I worked in a video store for 25 years
December 2, 2015 5:52 PM Subscribe
DVD was just about the best sweet spot between convenience and quality that the mid-90s to mid-00s had to offer. They looked and sounded fantastic compared to VHS, they offered features VHS never could, they didn't need rewinding, and they were manufactured pretty much just like VHS cassette shells in a plastic-molding process. Even with the format royalties being artificially high, the cost of the format meant that damn near everything got released for DVD before the format began its decline. DVD made keeping indy video stores open a lot easier before Netflix streaming made it a lot harder.
RIP VisArt Video and all the rest.
I would like to thank Dennis for namechecking The Black Marble, which is a weird movie I helped put on DVD too many years ago. If anyone needs their film released on DVD or Blu-ray, please MeMail me and we'll talk.
posted by infinitewindow at 6:06 PM on December 2, 2015 [7 favorites]
RIP VisArt Video and all the rest.
I would like to thank Dennis for namechecking The Black Marble, which is a weird movie I helped put on DVD too many years ago. If anyone needs their film released on DVD or Blu-ray, please MeMail me and we'll talk.
posted by infinitewindow at 6:06 PM on December 2, 2015 [7 favorites]
My friends and I predicted the demise of video back in the early 90s with the question: How many businesses could survive when you have to drive to the store(sometimes far), search for too long finding what you want about 25% of the time and if not, you settle for some crap movie you didn't want but already drove the distance and needed something to watch while you hear money go down the toilet with your patience?
posted by Muncle at 6:12 PM on December 2, 2015 [9 favorites]
posted by Muncle at 6:12 PM on December 2, 2015 [9 favorites]
"You had to get out of bed, get dressed, and go to a store."
Based on my experience working at a video store, at least one of these things was not a given.
posted by happyroach at 6:14 PM on December 2, 2015 [47 favorites]
Based on my experience working at a video store, at least one of these things was not a given.
posted by happyroach at 6:14 PM on December 2, 2015 [47 favorites]
I spent many years in my twenties behind the counter of a video store and am saddened by their demise.
posted by hoodrich at 6:17 PM on December 2, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by hoodrich at 6:17 PM on December 2, 2015 [2 favorites]
I don't know, I'm getting a lot of eye-rolls out of this. I'm sorry the place this guy worked went out of business and all, but... going home with a physical copy of Destroy All Monsters after roaming around a video store for forty minutes and then accepting that you just weren't going to find anything better was not a revolutionary act. And finishing the crappy movie you ended up with didn't mean you'd Engaged With It and had an Authentic Experience, it just meant the store was closed and you were stuck with it. Most of the article just reads like sour grapes to me. I'm sure an indie video store would be a cool place to work, but that doesn't make it a better experience for the customers; let's face it, however you feel about Destroy All Monsters, it's better without having to look for parking.
posted by Sing Or Swim at 6:23 PM on December 2, 2015 [26 favorites]
posted by Sing Or Swim at 6:23 PM on December 2, 2015 [26 favorites]
Netflix probably doesn't even have Happy Scrappy Hero Pup.
posted by Chrysostom at 6:29 PM on December 2, 2015 [30 favorites]
posted by Chrysostom at 6:29 PM on December 2, 2015 [30 favorites]
Ha! This was my video store. I kinda knew it was, somehow.
Videoport was by far the best video store I've ever seen. It was well curated, well staffed, had lots of diehard customers, and managed to not be snooty or weird about movies. They had an "Incredibly Strange Films" collection that I rented many a quality film from. They had an amazing selection of foreign films that felt hand-picked, and also an amazing section of trashy action films. If Videoport can't survive, then no video store will be left. Which makes sense, in a sad way: very few people I know even watch movies on a physical format anymore. If discs are going away, there will be nothing left for people to rent.
I feel terrible about them closing, in part because there is nothing I could really do about it, and in part because all these stores closing is having a real impact. The streaming services just do not have the breadth and curation of the collections of good indie video stores, and due to the vagaries of rights and big corporations this is unlikely to change for a long time. Believe me when I say, I am constantly heading to canistream.it to see if something is available, and the answer is almost always "no", or "buy it for twenty bucks, and by "buy" it we mean we'll let you stream it from us until we go out of business or have a weird hissy fit".
And as much as the selection problem is an issue, the curation one is an even bigger one. Nobody online has figured out a semi-decent way to do curation because frankly, people are fucking shitty at knowing what they'll like. Don't you want to be surprised? Don't you want to feel like you discovered something awesome? I'm sorry, our algorithm just feeds you more stuff just like what you already watched. And the more product you add, the more you end up with something like Steam, where it just feels like you're diving into a ballpit the size of an olympic swimming pool and digging around for your car keys.
It fucking sucks.
posted by selfnoise at 6:34 PM on December 2, 2015 [23 favorites]
Videoport was by far the best video store I've ever seen. It was well curated, well staffed, had lots of diehard customers, and managed to not be snooty or weird about movies. They had an "Incredibly Strange Films" collection that I rented many a quality film from. They had an amazing selection of foreign films that felt hand-picked, and also an amazing section of trashy action films. If Videoport can't survive, then no video store will be left. Which makes sense, in a sad way: very few people I know even watch movies on a physical format anymore. If discs are going away, there will be nothing left for people to rent.
I feel terrible about them closing, in part because there is nothing I could really do about it, and in part because all these stores closing is having a real impact. The streaming services just do not have the breadth and curation of the collections of good indie video stores, and due to the vagaries of rights and big corporations this is unlikely to change for a long time. Believe me when I say, I am constantly heading to canistream.it to see if something is available, and the answer is almost always "no", or "buy it for twenty bucks, and by "buy" it we mean we'll let you stream it from us until we go out of business or have a weird hissy fit".
And as much as the selection problem is an issue, the curation one is an even bigger one. Nobody online has figured out a semi-decent way to do curation because frankly, people are fucking shitty at knowing what they'll like. Don't you want to be surprised? Don't you want to feel like you discovered something awesome? I'm sorry, our algorithm just feeds you more stuff just like what you already watched. And the more product you add, the more you end up with something like Steam, where it just feels like you're diving into a ballpit the size of an olympic swimming pool and digging around for your car keys.
It fucking sucks.
posted by selfnoise at 6:34 PM on December 2, 2015 [23 favorites]
Well, I'm sad about it. The last video store in town seems to have closed down about 2 years ago, long after Blockbuster folded. With zero competition, that place had managed to eke out a niche in the student housing part of town. They had a popcorn popper behind the counter and served small bags to every customer. They had everything (as in I literally couldn't think of a request to make that they couldn't fulfill) in stock on disc, and they even had a small VHS section.
Another thing I definitely miss are videogame rentals. At my local BB, you could rent any XBox game, new or old, for a week for about $5.
posted by figurant at 6:34 PM on December 2, 2015 [2 favorites]
Another thing I definitely miss are videogame rentals. At my local BB, you could rent any XBox game, new or old, for a week for about $5.
posted by figurant at 6:34 PM on December 2, 2015 [2 favorites]
My overwhelming experience in a video store was settling, and far too often driving from store to store to find what I wanted. The methodical choosing that this guy mourns, to the extent it ever existed for most people, is right there in front of us on the screen. We check the equivalent of multiple stores without leaving the home, browse an enormously larger collection of releases than any one store ever had, and make a choice. This guy seems stuck on Netflix, but man, go to Amazon or tons of other places and you are right back renting a movie after a careful deliberation with family and friends. I watch a ton more "challenging" films now than when video stores were around. Streaming has gotten so good many of us are cutting the cable as well.
The difference is the cost and experience of streaming are far, far better to most people. Cheaper, faster, better. Hard to argue with that.
Oh, and this whole curator of a collection thing - yeah, great, but mostly rental places were filled with minimum wage teenagers who couldn't figure out the cash register but loved to fine you for not returning the damn tape on time. Man, a late return was treated by some of these guys like a criminal act. Most video stores got so bad at selection, price, and customer service, the customers welcomed a killer competitor.
posted by Muddler at 6:36 PM on December 2, 2015 [12 favorites]
The difference is the cost and experience of streaming are far, far better to most people. Cheaper, faster, better. Hard to argue with that.
Oh, and this whole curator of a collection thing - yeah, great, but mostly rental places were filled with minimum wage teenagers who couldn't figure out the cash register but loved to fine you for not returning the damn tape on time. Man, a late return was treated by some of these guys like a criminal act. Most video stores got so bad at selection, price, and customer service, the customers welcomed a killer competitor.
posted by Muddler at 6:36 PM on December 2, 2015 [12 favorites]
Going home with a physical copy of Destroy All Monsters after roaming around a video store for forty minutes and then accepting that you just weren't going to find anything better was not a revolutionary act.
I'm having a hard time imagining a decent independent video store that doesn't have anything "better" than Destroy All Monsters on the shelves. The whole point of the article is that a good video store had a well-curated library of movies and was staffed by people who were willing to go out of their way to help you find something better to watch—based on your own stated tastes—than Destroy All Monsters. If your local video store has gorgeous films by Fassbinder, Cocteau and Hou Hsiao-Hsien on the shelves and you keep taking home kitschy kaiju titles well, yeah, that's on you.
posted by Mothlight at 6:36 PM on December 2, 2015 [3 favorites]
I'm having a hard time imagining a decent independent video store that doesn't have anything "better" than Destroy All Monsters on the shelves. The whole point of the article is that a good video store had a well-curated library of movies and was staffed by people who were willing to go out of their way to help you find something better to watch—based on your own stated tastes—than Destroy All Monsters. If your local video store has gorgeous films by Fassbinder, Cocteau and Hou Hsiao-Hsien on the shelves and you keep taking home kitschy kaiju titles well, yeah, that's on you.
posted by Mothlight at 6:36 PM on December 2, 2015 [3 favorites]
The OP has very good points. Even Netflix DVD requires more of a commitment than streaming, since you can't get too many movies too quickly. And there was something je ne sais quoi about roaming the aisles of the video store that you don't get from Netflix's aggo attempts to steer you to content they think you'll like.
As far as streaming, it's just too easy when it works and too impossible when it won't because of the zoo of licensing arrangements companies like Netflix and Hulu have to maneuver to get something online.
posted by Bringer Tom at 6:38 PM on December 2, 2015 [2 favorites]
As far as streaming, it's just too easy when it works and too impossible when it won't because of the zoo of licensing arrangements companies like Netflix and Hulu have to maneuver to get something online.
posted by Bringer Tom at 6:38 PM on December 2, 2015 [2 favorites]
Yeah, I worked in two different independent video stores for about 7 years. I really, REALLY miss video stores, especially the ones I worked at (one of which is actually still in business, except that I won't say the name because people could figure out who I am - as much as I want to send customers to them). The two stores had about 50,000 and 70,000 titles, respectively. You could find almost anything, and if you couldn't, you could talk to someone about it for a while ("oh, I love Eugène Green!").
There was constant griping from customers at both stores, and I get that. People would be unhappy that they'd turned something in late, or that something was checked out when they wanted it. The stereotype of the snobby video store clerk is totally embodied by some of the people I worked with (I always thought I was nicer than that, but maybe just being behind the counter gave me some sort of jerky aura).
But - and I know this sounds really oversentimental - there was kind of a community, too. Everyone had favorite customers (I worked at a store in DC, and I have to mention that Margaret Talbot was a regular, and, like, the entire store's favorite customer). I formed close friendships with some of my coworkers. And I mean, it wasn't all rosy (special shout out to a handful of abusive customers). But it was a place to be, and I liked it.
I'm going long with this, but really, what makes me sad about the death of video stores is that I used to be so into movies. As art, as a diversion, as whatever. And I can't engage with them like that anymore. I used to have so much fun finding something on the shelf, having no idea what it was, and watching it to see if it was boring, weird, or amazing (sometimes all three). I can't do that anymore - I mean, there's no place to get some of these things anymore (you can't go on Amazon for movies that were made in small towns where half the cast is related to the director). There's no one to talk to, no one to ask for recommendations. And yeah, Netflix has a really awful selection, but that's not even the point. I'm just no longer able to love what I used to love, because it's just not there anymore. And that sucks.
posted by teponaztli at 6:39 PM on December 2, 2015 [16 favorites]
There was constant griping from customers at both stores, and I get that. People would be unhappy that they'd turned something in late, or that something was checked out when they wanted it. The stereotype of the snobby video store clerk is totally embodied by some of the people I worked with (I always thought I was nicer than that, but maybe just being behind the counter gave me some sort of jerky aura).
But - and I know this sounds really oversentimental - there was kind of a community, too. Everyone had favorite customers (I worked at a store in DC, and I have to mention that Margaret Talbot was a regular, and, like, the entire store's favorite customer). I formed close friendships with some of my coworkers. And I mean, it wasn't all rosy (special shout out to a handful of abusive customers). But it was a place to be, and I liked it.
