XXX. The Lost Video Store Lament… by Robin Scher

Since 2021 I’ve had the same New Year’s Resolution — to watch more movies than the year before. It’s now a recurring resolution I have no plans to quit. I’m up to 86, which gives me a decent runway as the number grows in time. But I’ve started to wonder about the three decades prior to keeping count. How many movies have I watched in my life? Not that it matters, or is possible to calculate, but that hasn’t stopped me from trying.

I’ve devised a simple method using Letterboxd. For those unfamiliar, Letterboxd is an ‘online social cataloging service’ that allows users to share their pithy one-liners or exhaustive thoughts on what they’ve watched. It’s also useful for keeping track of films you’ve seen or aspire to see. And with its near encyclopedic database of entries, a handy tool for someone looking to track every picture they’ve consumed since about the age of three.

So now, when I’ve got time to kill, I head over to www.letterboxd.com to log films. I’m going decade by decade, scanning over the rows of posters and clicking on the eye logo when a familiar one appears, marking it as ‘watched’. It’s proving to be quite meditative, and I often lose myself in the task as I mentally register the titles, many of which I haven’t thought of in years. Often without even seeing the name of the film I’m able to recall its cover. If I think about why that is, and what it is about mindlessly scrolling lists of films that I find so appealing, I land on the same source: the hours of my youth spent browsing the aisles of my local Video Shop.

In what is now mostly the frozen food section of the Parktown North Woolies, it stood. I can’t recall the store’s name, but it had a hand-painted motif of London on the front window, a nod to its collection of BBC stock and foreign art house titles. The place was run by a Professor of English Literature named Stanley Peskin, or ‘Big Stan’ as I’d later call him on account of the coterie of young men helping him attend to the store.

It was at Big Stans that I first discovered my love for Monty Python, as well as vintage James Bonds. I’d go through phases where these franchises would be all I watched, making sure I clocked every title. I also had a penchant for dumb Hollywood comedies like The Three Amigos, Ace Ventura, or older Mel Brooks stuff. Young Frankenstein remains a perennial fave. Even if I knew what I was ultimately going to select, I’d still spend a solid 30 minutes browsing titles, testing my poor mother’s patience before inevitably picking a title I’d already watched several times before.

I think why I enjoyed loitering so much came down to the feeling of belonging I had standing amidst those somewhat dusty shelves. Nothing could replace a visit to the cinema itself, but this came close and offered a young nerd like me the chance to commune. Instead of wafers and wine, I had VHS. And while I might have only walked out with one, maybe two boxes, I left with a fuller feeling, having mentally filed away selections I’d watch later. Which brings me back to Letterboxd.

Looking through the rows of movies on that website offers a cheap thrill, a simulacrum if you will of those aisles of yore. In the same way as I was able to hunt down a choice, rent it and enjoy discovering its contents on the comfort of my couch in the time of the video cassette and later DVD, similarly now I can find just about anything I’d like to watch and, to varying degrees of legality and internet reliability, sit down to watch the flick of my choice.

To my younger self this would appear ideal. Getting to watch anything at anytime? Fuck yeah. I’ll admit to the convenience of it. There’s no denying that. But I do find, like the hollow sense I get browsing titles on a webpage, there’s something a bit empty about typing in a search, clicking on a link, and watching as moments later the MGM Lion roars, the white stars of Paramount fly across the screen — or worse, the dull echoing thud of the Netflix logo sounds. But why? What is it that I miss about the physical experience of acquiring a piece of media and pressing ▷ on a player?

Oh no, not another tired objection to digital media. An aging millennial misconstruing the carefree innocence of the 90s and early 2000s with a nostalgia for bygone technology. Sure, it’s true we’re seeing a massive resurgence in the popularity of vinyl, and it could be argued this reflects a mass desire to escape the existential dread of life in the early 21st century. But it’s not the only reason.

If I had to pin it down, I think it comes down to time. Before those eyes roll too deep into your sockets, let me explain. It’s no great insight that we live in an attention-deprived era, fueled by mass consumption and the bombardment of media courtesy of the many screens available to our person at any given time of the day. The effect, as we’re already all too aware, is that the act of focusing on anything — be it an open word doc, or episode of television — is at risk of constant interruption courtesy of a push notification, or worse still, the need for a small dopamine hit from checking likes on your last post. But, before I make this another screed against the corrosive effects of social media, let me bring it back to the video store.

It used to take a bit of effort to get the things you wanted. It meant our relationship to time was different. Perhaps we respected it more. Don’t get me wrong, the convenience economy is great, but it comes at a cost, and I suspect that toll is our quality of attention. Now, because anything and everything is available to us with a couple clicks, it becomes a bit more disposable. We watch with wanton abandon, fickle in our tastes and, I increasingly suspect, more easily manipulated by the invisible hand of the algorithm. As for what this means for movies, consider Zack Snyder’s recent Rebel Moon, a veritable Frankenstein’s monster of sci-fi tropes seemingly cooked in an executive suite.

I wouldn’t dare suggest great movies are not still being made. If anything, I’m championing for their credit by giving them their due attention. The problem is how? A visit to the cinema is still an option. Though for most it's impractical to catch every release at your nearest cineplex. Which leaves little option other than to stream, and that works perfectly fine, I guess. As a recent father, it’s also not a method of delivery I have much room to complain about. Yet, here I am, yearning for a now old ritual and the excitement that accompanied it.

I recently watched a film that speaks to this longing. A 2022 Canadian picture by director Chandler Levack, I Like Movies aptly captures the spirit of video store culture in what, at the time of its setting (early 2000s), was its dying days. A little younger than protagonist Lawrence Kweller, I could deeply relate to his character’s teen awkwardness. In him, I recognised a shared appreciation not only for the escape of movies, but what they present as an opportunity for connection, which in the oppressive social environment of high school, was an entry point into conversation and friendship.

At its best, this is what we lost when the Video Shops went away. Places like Big Stan’s was where I fostered my reverence for movies, and the world over, represented havens for aficionados to revel in their filmic geekdom. Now we have websites instead, and I can’t help but feel we’re a little poorer for that.