another thing that I think you read a lot about when you read about video store culture is this idea of video stores as a communal space centered around the video. and how that that's kind of gone.

I think it's why it's important to protect movie theaters like the Hollywood theater that we have here in Portland or the Alamo Draft House in Austin. And other places now. It's why we have to protect film festivals. Because there is some truth to that we're losing the opportunity for communal experiences around film going. So theaters like the Alamo and the Hollywood

that do programming that is built around getting people to participate or to engage with each other as they're watching a movie or with the process of watching a movie. So that it's not a merely passive experience. I think that's a really good thing. I don't know when I've read these stories or watched these documentaries that I'd buy that it was, that the video store was quite the sort of like,

I don't know, there's this, there is a rose-colored, glasses version of this idea that video stores were this like bastion of great highbrow cinephelia and they weren't they were commercial enterprises they stocked what they thought would rent of course so in the small town i grew up in the middle of a cornfield what they knew would rent were these kind of hollywood blockbusters comedies and action movies sure they top i can guarantee you the video store that i grew up with had no copies of my dinner with Andre or my life as a dog or, you know, there was no foreign cinema. There was not much in the way of independent filmmaking there.

And it's because most people are just not us. They're not adventurous film watchers. I mean, the people that listen to this podcast probably are or they're just, you know, Gen Xers who miss the 80s, which is fine. We welcome you all. All are welcome. Yes. But most people are not.

particularly adventurous. They just want to be entertained. And that's totally fair. Yeah, they view film as an escapism. They're not as interested in film as an art. And so in that way, streaming has been a huge boon because it has been the ability to find these movies and watch them. As much as has been written in recent years about how hard it is to find a lot of movies on streaming. And that's certainly true. I think in the big picture, more independent films and foreign films have probably been made available to people in a broader variety of geographic settings.

That's a really good point. Because of streaming. Right. The video store, I mean, I will say this, even though I'm saying, like, there wasn't a lot of independent cinema or foreign films there, it still was a life-changing experience for somebody like me who love film. I mean, what else would I have had, I would have been limited to what they show on networks and syndicated television stations. Definitely not much in terms of film. What I might be able to get off at HBO on the rare occasion where I got to watch it when I was visiting somebody in town.

Yep. And what I could see at the theater. And the theaters around where I grew up showed only blockbusters. You didn't have independent theaters. There was no art house theater where I grew up. And so my access to the smaller movies or, you know, more niche movies was really, through that video store. Yeah, or like the old black and white stuff or that kind of thing.

Yeah, I mean, I think that's really true. And that's a really great point about streaming is, you know, I'm talking about knowing I want to watch something and not being able to find it anywhere on screen, something that's older or maybe more niche. But you're right, like someone who isn't like you and I and who isn't seeking that stuff out and is only watching the blockbusters might be introduced to something that they wouldn't have picked

just by being there on streaming. But the opposite is true, too. I mean, I'm sure that I was able to have more, you know, my experience is a little different because I did, I grew up in the New York City suburbs, but what I think is funny about that is I don't remember there being a lot of, there probably were, and I just couldn't get to them or didn't know about them,

but I really only remember the big name chains and my library. So, but even so I was able to, able to get, especially at the library, that's where I was able to get, you know, the merchant ivory kind of things or the things that I was interested in in that respect. So when you, when you would go to Blockbuster or Hollywood video or whatever, would you ever talk to the clerk and have them like, have them like recommend movies to you? I was a very, and I was a very shy, introverted teenage girl, so no. That would be horrifying to me. I would be probably nervous to even, like it was even a little nerve-wracking for me to go scope out the return bin.

I wonder, too, if there's a difference between, like, a girl of that time going into a movie store talking to a clerk versus a guy? Like, I don't know. The stories I hear about that usually are of, like, dude film nerds. Oh, yeah, for sure. They're like the film version of the Jack Black character in high fidelity. Sure, yeah. These sort of, like, snobby genre hounds. Absolutely.

Yeah, and they're usually young men who probably live in their parents. basement. And, you know, it's great that they find each other and talk to each other. Right. I just didn't. I was thinking about how I didn't have that experience of like, but that was because I would have been too nervous or afraid to talk to a clerk. Like, that just wouldn't happen.