I'm going long with this, but really, what makes me sad about the death of video stores is that I used to be so into movies. As art, as a diversion, as whatever. And I can't engage with them like that anymore. I used to have so much fun finding something on the shelf, having no idea what it was, and watching it to see if it was boring, weird, or amazing (sometimes all three). I can't do that anymore - I mean, there's no place to get some of these things anymore (you can't go on Amazon for movies that were made in small towns where half the cast is related to the director). There's no one to talk to, no one to ask for recommendations. And yeah, Netflix has a really awful selection, but that's not even the point. I'm just no longer able to love what I used to love, because it's just not there anymore. And that sucks.
posted by teponaztli at 6:39 PM on December 2, 2015 [16 favorites]
Also, the fact that Videoport closed means that no one will ever ask me about hot dog insurance again.
(I had a note on my file that read "Ask him about hot dog insurance". Apparently this is the result of some weird rant I went on once while talking to the clerk, but I can't actually remember doing this)
posted by selfnoise at 6:40 PM on December 2, 2015 [26 favorites]
(I had a note on my file that read "Ask him about hot dog insurance". Apparently this is the result of some weird rant I went on once while talking to the clerk, but I can't actually remember doing this)
posted by selfnoise at 6:40 PM on December 2, 2015 [26 favorites]
I understand that video rental is dying an accelerated version of the fate of record and books stores. It is easy to know why these businesses are becoming unviable across the board. But I miss movie places most, despite my being more of an audio and bibliophile. Maybe because.
This account is deeply touching to me. I hope we all find a way to help those who are really gifted at currating. It makes a difference. Hell, it's why I LOVE MEFI.
Great article.
posted by es_de_bah at 6:40 PM on December 2, 2015 [3 favorites]
This account is deeply touching to me. I hope we all find a way to help those who are really gifted at currating. It makes a difference. Hell, it's why I LOVE MEFI.
Great article.
posted by es_de_bah at 6:40 PM on December 2, 2015 [3 favorites]
Several usurious late-charges in the early 90s continue to undermine any sympathy I'm able to generate for video stores. Also, all the new movies are OUT.
posted by bonobothegreat at 6:41 PM on December 2, 2015 [4 favorites]
posted by bonobothegreat at 6:41 PM on December 2, 2015 [4 favorites]
I had a Boarders #1 feelee going comparsion wise. There is little except knowledge and excellent collections with strong local ties.
Yeah, my first deal with national bank of grandma 'needs' was a video store in Jacksonville. The lease was more valuable then everything inside. I mean, the little business folk had to rent the goofy movie out about 15 times before it was paid for. Then the ones whom do not return-ever.
Curses!
I guess the real kick is when someone likes a recommendation.
You feel all mercantilly.
posted by clavdivs at 6:41 PM on December 2, 2015 [1 favorite]
Yeah, my first deal with national bank of grandma 'needs' was a video store in Jacksonville. The lease was more valuable then everything inside. I mean, the little business folk had to rent the goofy movie out about 15 times before it was paid for. Then the ones whom do not return-ever.
Curses!
I guess the real kick is when someone likes a recommendation.
You feel all mercantilly.
posted by clavdivs at 6:41 PM on December 2, 2015 [1 favorite]
I mean, I remember hanging around my local college town's indie video store in probably 1990 or so looking for something good to watch. Ended up in conference with the guy behind the counter, who asked what kind of movie we were in the mood for. I was like, how about a really good action movie? And he thought about that for a little while and then he said, "have you seen any Jackie Chan movies?" Handed me a copy of the original Police Story. Holy shit. Changed my life. Who knows how long it would have taken for me to have figured that out without his help?
Same dude sent me home with Peter Jackson's Bad Taste and John Woo's Hard-Boiled, which meant I was hip enough to those directors that I was able to see Braindead and Hard Boiled on 35mm on their original theatrical releases, when they played at our local art houses for about five minutes each.
I know, I know. Nobody watches Jackie Chan and John Woo movies anymore, and Peter Jackson is long past his prime. But my moviegoing life was immeasurably enriched by my local video store.
posted by Mothlight at 6:44 PM on December 2, 2015 [15 favorites]
Same dude sent me home with Peter Jackson's Bad Taste and John Woo's Hard-Boiled, which meant I was hip enough to those directors that I was able to see Braindead and Hard Boiled on 35mm on their original theatrical releases, when they played at our local art houses for about five minutes each.
I know, I know. Nobody watches Jackie Chan and John Woo movies anymore, and Peter Jackson is long past his prime. But my moviegoing life was immeasurably enriched by my local video store.
posted by Mothlight at 6:44 PM on December 2, 2015 [15 favorites]
One of the few times I went to a Blockbusters was for my 3rd or 4th grade project. I had to write a research report on any figure I wanted, and for some reason I chose Shirley Temple Black. For two reasons, this is why I support both libraries and brick and mortar stores:
1) My library, for some reason, had a comprehensive biography on Shirley Temple Black that was kid-friendly, but dense in information, but written concisely and with photos.
2) My local Blockbusters had all the Shirley Temple films I could ever want to watch, so I took it home and watched them all. The store employees that helped me were very supportive and utterly bemused as I asked some of them for their opinion and if they watched it, but they helped me find and borrow all of them.
I'm not sure how the kids of today are doing their research or learning how to access media, but I think I grew up in a real sweet spot between physical and digital media, and it greatly enamored me to research, and later helped me build my toolkit that allowed me to be a relatively happy(?) humanities major. It would have been amazing if indie video stores existed in my area, but alas, I won't get to experience it anymore. (Also, thanks mom, for the labor of driving to these locations and supporting my wild goose chase for my research project.)
posted by yueliang at 6:45 PM on December 2, 2015 [3 favorites]
1) My library, for some reason, had a comprehensive biography on Shirley Temple Black that was kid-friendly, but dense in information, but written concisely and with photos.
2) My local Blockbusters had all the Shirley Temple films I could ever want to watch, so I took it home and watched them all. The store employees that helped me were very supportive and utterly bemused as I asked some of them for their opinion and if they watched it, but they helped me find and borrow all of them.
I'm not sure how the kids of today are doing their research or learning how to access media, but I think I grew up in a real sweet spot between physical and digital media, and it greatly enamored me to research, and later helped me build my toolkit that allowed me to be a relatively happy(?) humanities major. It would have been amazing if indie video stores existed in my area, but alas, I won't get to experience it anymore. (Also, thanks mom, for the labor of driving to these locations and supporting my wild goose chase for my research project.)
posted by yueliang at 6:45 PM on December 2, 2015 [3 favorites]
I don't spend too much time mourning video stores. Things change. Sure, the demise of that industry means that funky indie stores like the one described here (or the fabulous and recently deceased Video Americain in Baltimore) don't exist anymore. But the small towns I grew up in never had anything like that anyway—and the rise of Netflix and other streaming options means that Smalltown USA now has unprecedented access to indie flicks, foreign films, documentaries, cinema classics, and other fare.
It is odd, and a bit troubling, that the streaming industry can't figure out how to make so many popular, in-demand titles available legally. I'm probably missing something, but it seems like they're leaving money on the table. Do people really buy enough physical media these days to make that distribution model more profitable than streaming?
This part really rings true for me, though, and it's something I've thought before myself:
If you're actually in a video store, the stakes are different. You're engaged. You're on a mission to find a movie — the right movie. You had to get out of bed, get dressed, and go to a store. You had to think about what you want, why this movie looks good and not that one, perhaps even seeking guidance or advice. Whether it's from nostalgia, advertising, packaging, reputation, recommendation, or sheer whim, a movie chosen from the shelves attaches you to your choice. Before the film even starts playing, you've begun a relationship with it. You're curious. Whether you've chosen well or poorly, you've made a choice, and you're in it for the duration.
I do miss that. Sure, the selection was tiny, and it was less convenient—but watching a movie was an event, a small adventure. You couldn't just turn on the TV and watch whatever Netflix dropped in your lap. Nor could you bail out on a movie if it failed to grab your attention within the first five minutes. (I mean, you could, but then you'd have to find something else to do—you didn't have 86,000 other movies to watch instead. Unless the movie was truly awful, you were committed to giving it time to develop, prove itself, and have its moments even if it was flawed overall.)
Plus, you could pick up microwave popcorn and Hot Tamales along with your movie.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 6:48 PM on December 2, 2015 [2 favorites]
It is odd, and a bit troubling, that the streaming industry can't figure out how to make so many popular, in-demand titles available legally. I'm probably missing something, but it seems like they're leaving money on the table. Do people really buy enough physical media these days to make that distribution model more profitable than streaming?
This part really rings true for me, though, and it's something I've thought before myself:
If you're actually in a video store, the stakes are different. You're engaged. You're on a mission to find a movie — the right movie. You had to get out of bed, get dressed, and go to a store. You had to think about what you want, why this movie looks good and not that one, perhaps even seeking guidance or advice. Whether it's from nostalgia, advertising, packaging, reputation, recommendation, or sheer whim, a movie chosen from the shelves attaches you to your choice. Before the film even starts playing, you've begun a relationship with it. You're curious. Whether you've chosen well or poorly, you've made a choice, and you're in it for the duration.
I do miss that. Sure, the selection was tiny, and it was less convenient—but watching a movie was an event, a small adventure. You couldn't just turn on the TV and watch whatever Netflix dropped in your lap. Nor could you bail out on a movie if it failed to grab your attention within the first five minutes. (I mean, you could, but then you'd have to find something else to do—you didn't have 86,000 other movies to watch instead. Unless the movie was truly awful, you were committed to giving it time to develop, prove itself, and have its moments even if it was flawed overall.)
Plus, you could pick up microwave popcorn and Hot Tamales along with your movie.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 6:48 PM on December 2, 2015 [2 favorites]
On the one hand, yes, the serendipity of physical browsing is not matched at all by digital browsing (why are Netflix and Amazon search functions so goddamn shitty, I do not know.)
On the other hand, very few video (or book stores) had the kind of concierge, art-focused approach he describes. Lots of them had crap selection and service (and bunged up merchandise that never played properly. Kids DVDs were the worst).
I think there's probably a way to make searching/serendipity more of a thing with streaming movies, but we haven't figured it out properly yet. And streaming is missing a whole lot of movies, not just obscure ones, but classics everyone has heard of. I do worry that rent-seeking rightsholders will keep lots of titles out of everyone's hands when there are no physical copies to order anymore. Which would be stupid and a damn shame.
posted by emjaybee at 6:48 PM on December 2, 2015 [4 favorites]
On the other hand, very few video (or book stores) had the kind of concierge, art-focused approach he describes. Lots of them had crap selection and service (and bunged up merchandise that never played properly. Kids DVDs were the worst).
I think there's probably a way to make searching/serendipity more of a thing with streaming movies, but we haven't figured it out properly yet. And streaming is missing a whole lot of movies, not just obscure ones, but classics everyone has heard of. I do worry that rent-seeking rightsholders will keep lots of titles out of everyone's hands when there are no physical copies to order anymore. Which would be stupid and a damn shame.
posted by emjaybee at 6:48 PM on December 2, 2015 [4 favorites]
I dunno, for me the video store evokes "I'm so bored I could watch Young Einstein" feels.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 6:49 PM on December 2, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 6:49 PM on December 2, 2015 [3 favorites]
This is navel-gazing, pulled-it-out-my-ass bullshit written well enough to sound like it might be true. But if you actually stop and pick at it even the tiniest bit, you realize that as an argument, it makes no fucking sense. This single paragraph is based on completely made-up premises and then contradicts itself:
With online streaming, we don't decide — we settle. And when we aren't grabbed immediately, we move on. That means folks are less likely to engage with a film on a deep level; worse, it means people stop taking chances on challenging films. Unlike that DVD they paid for and brought home, a movie on Netflix will be watched only so long as it falls within the viewer's comfort zone. As that comfort zone expands, the desire to look outside of it contracts.
posted by jacquilynne at 6:52 PM on December 2, 2015 [20 favorites]
With online streaming, we don't decide — we settle. And when we aren't grabbed immediately, we move on. That means folks are less likely to engage with a film on a deep level; worse, it means people stop taking chances on challenging films. Unlike that DVD they paid for and brought home, a movie on Netflix will be watched only so long as it falls within the viewer's comfort zone. As that comfort zone expands, the desire to look outside of it contracts.
posted by jacquilynne at 6:52 PM on December 2, 2015 [20 favorites]
Yeah, peoples' memories of video stores are definitely going to be based not only on how good the store near them was, but also on what they wanted out of it. I can imagine being really annoyed if I wanted to watch a movie and I had to pick from 50,000. And then some jerk gets all chuckly when you rent the movie version of RENT. Maybe video stores never were for everyone, even if we genuinely tried to have something for everyone. Me, I was a regular from the age of 10, and then I got a job there and stayed into my mid-20s, so I'm pretty clearly biased.
Hey, other video store people, do you remember obsessing over YOUR staff picks shelf?
I remember how my way of thinking about it evolved over time - like, at first I wanted to have a balance of really good movies ("Funeral in Berlin for the 60s movie, then Primer for the new, crazy one"). And then later on it would get weirder, like "hmm, maybe this month I will do nothing but Chinese movies about ghosts." Ahh, memories.
posted by teponaztli at 6:58 PM on December 2, 2015 [4 favorites]
Hey, other video store people, do you remember obsessing over YOUR staff picks shelf?
