Comments on: BE KIND, REMEMBER — A Conversation Between Alex Ross Perry And Joe Martin About The Closing Of Reel Life South

By: Allan MacInnis

Allan MacInnis — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 10:31:00 +0000

Thanks for the massive amount of work you put into this article, it IS very moving and very true, and deeper and richer than my own two big pieces on the death of the video store, which you may want to look at anyhow, here: http://alienatedinvancouver.blogspot.ca/2011/04/rip-video-stores.html
and here:
http://alienatedinvancouver.blogspot.ca/2011/05/videomatica-is-closing-graham-peat.html

Bizarrely, in the suburban town where I live, there’s a guy who recently opened up his own video store, using his own collection. It’s not even a very big or (sorry) interesting collection: no Criterions, very few cult horror films, no classics, no noirs, no French New Wave or New German Cinema or what have you… however, with all the big box stores gone, as the only game in town (for people who actually value the “store” experience), he’s actually making a go of it; there are enough people coming in that he’s celebrating his first anniversary in a few weeks…

By: A Conversation With Alex Ross Perry (THE COLOR WHEEL) – Hammer to Nail

A Conversation With Alex Ross Perry (THE COLOR WHEEL) – Hammer to Nail — Fri, 18 May 2012 16:39:16 +0000

[…] and I ordered a pizza, and while it was being made we went to Reel Life—the video store I wrote about for you guys—rented Piranha 3D, and I hadn’t told her that I’d been rejected yet, because I didn’t feel […]

By: Sam Howson

Sam Howson — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 08:52:00 +0000

Is there not possibility of creating a website in which you continue to educate an audience/ customer (eg – a cult directors shelf)? The “democratic” Google or Amazon merely shows what’s popular not what is significant, important or moving. Netflix/ Lovefilm does not/ cannot educate it merely supplies.

By: Jim

Jim — Sat, 31 Mar 2012 20:46:00 +0000

I can confirm that labels big and small send spindles of discs to Netflix, no cases or artwork.

By: TrekBeatTK

TrekBeatTK — Sat, 31 Mar 2012 18:10:00 +0000

This makes me so sad. I agree with every single point made here about the glory of a video store, how Netflix has killed everything, how nothing needs to look better than DVD, how studios started getting cheap about the DVDs they put out, etc.

Sometimes I think that my dream job would be to run a video store, but then I think that if it’s just ultimately going to die, do I want to bother? The world we are moving towards of everything being wireless and streaming and brought to you on phones and stuff, I don’t want to live in that world. Remember that scene in Clerks when Randall falls to his knees at the glory of the selection at the bigger video store? That’s what I want. I want to spend hours walking around a video store looking at all the weird stuff and know that what I don’t take today I can come back and get later.

There are days when I read things like this and wonder why I don’t just kill myself. But surely if others like me feel the same way, there must be hope. …mustn’t there?

By: Samuel B. Prime

Samuel B. Prime — Sat, 31 Mar 2012 16:32:00 +0000

Truly moving, ARP. Growing up in a small midwestern town, I didn’t have access to the specialty video stores I could only dream about until much later in life (college, moving to Evanston/Chicago), but I exhaustively mined the local collections at the Family Video and Hollywood Video, the latter of which miraculously showcased both foreign and cult sections. I also had the great fortune to befriend a few likeminded folks nearly twice my age, filmmakers local to the region, whose personal libraries and recommendations proved an indispensable resource, serving as a cross-generational information exchange in celebration of the serendipitous joy of discovery. 200 Motels and Suspiria, to name only a very few, were among such early joyful VHS experiences. A world without such opportunity is dire.

By: Zack Carlson

Zack Carlson — Sat, 31 Mar 2012 07:49:00 +0000

Though I’ve never been a NY resident, I am a loyal supporter of video stores and this article crushed me beyond words. I’ve shared it with as many people as possible, and I strongly believed in both the writer’s and subject’s stance. This world needs to get fixed quick.

By: Michael Mohan

Michael Mohan — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 17:06:00 +0000

At the very least – the fact that websites such as Hammer to Nail exist – you are now functioning as the online voice of these passed video store clerks. Thank you for writing such a passionate piece – this genuinely moved me.

By: Michael Nordine

Michael Nordine — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 01:49:00 +0000

As someone whose cinephilia was greatly assisted by Netflix (I’m a latecomer/blu-ray-loving scum, I know), articles like these make me nostalgic for something I never really had. Rumsey Taylor, in a similar piece he wrote for Not Coming to a Theater Near You a few years back (http://notcoming.com/2007/rumz.php ), put it extremely well when he said that we “live in an age in which the availability of film has taken precedence over the opportunity to discover it.”

For the interested, here are some pretty indispensable VHS sites:

http://serialkillercalendar.com/serialkillercalendar/VHSWASTELAND/
http://www.bleedingskull.com/vhs/index.html
http://www.vhshitfest.com/
http://www.ghoulbasement.com/

By: Michael

Michael — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 18:09:00 +0000

Thanks for this great interview piece. As someone that has grown up in a small town that only had a Blockbuster and a Roger’s (Canadian media corporation) rental stores, I never knew the great experience conveyed in the writing here. Where I have found ways to see the titles not in ‘the book’ is through people I’ve met through the internet on forums and twitter. It can’t replace the experience of actually meeting people and actually browsing a store, but between that and searching through my local libraries, with their out of print titles, VHS selection (that doesn’t even come close to rivaling a curated collection, but at least exists) and titles that don’t drop out of circulation unless they’re scratched to death, I’ve in some way approximated the video store feeling. It isn’t quite the same, but hopefully as long as those people and those institutions remain, some small piece of that will continue to exist. Again, thanks. This topic is something that is often missing in conversations about film today, and I’m glad you wrote this piece, hard as it may have been to do.