BEFORE: This one hasn't been on my Netflix list for THAT long, but long enough that I got a Netflix notification two days ago, reminding me to watch it. Could be just a coincidence - I'd hate to think that the recommending bots have finally figured out my all-over-the-place approach to watching my movies. I won't be contained - I should probably skip this one as a protest, but I'm too curious about it to do that. Yesterday's film also links to tomorrow's, so I don't HAVE to watch this one here and now, but if not now, then when? It's got such a varied cast that I could probably link here from anywhere, and my schedule is still one film over for the year, but nope, I'll find something else to drop. Watching this one makes a better film land as Movie #3,950 so there you go.
Ron Funches carries over from "Trolls World Tour".
FOLLOW-UP TO: "All Things Must Pass: The Rise and Fall of Tower Records" (Movie #2,428)
THE PLOT: A documentary on the last remaining Blockbuster Video, located in Bend, Oregon.
AFTER: I bet you can guess how nostalgic I am about renting movies fom video stores - I was a teen during the 1980's, when Blockbuster Video was the biggest game in town, especially since my parents adamantly refused to get cable, he strongly believed that all TV should be free. I had to order cable for my parents years later and pay for it, just so there would be some decent TV and a clear picture when I came to visit. And I STILL watch movies on DVD, and I STILL have a collection of VHS tapes, I just never replaced some movies that I bought back in the 1980's and 90's on VHS, but I still have VCRs and a working DVD player, even if my computers no longer have DVD drives. It's a way of life that I still don't want to completely lose touch with, though I don't think I've been in a video-rental store since I moved out of Brooklyn.
They're still out there, this doc may be about the last Blockbuster, but there are still independent video stores, just like somewhere there are still blacksmiths making horseshoes and there are people using mimeograph machines and printing books using movable type. Umm, right? People still grill food over fire, I know that much, and that's been going on for thousands of years, and BBQ isn't going away any time soon. And people still ride horses, somewhere, when they're herding cattle or sheep or something, I bet. Sometimes the old ways still just work.
My first job was in a department store in the Boston area, the kind of place that sold furniture, housewares, computers, electronics, and even had a video rental counter. I applied to work in video rentals, but they put me in the warehouse, bringing merch out to the customers who'd just paid for it. (Cash, then carry...). I wonder if my life would have been different if I had been able to work in video rentals, recommending movies to people and talking movies all day long - I might have become the next Tarantino, but probably not. After that, I worked in a movie theater while I went to film school, so I eventually got where I wanted to go, more or less, and not working in video rentals was just a momentary setback. But working there allowed me to afford a copy of "The Empire Strikes Back" on VHS the day it came out, even though it cost close to $100 (yep) I watched that tape so many times that price became a bargain. Previously I had bought the first "Star Wars" film used from a different video store, for the high price (to me, at the time) of $30.
So this film gives me a little background about WHY the movie industry was making bad decisions, like pricing VHS tapes at $100, instead of, say, $20. The industry felt they were losing money when compared to movie theater ticket prices, which were maybe $6 or $7 at the time. If I bought that movie on VHS I could watch it whenever I wanted, and I'd never go out to see it in the theater again, so Hollywood felt they were losing their monopoly, and wanted to be compensated for that. But, but I was still going to go to see NEW movies in the theater, so what gives? (The Star Wars series is probably a bad example here, because as a true fan, later on I'd end up buying the special editions on VHS, then DVD, and now they're on streaming, so really, I wasted all that money...)
Also, the VHS tapes were priced to discourage people from buying to own, at least at first - what 15-year old kid, besides me, was going to drop a C-note on a VHS tape? They could sell a tape to ONE person for $100, or they could rent it for $3 to 100 people, which would take in $300? Well, sure, that makes sense, provided nobody damages the tape or it doesn't break during rewinding or get caught in the VCR heads - yes, it happened, but good luck trying to explain that to the rental store without having to reimburse them for the cost of the tape. Fortunately, DVDs soon came along and those were VERY difficult to damage - I'm just kidding, they were very easy to scratch or damage or melt, if you left them in your car on a hot summer's day. Whose bright idea was it to have one side of the disc exposed to the dusty air and the elements, and that side would also be where the disc's information was stored? One little scratch and the disc would skip, worse than a vinyl record, and again, you'd be on the hook for the damage.
Or, god forbid, if you forgot to rewind the VHS tape, that was ANOTHER charge - so having a Blockbuster or other franchise video-store was basically a license to charge the customer for doing everything, or even doing nothing. Bring the tape back late, and they'd charge you for the whole cost of the tape. Seeing "Gremins" for $3 was a good deal, but if the tape broke, then you had to pay $50 and you now own a broken copy of "Gremlins", that's a terrible deal. You know, I'm starting to see why streaming took so much market share from video rental stores when it came along. But I'm going to point out here that streaming and cable have their own problems - what happens when the cable company is having problems, when the lines are down or your internet isn't working right? My DVD player will still work when the internet is down or the cable's doing that thing where it pixellates every 30 seconds. (Or if your satellite TV is on the fritz because, you know, it's cloudy.)