I remember how my way of thinking about it evolved over time - like, at first I wanted to have a balance of really good movies ("Funeral in Berlin for the 60s movie, then Primer for the new, crazy one"). And then later on it would get weirder, like "hmm, maybe this month I will do nothing but Chinese movies about ghosts." Ahh, memories.
posted by teponaztli at 6:58 PM on December 2, 2015 [4 favorites]
The curated video store of which he speaks is only really meeting the needs of Film Buffs; and much like any institution catering to hardcore nerds who enjoy pedantry and trivia, the existence of the internet has killed off 90% of the reason to go ("to talk to another nerd"). Most people don't want challenging cinema, just like most people don't want to listen to challenging music. I like the latter but not the former, so I can sympathize with feeling alone in your love of something where you know they'd like it if they could just try it! But horse, water, forcing, etc.
I worked at a video store in 1997. The owner's son was a Film Buff and his dad let him curate some-- we had ~1000 titles from the Criterion Collection, cult films, Bollywood, every vampire-themed movie ever made, etc., along with ~6000 titles of "mainstream movies." Almost no one rented these Film Buff films. There just wasn't an audience for Whoops Apocalypse or Dark Star or The Cook, The Thief, etc. , all movies I was talked into renting by said Film Buff.
This store also had about ~1000 VHS of porn. The porn was the #1 renter, by far. The weirdest porn renter we had was a guy who would be waiting outside before the store opened. He'd knock on the door until you opened it, rush to the porn, get 3 VHSes (the max we'd allow any 1 person at a time) and leave. He'd be back at a time you could calculate such: 15 min drive, the run time of the 3 films, 15 min drive back. He'd return, rent 3 more, leave, return at 30 min + run time; check out 3 more...and so on. From 9 am until 1 am, every Saturday and Sunday, all summer. I think porn being online is likely much more of a killer for VHS stores-- while this guy was an outlier, we still rented 2x more porn that not-porn.
There are still PLENTY video stores of the Big Box variety, usually outside bigger towns, where you still can't get good broadband speeds and so can't stream. My parents live about a mile from a Family Video which has over 500 locations in the US. I know he is decrying the loss of specialty video stores, but there haven't been any of those within 100 miles of my parents' house ever (save the one I worked at, which barely counts).
posted by holyrood at 6:59 PM on December 2, 2015 [5 favorites]
I worked at a video store in 1997. The owner's son was a Film Buff and his dad let him curate some-- we had ~1000 titles from the Criterion Collection, cult films, Bollywood, every vampire-themed movie ever made, etc., along with ~6000 titles of "mainstream movies." Almost no one rented these Film Buff films. There just wasn't an audience for Whoops Apocalypse or Dark Star or The Cook, The Thief, etc. , all movies I was talked into renting by said Film Buff.
This store also had about ~1000 VHS of porn. The porn was the #1 renter, by far. The weirdest porn renter we had was a guy who would be waiting outside before the store opened. He'd knock on the door until you opened it, rush to the porn, get 3 VHSes (the max we'd allow any 1 person at a time) and leave. He'd be back at a time you could calculate such: 15 min drive, the run time of the 3 films, 15 min drive back. He'd return, rent 3 more, leave, return at 30 min + run time; check out 3 more...and so on. From 9 am until 1 am, every Saturday and Sunday, all summer. I think porn being online is likely much more of a killer for VHS stores-- while this guy was an outlier, we still rented 2x more porn that not-porn.
There are still PLENTY video stores of the Big Box variety, usually outside bigger towns, where you still can't get good broadband speeds and so can't stream. My parents live about a mile from a Family Video which has over 500 locations in the US. I know he is decrying the loss of specialty video stores, but there haven't been any of those within 100 miles of my parents' house ever (save the one I worked at, which barely counts).
posted by holyrood at 6:59 PM on December 2, 2015 [5 favorites]
There's a video rental place on the way to my family's cabin that is also a tanning salon, a consignment shop, and a place that buys gold.
In general in small towns a lot of businesses are little polyglots like that, but this one used to be just a video store when I first started driving through the town fifteen years ago. I can't wait to find out what extra sideline they'll add next.
posted by padraigin at 7:01 PM on December 2, 2015 [3 favorites]
In general in small towns a lot of businesses are little polyglots like that, but this one used to be just a video store when I first started driving through the town fifteen years ago. I can't wait to find out what extra sideline they'll add next.
posted by padraigin at 7:01 PM on December 2, 2015 [3 favorites]
jacquilynne, this is the paragraph that killed it for me as well. I had a hard time finishing the article after reading it. The paragraph made no sense, and after that I had problems trusting anything he said. Sour grapes and whining, I think.
I didn't have an excellent video store like he talks about, but except for new releases, I felt much more like I was "settling" at the video store than I do with Netflix, Amazon, Hulu or RedBox. There was nothing magical about renting a DVD. Want challenging film? There's a whole bunch of the Criterion Collection on Hulu, just as an example.
Lack of curation is a valid point. I never had access to it to start with, but it would be nice. Then again, there's always Ask Mefi.
posted by lhauser at 7:09 PM on December 2, 2015 [2 favorites]
I didn't have an excellent video store like he talks about, but except for new releases, I felt much more like I was "settling" at the video store than I do with Netflix, Amazon, Hulu or RedBox. There was nothing magical about renting a DVD. Want challenging film? There's a whole bunch of the Criterion Collection on Hulu, just as an example.
Lack of curation is a valid point. I never had access to it to start with, but it would be nice. Then again, there's always Ask Mefi.
posted by lhauser at 7:09 PM on December 2, 2015 [2 favorites]
"We watch Netflix like we used to watch television on a slow Sunday night..."
No we don't.
I find this whole piece -- the very idea of it -- insufferable. Everything the writer valorizes about video rental stores and its subculture is so much more true about the cinema-going culture that video rental stores partly displaced and transformed. In the bigger, more vital American story, the video rental store is the villain, not the hero.
And, anyway, approximately zero percent of video rental stores were anything like what the author describes -- most of them were Blockbuster or the like. So this was a culture and experience that existed for less than twenty years and only in an admirable form for a small minority of people. In contrast, the equivalent bookstore culture existed for at least a hundred years and a much larger portion of it looked like this idealized view.
Or how about the locally owned corner drugstore and its pharmacist? The grocer down the block? The paperboy? Doctors who made house calls?
If we're going to eulogize an aspect of local consumer culture that was important in American life and which is sorely missed, there's about six-hundred more deserving candidates on the list above video rental stores.
This reads like a boomer waxing nostalgic (and subtextually doomsaying) about the demise of fifties car-hop restaurants -- a boomer who happened to work at a car-hop restaurant for fifteen years. It's myopic and self-indulgent.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 7:12 PM on December 2, 2015 [28 favorites]
No we don't.
I find this whole piece -- the very idea of it -- insufferable. Everything the writer valorizes about video rental stores and its subculture is so much more true about the cinema-going culture that video rental stores partly displaced and transformed. In the bigger, more vital American story, the video rental store is the villain, not the hero.
And, anyway, approximately zero percent of video rental stores were anything like what the author describes -- most of them were Blockbuster or the like. So this was a culture and experience that existed for less than twenty years and only in an admirable form for a small minority of people. In contrast, the equivalent bookstore culture existed for at least a hundred years and a much larger portion of it looked like this idealized view.
Or how about the locally owned corner drugstore and its pharmacist? The grocer down the block? The paperboy? Doctors who made house calls?
If we're going to eulogize an aspect of local consumer culture that was important in American life and which is sorely missed, there's about six-hundred more deserving candidates on the list above video rental stores.
This reads like a boomer waxing nostalgic (and subtextually doomsaying) about the demise of fifties car-hop restaurants -- a boomer who happened to work at a car-hop restaurant for fifteen years. It's myopic and self-indulgent.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 7:12 PM on December 2, 2015 [28 favorites]
there's probably a way to make searching/serendipity more of a thing with streaming movies, but we haven't figured it out
uh, i'll bite...
- every streaming title a-z by title
- search by anyone-in-the-credits
- search by tag
- link to imdb and ebert
- no genres - only tags. tags shall be the one true way.
posted by j_curiouser at 7:19 PM on December 2, 2015 [5 favorites]
uh, i'll bite...
- every streaming title a-z by title
- search by anyone-in-the-credits
- search by tag
- link to imdb and ebert
- no genres - only tags. tags shall be the one true way.
posted by j_curiouser at 7:19 PM on December 2, 2015 [5 favorites]
Count me in as another nostalgic vote. I pretty much had entire dates at the video store when I was in high school, as my bf and I would roam the aisles looking for other movies, or deciding on bizarre marathons, or completely randomly picking something based on a random word we'd pick or box art, or whatever we thought was both cool and hilarious to the 11th grade mind. I definitely felt like I was more enaged with movies then, possibly because the tangibility and visibility appealed to me more. Nowadays I only stream stuff I've heard of or want to see; lots of the serendipity has been lost. Along with the fun of all the ridiculous snacks we'd bring back, too.
posted by TwoStride at 7:21 PM on December 2, 2015 [5 favorites]
posted by TwoStride at 7:21 PM on December 2, 2015 [5 favorites]
Wow. I'm surprised by so many negative reactions to this article. Back in the mid-'90s (VHS era) I worked at a video store just like the one described, and there were two arguably better stores within a mile of us. We cared, we contributed, we had a great community. The space is now a barber shop (which is in itself ironic, because there used to be a barber shop next to the video store, but it went out of business sometime in the '00s).
I am happy that there are more sites like "A Good Movie to Watch" these days that help plow through the Netflix streaming wall of suggested crap, but still...
.
posted by queensissy at 7:27 PM on December 2, 2015 [6 favorites]
I am happy that there are more sites like "A Good Movie to Watch" these days that help plow through the Netflix streaming wall of suggested crap, but still...
.
posted by queensissy at 7:27 PM on December 2, 2015 [6 favorites]
Oh hey, spouse of a mefite. Maybe a mefite?
I worked for an independently owned video store for awhile in college. It was kind of a hot mess in the best way, sticky porn tapes in the basement and clerks with hand-poked tattoos. The store was once co-owned by a neo-nazi, which I only found out because I found a huge box of trashed tapes marked "German WWII propaganda" in the basement once, which the owner had tossed after they had a falling out and went their separate ways. (At 18 I thought it would be funny to take home a tape marked "German WWII propaganda" to watch but no, it was awful. And yet I still have that tape. It feels hard to throw out, for some reason. Maybe that's why it only ever made it to the basement of that store). They did have a really, really great cult movies section, and a pretty decent martial arts section, too. The business itself was terrifically mismanaged. I once made the mistake of cleaning the revolting, urine-soaked employee bathroom and the boss got mad at me, for some reason.
Still, I felt a pang when it closed. Mostly for the media that I knew would go in the garbage. The weird vintage porn. Every single Troma movie. I guess it matters less, now. We have the internet, everything available at our fingertips. But the way those video boxes felt in your hands, and the blue plastic tape cases we used to pop the rentals into, the ancient computer system that contained notes on all of the regulars, including sordid dramas about former employees, the popcorn we had to pop every night and the toxic-looking faux butter concoction we melted over it and the way it stained your fingers yellow. The off nights when I'd come in with my first boyfriend, and then my now-husband, and roam the aisles to find a movie we would only make out through, anyway. The nights I'd put on Times Square to run on the store screens over and over again. It was a crappy job, but it was more than a crappy job in a way that was different from when I worked in a supermarket or a drug store.
It was kind of like working at Empire Records but gross.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 7:28 PM on December 2, 2015 [4 favorites]
I worked for an independently owned video store for awhile in college. It was kind of a hot mess in the best way, sticky porn tapes in the basement and clerks with hand-poked tattoos. The store was once co-owned by a neo-nazi, which I only found out because I found a huge box of trashed tapes marked "German WWII propaganda" in the basement once, which the owner had tossed after they had a falling out and went their separate ways. (At 18 I thought it would be funny to take home a tape marked "German WWII propaganda" to watch but no, it was awful. And yet I still have that tape. It feels hard to throw out, for some reason. Maybe that's why it only ever made it to the basement of that store). They did have a really, really great cult movies section, and a pretty decent martial arts section, too. The business itself was terrifically mismanaged. I once made the mistake of cleaning the revolting, urine-soaked employee bathroom and the boss got mad at me, for some reason.
Still, I felt a pang when it closed. Mostly for the media that I knew would go in the garbage. The weird vintage porn. Every single Troma movie. I guess it matters less, now. We have the internet, everything available at our fingertips. But the way those video boxes felt in your hands, and the blue plastic tape cases we used to pop the rentals into, the ancient computer system that contained notes on all of the regulars, including sordid dramas about former employees, the popcorn we had to pop every night and the toxic-looking faux butter concoction we melted over it and the way it stained your fingers yellow. The off nights when I'd come in with my first boyfriend, and then my now-husband, and roam the aisles to find a movie we would only make out through, anyway. The nights I'd put on Times Square to run on the store screens over and over again. It was a crappy job, but it was more than a crappy job in a way that was different from when I worked in a supermarket or a drug store.