I only bring it up because that's another thing that I feel like you, that I read about in these articles that are sort of nostalgic pining for the lost video store of the 80s and 90s. And certainly they mentioned in those documentaries that we talked about, which is that the idea of losing that, those conversations that you get to have with the people that work there who get to know you and get to know your tastes and so can open you up to movies you might never have heard of. And that has, that obviously still exists, but it exists now in the form of an algorithm, right? These computer algorithms, like Netflix, when you finish a movie,

they're going to pop up on your screen with like three thumbnails saying, did you like that? You may also like these. Yeah. And is that the same as a clerk who gets to know you and who you have a relationship with because you go to the video store every day? I would say no. I don't know. I mean, it's a scientific measurement of like, it's probably built from data of people

who they watched one movie may have also watched another movie. And it's probably built from that. And so there's probably some communal evidence to, I mean, there has to be. Of course. Right. But it certainly is less warm. And so.

Well, there's no discussion about it. Yeah, exactly. Well, it feels less personal. Yeah. There's no, you don't, once you bring the movie back, you don't get to go, wow, you were right. Like, this is exactly like. Or man, I hated this. Or, yeah.

Don't ever recommend something like this to me ever again, you bastard. Yeah. Well, I wondered about you. because this was such a formative thing for you, and you were in the small town and probably knew a lot of the people, like, did you have this relationship with a clerk? Yes and no.

Okay. So the video store that I went to was staffed by locals in this town. Like I said, there was nobody in this town that cared about movies in the way that I did. And that included the clerks. And they were middle-aged people. Yeah.

And they were very nice. And they had certainly seen more movies. than probably anyone else in the town besides me because they worked in a video store. Yeah. And so by that very nature, it was, I still valued talking to them because I just, there was not, it wasn't really, boy, this makes me sound sad, doesn't it? No, not at all. There just weren't many people for me to talk about movies with.

And so I enjoyed talking to them, but it wasn't like I had a high fidelity Jack Black to kind of like. Yeah. Well, that's lovely too, though. they knew you, they looked out for you probably and still talked to you about stuff. It just wasn't like, they did. They hooked me up with, they gave me like, or, you know, sold me the posters. Oh, that's pretty great. I bought probably as many posters as I did rent movies. I had, like, an insane poster collection at one point of video store posters. And they would also

give me those big cardboard standies. Yeah. I had this massive one. It was like the size of a small car. was for the movie Darkman. Where did you put it? In my bedroom. Oh, really? Yeah. It was amazing. Can you picture the poster of Dark Man?

Do you remember what the poster? It's Dark Man and he's standing up on the finale of Dark Man is set entirely in this, at the top of a skyscraper that's under construction. So he's up on this, he's up on a steel beam, and it's in the middle of a storm and he's, like, reaching toward you with his bandaged hand. This is the Liam Neeson movie. Okay, okay. So yeah, I guess I can.

That's what the cardboard stand he was. It was like two giant steel beams and a full-sized dark man built to scale. Yeah. Cardboard man reaching out. Whoa. That was just one of the most badass things you've ever seen. I have logistical questions that I won't go into. But yeah, that's a, like how did I get it into my room?

Like how did you get it home and all that stuff? Yeah, I had to break it down and rebuild it. But it was worth it. Yeah. Yeah. I had a few other movies. That's the one, that's the only one I can remember off the top of my head, but I know I had more of those things.

Right. Because, I mean, they were just going to throw them in the dumpster. So why not sell them to me for five bucks or whatever? Yeah. I mean, this is probably an unanswerable question, but is this what you think got you into filmmaking? Or do you think this just, it would have happened just maybe in a different way? Or, you know, maybe it's an impossible question.

No, it's not. I mean, whenever I've been interviewed doing like press stuff from my own movies, and they ask about that, I always say it's the VHS tape. I mean, it changed everything for me. I don't know that I'd be a filmmaker. Without it, because it changed for me and a whole generation, people like me, the access to movies. I mean, it just before you either saw it in a theater or you caught it on cable or you caught it when it ran on network TV years later. And that was it.

You had like three chances in your life to see a movie. And when video, VHS came along and everything became accessible. and you could watch it anytime you want. You could replay it. You could rewind it. You could watch it over and over again. I mean, that's, as I said before, that's how I got into filmmaking

was by rewinding and replaying stuff that I watched and realizing that before anyone even told me like what filmmaking was, like that there was somebody behind it. Like somebody I wasn't, there was a director somewhere, somebody that I wasn't seeing. And I was like, somebody made this.