Plus, some people still miss the human connection, that ability to walk into a store where someone will recommend a movie to you based on what they know about you, even if what they know about you is that you like movies where people are tortured horribly by a stranger who's put them in weird puzzle-like contraptions. (Dude, you really should see somebody about that...). I was always afraid that the staff at Park Slope Video in Brooklyn knew just a bit too much about my tape-renting habits. Sure, we have Amazonbots and Netflixbots recommending movies now, but it's just not the same, where's the shame and scorn?
Never fear, there's still at least ONE Blockbuster video store keeping the dreams alive, even in the age of COVID where people are still afraid to leave the house, they can still get curbside pick-up at the last Blockbuster in Bend, Oregon. But this film leads you to think this is the last video-rental store, period, and that's just not true - there's Scarecrow Video in Seattle, and there's Movie Madness in Portland, OR, and my boss recently visited Universal Video in Seaside, on the Oregon Coast. We used to have Kim's Video here in NYC, several locations but I guess the last one closed in 2014. There still might be a couple holdouts in the Times Square area, but I'd be a little wary of those - anyway, I don't need to go to video stores, because even if something I really want to see isn't on cable, or disappears from Netflix, then there's always iTunes. Why would I go to a video store to rent a movie for $3.99 when I can just push a couple buttons on my computer and see it for $3.99? So of course, I get it, I see why streaming killed the video-store. (My apologies to The Buggles.)
This documentary puts forth the theory that Netflix and Redbox didn't kill Blockbuster, BLOCKBUSTER killed Blockbuster. They expanded too much, too quickly and didn't pay attention to the changing marketplace or the fact that customers wanted more convenience, not just 50 copies of Stephen Seagal in "Hard to Kill" available to them in the New Releases section. By the time Blockbuster started to listen to their customers, abolish all late fees, and started mailing DVDs to customers' homes, with an eye toward looking into this "streaming" thing, it was already too late. Plus Blockbuster had a revolving door on the CEO's office, the men who had led 7-Eleven and the guy who invented the Cheesy Gordita Crunch over at Taco Bell both took turns leading the company before corporate raider Carl Icahn started sniffing around. (Not to disparage the Cheesy Gordita Crunch, it's damn delicious, and if there were a Nobel Prize for fast food, it would definitely be worthy, only that's not a thing.)
Carl Icahn, why does that name sound so familiar? Oh, yeah, Marvel Comics. Some people don't remember that Marvel once filed for bankruptcy and had to reorganize itself - it never stopped publishing comics, but in a very similar fashion to Blockbuster, Marvel sort of lost its way and wasn't really reading its customers right - they thought what the fans wanted was a new X-Men series, with a #1 issue with 6 different covers, so instead of paying $3 for a comic, you'd have to pay $18 to collect them all, thinking that they'd be very valuable someday - only they wouldn't because all your friends and all their friends also bought all 6 collectible covers, and there were so many copies of X-Men #1 on the market that they had no resale value, and became essentially worthless. Of course, they didn't really think of just making the comics BETTER, or if they did, that idea came a bit too late - and in the meantime Marvel bought a trading card company (Topps) and a sticker company (Panini) and a toy company (ToyBiz) so they could make Marvel trading cards and Marvel stickers and Marvel toys themselves, and WHOOPSIE, we're out of money, how did that happen?
I remember this because I bought stock in Marvel Comics when it was first offered, I dropped maybe $1,000 on I think 40 shares. I got an invitation to their stockholders meetings for a few years, and I did go, and a couple times I got my stock report (in comic book form) signed by Stan Lee, so that's something. But a few years after I bought the stock, naturally it was in the crapper because Marvel had bought up all these smaller companies and had massive debts. My 40 shares were essentially worthless, though I was given the opportunity to trade them in for ONE share of the new, reorganized company - for a fee, of course. Yeah, no thanks, I took a pass and a couple years later I bought a few shares of Disney - then what happened? Disney bought Marvel, so I felt the universe was having a big old laugh at my expense - but then the Marvel movies came out and did gangbusters, so who knows, maybe these things just go in cycles, you just don't want to be left holding the stock at the bottom of that cycle, like I was.
Anyway, Blockbuster - at one point Netflix representatives had a meeting with Blockbuster executives to see if they were interested in buying Netflix. "What? Buy a streaming service? No thanks, we're about to start a streaming service of our own, and buying an existing one would just be easier and probably cheaper, so that's crazy talk." And one day, people would look back on that as one of the great bonehead entitled white guy moves of ALL TIME. If Blockbuster were still around, and they OWNED Netflix, would that be a better world, or just a different one? And now the documentary about Blockbuster's demise is streaming on Netflix, so there's another case of the universe having a big old laugh at somebody's expense - just this time, it's not mine.