It was kind of like working at Empire Records but gross.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 7:28 PM on December 2, 2015 [4 favorites]
Oh hey, this is the other great video store I used to go to.
Well, shit.
posted by selfnoise at 7:30 PM on December 2, 2015
Well, shit.
posted by selfnoise at 7:30 PM on December 2, 2015
I love the idea of a local store full of knowledgeable staff and a broad quirky selection but I never lived anywhere where that was actually true. It's a lot harder to wax nostalgic about sullen teenage clerks, a collection focused on porn and the n most recent Disney/Dreamworks/etc. direct-to-VHS kids movies and finding that your rental was worn enough to have artifacts half way through.
The hate for Netflix is similarly backwards in my experience: the movie fans I know loved being able to get all of the stuff their local video shop never stocked. Sure, streaming selection is limited but that's on the same major companies which made physical rentals less appealing with things like 10 minute unskippable commercials on DVDs.
posted by adamsc at 7:38 PM on December 2, 2015 [6 favorites]
The hate for Netflix is similarly backwards in my experience: the movie fans I know loved being able to get all of the stuff their local video shop never stocked. Sure, streaming selection is limited but that's on the same major companies which made physical rentals less appealing with things like 10 minute unskippable commercials on DVDs.
posted by adamsc at 7:38 PM on December 2, 2015 [6 favorites]
> 2) An algorithm is no substitute for human interaction
Apparently it is.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 7:38 PM on December 2, 2015 [3 favorites]
Apparently it is.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 7:38 PM on December 2, 2015 [3 favorites]
A video store employee was once able to accurately deduce that my then flatmate actually wanted Donnie Brasco instead of Donnie Darko. She deduced this because the flatmate was raving about how the movie made the mafia 'humane' or some shit for 20-odd minutes, before we got the DVD and some beer.
We ended up having beer that weekend. Lots of it. And some chicken wings, and some poker. But no movie; we ended up returning the DVD in two days because it was on some super special list, which meant its rental cost and fines were through the roof.
I was reminded of this recently, when Netflix suggested that I watch Donnie Brasco, and actually hit play to finally watch the damned movie. I still haven't finished watching it though, because I hit pause at some point in the movie and fell asleep on the couch. The next time I saw that movie name was in a list of titles that Netflix was going to retire the previous month. This apparently was why the movie stopped showing up in my algorithmically curated list.
Donnie Darko is still available on Netflix I think.
I don't know what my point here is, except to say that I'm, perhaps, not as much a movie connoisseur as I pretend to be, and that both the in-store person and Netflix's algorithm didn't really realize I'd be bored to death with Donnie Brasco.
posted by the cydonian at 7:43 PM on December 2, 2015 [4 favorites]
We ended up having beer that weekend. Lots of it. And some chicken wings, and some poker. But no movie; we ended up returning the DVD in two days because it was on some super special list, which meant its rental cost and fines were through the roof.
I was reminded of this recently, when Netflix suggested that I watch Donnie Brasco, and actually hit play to finally watch the damned movie. I still haven't finished watching it though, because I hit pause at some point in the movie and fell asleep on the couch. The next time I saw that movie name was in a list of titles that Netflix was going to retire the previous month. This apparently was why the movie stopped showing up in my algorithmically curated list.
Donnie Darko is still available on Netflix I think.
I don't know what my point here is, except to say that I'm, perhaps, not as much a movie connoisseur as I pretend to be, and that both the in-store person and Netflix's algorithm didn't really realize I'd be bored to death with Donnie Brasco.
posted by the cydonian at 7:43 PM on December 2, 2015 [4 favorites]
I will say, though, that the vast majority of the customers at the store where I worked were not looking for engagement, but there because of our 4/$10 rental deal. They're probably well-served by Redbox now.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 7:46 PM on December 2, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 7:46 PM on December 2, 2015 [2 favorites]
your rental was worn enough to have artifacts half way through
Whenever I can't get something streaming, I'm likely to look for it in my local library system, now. Which, I'm a bigger fan of libraries than I ever was of any the video stores that were options to me, but this has always been the biggest issue for me. I probably never watch much as spur-of-the-moment as Netflix's instant access really enables. Stuff sits on my list for weeks before I get to it. But VHS or DVD, my success with physical media has always been terrible. There's nothing like missing something in theaters, waiting forever for it to come out, sitting on a waiting list until it gets in, bringing it home to watch it with all this excitement, and then realizing that only about half the movie is watchable.
I think physical media would still be more popular if they'd been able to invent a version that was impervious to some previous renter's three-year-old. If nothing else, it's really nice that it's not subject to the vagaries of licensing, but it sometimes takes me two or three tries to get a copy that can be watched from start to finished without skipping. I still haven't seen Frozen or Tangled from start to finish.
posted by Sequence at 7:49 PM on December 2, 2015 [4 favorites]
Whenever I can't get something streaming, I'm likely to look for it in my local library system, now. Which, I'm a bigger fan of libraries than I ever was of any the video stores that were options to me, but this has always been the biggest issue for me. I probably never watch much as spur-of-the-moment as Netflix's instant access really enables. Stuff sits on my list for weeks before I get to it. But VHS or DVD, my success with physical media has always been terrible. There's nothing like missing something in theaters, waiting forever for it to come out, sitting on a waiting list until it gets in, bringing it home to watch it with all this excitement, and then realizing that only about half the movie is watchable.
I think physical media would still be more popular if they'd been able to invent a version that was impervious to some previous renter's three-year-old. If nothing else, it's really nice that it's not subject to the vagaries of licensing, but it sometimes takes me two or three tries to get a copy that can be watched from start to finished without skipping. I still haven't seen Frozen or Tangled from start to finish.
posted by Sequence at 7:49 PM on December 2, 2015 [4 favorites]
I don't miss video stores. I always seemed to wander around for an hour, never finding anything that I wanted and going home with some crappy big budget movie. Now I have so many great films on Hulu/Criterion that I want to quit my job and stay home and watch them.
posted by octothorpe at 7:58 PM on December 2, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by octothorpe at 7:58 PM on December 2, 2015 [3 favorites]
With online streaming, we don't decide — we settle. And when we aren't grabbed immediately, we move on.
Which is great. It's way better than slowly pacing up and down the rows of the store, pausing at different nodes of potential response, fondling a box (being slightly suss about the cover or description), or trying to remember that film you were interested in seeing based on a review you scanned two weeks ago - or even the first letter of the director's last name, no Google at hand to help, just your memory - and asking yourself, "Do I really feel like having these feelings tonight? Maybe I will after dinner", x 20. Until you finally pick one, which is (always) the amazing film your watching partner saw the week before and says you should really see sometime soon. (actually that still happens with streaming.)
What I do miss is watching weekend programming at the local rep cinema with a wee pack of friends, and dissecting the film for a couple of hours afterwards, like that mattered.
posted by cotton dress sock at 8:01 PM on December 2, 2015 [3 favorites]
Which is great. It's way better than slowly pacing up and down the rows of the store, pausing at different nodes of potential response, fondling a box (being slightly suss about the cover or description), or trying to remember that film you were interested in seeing based on a review you scanned two weeks ago - or even the first letter of the director's last name, no Google at hand to help, just your memory - and asking yourself, "Do I really feel like having these feelings tonight? Maybe I will after dinner", x 20. Until you finally pick one, which is (always) the amazing film your watching partner saw the week before and says you should really see sometime soon. (actually that still happens with streaming.)
What I do miss is watching weekend programming at the local rep cinema with a wee pack of friends, and dissecting the film for a couple of hours afterwards, like that mattered.
posted by cotton dress sock at 8:01 PM on December 2, 2015 [3 favorites]
I worked at a couple of independent video stores in the '90s in San Francisco, and while one had a great selection and the other didn't - a difference being that the first one's owner worked in the store while the other was absentee - what sticks in my mind was the sense of neighborliness at each. Staff either lived nearby or had worked the gig for years, and knew many of the customers. For at least some customers, visiting the video store wasn't just a shopping experience but a chance at engaging with staff and neighbors. That was not the purpose of the enterprise but it was a boon to patrons as well as the business.
Also, each shift saw at least one customer come up to the desk and say something like, "You know that guy? He was in that one movie, and that other guy played his brother, and he had a moustache. . . ?" A staff member could always figure out what that customer was getting at. I think that's valuable, tho it wasn't enough to keep either store open. Blockbuster up the street killed one, and Netflix the other.
[During my first store employment the video of "Party Girl" came out. I was in library school at the time and just understanding that I was, in essence, working a reference desk with those vague questions. Librarians and archivists among our customers LOVED it when we played that video in the store.]
posted by goofyfoot at 8:15 PM on December 2, 2015 [3 favorites]
Also, each shift saw at least one customer come up to the desk and say something like, "You know that guy? He was in that one movie, and that other guy played his brother, and he had a moustache. . . ?" A staff member could always figure out what that customer was getting at. I think that's valuable, tho it wasn't enough to keep either store open. Blockbuster up the street killed one, and Netflix the other.
[During my first store employment the video of "Party Girl" came out. I was in library school at the time and just understanding that I was, in essence, working a reference desk with those vague questions. Librarians and archivists among our customers LOVED it when we played that video in the store.]
posted by goofyfoot at 8:15 PM on December 2, 2015 [3 favorites]
I never had access to a good video rental place, and I don't have the slightest nostalgia or good feelings for the crappy chain stores. In comparison Netflix is sheer heaven (along with Amazon, Hulu, etc).
posted by Dip Flash at 8:27 PM on December 2, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by Dip Flash at 8:27 PM on December 2, 2015 [1 favorite]
I was sad when Vidiots closed, but the store didn't have much that I can't find online. The place was very snobby if you weren't as knowledgable as the clerks thought they were, which was quite a feat in LA.
posted by Ideefixe at 8:33 PM on December 2, 2015
posted by Ideefixe at 8:33 PM on December 2, 2015
I didn't entirely love the article, and I guess I can see why some find it annoying. But I loved video stores, and I'm not quite understanding all the shade being thrown either.
I grew up around mediocre rural video stores. I later had the good fortune to live near several great urban video stores all over the country, from places that were basically bootleg punk libraries to serious high-end film-buff havens. Hell, we picked our DC neighborhood partially because of the now-defunct Takoma Park branch of Video Americain (mentioned above).
These were basically rental libraries, where the cost of entry was low but there was still a commitment. The good ones were, for reasons both deep and wide (some even given in the article!), better than any curated youtube channel or streaming service I've found. I do lament their passing.
approximately zero percent of video rental stores were anything like what the author describes
In my experience, they weren't nearly that uncommon. Maybe one for every ten Blockbusters? Maybe I just got really lucky?
how about the locally owned corner drugstore and its pharmacist? The grocer down the block? The paperboy? Doctors who made house calls?
Except for the paperboy, these are all things whose passing we should rightly lament. Which from context I guess you're agreeing with? I mean, no one's defending CVS and Giant here, right?
I get why the nostalgia might be off-putting, but if a lot of people find something special about something now gone, it's worth looking at why its replacement fails to satisfy. As someone with unpredictable (not necessarily good) taste, I am regularly let down by "you-might-also-like" algorithms, in a way that I never was by just asking the woman at the counter if there was anything that was the same mood as "Happiness of the Katakuris."
posted by aspersioncast at 8:44 PM on December 2, 2015 [7 favorites]
I grew up around mediocre rural video stores. I later had the good fortune to live near several great urban video stores all over the country, from places that were basically bootleg punk libraries to serious high-end film-buff havens. Hell, we picked our DC neighborhood partially because of the now-defunct Takoma Park branch of Video Americain (mentioned above).
These were basically rental libraries, where the cost of entry was low but there was still a commitment. The good ones were, for reasons both deep and wide (some even given in the article!), better than any curated youtube channel or streaming service I've found. I do lament their passing.
approximately zero percent of video rental stores were anything like what the author describes
In my experience, they weren't nearly that uncommon. Maybe one for every ten Blockbusters? Maybe I just got really lucky?
how about the locally owned corner drugstore and its pharmacist? The grocer down the block? The paperboy? Doctors who made house calls?
Except for the paperboy, these are all things whose passing we should rightly lament. Which from context I guess you're agreeing with? I mean, no one's defending CVS and Giant here, right?
I get why the nostalgia might be off-putting, but if a lot of people find something special about something now gone, it's worth looking at why its replacement fails to satisfy. As someone with unpredictable (not necessarily good) taste, I am regularly let down by "you-might-also-like" algorithms, in a way that I never was by just asking the woman at the counter if there was anything that was the same mood as "Happiness of the Katakuris."
posted by aspersioncast at 8:44 PM on December 2, 2015 [7 favorites]
But I loved video stores, and I'm not quite understanding all the shade being thrown either.
