Why We Need Video Stores

About a year ago, my wife and I traveled the U.S. to visit different physical media stores including WeLuvVideo in Austin, Movie Madness in Portland, and even the last Blockbuster Video in Bend. We were filming a documentary which is still available to watch, but I remember very well when we were at our first stop at WeLuvVideo, and my wife said to me, “There needs to be more of these, and we should do this someday.” While we were there, we met the clerks and many of the members of WeLuvVideo as they browsed for their newest rental, engaged and caught up with one another, and attended a community film screening of Shock Treatment in the store’s “microcinema.” The amount of fun, wonder, and community we experienced in just a few hours at that store brought us to a realization. This digital age of streaming which has worked to kill physical media and the video store has stolen away from us much more than a nostalgic reminder of our youth. It's taken away a key component of our culture and divided a community based around shared love for story and meaning in movies… Let me explain.

For me, movies have always been more akin to a religious experience than simple distraction content or a necessary evil to feed a dopamine addiction. As a kid, I saw them as a lifeline - giving me hope in dark times, providing a laugh when nothing felt funny about my life, and if nothing else, leaving me with a meaningful or silly line to carry with me in my pocket for a rainy day. Now, years later, as an adult and a licensed therapist, I see them as a vital part of our sanity - with the empathy that we all learn best through story, with the catharsis of crying, laughing, or mourning along to a story that reflects our own life events, and perhaps most importantly, with the relationships and community that movies can provide through theater screenings, film festivals, and what used to be most common - the video store.

If Hollywood was our Vatican City, then the video store was our local church parish. Video stores like Blockbuster, Hollywood Video, or whatever local store you frequented used to provide so much more than movies. They were a place to spend time, get out of your house once in a while, and interact with real people. It was with the movie buffs at the video store where you learned that 12 Angry Men was shot in 21 days, or that Ben Affleck and Matt Damon were extras in Field of Dreams before they got famous, or that Tobey Maguire actually caught that tray of food in Spider-Man (after 156 takes). When you spoke with the clerks or even just fellow movie lovers at the store, you’d build friendships, engage with your community, and get recommendations based on human relationship and thoughtful interaction, instead of a cold Netflix algorithm that just feeds you the same kind of stuff you’ve already been watching over and over again. 

When we lost the video store, we lost a vitally important part of our community and culture. We lost our church. And along with it, we lost our connection to physical media. Physical media which came with a charming simplicity to it. If I came back from the video store with a disk, then I was committed to watching that film - instead of scrolling every streaming service for hours and watching the first few minutes of 9 different movies before giving up and going to bed. Physical media also made it less appealing to veg on the couch and binge 3 seasons of a TV show, mainly because every 3 episodes you have to switch to another disk and wait for another menu screen, which forces you to ask, “is it worth it?” If nothing else, you had to earn the binge, taking a trip to the video store for another season’s DVD. 

Without physical media OR physical stores we have become slaves to our dopamine addictions and now we remain cut off from the community that once grounded us. The constant streaming, binging, and social media addiction is just a desperate attempt to fill a community shaped hole where the video store used to be…

SO! That’s where CINEMANIACS comes in. We don’t want endless mindless podcasts, youtube videos, and streaming services slowly selling our brains into psychosis. Instead, as “cinemaniacs” we’ll choose to consume media in a slower way, a more thoughtful way. Right now, Cinemaniacs is only a small collection of just over one thousand films (Blu-Ray, DVD, & VHS) and a plan for future growth into a non-profit video store geared toward building community, preserving film history, and fostering more intentionality into our consumption. 

I will be using this blog to continuously document our process from small personal collection to large non-profit video collective, so be sure to join our mailing list and join us on the journey to making CINEMANIACS a reality! Our plan is to eventually create a kickstarter to raise money for the store (much closer to the store’s opening), thought we are currently working on creating designs for cool t-shirts and other merch which you can buy on the website to support the project. All of the profit from any of our merch will go directly into the store’s fund. We are also currently accepting Blu-Ray, DVD, and VHS donations to help build the collection. If you have some movies you don’t need anymore and would like to support us, reach out at cinemaniacsmovieclub@gmail.com. We are excited to partner with other local businesses and non-profits in many different creative ways, so don’t hesitate to send us an email!

Lastly, to see our full business proposal and to get a better idea of our vision for Cinemaniacs (such as the subscription model, popcorn shop, and microcinema) check out the “OUR MISSION” tab of our website cinemaniacs.org. Thank you guys for joining us as we see this potential community pillar into reality - I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship!

Here’s looking at you kid,

Jackson Taylor