It's not the people in the – I know what actors are. And so I know they're not the people that made this. Somebody made this. And so even as like an eight-year-old, I was like rewinding tapes and being like, somebody put this together, like watching Hitchcock movies and figuring out that like there was an author. I didn't know what they did. I didn't quite get it. Right. But you got that they were doing it.

Yeah. And, you know, and that sort of never changed. I mean, that's how I – that's how to this day I study movies. You have – you just have to replay them. and rewatch scenes and figure out how they were constructed. I mean, that's the only way to do it. Yeah. Yeah, it's just always impressive to me to hear that story because it makes me wonder if you would have got there anyway,

just being able to figure that on on your own. But yeah, the VHS, I'm sure, really helped. So, yeah. So you say you only went to, you didn't go to any mom-and-pop video stores that you can remember. Back in, like, the 80s and 90s, not that I recall. I do remember going to one smaller video story, that was like in a strip mall, but back in the 80s,

but I don't think it lasted very long. And I honestly, I'm not sure if it was mom. I don't remember the name of it. I think it might have been a chain anyway, just a different chain that went the way of the mom and pops in a way. Yeah. The closest I probably got to mom and pop again. I keep saying this with the library.

That was probably the closest I got to that. Yeah. So I bring it up because there's, you know, there's this interesting, speaking of Rose, cold rose-tinted glasses. There's this sort of nostalgiaification of blockbuster. Yeah, sure. Right?

There's people, you see people wearing blockbuster t-shirts. There's this fetishization of like the iconography, like the blue, you know, in yellow. We even have the last blockbuster right here in Oregon. Yeah, and they have a lot of that kind of merch. About three hours from Portland here. Yeah. And I went there and did you go there with me? No, no, I didn't go on that trip.

Yeah, that's right. I was with my sister. Yeah, you were with your sister. Yeah, I went to the last Blockbuster in Ben. There's a whole documentary about it. It's actually pretty good. It's called The Last Blockbuster. And it was a strange experience because I thought when I went in that I would be kind of overwhelmed by nostalgia, like, having not been in a video store proper for so many years and certainly not one that looked like Blockbuster. Yeah.

But it kind of looked like somebody made a fake blockbuster. Oh, like it was a blockbuster experience or something. It was like, it was strange. It just didn't play. It didn't feel like blockbuster to me. Do you think it's because it's the only one and you're not going to them anymore? No, it was just different. It was like the signage felt different.

And there was like they had. had props and artifacts. They had, you know, they have, you know, famously they have, what's his name, Russell Crow's cod piece from Gladiator, I think, because John Oliver bought it for the blockbuster in Alaska. And then when they closed, they sent it to the one in Dend. So, yeah, they have it on, it's just a, it's a centerpiece of the store. And so it's like proudly on display in the middle of the store. That is not something you would ever have seen in a It's just a very strange. They have like this little kind of museumish display.

And then a lot of the store is actually Blockbuster merch. Right. So it feels more like a... It sounds like a museum. Yeah, like a museum. It's like a, I don't know, it's like a weird hybrid of an old Blockbuster and like a Spencer's Gifts or something. Yeah, I could see that. Yeah.

But yeah, I mean, I went in there and I looked around and I was like, I don't know that I would want to go back to this because I think I think my I think I'll always come down on the idea of access and the internet and streaming have given me access to so many movies that I couldn't even get through video stores and this is where this is where I have to agree and disagree somewhat with every online article you tend to read about this subject which is this idea that video stores actually have more movies than streaming. And that's true, right? Like there's, you know, we have a video store here in Portland.

It's a nonprofit. It's called movie madness. It's been around forever. It has this unbelievable collection of movie props because the guy that owned it was a movie prop collector. And he's just got, you know, maybe outside of the Academy Museum in Hollywood, he's maybe got the greatest collection of movie memorabilia. It's just unbelievable. Yeah.

It's worth going to that store just to see that stuff. It's a cool place. But it was failing as a video store, like every other video store. And so it was purchased by the aforementioned Hollywood theater and turned into a non-profit. Now it's a little screening room. But they still rent tapes. I don't know how much money they pull in from that. But they still buy new DVDs.

I shouldn't say tapes. They still rent DVDs and Blu-rays. And so they buy new Blu-rays. They have a new releases section and they get the new stuff that comes out every week. And I don't doubt that their collection isn't. larger than the accumulated collection that is available from Netflix and Amazon and Hulu and so forth. Right.