Personally, I never intended to throw shade on video stores. The article should have a giant oak tree planted over top of it, but I am value neutral on video stores themselves.
posted by jacquilynne at 9:03 PM on December 2, 2015 [1 favorite]
Personally, I never intended to throw shade on video stores. The article should have a giant oak tree planted over top of it, but I am value neutral on video stores themselves.
posted by jacquilynne at 9:03 PM on December 2, 2015 [1 favorite]
Pouring out a 40 for the late, lamented Pleasant Street Video in Northampton (and the Pleasant St Theater next door, also gone gone gone).
posted by Spatch at 9:05 PM on December 2, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by Spatch at 9:05 PM on December 2, 2015 [2 favorites]
I used to be a member at a teeny video store in Hayes Valley between, I don't know, 2007 and 2010 (so well into the era when I could just have used Netflix, and when its continued existence was somewhat remarkable). Into Video, now unsurprisingly out of business. I rarely found the movie or movies I went in with a mind to see, unless it was something I'd previously noted on the shelves but hadn't picked up, but I also rarely left without a movie I wasn't interested in—something I'd heard of before and forgotten about, or that I randomly picked up whose box description seemed promising (this was also before I had a smartphone so I couldn't even look up reviews online)—I never left with some piece of crap I felt I had to pick up because I'd made the trip (of course the trip itself was also very short).
posted by kenko at 9:39 PM on December 2, 2015
posted by kenko at 9:39 PM on December 2, 2015
Spatch: "Pouring out a 40 for the late, lamented Pleasant Street Video in Northampton (and the Pleasant St Theater next door, also gone gone gone)."
Which, among other things, mentions those fabulous films from the Cohen brothers. You know, like Fargo.
Sad to say, the last indy video store I went to, I basically used them as a movie poster supply store for my then apartment, where the living room was completely covered in movie and comic posters (including a like five foot square Clockwork Orange poster covering one wall).
posted by Samizdata at 9:49 PM on December 2, 2015
Which, among other things, mentions those fabulous films from the Cohen brothers. You know, like Fargo.
Sad to say, the last indy video store I went to, I basically used them as a movie poster supply store for my then apartment, where the living room was completely covered in movie and comic posters (including a like five foot square Clockwork Orange poster covering one wall).
posted by Samizdata at 9:49 PM on December 2, 2015
If we're going to eulogize an aspect of local consumer culture that was important in American life and which is sorely missed, there's about six-hundred more deserving candidates on the list above video rental stores.
This reads like a boomer waxing nostalgic (and subtextually doomsaying) about the demise of fifties car-hop restaurants -- a boomer who happened to work at a car-hop restaurant for fifteen years. It's myopic and self-indulgent.
This strikes me as so mean-spirited. Just kind of a sock in the gut. Who said anything about ranking shit that people miss? All you accomplish with comments like these is put down the people who care. I mean, obviously video stores didn't cure cancer. Video stores didn't exist outside the capitalist system. Video stores could be dingy, and poorly stocked (or well stocked with stuff no one wanted) and you could leave with something you didn't even want to watch after getting eyerolled by some guy wearing a Fassbinder T-shirt.
I get it, not every had a good experience in video stores. Shoot, maybe nobody did except for me and all the other movie snobs. It's just that I didn't think so many people would respond to this by saying "good riddance."
I'm honestly hurt by this comment, because video stores really meant something to me, and it's being treated like it was wrong to care in the first place. Oh, I should have known enough to get that video stores killed theater culture. Why did I ever like them in the first place?
It's one thing to say this writer is romanticizing the past. But to completely dismiss video stores because they weren't around as long as bookstores, or because they only mattered to a small segment of the population - is it at all possible that something can be a cultural touchstone with meaning to people, in spite of all this? Unless I am also self-indulgent and myopic, and I just don't get that this means nothing, on average. Because, sure, the average video store probably did suck.
I don't know, maybe I'm in the minority here, but these stores meant something to me and it sucks that apparently this is what I look like to other people.
posted by teponaztli at 9:50 PM on December 2, 2015 [21 favorites]
This reads like a boomer waxing nostalgic (and subtextually doomsaying) about the demise of fifties car-hop restaurants -- a boomer who happened to work at a car-hop restaurant for fifteen years. It's myopic and self-indulgent.
This strikes me as so mean-spirited. Just kind of a sock in the gut. Who said anything about ranking shit that people miss? All you accomplish with comments like these is put down the people who care. I mean, obviously video stores didn't cure cancer. Video stores didn't exist outside the capitalist system. Video stores could be dingy, and poorly stocked (or well stocked with stuff no one wanted) and you could leave with something you didn't even want to watch after getting eyerolled by some guy wearing a Fassbinder T-shirt.
I get it, not every had a good experience in video stores. Shoot, maybe nobody did except for me and all the other movie snobs. It's just that I didn't think so many people would respond to this by saying "good riddance."
I'm honestly hurt by this comment, because video stores really meant something to me, and it's being treated like it was wrong to care in the first place. Oh, I should have known enough to get that video stores killed theater culture. Why did I ever like them in the first place?
It's one thing to say this writer is romanticizing the past. But to completely dismiss video stores because they weren't around as long as bookstores, or because they only mattered to a small segment of the population - is it at all possible that something can be a cultural touchstone with meaning to people, in spite of all this? Unless I am also self-indulgent and myopic, and I just don't get that this means nothing, on average. Because, sure, the average video store probably did suck.
I don't know, maybe I'm in the minority here, but these stores meant something to me and it sucks that apparently this is what I look like to other people.
posted by teponaztli at 9:50 PM on December 2, 2015 [21 favorites]
"Personally, I never intended to throw shade on video stores. The article should have a giant oak tree planted over top of it, but I am value neutral on video stores themselves."
I have a problem with valorizing video rental stores in general and therefore with the fundamental premise of this piece, as well as disliking numerous aspects of this piece in particular. In that sense I did intend to throw shade on video stores -- pretty much as I would have in the case of an equivalent article lamenting the decay of American civilization in the form of a eulogy for the halcyon days of the car-hop drive-in restaurant.
But that's not to say that people don't have fond memories of car-hop drive-in restaurants. My parents do. Nor that I think there's anything wrong with people reminiscing about the great things they enjoyed about those car-hop drive-in restaurants. It would be churlish and insensitive to think so or give that impression.
"I'm honestly hurt by this comment, because video stores really meant something to me, and it's being treated like it was wrong to care in the first place."
No, that's not my intention and I apologize for making you feel badly this way. But this article -- to which my comment was responding -- isn't a nostalgic discussion of what video rental stores meant to a particular group of people at a particular point in time, it's making a larger and normative argument. If you can see why boomer nostalgia is not only irritating but harmful when it confuses its sentimentalism with an argument about how society should be structured using examples of their beloved institutions -- arguments which aren't self-critical and which lack awareness of how those institutions were deeply flawed -- you'll understand what I object to in this article. Car-hops were fun, they were important to the people who came of age with them, but they also displaced a kind of restaurant eating that was itself very valuable and, more importantly, those car-hop drive-ins literally paved the way for American fast-food. There's something wrong with valorizing them as part of a larger argument without recognizing this.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 10:10 PM on December 2, 2015 [3 favorites]
I have a problem with valorizing video rental stores in general and therefore with the fundamental premise of this piece, as well as disliking numerous aspects of this piece in particular. In that sense I did intend to throw shade on video stores -- pretty much as I would have in the case of an equivalent article lamenting the decay of American civilization in the form of a eulogy for the halcyon days of the car-hop drive-in restaurant.
But that's not to say that people don't have fond memories of car-hop drive-in restaurants. My parents do. Nor that I think there's anything wrong with people reminiscing about the great things they enjoyed about those car-hop drive-in restaurants. It would be churlish and insensitive to think so or give that impression.
"I'm honestly hurt by this comment, because video stores really meant something to me, and it's being treated like it was wrong to care in the first place."
No, that's not my intention and I apologize for making you feel badly this way. But this article -- to which my comment was responding -- isn't a nostalgic discussion of what video rental stores meant to a particular group of people at a particular point in time, it's making a larger and normative argument. If you can see why boomer nostalgia is not only irritating but harmful when it confuses its sentimentalism with an argument about how society should be structured using examples of their beloved institutions -- arguments which aren't self-critical and which lack awareness of how those institutions were deeply flawed -- you'll understand what I object to in this article. Car-hops were fun, they were important to the people who came of age with them, but they also displaced a kind of restaurant eating that was itself very valuable and, more importantly, those car-hop drive-ins literally paved the way for American fast-food. There's something wrong with valorizing them as part of a larger argument without recognizing this.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 10:10 PM on December 2, 2015 [3 favorites]
For all their algorithmic prowess, Netflix is actually really shitty at recommending movies. Like, really shitty. At any given moment, I have no good way of knowing what is actually available to watch. Instead, I've got all these kooky categories they've come up with, like "Disappointing action comedies starring more than one actor named Steve." Shitty and useless.
I miss video stores for all the intangible reasons listed in this article, but also for one practical reason : sometimes, there's a specific movie you want to see, and a decent indie video store will nearly always have that movie. With Netflix, it's a total crapshoot unless you have a DVD membership, which defeats the entire purpose because fuck waiting three days. I want to see that movie NOW, even if it means (gasp) getting off my ass and walking a couple blocks to a video store. Hell, even if you have a Netflix DVD membership, they're still not going to have the foreign, obscure, or just plain unpopular stuff that you may find at a decent indie video store.
There are no video stores anywhere near me, and it's fucking sad.
posted by panama joe at 11:07 PM on December 2, 2015 [1 favorite]
I miss video stores for all the intangible reasons listed in this article, but also for one practical reason : sometimes, there's a specific movie you want to see, and a decent indie video store will nearly always have that movie. With Netflix, it's a total crapshoot unless you have a DVD membership, which defeats the entire purpose because fuck waiting three days. I want to see that movie NOW, even if it means (gasp) getting off my ass and walking a couple blocks to a video store. Hell, even if you have a Netflix DVD membership, they're still not going to have the foreign, obscure, or just plain unpopular stuff that you may find at a decent indie video store.
There are no video stores anywhere near me, and it's fucking sad.
posted by panama joe at 11:07 PM on December 2, 2015 [1 favorite]
Is everyone just really stressed out by what's going on recently? I've been surprised by all the meanspirited comments I've seen today, there's been some nasty energy going on today in the Blue.
I think if a guy posts an article wanting to mourn about the demise of video stores because he had the fortunate experience to work at an amazing one for 25 years, well crap. I'm glad he decided to put it out there to share that experience, because most of us will never get to in the future. It's history at this point.
posted by yueliang at 11:47 PM on December 2, 2015 [10 favorites]
I think if a guy posts an article wanting to mourn about the demise of video stores because he had the fortunate experience to work at an amazing one for 25 years, well crap. I'm glad he decided to put it out there to share that experience, because most of us will never get to in the future. It's history at this point.
posted by yueliang at 11:47 PM on December 2, 2015 [10 favorites]
Someone needs to solve the "I have access to millions of songs/thousands of movies. What do I want to listen to/watch?" problem. That and one-click micropayments for online longform articles and newspaper stories. I want both of those before a self-driving car.
posted by persona au gratin at 12:02 AM on December 3, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by persona au gratin at 12:02 AM on December 3, 2015 [3 favorites]
My experience of movies and video games is that in the 80's and 90's I often found myself playing games or watching movies that I didn't really enjoy very much because they were the only thing available.
Now, I have more excellent games and movies at my fingertips than I could ever get through. When I sit down to watch a movie or play a game, it's almost always something excellent. If something bad somehow gets to the top of my pile, I can easily set it aside and move on to the next excellent thing.
I prefer what I have now to what I had then.
posted by straight at 12:40 AM on December 3, 2015 [3 favorites]
Now, I have more excellent games and movies at my fingertips than I could ever get through. When I sit down to watch a movie or play a game, it's almost always something excellent. If something bad somehow gets to the top of my pile, I can easily set it aside and move on to the next excellent thing.
I prefer what I have now to what I had then.
posted by straight at 12:40 AM on December 3, 2015 [3 favorites]
"For all their algorithmic prowess, Netflix is actually really shitty at recommending movies."
In my own experience, their recommendations were originally quite good ... and then a number of years ago, over maybe a couple of years, they became mostly useless.
Perhaps relatedly, this has been my experience with Amazon recommendations for books, too. In both cases, especially with Amazon, there was a period of time at the beginning where the recommendations were extremely helpful for me to discover new stuff.
It seems like I recall some articles talking about how Netflix's recommendation algorithm prize all worked out. Perhaps I'm misremembering, but I think that what both Amazon and Netflix learned, as well as others like them, is that it doesn't maximize their own profits when their recommendation engines work the way their customers want them to. Netflix and Amazon want the recommendations to work the way that that they want them to, similar to how store displays like endcaps and register displays work. They want the recommendations to be personalized only to some moderate degree, but otherwise want to lead us to the stuff that makes them the most money.
