Video Store Owner Brings Analog Community to a Streaming World | THR Video - video Dailymotion

The Hollywood Reporter

While corporate video stores like Blockbuster and Hollywood Video are a thing of the past, one local video store is defying the streaming era. Meet Matthew Renoir, the great-grandson of famed director Jean Renoir who owns Be Kind Video, a thriving video store in Burbank, California that's fostered a community of film lovers young and old.

Transcript

00:00This is my favorite part. I love this.

00:10Just clean these.

00:25Hey, Hollywood Reporter. I'm Matthew Renoir. Welcome to Be Kind Video.

00:36The idea for Be Kind Video has been part of my DNA, I think, my whole life. Just as a

00:40kid, my brother and I would go to the video store and, you know, we'd rent a tape, you

00:45know, once a week or so. And I just, I don't know, I was always fascinated by the video

00:49store. Something about walking into a place and maybe it was like a window in an other

00:52world.

00:53What's that werewolf movie with E.T.'s mom in it?

00:56The Howling Horror, straight ahead.

00:58My feelings initially with opening the store, it wasn't so much that I was nervous as much

01:03as I was ready for a fight, if that makes sense, because I thought, oh, so many people are going

01:08to be naysayers. So many people are going to come at me saying, you can't do this. Everything

01:13is streaming. Video stores died 10 years ago. And everybody I sort of came up against agreed.

01:20Come on, guys. This is our time. Our last chance to see if there really is any rich stuff.

01:28In the store, we have, I would say, about 12,000 movies for rent. Probably a little more. DVDs,

01:40Blu-rays, 4K Blu-rays. And then for tapes, there are probably about, I don't know, 1,200

01:47tapes at any given moment. But I go, like I went on Sunday to pick up like 600 tapes. You

01:54know, every week I probably get several hundred tapes. And so they move. We go through tapes

01:59like crazy. So it's an ever evolving stock. And that's what I wanted to with the video

02:05stores. I wanted it to be like dynamic. I wanted you to come in and it was different

02:08every time. So it's all by genre. I mean, it starts with formats. It's like Blu-ray and

02:124K. And then there's DVDs, Hollywood comedy and like kind of action comedies and workplace

02:20comedies and romantic comedies. And I think, I think comedy is the most like ubiquitous.

02:25Like it's like, there's so many types of comedies, you know, most of the customers I would say

02:30are probably about millennial, you know, sort of thirties to forties, because like me, we

02:36remember going to the video store and so much of the attraction I think is people coming in

02:40here and socializing, not just with me, but with other customers. And you know, it's interesting

02:45how the common denominator being movies, of course, it's, it's pretty easy to talk to people

02:49in here. And so I think that that's a big attraction. I also get a lot of high school age, you know,

02:55kids, even younger, that, you know, either their parents are trying to tell them, oh, it's what we used to do

03:00on a Friday night, or, you know, I used to work at a video store, or just this is what a video

03:05story is, kind of a thing. So there's a lot of that. And then, and even older people as well.

03:10For me, a lot of my favorite movies are comedies. So to start, I'd say Drop Dead Gorgeous, which is a great

03:16mockumentary about a teen beauty pageant in Mount Rose, Minnesota.

03:20What? Oh, my God. Lights, camera, and me without a stitch of makeup on.

03:26Napoleon Dynamite, for me, is huge. I grew up on a farm, basically, and so I saw a lot of parallels

03:33to the kind of 90s aesthetic and the awkwardness, the moon boots, all that stuff. That was me.

03:40So we do have some of my great-grandfather's films. A few in the Criterion Collection. There's

03:52The River right here, and when I was growing up, we watched this the most. Like, we'd watch it with

03:57my family. It's a really good movie. 1951. It's an American production, but he shot in India. It's

04:03good drama, good, you know, based on a true story. And there's a Cobra in it, so that was

04:08fun. VCRs, we do sell them, and we sell out all the time. Even right now, I don't have

04:14any for sale. I have a few for rent, because a lot of people want to just digitize tapes.

04:17They want to just see what's on a tape, or they want to have, like, a 90s party or 80s

04:21party, and they just want to have tapes playing in the background. So I sell a lot of VCRs,

04:26but also rent them out. But then with DVDs and Blu-rays and 4K Blu-rays, most people have

04:32a PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, all that, you know, that will still play these.

04:37And I think, because we're all wooed away from physical media by streaming, and people sort of

04:44forgot that this is all viable. This still works. All the stuff still works. Like, it's incredible.

04:49It was built to last. Most people my age, or about that, would remember going to Blockbuster,

04:54and you go look on the walls, and there would be the VHS cover, you know, in front like this.

05:02And you would hope that they had in stock one behind. So that's what this is. It's the old

05:07stock rental cases from Blockbuster. And when they switched over to DVD, they were selling these

05:14for a while, and then they just decided they'd just throw them away, basically. So I've talked

05:18to customers who, yeah, went through dumpsters to pick these things up. And it's funny, because

05:23now these are really rare. So for the most part, I keep them. I just kind of pile them here,

05:28because this is kind of like our homage to the 80s and 90s, like, living room, you know,

05:35where you had just things piled up, and your rentals were just kind of strewn around or

05:39whatever. And so I sell these on occasion, but for the most part, I just, I like having

05:45them in here as like a weird sort of shrine, but also kind of like, you know, it's like a

05:53graveyard. You know, all these old corporate video stores that are no longer with us have

05:59now resided inside of a small mom-and-pop video store. So it's a circle of life, I guess.

06:09The thing that surprised me the most about owning the store is definitely the community support.

06:13I really didn't expect people to just come in and not just donate things, but to come in and be so

06:24grateful. Like people thank me all the time. People say, oh, wow, you should have a tip jar. You know,

06:29this is like a museum. You should take donations, you know, that kind of thing. And it's funny,

06:35because it's like, well, that's just, it's like a continuance of like what I wanted, which was like,

06:40just to be around this stuff. The community definitely has been the most surprising thing.

Video Store Owner Brings Analog Community to a Streaming World | THR Video

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