Christmas Eve At The Video Store!

I used to rush down there as early as possible for the Christmas Eve deal. It was 4 discs for £5, and you could keep them for 3 nights. The big titles would go first. And then the Christmas classics were gone. You'd scramble around for the perfect films to fit your mood. 

The place was rammed. The best part was the conversations, the banter. It was the place to be. 

They knew me from when I was a kid, so I got preferential treatment. They'd keep videos behind for me, let me take extra ones. It was about community back when things were about community. That was always  why people loved the video store. You could get away from your parents or your wife or your kids and go into a place where what mattered was THE MOVIES.

And it was right at the end of your road. Seems crazy now; to think that you could just walk down the street and then spend two hours talking to someone about Al Pacino or Jack Lemmon or Jean-Luc Godard. 

I was desperate for a job there. I begged and begged. 

And then one day it happened. 

Tuesday nights were my domain. And this was after video stores were dead. My nights were the only profitable ones. Not by a big margin, but enough. I recommended the right blockbusters to the blockbuster crowd and the best alternative films to those who were looking to see something unique. But it was dying and gone and by this time we were all looking towards the internet, DVD rentals and everything else. 

People think it's all about technology but it isn't, it's about people. Sure, the Kindle will take over everything but there's nothing magical about passing books electronically through the generations. It's the actual physical books that hold magic. The video store was about the community. That's why our store lived as long as it did, people went there to connect, to speak to someone who valued the cinema over whatever junk was on TV. No-one got kicked out, no-one was forced to buy. We were genuinely happy just to chat. 

I guess that's why the video stores died. They refused to change. Very rarely did you find a business savvy independent video store, they were too invested in the people. Video stores were the coffee houses of the 80's and 90's. The difference being the drinks were films, not coffee beans; and the staff actually remembered your name. 

I wasn't working on Christmas eve; but I went down there and did it for free anyway. And even though the business model was dead, its future gone; we rocked it on Christmas eve. Everyone in town and further out knew about it. 

Sometimes, for the briefest of moments, you're able to convince yourself that magic can live forever. But it can't. You gotta hold onto it when it happens because before long everyone has changed and the thing you love about it is gone. The video store is something that our children will never know about. There'll be new ways of experiencing things, but even those will change. I was just getting used to the thrill of discs dropping onto my doormat, and now they want me to stream everything. Technically things are improving, but I miss the people. Sometimes we'd stand there for three hours, amongst the DVDs, drinking tea and talking about life and movies and whatever else. 

And now it's a Chinese takeaway place. 

That thing we loved is gone and exists only in our memories. 

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Cinema Memories

I was in Florida, and the weather sucked, so we went to see a movie. We loved it. We were both blown away by the brilliance of 'Spanglish' (We must've been high or something).

My friend Kev had never been abroad before. We took a trip to Denmark. We spent all our money on day one; by eating steak that was more expensive than our flights. Then I got ill. And Denmark is cold. So we stayed indoors... in the cinema. Kev didn't get to see much of Copenhagen but I got to see a lot of movies.

A girl who had the misfortune of being my girlfriend back in the day was treated by me to a romantic first kiss.. during a Michael Moore documentary. Isn't that what every woman dreams of? Looking back, it was probably the highlight of our relationship.

I saw 'This Is It' in New York with a woman I'd met only days before. We got pretty close, as humans often do, but now we're an ocean apart and Facebook is all we have.

I found a cinema in 'Sicily' which was just like Cinema Paradiso. It was magical, at least until the movie started, because watching 'Bridge To Terabithia' dubbed in Italian sucks.

And years ago it was just me, Abdul and Trev in the cinema. We sat in the front row, in fact, we sat on the floor, leaning back on our chairs, and we stared up at the screen and thought 'Spun' was the craziest film we'd seen in years.

And I walked out of 'Gothika' because it was awful. And 'Love In The Afternoon' was ruined a few months ago because I was stuck sitting next to the heaviest breather of all time. And I saw 'Juno' five times and I saw 'Lost In Translation' seven times.

And Jodie was the prettiest girl of my teenage years and we went to a movie but I didn't share my popcorn and I ate all of her big-bag-of-maltesers and after that she preferred James, which sucked because all he had going for him was everything.

And I remember seeing 'Elizabethtown' and thinking it was the best film ever, which it isn't; and i remember thinking 'Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang' was the most hilarious thing of all time, which it probably is.

And those are the ones that come to mind now, but there'll be others.

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