Unless I've made this all up. But it sure seems to me that there was a golden era of personalized recommendations that really worked the way that everyone hoped they would ... and then that era ended.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 1:24 AM on December 3, 2015 [3 favorites]
In my own experience, their recommendations were originally quite good ... and then a number of years ago, over maybe a couple of years, they became mostly useless.
Perhaps relatedly, this has been my experience with Amazon recommendations for books, too. In both cases, especially with Amazon, there was a period of time at the beginning where the recommendations were extremely helpful for me to discover new stuff.
It seems like I recall some articles talking about how Netflix's recommendation algorithm prize all worked out. Perhaps I'm misremembering, but I think that what both Amazon and Netflix learned, as well as others like them, is that it doesn't maximize their own profits when their recommendation engines work the way their customers want them to. Netflix and Amazon want the recommendations to work the way that that they want them to, similar to how store displays like endcaps and register displays work. They want the recommendations to be personalized only to some moderate degree, but otherwise want to lead us to the stuff that makes them the most money.
Unless I've made this all up. But it sure seems to me that there was a golden era of personalized recommendations that really worked the way that everyone hoped they would ... and then that era ended.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 1:24 AM on December 3, 2015 [3 favorites]
I can see the argument for Amazon, but does Netflix really make any more money streaming one show vs. another?
posted by en forme de poire at 1:32 AM on December 3, 2015
posted by en forme de poire at 1:32 AM on December 3, 2015
Independent video stores were cool in their day. There are some private torrent trackers that do niche film stuff *really* well - unfortunately I let my account expire at the only one I was a member of (Cinemageddon).
posted by atoxyl at 1:38 AM on December 3, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by atoxyl at 1:38 AM on December 3, 2015 [1 favorite]
Everything the writer valorizes about video rental stores and its subculture is so much more true about the cinema-going culture that video rental stores partly displaced and transformed. In the bigger, more vital American story, the video rental store is the villain, not the hero.
I find this comment a bit... obnoxious (didn't want to reuse insufferable) not because you don't think video stores were all that but because instead of saying cinema and video and streaming and file sharing all have their upsides and downsides you want to throw your own rather debatable value judgement in there.
posted by atoxyl at 1:52 AM on December 3, 2015 [5 favorites]
I find this comment a bit... obnoxious (didn't want to reuse insufferable) not because you don't think video stores were all that but because instead of saying cinema and video and streaming and file sharing all have their upsides and downsides you want to throw your own rather debatable value judgement in there.
posted by atoxyl at 1:52 AM on December 3, 2015 [5 favorites]
I'm going long with this, but really, what makes me sad about the death of video stores is that I used to be so into movies. As art, as a diversion, as whatever. And I can't engage with them like that anymore.
I hear you dude. I was a film studies major, worked in a video store, and then became a movie reviewer as one of my freelance jobs. I used to watch somewhere between 5-10 movies a week, nearly every week. I still have a weirdly thorough knowledge of cast and crews of early 2000s movies.
And I don't do that - I can't do that - any of it, anymore. It's December now, I think I've seen three movies this year, maybe? Definitely Avengers and Sicario, I'm struggling to remember a third. Oh yeah, I watched a Mission Impossible movie when I was home sick one day.
Partly, it's life. I have a real job now, a family, a mortgage. In the scattered remnants of my time, I choose to keep reading, rather than keep watching. Also, there's television. Television was utter shite in the nineties and 2000s, at least in Australia. It's immeasurably better now. I don't have time to take a gamble like I used to.
I miss sitting back like that, diving through movie after movie. I don't miss the store so much. I do chuckle at some of the naive recommendations I made to people, who just wanted - and deserved - simple entertainment though.
posted by smoke at 2:08 AM on December 3, 2015 [2 favorites]
I hear you dude. I was a film studies major, worked in a video store, and then became a movie reviewer as one of my freelance jobs. I used to watch somewhere between 5-10 movies a week, nearly every week. I still have a weirdly thorough knowledge of cast and crews of early 2000s movies.
And I don't do that - I can't do that - any of it, anymore. It's December now, I think I've seen three movies this year, maybe? Definitely Avengers and Sicario, I'm struggling to remember a third. Oh yeah, I watched a Mission Impossible movie when I was home sick one day.
Partly, it's life. I have a real job now, a family, a mortgage. In the scattered remnants of my time, I choose to keep reading, rather than keep watching. Also, there's television. Television was utter shite in the nineties and 2000s, at least in Australia. It's immeasurably better now. I don't have time to take a gamble like I used to.
I miss sitting back like that, diving through movie after movie. I don't miss the store so much. I do chuckle at some of the naive recommendations I made to people, who just wanted - and deserved - simple entertainment though.
posted by smoke at 2:08 AM on December 3, 2015 [2 favorites]
I have discovered that here in Brunswick, GA a video store still hangs on by the skin of its teeth, Take Two Video. I was in there just a couple of weeks ago. They even have some old games for rent there (Xbox/PS2 era). I think they survive with adjunct businesses. I told them I hope they survive a thousand years, but I must admit I walked out without renting anything. I don't really watch many movies at the moment that aren't being mocked by a guy and his robot friends.
posted by JHarris at 2:30 AM on December 3, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by JHarris at 2:30 AM on December 3, 2015 [1 favorite]
Pretty much the same story is playing out at Aro Video in Wellington. And it's tragic, because it is without a doubt the finest arthouse video store in New Zealand.
posted by WhackyparseThis at 3:15 AM on December 3, 2015
posted by WhackyparseThis at 3:15 AM on December 3, 2015
I rented at Videoport. Great store, huge backlist, and interesting recommendations. I know the writer, having gotten to know his wife, a MeFite, at meetups. I'm not really a movie person, but when I wanted a movie, Videoport would always have something I wanted to watch, and if you had any niche film interests, they'd have plenty for you to see, and probably a staffer to discuss it with. I moved just far enough away that it was a pain to rent there, and, yeah, I have my son's Netflix password.
It was like a good bookstore or a good record store. Lots of ridiculously knowledgeable people working there who cared deeply about movies. When you browse, you see stuff you didn't know about or had forgotten. There is little serendipity on netflix or amazon. And there are customers, people who generally live in your area, and community develops. When you stay in and watch Netflix, there's no interaction with community. I miss that.
posted by theora55 at 3:33 AM on December 3, 2015 [2 favorites]
It was like a good bookstore or a good record store. Lots of ridiculously knowledgeable people working there who cared deeply about movies. When you browse, you see stuff you didn't know about or had forgotten. There is little serendipity on netflix or amazon. And there are customers, people who generally live in your area, and community develops. When you stay in and watch Netflix, there's no interaction with community. I miss that.
posted by theora55 at 3:33 AM on December 3, 2015 [2 favorites]
- every streaming title a-z by title
- search by anyone-in-the-credits
- search by tag
- link to imdb and ebert
- no genres - only tags. tags shall be the one true way.
So, I'll have to know the title of what I'm looking for? Or who's in it? Reviews? Maybe. But, I'm looking for a movie, not wanting to read through articles.
And, tags? Ugh. One of the more over-sold fetishes of this modern geek world we find ourselves in.
Just last night, we found that there was nothing on regular tv, so we jumped to the On Demand menu (sorry, we don't have Netflix or any of the other streaming services) Good lord, the granularity was overwhelming. It was like going through a phone tree before you actually got to titles. It's too much damned work just to find something to kill a couple of hours.
Oddly, my town is also festooned with RedBox kiosks everywhere, and one would think they would help slake the thirst of the DVD crowd, but I find standing in front of a kiosk, scrolling through screen after screen of titles as numbing as that OnDemand system. Physical browsing in a store just seems much more purposeful than virtual browsing. Wading through screens of streaming choices is functionally and emotionally identical to flipping through channels trying to find something on tonight to watch.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:13 AM on December 3, 2015 [1 favorite]
- search by anyone-in-the-credits
- search by tag
- link to imdb and ebert
- no genres - only tags. tags shall be the one true way.
So, I'll have to know the title of what I'm looking for? Or who's in it? Reviews? Maybe. But, I'm looking for a movie, not wanting to read through articles.
And, tags? Ugh. One of the more over-sold fetishes of this modern geek world we find ourselves in.
Just last night, we found that there was nothing on regular tv, so we jumped to the On Demand menu (sorry, we don't have Netflix or any of the other streaming services) Good lord, the granularity was overwhelming. It was like going through a phone tree before you actually got to titles. It's too much damned work just to find something to kill a couple of hours.
Oddly, my town is also festooned with RedBox kiosks everywhere, and one would think they would help slake the thirst of the DVD crowd, but I find standing in front of a kiosk, scrolling through screen after screen of titles as numbing as that OnDemand system. Physical browsing in a store just seems much more purposeful than virtual browsing. Wading through screens of streaming choices is functionally and emotionally identical to flipping through channels trying to find something on tonight to watch.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:13 AM on December 3, 2015 [1 favorite]
My wife and I lived in Portland, ME in the early-to-mid 90s and Videoport was our go-to video store. If you didn't mind the hipper-than-thou employees, it was really the best video store I ever visited in terms of breadth and depth of collection.
I worked at a video store in college in the Dawn of the VHS Era in the mid-80s, and we were definitely not hip, but the guy who owned the store tried very hard, especially at the beginning, to make sure that we had any and every obscure thing he could find, and he preferred to hire film majors (like me) or other serious film geeks. His business boomed as video rentals went mainstream and his attempts to maintain a curated collection suffered somewhat at the hands of needing to have 75 copies of whatever the hot release of the week was, but he never stopped adding stuff. When the heat wore off and Blockbuster won on the all-hot-titles-all-the-time front, he was able to fall back on being THE place for serious cinema buffs, people looking for hard-to-find titles, and so on. He outlasted Blockbuster and hung in there until fairly recently, so I figure he had the right idea all along.
posted by briank at 5:14 AM on December 3, 2015 [2 favorites]
I worked at a video store in college in the Dawn of the VHS Era in the mid-80s, and we were definitely not hip, but the guy who owned the store tried very hard, especially at the beginning, to make sure that we had any and every obscure thing he could find, and he preferred to hire film majors (like me) or other serious film geeks. His business boomed as video rentals went mainstream and his attempts to maintain a curated collection suffered somewhat at the hands of needing to have 75 copies of whatever the hot release of the week was, but he never stopped adding stuff. When the heat wore off and Blockbuster won on the all-hot-titles-all-the-time front, he was able to fall back on being THE place for serious cinema buffs, people looking for hard-to-find titles, and so on. He outlasted Blockbuster and hung in there until fairly recently, so I figure he had the right idea all along.
posted by briank at 5:14 AM on December 3, 2015 [2 favorites]
I think if a guy posts an article wanting to mourn about the demise of video stores because he had the fortunate experience to work at an amazing one for 25 years, well crap. I'm glad he decided to put it out there to share that experience, because most of us will never get to in the future.
If a guy had posted an article about how much he misses video stores and wishes they were still around, I'd have read it, got vaguely nostalgic myself and moved on. But guy made an argument about how the thing that replaced video stores is bad and wrong and making us all boring and unadventurous, and that is a whole different thing.
posted by jacquilynne at 5:44 AM on December 3, 2015 [5 favorites]
If a guy had posted an article about how much he misses video stores and wishes they were still around, I'd have read it, got vaguely nostalgic myself and moved on. But guy made an argument about how the thing that replaced video stores is bad and wrong and making us all boring and unadventurous, and that is a whole different thing.
posted by jacquilynne at 5:44 AM on December 3, 2015 [5 favorites]
If you miss the video store experience, there's always your public library. My library has a huge selection and access to all sorts of rare and bizarre stuff if you're willing to wait a few days. It doesn't cost a dime and we get all the new releases.
Streaming is great and I'm a very happy wire cutter, but the library fills in all the gaps in the streaming offerings without paying rental fees.
posted by Lighthammer at 6:32 AM on December 3, 2015 [1 favorite]
Streaming is great and I'm a very happy wire cutter, but the library fills in all the gaps in the streaming offerings without paying rental fees.
posted by Lighthammer at 6:32 AM on December 3, 2015 [1 favorite]
I like streaming while noting its limitations -- terrible recommendations, wildly inconsistent availability of films. But it does represent the loss of employment for some, and the loss of community for many more. Is streaming a replacement? Sure, but progress isn't tantamount to improvement. A Zone Perfect bar can take the place of filet mignon, but that don't make a guy at the Zone Perfect factory a sous chef, man. Or, you know, whatever.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 6:48 AM on December 3, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by kittens for breakfast at 6:48 AM on December 3, 2015 [1 favorite]
We lost our venerable (truly!) local indie video store when they tragically miscalculated the VHS to DVD shift by about 2 years. They were ahead of their time, and so excited about the new and improved format that they shifted 100% of their stock over to DVDs in like, 1996. It was a lower-middle-income area; we didn't have a critical mass of early adopters. I firmly believe that if they'd survived the transition they would still be operating in all their weird glory today.