It would have to be. Yeah. But all I can tell you is my personal experience is that there were movies that I have, that I heard about for a million years before, pre-streaming that I was never able to see. And then in a post-streaming world, it's not hard to find those movies. Like, they're going to be, they're going to be somewhere on some streaming service. And if not, you're going to find them in the bowels of YouTube or the Internet Archive. Yeah, might have to actually work a little bit for it in the same way.

It still takes work. It's a different kind of work. It's not going to the stores and hunting through the shelves. It's like deep diving into the bowels of the Internet. But I've been able to find almost every movie that I've wanted to see. I have a list of stuff that I've hunted for. And there's probably maybe 10 or 12 movies that in the last 20 years that I consistently, I look for every year and have never been able to find.

Do you get any of that, even just like a hint of that same thrill of the hunt feeling from that? Or is it just a totally different feeling? Yeah, maybe a little. Yeah. But not really. Only because I look so often, like once a year I might pull this list up and then deep dive through YouTube and daily motion. internet archive and try to find rips of a VHS from Italy or something that somebody has posted somewhere and hope that it's in a language that, you know, hope that it's in English or

or that it's in a copy that's remotely watchable. But yeah, I mean, it's just, and it's, so I don't know that I don't know that I would want to go back to a world where it was just harder for me to access movies. That's the thing I would miss about like going back to a world of video stores like we used to have. Yeah. I would say that mine, sorry, you go ahead. Maybe I jumped in a time. I got like, no, go ahead and say what you wanted to say.

I got a little derailed. I didn't want to change the subject too much. But I was just thinking that you were talking about going to Blockbuster the last one and not feeling so much nostalgia about it. And I guess I was thinking when you said that maybe my nostalgia isn't for Blockbuster or Hollywood video so much as it is for the browsing experience that I enjoy so much. And I can still get that again. I guess I just have to say I love the library so much. And that's one of the few places you can kind of now still enjoy that experience of like browsing through, you know, pulling them off and looking at them and being like, do I like this? Do I want to watch this or read this or whatever it is?

So I can still at least get that experience. Well, audio files say the same thing about. I mean, like the resurgence of vinyl and record stores. Sure. There is a huge difference in the sense that in music for vinylophiles or whatever they call themselves, the media itself is different. Yep. Which is to say a record sounds different. It sounds audibly different from digital.

And that's not true with physical media in film because a Blu-ray or a DVD. are still just compressed digital files, and that's all streaming is. Sure. And a Blu-ray is going to look better than almost any streaming. That's probably not going to be true in a few years or even a year. Right. But right now, like a Blu-ray or 4K looks way better than what you can stream in most cases. It might even depend on the stream rate you pay for.

But it doesn't feel different. It's not like the difference between a CD or an MP3 and vinyl. The quality isn't that different. So that kind of nostalgia for physical media, which obviously I still have comes from something else with movies. I mean, again, it's access. It's knowing you have it. It's being able to hold it in your hands. Anything you hold in your hands is going to feel like it has more value to you than something you don't.

I think that's just a human fact. But where I was going with the whole Blockbuster thing 10 minutes ago was I just find it interesting that there's a lot of nostalgia for Blockbuster. when at the time, my memory of it is that it was viewed as this kind of lame corporate boogeyman that was driving all these great mom-and-pop video stores out of business. It was the streaming of the time, right? Yeah, it was terrible. It charged, at least in my town, it charged twice as much for a videotape rental. It was four bucks a night for a tape at Blockbuster and two bucks a night from the mom-and-pop places for the same movie.

Yeah. And it wasn't like the clerks weren't like particularly helpful. They were kind of doing their own thing. I didn't like how you had to exit through the clerk's workstation. Every blockbuster was laid out in the same way. Like the exit, you had to go past. It was like there was a clerk's workstation. It was broken up with this path through the middle of it.

I don't remember that. Okay. So to like leave without a movie, they were always kind of looking at you. or like, what's your problem? Like, you can find anything or, I don't know. I don't remember that. That's so interesting. Yeah.

And it just felt like so, like the lighting was bad. Yeah, it was a very fluorescent type. Yeah. No, you're right. It wasn't a pleasant space. It was sort of like everything about it beyond the, its capacity to stock more new releases and therefore more likely have the thing you wanted to rent or have a deeper library.

Yeah. Which is how I used it. Right. Right, right, right. Yeah. Everything else about it kind of stunk. I kind of, yeah. I mean, I guess I remember blockbler.

