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LOS Angeles is the capital of the film world, but it is about to lose one of its last great shops that rents movies: Vidiots in Santa Monica. I got to know this place about a decade ago, as well as a store made up of some of its alums, CineFile in West LA. A little later, I frequented Rocket Video, which closed a few years ago and leads a chapter of my book. In any case, not only were these stores urban spaces where people could gather to talk about obscure French New Wave or Hong Kong movies or ’30s gangster films or ’70s science fiction, they were placed that employed knowledgeable — almost scholarly — film lovers.
Vidiots was especially valuable for offering screenings and events with filmmakers.
This story from the LA Weekly — “I Went to UCLA, But My Real Film School Was Vidiots” hits it on the nose. (That’s almost as true for Quentin Tarantino.)
The store’s founders, Patty and Cathy (“the girls” as we all called them), were two of the nicest, most down to earth people I’d ever met. I liked the idea that two friends could start a business more or less out of love. It was the kind of store they wanted to rent from and it didn’t already exist (not nearby, anyway), so why not?
Like used bookstores and record shops (remember them?), independent video stores are many things — providers of jobs for those willing to trade low wages for cultural cachet, magnets for a certain kind of pop culture man child, sanctuaries for those who have made cinema their religion. For me Vidiots, which will close April 15 after 30 years, was like a clubhouse, one where customers came to talk about movies as often as they did to rent them.
The very fine WSJ film critic Joe Morganstern has also weighed in.
Vidiots is my local video shop in Santa Monica, but it’s the Alexandria library of video shops, a repository of 50,000 DVD’s and tapes, many of them rare and unavailable anywhere else, including the Internet. For the almost 20 years I’ve been reviewing movies for the Journal, I’ve cherished the shop, with its all-knowing staff, as an indispensable resource.
I am so tired of writing these obituaries. But it’s important that we mourn and remember when something valuable dies.
UPDATE: Vidiots saved! At least for now. Great news. If only all of these places had benefactors like this.
Yeah I just wrote an obituary myself for the American Dream lol… But yeah Vidiots was a cool spot… Sadly the Feng Shui in that area is really bad… Which I fear played a part in their demise…. As they say, location, location… Those who don’t change with the times get swept away… Thus is the nature of things… My buddy had the coffee shop next door which also went under which was totally an urban destination… it was called the flying Saucer, and pandered to my fellow conspiracy friends… Sad times, but what are you gonna do? Theres always a way to survive, but some people don’t want to accept the change that survival may require… Or perhaps it was best that they let go and moved on to another phase… ?? Whose to say Best A
Netflix became a better business model. I’m able to stream lots of English-language films here in Germany using Netflix. The standards of the German Netflix are far superior to the US version. Just watched, for example, Moonrise Kingdom, which I highly recommend. (It’s not available on the US or UK Netflix.)
So I’m wondering if Internet forums simply replaced the video store as a place where film could be intelligently discussed? Have both the methods of distribution and the means of creating community changed? Or will the loss of diversity in business formats inevitably reduce our cultural standards? Since there are any number of places on the web where we can intelligently discuss film, and since at least the postal version Netflix has an enormous library, why are retailers still relevant? It comes down to an interesting question: what is special about embodiment, the physical presence of people, as part of cultural exchange?
Can we say that rock music became a “better business model” than classical music, or Broadway “better” than opera? What is special about those old forms ?
Yes, those new forms became better business models, even though one could argue that the older forms were in many respects more sophisticated, complex, broader in meanings, and intelligent. In fact, it was exactly the simpler nature of the new forms that allowed them to more easily reach mass markets.
The analogy, however, is false. Video stores are a means of distribution, not an art form. The greater ease of distribution given to film via the Net might allow for more diversity and thus actually weaken the power of the studios and their often shallow cultural values. The superficiality of Hollywood corresponds directly to the superficiality of the music industry.
The loss of video stores and the move toward online distribution, and the forum it offers to independent film-makers, is actually a threat to Hollywood. In the same way, non-pop composers are now able to present their work to much wider publics via the web. Same for alternative pop groups outside the mainstream.
The plutocracy, of course, is unlikely to let this stand. It will eventually find ways to control the Net and exclude competition — if it hasn’t already. One method already underway is their efforts to obtain express lanes on the Net for their products.
But still, I’m really thinking about your comment. There truly is something special about those knowledgeable women down at the arty video store you speak about (and so often they seem so pretty and cool too!). Net communities will never replace the beauty and depth of being with people in person. As art and culture becomes more and more synthetic (digitally disembodied,) and less experienced live among a community of embodied people, will its quality fall?
The challenges are only beginning. Very soon the holographic world will begin. We will eventually live in a culture where psychical and digital realities become a unity completely intertwined in our experience and shaping of the world. See:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aThCr0PsyuA
“Megan Ellison Saves Santa Monica’s Vidiots From Closure”
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/megan-ellison-saves-santa-monicas-768735?utm_source=Twitter