But it's thanks to that place that I have any taste in film at all. I could walk there on my own as an 11 or 12 year old, and they completely took me under their wing as a fellow weird nerd. They were experts at finding me sophisticated films that skirted around the draconian "No R Rating for Minors" rules and if they were super-snobs, I sure never knew it as a kid. They were always open on holidays and my mom would always bring them a pizza and beer.
There's one video store near me now and apparently they make their rent by selling sex toys out of a catalog on the side.
Is all of this better than streaming? I don't particularly think so. Is it worse? I also don't think so. It seems rather a shame that we can't somehow keep both afloat to serve their distinct purposes (much as it seemed a shame that we couldn't sustain both the indie stores AND the Blockbusters, back in the day). Capitalism, man. What can you do.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 7:21 AM on December 3, 2015
But it's thanks to that place that I have any taste in film at all. I could walk there on my own as an 11 or 12 year old, and they completely took me under their wing as a fellow weird nerd. They were experts at finding me sophisticated films that skirted around the draconian "No R Rating for Minors" rules and if they were super-snobs, I sure never knew it as a kid. They were always open on holidays and my mom would always bring them a pizza and beer.
There's one video store near me now and apparently they make their rent by selling sex toys out of a catalog on the side.
Is all of this better than streaming? I don't particularly think so. Is it worse? I also don't think so. It seems rather a shame that we can't somehow keep both afloat to serve their distinct purposes (much as it seemed a shame that we couldn't sustain both the indie stores AND the Blockbusters, back in the day). Capitalism, man. What can you do.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 7:21 AM on December 3, 2015
Say what you will about time and progress, etc. Netflix has likely never left voice mail telling someone their rental of "Ghoul Sex Squad" was due back a week ago.
posted by anthom at 7:45 AM on December 3, 2015 [4 favorites]
posted by anthom at 7:45 AM on December 3, 2015 [4 favorites]
I stuck with my local video rental place (I Luv Video) for longer than most, but eventually signed up with Netflix (DVDs, not streaming). I really liked that place. I liked the people who worked there and the conversations, I liked their incredibly extensive and weird and well-organized selection, and the "director's wall." Places like this do have a useful role to fill.
I'd probably still be renting from them if not for one thing: disc damage. Bringing home discs that wouldn't play, or would crap out halfway through, got to be routine. The last straw for me was renting a disc, bringing it home, finding it was the wrong disc, bringing it back, getting the right disc, and finding it was unplayable.
posted by adamrice at 7:47 AM on December 3, 2015 [2 favorites]
I'd probably still be renting from them if not for one thing: disc damage. Bringing home discs that wouldn't play, or would crap out halfway through, got to be routine. The last straw for me was renting a disc, bringing it home, finding it was the wrong disc, bringing it back, getting the right disc, and finding it was unplayable.
posted by adamrice at 7:47 AM on December 3, 2015 [2 favorites]
In terms of scratches, etc, Blu-Ray's are a lot harder to damage than DVDs. Unfortunately that came too late to be of much use to rental stores.
posted by selfnoise at 7:50 AM on December 3, 2015
posted by selfnoise at 7:50 AM on December 3, 2015
stuck with my local video rental place (I Luv Video) for longer than most, but eventually signed up with Netflix (DVDs, not streaming). ...
I'd probably still be renting from them if not for one thing: disc damage.
And yet you signed up for Netflix DVDs? At least 8 or 9 times I have gotten Netflix discs that were literally broken in half. The vast majority are unplayable.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 8:11 AM on December 3, 2015 [2 favorites]
I'd probably still be renting from them if not for one thing: disc damage.
And yet you signed up for Netflix DVDs? At least 8 or 9 times I have gotten Netflix discs that were literally broken in half. The vast majority are unplayable.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 8:11 AM on December 3, 2015 [2 favorites]
Fond memory of my old local video place: they put up a display of Gerard Depardieu movies and separated them, based on the critical opinions of the staff, into "Depar-Dos" and "Depar-Dont's."
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 8:16 AM on December 3, 2015 [10 favorites]
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 8:16 AM on December 3, 2015 [10 favorites]
Everything the writer valorizes about video rental stores and its subculture is so much more true about the cinema-going culture that video rental stores partly displaced and transformed. In the bigger, more vital American story, the video rental store is the villain, not the hero.
I guess I'm just a bit player in the "more vital American story" you refer to but, like a lot of Americans, I grew up in an isolated blue-collar town with a handful of lousy, run-down movie theaters with bad projection and worse sound and nothing remotely resembling an art house. I was able to keep up with stuff like Blue Velvet, Liquid Sky, Fanny and Alexander, and My Beautiful Laundrette only because VHS made it possible. (Amazingly, Terry Gilliam's Brazil actually got booked in town, but it was only screened for three days — the theater yanked it after Sunday screenings and replaced it with a different film on Monday.) Sure, I got out of there when I was of age, but intellectually curious teenagers in economically depressed steeltowns deserve access to good movies too.
I live in the New York area now and, believe me, I mourn the demise of the repertory circuit (it's still here, but it's a shadow of what it once was) and the larger filmgoing culture. But outside of larger urban areas, eager cinephiles embraced the video store not necessarily because they preferred VHS tapes to 35mm film, but because when it came to non-mainstream cinema, it was literally the only show in town.
posted by Mothlight at 8:18 AM on December 3, 2015 [2 favorites]
I guess I'm just a bit player in the "more vital American story" you refer to but, like a lot of Americans, I grew up in an isolated blue-collar town with a handful of lousy, run-down movie theaters with bad projection and worse sound and nothing remotely resembling an art house. I was able to keep up with stuff like Blue Velvet, Liquid Sky, Fanny and Alexander, and My Beautiful Laundrette only because VHS made it possible. (Amazingly, Terry Gilliam's Brazil actually got booked in town, but it was only screened for three days — the theater yanked it after Sunday screenings and replaced it with a different film on Monday.) Sure, I got out of there when I was of age, but intellectually curious teenagers in economically depressed steeltowns deserve access to good movies too.
I live in the New York area now and, believe me, I mourn the demise of the repertory circuit (it's still here, but it's a shadow of what it once was) and the larger filmgoing culture. But outside of larger urban areas, eager cinephiles embraced the video store not necessarily because they preferred VHS tapes to 35mm film, but because when it came to non-mainstream cinema, it was literally the only show in town.
posted by Mothlight at 8:18 AM on December 3, 2015 [2 favorites]
Unless I've made this all up. But it sure seems to me that there was a golden era of personalized recommendations that really worked the way that everyone hoped they would ... and then that era ended.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich
Personalized recommendation systems came out of academia in the late 90's, and I suspect that their golden era fell somewhere between 1997-2001. There's one ongoing academic project I know of called Movielens; not sure how well it compares to commercialized recommendations.
posted by ZeusHumms at 8:31 AM on December 3, 2015
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich
Personalized recommendation systems came out of academia in the late 90's, and I suspect that their golden era fell somewhere between 1997-2001. There's one ongoing academic project I know of called Movielens; not sure how well it compares to commercialized recommendations.
posted by ZeusHumms at 8:31 AM on December 3, 2015
The vast majority are unplayable.
You need a new DVD player. I have rented at least a thousand Netflix DVD's and have had maybe a dozen that wouldn't play, about half of which were visibly damaged. The most annoying are non visibly damaged disks which play 3/4 of the movie and then start skipping. On every occasion when I've gotten an unplayable disk I've gone to the website, filled out the online form, and a replacement has arrived within two days without waiting for me to return the bad one.
posted by Bringer Tom at 8:32 AM on December 3, 2015 [3 favorites]
You need a new DVD player. I have rented at least a thousand Netflix DVD's and have had maybe a dozen that wouldn't play, about half of which were visibly damaged. The most annoying are non visibly damaged disks which play 3/4 of the movie and then start skipping. On every occasion when I've gotten an unplayable disk I've gone to the website, filled out the online form, and a replacement has arrived within two days without waiting for me to return the bad one.
posted by Bringer Tom at 8:32 AM on December 3, 2015 [3 favorites]
If you think I'm overrating the power of these connections, consider this: Years ago, I helped a lovely, seemingly upstanding woman... She started coming in regularly. After months of recommendations and some earnest cinematic dismantling...I became her go-to movie guy. A year later, I became her go-to everything guy when we got married.
This phenomenon isn't uncommon. We at the store ended up dating and/or wedding customers so consistently that it became a running joke from the boss that we were taking money out of his pocket.
Eh. Guess it depends on the way you're looking at "common." Even if all 10 employees married a customer, that still has to be a drop in the pond relative to the customer base. Common for employees, rare for customers.
People meet people places and then marry them sometimes. But he's "overrating the power of these connections" relative to the average customer who doesn't (sigh) get to marry the video store clerk. The power of the connection for the customer to the employees/store being the point he's trying (failing) to make.
posted by tummy_rub at 8:33 AM on December 3, 2015 [1 favorite]
This phenomenon isn't uncommon. We at the store ended up dating and/or wedding customers so consistently that it became a running joke from the boss that we were taking money out of his pocket.
Eh. Guess it depends on the way you're looking at "common." Even if all 10 employees married a customer, that still has to be a drop in the pond relative to the customer base. Common for employees, rare for customers.
People meet people places and then marry them sometimes. But he's "overrating the power of these connections" relative to the average customer who doesn't (sigh) get to marry the video store clerk. The power of the connection for the customer to the employees/store being the point he's trying (failing) to make.
posted by tummy_rub at 8:33 AM on December 3, 2015 [1 favorite]
While I certainly don't begrudge anyone their fond memories of video stores (I have my own share - my Mom was able to get me some hard-to-find Nintendo game (I want to say Faxanadu) one Christmas because she was griping about it to our local video store clerk and he said that he could special order it for her), especially folks who worked at one, or had a fantastic local example that helped expand their artistic horizons, I disagree with the premise of the article as well. I'd estimate I "settled" at the video store far more often than I found a hidden gem, and even the indie/arty video stores I frequented over the years were often too high-minded and snobbish to help a mostly-mainstream guy like me find stuff I liked.
I do regret the passing of the video store, in the same way that I regret the passing of the car-hop restaurant and the telephone operator and the streetcar - it's a shame that these previous ways of life are largely lost to us now - not because they were better than what replaced them (though in some ways surely they were) but just because they were different.
posted by Rock Steady at 8:49 AM on December 3, 2015 [3 favorites]
I do regret the passing of the video store, in the same way that I regret the passing of the car-hop restaurant and the telephone operator and the streetcar - it's a shame that these previous ways of life are largely lost to us now - not because they were better than what replaced them (though in some ways surely they were) but just because they were different.
posted by Rock Steady at 8:49 AM on December 3, 2015 [3 favorites]
Everything the writer valorizes about video rental stores and its subculture is so much more true about the cinema-going culture that video rental stores partly displaced and transformed
You could only be talking to people who live in a major city here.
(And I guess if we didn't have the internet that changed both those things, you only would be talking about cinema-going culture if you lived in a major city.)
posted by straight at 8:55 AM on December 3, 2015
You could only be talking to people who live in a major city here.
(And I guess if we didn't have the internet that changed both those things, you only would be talking about cinema-going culture if you lived in a major city.)
posted by straight at 8:55 AM on December 3, 2015
I definitely find that I have better access to media now than I did then. If you have a roku, access to vudu, hulu, and amazon (and maybe round that out with youtube for the really obscure stuff) I find myself able to watch pretty much anything I'd ever want except new releases for between $1.99 and $19.99. Video stores had more curated collections, which meant that you could maybe explore more deeply in a more narrow collection. But that collection was formed around someone else's interests. And maybe that can be illuminating--just like how a library's collection can be illuminating--but if your interests are idiosyncratic and contrary to whatever is in active circulation, you're kind of out of luck. When I wanted to read 18th century medical manuals about tongue ties and oral dysfunction, I didn't go to the library--I went to google books. When I want to watch that weird My Pet Monster movie I was obsessed with when I was 4, I hit up the internet rather than heading to a video store.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 9:06 AM on December 3, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 9:06 AM on December 3, 2015 [1 favorite]
I guess that you all went to better video stores than I did. I can't remember ever getting a single recommendation for a movie from any of people working there.
posted by octothorpe at 10:31 AM on December 3, 2015
posted by octothorpe at 10:31 AM on December 3, 2015
I remember very early in the development of home VCRs, we had to go to the neighboring town to rent videos at a place called (IIRC) Videosmith. This was before video store practices were standardized, apparently, and instead of having all the copies of a given movie on the shelves, they had one case on display with a number on it. To rent a movie, you would pick up a slip of paper and a golf pencil upon entering the store and then browse, writing the numbers of several movies you were interested in on the paper. You then took the paper to the desk, and the clerk would look through the actual tapes to see if any of your choices were in (spoiler: they weren't).
posted by Rock Steady at 11:33 AM on December 3, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by Rock Steady at 11:33 AM on December 3, 2015 [1 favorite]
I totally get the love for curated collections and experiences. As a librarian and college radio DJ, I'd be a hypocrite otherwise. I also recognize it's a dying trend that is evolving in places, but not entirely. I think what I took issue with in this article wasn't so much the author's blaming Netflix (though I disagree with it), but rather their placement as gatekeeper and taste maker. Again, I totally get why people like being in that position - it's authority, it's validation of your interests, it's flattering. It's also a barrier to consumption for many.