It was a bad guy. It was like, it'd be like, I don't know. It's like if Walmart would have went away, would people start wearing Walmart shirts and be like, Walmart was so great, man. I love Walmart. I love how they drove all those small businesses out of business. Or I don't know. I guess it'd be like if Netflix went away for some other whatever and people started being nostalgic. Right.

And people started being. nostalgic for Netflix? Because I think it was, you know, you hear people talk about it. I think it was kind of the streaming of its time in a way. Like it was the thing that... Yeah, for sure. Killed some other things. So, yeah, I mean, again, I don't know that I have a nostalgia for the place of the space. It's more the experience. I love, I still, as I said, I mean, browsing is just something I can do for fun on its own without even picking anything up. So I do love that. But yeah, yeah, you're right. It wasn't like a pleasant, it was a means to an And I think that's kind of how I remember.

It was like, I want to go get the new release or I want to go get a movie. This is where I go get it. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. I will say that the social experience around video stores that I do miss, like I don't have a lot of memory just because of where I grew up and what my video store was like of the experience of the clerk being this like giant movie. But what I did get and what I do miss is going to a video store with friends.

Yeah, yeah, I remember that too. And having to talk, work out with them what we were going to rent to watch that night. Going out with a group of friends. And I think that like everything else that has gone into the internet, social media being the really obvious one, that having all of your film viewing come out of streaming services and come out of your phone and your laptop and your streaming device on your TV, by moving everything even more insular, it has made it less social.

and more isolationist. And so it's not that groups of teenagers don't still get together and watch movies together. I'm sure they must. Yeah. I doubt I would be surprised if they did at the rate that they were when you and I were younger. I mean, that was a typical Friday, Saturday, Saturday, activity. Yeah, like that was all we did. Absolutely.

Yeah, same. And maybe they're having these kind of experiences and discussions around. like clicking on a movie, but I doubt it. They might be. They have to figure out what they're going to watch, right? Yeah. But it seems like it would be more like a side thing. Like it would just be like the thing to like, I don't know how I can explain this.

It just seems that would be a very different experience from having to go in a car. Yeah. Or on bikes with your pals. Right. Physically into a video store and have the discussion in a public space. Right. Where there's a time pressure because you can't spend all day in the store. Yeah, someone's paying for it.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And pick the movie together. Yeah. And like you're invested. And again, this goes back repeating myself, but as a group, you're invested in that movie once you've selected it. Which is why Rad and Top Gun were always gone, right? Because they were a surefire thing.

You had seen them a million times. And so let's rent them again. Yeah. Yeah. And I just don't know. I don't know that that experience would be the same if you were just picking a movie off of Netflix. I would be interested to know. I mean, all I can think of is like, you know, when we have been with friends or family,

or, you know, when you're with your family or whatever, trying to look through and find something to watch, it does sometimes devolve, as we said, again, repeating. But into that, like, you can't decide for half an hour at least what to watch. And that isn't somehow as fun as the fun of browsing in the store. And I still don't totally get why, except that I guess the investment thing or, you know, wanting to go home and watch something for heaven's sake. Yeah. It's a bigger thing. You and I have talked about this before, but it's a bigger part of a thing that we find strange, which is that technology seems to be designed always about making us more isolated.

and that happened even in stages and video stores, right? Like, first it was the video store, but then it was Red Box, right? Which removed your interaction with the clerk. You didn't even have to go inside. It was like, it was essentially an ATM or a soda machine for movies. So it took out any kind of interaction with humans. And then it was Netflix DVDs. For the first few years of Netflix, they would mail you DVDs.

So it was, okay, I don't have to leave my house. I can get these. I can get my movies through the mail. And then it's streaming. So I don't even have to go to the mailbox. I can just stay indoors. I can stay in my house if I want to. Yeah.

And it just seems like, I don't know what post-streaming is for filmmaking. I know. I can't even, I don't even want to think about it. It's hard to imagine how it could get more isolationist as an experience film going than what streaming has given us, which is kind of a bummer. And again, repeating myself, but this is a way we have to, like, champion places like the Hollywood theater or Alamo Draft House

that are really about the communal social experience of ingesting movies together. And I do think, I mean, I don't know, you tell me, but I get the sense that in the air there's a bit of a hunger for that, for, you know, like you say, I'm thinking of it in terms of vinyl, I guess, but a lot of people of varying ages are now getting into some physical media, finding it interesting, or, you know,

are wanting to go to some kind of physical event to enjoy a movie. Or even if they don't do it, they hunger for it, perhaps. I feel like I do hear that. Or I don't know, maybe it's in the air. I don't know. Do you see that at all? Yeah, for sure. And I hope so my, I hope that the thing that will disrupt the streaming model

will be a return to something that brings us together rather than pushes us further apart. Because up till now, the disruptors have always been about things that make us more isolated. I mean, it's about convenience in that sense, right? And most humans, because we're humans, we'll go for what takes less energy. But yeah, that would be really cool.

