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.
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.
00:40Just as a kid, my brother and I would go to the video store and, you know, we'd rent a tape, you know, once a week or so.
00:47And I just, I don't know, I was always fascinated by the video store.
00:50Something about walking into a place and maybe it was like a window in an other world.
00:54What's that werewolf movie with E.T.'s mom in it?
00:57The howling horror straight ahead.
00:58My feelings initially with opening the store, it wasn't so much that I was nervous as much as I was ready for a fight, if that makes sense.
01:06Because I thought, oh, so many people are going to be naysayers.
01:09So many people are going to come at me saying, you can't do this. Everything is streaming.
01:14Video stores died 10 years ago. And everybody I sort of came up against agreed.
01:21Come 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.
01:39Probably a little more. DVDs, Blu-rays, 4K Blu-rays. And then for tapes, there are probably about, I don't know, 1,200 tapes at any given moment.
01:50But I go, like I went on Sunday to pick up like 600 tapes.
01:54You know, every week I probably get several hundred tapes.
01:57And so they move. We go through tapes like crazy.
02:00So it's an ever evolving stock. And that's what I wanted too at the video stores.
02:05I wanted it to be like dynamic. I wanted you to come in and it was different every time.
02:09So it's all by genre. I mean, it starts with formats. It's like Blu-ray and 4K.
02:13And then there's DVDs, Hollywood comedy and like kind of action comedies and workplace comedies and romantic comedies.
02:22And I think comedy is the most like ubiquitous. Like it's like there's so many types of comedies, you know.
02:29Most of the customers, I would say, are probably about millennial, you know, sort of 30s to 40s.
02:34Because like me, we remember going to the video store and so much of the attraction, I think, is people coming in here and socializing.
02:42Not just with me, but with other customers.
02:44And, you know, it's interesting how the common denominator being movies, of course, it's pretty easy to talk to people in here.
02:50And so I think that that's a big attraction.
02:52I also get a lot of high school age, you know, kids, even younger, that, you know, either their parents are trying to tell them,
02:59Oh, this is what we used to do on a Friday night or, you know, I used to work at a video store or just this is what a video store is kind of a thing.
03:06So 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 mockumentary 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.
03:29I grew up on a farm, basically.
03:32And so I saw a lot of parallels to the kind of 90s aesthetic and the awkwardness, the moon boots, all that stuff.
03:39That was me.
03:46Who are you?
03:47I'm the founder.
03:48So we do have some of my great grandfather's films.
03:51A few are in the Criterion Collection.
03:52There's The River right here and when I was growing up, we watched this the most.
03:56Like, we'd watch it with my family.
03:58It's a really good movie.
03:591951.
04:00It's an American production, but he shot in India.
04:03It's good drama, good, you know, based on a true story.
04:06And there's a cobra in it.
04:08So that was fun.
04:09VCRs.
04:10We do sell them and we sell out all the time.
04:13Even right now, I don't have any for sale.
04:14I 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.
04:19Or they want to have like a 90s party or 80s party and they just want to have tapes playing in the background.
04:24So I sell a lot of VCRs, but also rent them out.
04:27But then with DVDs and Blu-rays and 4K Blu-rays, most people have a 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 forgot that this is all viable.
04:46This still works.
04:47All the stuff still works.
04:48Like it's incredible.
04:49It was built to last.
04:50Most people my age or about that would remember going to Blockbuster and you go look on the walls and there would be the VHS cover, you know, in front like this.
05:01And you would hope that they had in stock one behind.
05:05So that's what this is.
05:07It's the old stock rental cases from Blockbuster.
05:11And when they switched over to DVD, they were selling these for a while and then they just decided they'd just throw them away basically.
05:17So I've talked to customers who, yeah, went through dumpsters to pick these things up.
05:22And it's funny because now these are really rare.
05:25So for the most part, I keep them.
05:27I just kind of pile them here because this is kind of like our homage to the 80s and 90s, like living room, you know, where you had just things piled up and your rentals were just kind of strewn around or whatever.
05:40And so I sell these on occasion.
05:43But for the most part, I just I like having them in here as like a weird sort of shrine, but also kind of like, you know, it's like a graveyard, you know, all these old corporate video stores that are no longer with us have now resided inside of a small mom and pop video store.
06:03So it's the circle of life, I guess.
06:09The thing that surprised me the most about owning the store is definitely the community support.
06:14I really didn't expect people to just come in and and not just not just donate things, but but to come in and and be so grateful.
06:24Like people thank me all the time.
06:26People say, oh, wow, you should have a tip jar.
06:29You know, this is like a museum.
06:31You should take donations, you know, that kind of thing.
06:33And it's funny because it's like, well, that's just it's like a continuance of like what I wanted, which was like just to be around this stuff.
06:42The community definitely has been the most surprising thing.
06:59And it's probably the most surprising thing.
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