I love how much streaming has opened up the long tail. This weekend I watched Made In Britain at a friend's and we had a nice discussion of Alan Clarke's work. He asked if I saw them at the local film archive when they did a Clarke retrospective in the 90s. (I got them online.) It reminded me that until quite recently, it was near impossible to see films like Scum unless you were lucky to live in a cool area with a cool video store that overlapped with your tastes. I still love learning about things from trusted sources, but I also like the ability to source it for myself. (This is the same thing with music.)
I love that public libraries have stepped in for many to fill the gap. I think some of the video stores that still cling on (like the one in the article) do so because it's a community hub, not just a place to get videos.
posted by kendrak at 12:48 PM on December 3, 2015 [1 favorite]
I love how much streaming has opened up the long tail. This weekend I watched Made In Britain at a friend's and we had a nice discussion of Alan Clarke's work. He asked if I saw them at the local film archive when they did a Clarke retrospective in the 90s. (I got them online.) It reminded me that until quite recently, it was near impossible to see films like Scum unless you were lucky to live in a cool area with a cool video store that overlapped with your tastes. I still love learning about things from trusted sources, but I also like the ability to source it for myself. (This is the same thing with music.)
I love that public libraries have stepped in for many to fill the gap. I think some of the video stores that still cling on (like the one in the article) do so because it's a community hub, not just a place to get videos.
posted by kendrak at 12:48 PM on December 3, 2015 [1 favorite]
I’m not sure what people love so much about Netflix, or any other streaming, but I think a lot of it comes down to your viewing habits. We are almost never browsing for "something to watch", and if we are that’s what TV is for. And Netflix almost never has what we’re looking for streaming, even though it’s usually not something that obscure. I have several times sat down with a list of 20 or 30 movies and found 1 or none available. We honestly don’t even bother checking anymore. I have been a Netflix customer practically since they started, and loved it with DVD’s, but have only watched the streaming literally enough times to count on my fingers, and the first couple were just to try it (we periodically ask ourselves "why do we still pay for this?" but are too lazy to cancel, the perfect customers).
As some one else said, I find the screen browsing part is just too much trouble. We’ll start to look for something, and at some point my wife will say "never mind" and walk away. The other option is the DVD service, but you have to wait for it and plan in advance, neither of which I’m good at. It’s counter intuitive, but I’d rather just drive to the store and get what I want now. Most of the time it would be faster than all the online browsing involved. "What do I want to watch right now of the movies I’m interested in?" is the sweet spot.
posted by bongo_x at 2:45 PM on December 3, 2015
As some one else said, I find the screen browsing part is just too much trouble. We’ll start to look for something, and at some point my wife will say "never mind" and walk away. The other option is the DVD service, but you have to wait for it and plan in advance, neither of which I’m good at. It’s counter intuitive, but I’d rather just drive to the store and get what I want now. Most of the time it would be faster than all the online browsing involved. "What do I want to watch right now of the movies I’m interested in?" is the sweet spot.
posted by bongo_x at 2:45 PM on December 3, 2015
Refer, Vinyl.
posted by wallstreet1929 at 7:52 PM on December 3, 2015
posted by wallstreet1929 at 7:52 PM on December 3, 2015
As some one else said, I find the screen browsing part is just too much trouble.
Yeah, I find it really time-consuming to get a good sense for what Netflix has and doesn't have unless I know exactly what I'm looking for and can run a search.
And the state of VOD browsing is even worse, at least via our FiOS service. The interface is incredibly clunky and it takes some thinking to figure out where the program you're looking for might be categorized. (Is it an "Exclusive"? Is it a "B4 Netflix" title? Or is it "In Theaters Now"?) I remember a few years ago reading advice for indie filmmakers and one of the key nuggets of wisdom was to make sure your film's title begins with the letter "A" or "B" so that people will actually see it at the top of online listings of streaming titles.
posted by Mothlight at 9:00 AM on December 4, 2015
Yeah, I find it really time-consuming to get a good sense for what Netflix has and doesn't have unless I know exactly what I'm looking for and can run a search.
And the state of VOD browsing is even worse, at least via our FiOS service. The interface is incredibly clunky and it takes some thinking to figure out where the program you're looking for might be categorized. (Is it an "Exclusive"? Is it a "B4 Netflix" title? Or is it "In Theaters Now"?) I remember a few years ago reading advice for indie filmmakers and one of the key nuggets of wisdom was to make sure your film's title begins with the letter "A" or "B" so that people will actually see it at the top of online listings of streaming titles.
posted by Mothlight at 9:00 AM on December 4, 2015
I remember a few years ago reading advice for indie filmmakers and one of the key nuggets of wisdom was to make sure your film's title begins with the letter "A" or "B" so that people will actually see it at the top of online listings of streaming titles.
Heh.
A few months back I did a disc for a title called War Demons*. At nearly the last minute before replication, Wal-Mart refused to stock the title, saying they wouldn't sell a disc that referenced demons in the title because of the static they'd get from Bible Belt customers. This is a major fuckup, because Wal-Mart is something like 90% of our client's retail sell-through, and Wal-Mart not selling the title basically means the acquisition and marketing costs of a title are a complete loss. So our designers hurriedly changed the key art and edited the feature and trailer masters.
The film is now in stores and streaming as A-Squad.
*film names changed to protect the innocent.
posted by infinitewindow at 10:59 AM on December 4, 2015
Heh.
A few months back I did a disc for a title called War Demons*. At nearly the last minute before replication, Wal-Mart refused to stock the title, saying they wouldn't sell a disc that referenced demons in the title because of the static they'd get from Bible Belt customers. This is a major fuckup, because Wal-Mart is something like 90% of our client's retail sell-through, and Wal-Mart not selling the title basically means the acquisition and marketing costs of a title are a complete loss. So our designers hurriedly changed the key art and edited the feature and trailer masters.
The film is now in stores and streaming as A-Squad.
*film names changed to protect the innocent.
posted by infinitewindow at 10:59 AM on December 4, 2015
*film names changed to protect the innocent.
But you didn't change Wal-Mart's na-
oh never mind.
posted by phearlez at 1:32 PM on December 4, 2015 [4 favorites]
But you didn't change Wal-Mart's na-
oh never mind.
posted by phearlez at 1:32 PM on December 4, 2015 [4 favorites]
They still have tons of video rental places where I live, and I don't really get the hate for them here. On MeFi I often hear people talking about some movie from 5 or 10 or 20 or 30 years ago that I've never seen. I check my local non-indie video store's website and see if they have it in stock. 95% of the time the answer is "yes" (perhaps partially because I'm not big into indie film). The next time I'm near the video store, I drop in and rent it.
Compare this to about a month ago, when Netflix opened here. "Oh, awesome, this is that service that was so good it made America shut down all its video stores! I gotta check this out!" First month free, no less! So I go and check for some movie I'd wanted to watch. Not on Netflix. Okay, another movie. Not on Netflix. Okay, how about...? Not on Netflix. Not on Netflix not on Netflix not on Netflix. And I'm not talking Cocteau or Dogme or the like, I'm talking stuff like "Superbad". So then I'm flipping through just to see if there's a movie I might be interested in.
What? Fuck that! That's what people here are describing as the problem with physical stores. At a physical store I can actually get a movie I want to watch. On Netflix it's more like flipping through the TV channels to find the least boring show.
posted by Bugbread at 3:07 AM on December 6, 2015 [3 favorites]
Compare this to about a month ago, when Netflix opened here. "Oh, awesome, this is that service that was so good it made America shut down all its video stores! I gotta check this out!" First month free, no less! So I go and check for some movie I'd wanted to watch. Not on Netflix. Okay, another movie. Not on Netflix. Okay, how about...? Not on Netflix. Not on Netflix not on Netflix not on Netflix. And I'm not talking Cocteau or Dogme or the like, I'm talking stuff like "Superbad". So then I'm flipping through just to see if there's a movie I might be interested in.
What? Fuck that! That's what people here are describing as the problem with physical stores. At a physical store I can actually get a movie I want to watch. On Netflix it's more like flipping through the TV channels to find the least boring show.
posted by Bugbread at 3:07 AM on December 6, 2015 [3 favorites]
There's a whole bunch of the Criterion Collection on Hulu, just as an example.
There's Criterion Collection on Hulu that they can't manufacturer new discs for even (lost the physical rights, still have the digital rights).
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 6:06 AM on December 6, 2015
There's Criterion Collection on Hulu that they can't manufacturer new discs for even (lost the physical rights, still have the digital rights).
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 6:06 AM on December 6, 2015
"Not on Netflix. Okay, another movie. Not on Netflix. Okay, how about...? Not on Netflix. Not on Netflix not on Netflix not on Netflix."
I don't use Netflix for movies, for the most part, and so I don't rely upon them for availability. For that matter, I still don't rely on any online streaming (or download) service for movies. These days, I, um, get them other ways.
It's true that just being able to instantly watch stuff online from Netflix or Amazon or iTunes or a cable provider's on-demand service is very convenient. But I do think there's a problem with availability. Netflix theoretically could have most anything available online, but the reality is that the licensing stuff is complicated and changes all the time so not only don't they have a lot of stuff, but they might have it last month or next month, but not today. BTW, the availability of stuff on Netflix varies hugely internationally.
All that aside, my benchmark for availability as compared to video rental stores is Netflix's original mail service. From around 1998 through 2004, I bought about three-hundred DVDs from Amazon. But for a long time I also rented DVDs from Netflix. And between buying DVDs from Amazon and renting them from Netflix through the mail, there was basically nothing that I couldn't find. For a long time, that was Netflix's real benefit -- that you could get stuff in a couple of days that you'd probably not find at your local video store. And if you used a queue, then the waiting wasn't really a problem. That period of Netflix's growth hurt the video rental stores because pretty much none of them could compete with that.
And then as their customers switched to streaming and then all the other online, streaming services came about, most people want the most popular titles and so availability isn't a problem for most people, most of the time. It is a problem for those of us in a world without video rental stores and without Netflix mail option. I dropped mine years ago when they changed the pricing structure.
Which is to say that the complaint about availability of titles online is a problem, but it's not that the majority of video rental stores were better. And there was a time during Netflix's mailed DVDs heyday when local stores looked especially bad in comparison.
The online availability problem isn't technological, at least as far as the storage and delivery infrastructure is concerned. For older, more obscure titles, it's a bit of technological/labor problem to get them converted to the appropriate formats. But the real issue right now are the legal copyright and licensing issues (regional and time-limited) for streaming and other online digital content -- those are what's getting in the way of someone like Netflix having pretty much any movie made available for you to watch. I think that this will eventually get sorted out. Well, maybe.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 7:54 AM on December 6, 2015 [1 favorite]
I don't use Netflix for movies, for the most part, and so I don't rely upon them for availability. For that matter, I still don't rely on any online streaming (or download) service for movies. These days, I, um, get them other ways.
It's true that just being able to instantly watch stuff online from Netflix or Amazon or iTunes or a cable provider's on-demand service is very convenient. But I do think there's a problem with availability. Netflix theoretically could have most anything available online, but the reality is that the licensing stuff is complicated and changes all the time so not only don't they have a lot of stuff, but they might have it last month or next month, but not today. BTW, the availability of stuff on Netflix varies hugely internationally.
All that aside, my benchmark for availability as compared to video rental stores is Netflix's original mail service. From around 1998 through 2004, I bought about three-hundred DVDs from Amazon. But for a long time I also rented DVDs from Netflix. And between buying DVDs from Amazon and renting them from Netflix through the mail, there was basically nothing that I couldn't find. For a long time, that was Netflix's real benefit -- that you could get stuff in a couple of days that you'd probably not find at your local video store. And if you used a queue, then the waiting wasn't really a problem. That period of Netflix's growth hurt the video rental stores because pretty much none of them could compete with that.
And then as their customers switched to streaming and then all the other online, streaming services came about, most people want the most popular titles and so availability isn't a problem for most people, most of the time. It is a problem for those of us in a world without video rental stores and without Netflix mail option. I dropped mine years ago when they changed the pricing structure.
Which is to say that the complaint about availability of titles online is a problem, but it's not that the majority of video rental stores were better. And there was a time during Netflix's mailed DVDs heyday when local stores looked especially bad in comparison.
The online availability problem isn't technological, at least as far as the storage and delivery infrastructure is concerned. For older, more obscure titles, it's a bit of technological/labor problem to get them converted to the appropriate formats. But the real issue right now are the legal copyright and licensing issues (regional and time-limited) for streaming and other online digital content -- those are what's getting in the way of someone like Netflix having pretty much any movie made available for you to watch. I think that this will eventually get sorted out. Well, maybe.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 7:54 AM on December 6, 2015 [1 favorite]
« Older Сказал себе я: брось писать, - но руки сами... | Horror Victorianorum Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
posted by 4th number at 6:01 PM on December 2, 2015 [17 favorites]