The end of that road, as we all know, is those people and those characters in Wally, where we're just these blobs of consumption. with no brains and no... Or gosh, worse, the Matrix or something when you're just... Yeah. Yeah, you just plug in, right? These are things I don't even want to think about.

You just stay in your house all day while your body wastes away and you... I just don't. Wow, a gun, dark. Yeah. Let's maybe go a little lighter for a moment at least if we can. Yeah, I mean, I think we can wrap up. But the thing, the other thing I want to recommend to people who haven't done, haven't seen this before, which I find this kind of amazing.

And I'm a little jealous, but also a little like, Like, what are you guys doing? It is, there's all these guys on YouTube that if you go, if you punch into YouTube something like, I built my own video store. Oh, yeah, these are amazing. There's all these. It's always a guy and it's always like a horror movie fan, usually, or always, frankly. Or some kind of genre fan.

Yeah. You know more than I do about these, but yeah. I think they're all horror movie fans, basically. It just seems that way to me. I have yet to find one for their passion of doing the whole. whole thing isn't so that they have a way to showcase their horror VHS collection or whatever. But anyway, there's all these guys. Quentin Tarantino is one, frankly.

I guess he's the exception. Yeah. Who have built their own video stores in their basements. They're usually in the basement or in the garage. And they built these replicas of video stores from the 80s and 90s, complete with cash registers, gumball machines, arcade machines, pop. popcorn makers. They have the different sections for the genres.

And then some of them just have thousands and thousands or tens of thousands of tapes or DVDs. Basically, it's their movie collection and it's a way for them to showcase their movie collection by building this store. And every time I watch them, I was like, oh, man, I wish I had one of those. But I also think, like, what the hell would I do with?

I mean, it's essentially like, it's your shelves with your videotapes. I mean, you're just going to go in there and stand in there and look at them. I mean, I guess you could. I guess that's what they do maybe. Or bring, you know, bring your friends down there. Yeah, I guess so. I mean, they are amazing to look at it.

And I do have to salute these folks, just their love and their passion. I mean, I think it's cool. You know, they're doing something they love. They're enjoying something they love. Yeah, they're being creative. They're building something. Making something. Yeah.

I think that's healthy and great. Yeah. excess space in their house to do it, then, you know. I mean, I always tell you, if we had the excess space, it would be totally fine with me. For me to build a video store, I'm going to hold you to do that. I think you'd want a home theater, like a real home theater before you'd want that. Yeah, I would rather have a home theater than a personal video store, but I'll take both. If we had the room, it would be a no-brainer, I'm pretty sure.

But yeah, they're really fun to look at it. You should go check them out. They're a very good time. And it's cool as somebody who does have nostalgia for that. era and that experience of going to video stores, it's cool to see other people who have that same thing and have found a creative way to remember and celebrate that history. Yeah. It's always great to see other people honoring their passions like that. I think it's really great. Yeah. Yeah. So that's my recommendation of the day is not an actual movie. It's to go to YouTube and check out some of these people's personal home video stories because some of them are just truly amazing. like really incredible in their detail. Well, and I'll be the librarian and say my recommendation will be,

if you enjoy browsing like I do, go to your local library. Check it out. Go browse the shelves. Yeah. It's really fun. I mean, I would say that you and I still get as many films from our library as we watch on streaming. Oh, 100%. Yeah, I think we do too.

And actually, we do get a bit of a communal experience from that because, you know, you'll often talk, if you're not doing self-checkout, you will talk with the person. and checking the librarian. Gets to know your tastes. And you'll be like, oh, I love this movie. Or I haven't seen this one. What did you think? And so that's kind of fun.

I like that. All right. So Viva la Video Store. Viva La Video Store. Thanks for listening, everybody. Talk to you next time. You've been listening to The Long Rewind. The program is produced by Dustin Morrow and hosted by me, Lisa Molinelli.

If you enjoy the show, show, please consider hitting the subscribe button, leave us a good review on your podcast app, and tell your friends about the program. We'll see you next time. Thanks for listening.