Blockbuster: A Requiem

Today, the news broke that Blockbuster was entering bankruptcy.  The word came as an anti-climax of sorts; there's been an inevitability to this for some time.

I'm sure there will be plenty of analysis now that the shoe has finally dropped.  For me, this is a sad day.

There are two major influences on my movie sensibilities.  The first was my mother.  The second was my employment at Blockbuster.

I'll save a discussion of the former for later.  As for the chain store's influence on me, I worked in the mid-1990s as an employee and manager at the chain as I went to graduate school.  The store acted as my own personal film history school and I had a dozen or more teachers.  Employees and customers would engage in passionate debates about the state of horror movies or which Dracula was best.

The "instructor" who stood out most in my head is Bob.  Bob was unique in a store full of videotapes in that he had a laserdisc player.  For those unfamiliar with these, imagine getting a DVD the size of record and you can picture a laserdisc.  Our store was the only one in the area that stocked laserdiscs and so we had a more informed clientele.

Bob was an employee, but his respect for you was predicated upon your knowledge of movies.  When I first started working there, we discussed Godzilla movies and I gushed about Mothra.  Needless to say, we got along famously.

When I started working there, I thought I knew movies.  Bob quickly schooled me.  He found out I liked Kevin Spacey in The Usual Suspects and Seven, so he gave me a copy of Glengarry Glen Ross.  He was incredulous that I had never seen Taxi Driver, Citizen Kane or Raging Bull and helped me correct these  oversights.  He introduced me to foreign films like the supremely bizarre but incredibly awesome Aguirre, the Wrath of God.  People think Nicolas Cage does crazy well?  Check out Klaus Kinski in that movie.

If Bob was the dean of our little institution, there were plenty of associate professors.  I remember Matt shoving a copy of Shallow Grave into my hands and insisting I watch it.  That of course was an early film by Danny Boyle who would win an Oscar for Slumdog Millionaire.  Another employee told me if I loved Evil Dead, I had to watch Dead Alive.  That director would move on to make the Lord of the Rings trilogy.  My colleagues brought me in on the ground floor of some of the best talent the film industry has produced in the last twenty years.

Anyone who reads my posts here knows I use NetFlix.  Why?  They have a better selection than any Blockbuster I could walk into (particularly when you are looking at 1915 movies).  However, Blockbuster maintains two advantages over NetFlix that are undervalued.  The first is instant gratification.  Yes, RedBox has this, plus convenience.  But I cannot go to my grocery store and rent Ghostbusters from a kiosk.  I can go to a Blockbuster and pick up a classic like that.

The other advantage of Blockbuster is what I experienced above: conversation, dialogue, tradition.  People don't strike up a conversation about what's worth watching at a RedBox.  The reviews and comments on NetFlix are not dialogue.  I am who I am as a film goer because of those experiences.  And the last real chance for people to get those experiences went bankrupt today.

Blockbuster will emerge, but will never be the familiar face we recognize.  It will ape NetFlix online and copy RedBox kiosks.  It will continue on life support because the studios don't want to pull the plug on the patient.  Better to have it limp along as a competitor than have RedBox and NetFlix as the only games in town.

Yes, I realize the chain store is a dinosaur.  Yes, I get that 99 percent of people renting a movie are content with the RedBox new release or the two day waiting period from NetFlix.  And, I understand (and long for) the day when streaming into our homes is the rule, not the exception.

Still, I need to exercise a moment of regret at yet another blow against the idea that movies are communal experiences, meant to be shared and discussed.  The very existence of this blog can trace its existence back to an idea that is now literally bankrupt.

And with that, I'll sign off and see what's in my NetFlix Watch Instantly queue.