So somebody still manages that Last Blockbuster, her name is Sandi Harding, and all of the members of her family have worked at the store at one time or another. They're still surviving, they still don't sell porn, and they still provide that face-to-face personal service, and they don't even make people rewind any more, but I think that's just because you don't have to rewind a DVD. (Kids, ask your parents.). The last Blockbuster in Bend just may stick around forever, because they got all that cool Russell Crowe merchandise that John Oliver bought at an auction and sent to the last couple Blockbuster stores in Alaska (which have since closed) and they also somehow got all the computers from the other Blockbusters in Oregon, which they can cannibalize for parts and keep their own machines running.
People come from far and wide to visit the last Blockbuster, some people who are in their teens or 20's who have NEVER been in a video-rental store before. Plus I hear there's a secret cabal of Hollywood elite who meet in the basement of this store and discuss and trade old horror movies. Thank god we still have arcades, too - that's another prehistoric thing that isn't completely dead yet, either. We even have a few in NYC called Barcade, they have food, beer and video games, and they're surviving too.
This film interviews a number of comedians and actors, some of whom worked in Blockbuster Video stores as teens, and have a mix of wonderful nostalgic and probably also a few horrible memories (Because, you know, it was still A JOB.). They also interview Troma executive and film producer Lloyd Kaufman, someone I've met at various comic-cons, he and my boss did a podcast together once, and I think a couple times Lloyd and I were on the same flight from San Diego back to NYC. The interviewer asked Lloyd to introduce himself and describe his accomplishments and Lloyd said, "Why do I have to do that, isn't that your job? Or do you not know who I am? Didn't you do your research?" Ah, that's typical Lloyd - I also have a friend who worked for Lloyd for a while, and I'm sure he'll back me up.
That's OK, there are friendly people interviewed here too, like Kevin Smith - who I've never met, but I think I'd like to have a chat with him someday if possible. I've just never been willing to stand in line outside Hall H to be able to do so. Ron Funches, Doug Benson and Paul Scheer, I feel like I know them all from watching every episode of "I Love the 80's". Brian Posehn's here too, I think I saw him once walking out of Comic-Con with Patton Oswalt late one night, but I was too chicken-shit to approach.
Anyway, please patronize your local video-store if you can, I feel like I've done my share over the years, and iTunes is my go-to back-up now, but if you've got one in your area, please stop in. And I hope hope HOPE that someday Amazon follows the same business model as Blockbuster, expands too much too quickly and somehow pays the price for not giving a crap about their customers (or in Amazon's case, their employees) or that Jeff Bezos wastes so much money on space travel that the company has to file for bankruptcy and gets bought out by, I don't know, m&m/Mars or something. It could happen.
One big NITPICK POINT - the interviewer surprises many of the interview subjects with a VHS case containing the film "The Last Blockbuster", as a gift for participating in the interviews. Only we all realize that's impossible, right? Impossible for them to have footage IN THE FILM of people receiving copies of the FINISHED FILM. It's a paradox, you can't have a finished film until all the footage is filmed, so you can't be filming a scene of someone getting a copy of the finished film, and have that scene then get edited into the finished film.
Also starring Tom Casey, Sandi Harding, Kate Hagen, Alan Payne, Jared Rasic, Ken Tisher,
Doug Benson (last heard in "The Lego Batman Movie"), Adam Brody (last seen in "CHIPS"), Greg Camp, Eric Close (last seen in "American Sniper"), Darren Hayes, Lloyd Kaufman (last seen in "Comic Book: The Movie"), Jamie Kennedy (last seen in "Boiler Room"), Samm Levine (last seen in "Vacation"), Brian Posehn (last seen in "The Five-Year Engagement"), Paul Scheer (last seen in "The Onion Movie"), Ione Skye (last seen in "River's Edge"), Kevin Smith (last seen in "Jay and Silent Bob Reboot"), James Arnold Taylor (last heard in "Teen Titans GO! to the Movies"), the voice of Lauren Lapkus (last seen in "Between Two Ferns: The Movie")
and archive footage of Jeff Anderson (last seen in "Zack and Miri Make a Porno"), John Antioco, Jim Carrey (last seen in "Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond"), David Cook, Terry Crews (last seen in "Middle Men"), Russell Crowe (last seen in "State of Play"), Tom Cruise (last seen in "Mission: Impossible - Fallout"), Ellen Degeneres (last seen in "The Accidental President"), Seth Meyers (ditto), Jim Gaffigan (last seen in "Drunk Parents"), Jami Gertz (last seen in "The Lost Boys"), Tom Hanks (last seen in "Everyting Is Copy"), Ed Harris (last seen in "Cleaner"), Reed Hastings, Clint Howard (last seen in "Solo: A Star Wars Story"), Carl Icahn, Jim Keyes, Jimmy Kimmel (last seen in "Class Action Park"), Gayle King (last seen in "The Color Purple"), Burt Kwouk (last seen in "You Only Live Twice", Elisabeth Moss (last seen in "Shirley"), John Oliver, Al Pacino (last seen in "Manglehorn"), Kellie Pickler, Sumner Redstone, Andy Samberg (last seen in "Brigsby Bear"), Peter Sellers (last seen in "Elvis & Nixon").
RATING: 6 out of 10 copies of "Paul Blart 2"
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