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“Where nostalgia competes for the top spot.” 🏆
From the VHS aisles to the Saturday-morning toy shelves, The Sleepover Retro Countdown Show rewinds the analog past one list at a time. Hosts Rob and Guido—the retro archivists behind Sleepover Trading Co.—dig through decades of movies, music, toys, comics, commercials, and more to build definitive Top 10 countdowns celebrating the weird, wonderful, and occasionally warped corners of pop culture. Each week, they each bring five picks, debate their merits, and rank the results into one final “Sleepover Top Ten," and every episode is a time-traveling mixtape for VHS kids, mall rats, and midnight movie fans alike.
📼 Presented by Sleepover Trading Co. — be kind, rewind your childhood.
🔗 Follow: sleepovertrading.com | @SleepoverTrading
>> Guido: Welcome to the Sleepover Retro Countdown show, where nostalgia competes for the top spot, brought to you by the Sleepover Trading Company. Be kind and rewind your childhood.
>> Rob: In each episode, your hosts, Rob. That's me. And Guido. That's him. Bring five picks from deep within the analog archives. We're talking movies, comics, toys, commercials, whatever, and we're battling it out to build the ultimate top 10 list.
>> Guido: But today, we're doing something a little different. We've got something very special for this round of the Sleepover Retro Countdown show.
>> Rob: Yes, on this episode, it's an interview, a very special one, focused on memories of video stores, featuring the director, the writer, the producer, Alex Ross Perry.
>> Guido: Yeah, we are so lucky that we got to have this episode because Alex Ross Perry is indeed a director, a screenwriter, a producer who made his feature debut in 2009 with Impolex. And his 2018 film Her Smell starred Elisabeth Moss and Dan Stevens and it was named by the AV Club as one of their top 10 films of the year. And those last two years, he was quite busy with the ghost concert film right here, right now. Pavements, his experimental music biopic about pavement, and Video Heaven, which we're going to talk a lot about today, as well as a segment in 2025's VHS Halloween, which you and I both loved, I think we already talked about on our horror movie or Halloween podcast, one of those episodes.
>> Rob: And I talked about Alex's super busy years with him, so stay tuned. So he talks about working on all these different projects, some which timelines of literally over a decade and some had the timelines of two months. So there's a lot of different stuff happening. But before we hear my conversation with Alex, which we actually recorded live from the Sleepover Trading Company store in Catskill, New York. That's our first event like that, Guido.
>> Guido: Yes, it was very exciting.
>> Rob: Well, we're first going to count down some of our own top video store memories.
>> Guido: Yes. Because for anyone listening who's not familiar, Video Heaven is a three hour, nearly three hour film epic, broken into chapters, all about video stores, video store memories and video store depictions on film and TV.
>> Rob: Yeah, it's actually 180 clips taken from film and TV and some are the kind of things that a lot of us might know, famous things like Clerks and then there's super obscure movies like Disconnected and then there's just when a video store is just in the background and that's even included in there.
>> Guido: So there's training video and footage and all sorts of rarities and gems. And news footage and all the kind of stuff that we, and I'm sure our listeners love. So let's get into our countdown before we hear from Alex, because we have a few rules for today. Rule one, it's a memory. So it happened in the past. That's easy. Rule two, it took place in a video store, a place where you can rent videos. And this is an abbreviated episode because we want to get to your conversation with Alex. So it's just going to be us counting down our top three, each of our own top three memories of video stores. So who is starting?
>> Alex Ross Perry: You start.
>> Rob: Yeah. I'll kick us off. And this first memory's only come back to me pretty recently as we've been going through our own video store collection. But then suddenly was clear as day remembering these, which is the kind of uniformed clamshell boxes. And what I'm talking about is the specifically the Warner Brothers line that used this kind of uniform packaging. Because so much of what we think about video stores is that super uni art, especially with horror movies. But at the same time, I'm thinking of something like that Warner Brothers did, where everything was these clamshells. Everything looked the same. I think MGM had their own version of it. And you just never. I feel like you never saw them that much out in the wild. They must have been very much related or connected to video stores. Do you know what I mean? Can you. Can you picture these as well?
>> Guido: Yeah, I think they're mostly black. Right. And they're not quite like the Disney clamshells. They're a little different. They're mostly black. They have the really classic genre on them, which I think is what people replicate in custom VHS art a lot. And they have like, as you described, a uniform design and.
>> Rob: But different colors. Maybe a lime green on one, one might be a red, but it's all the same basic. And I think you're right. I think it's something that you've actually seen a lot come in the custom VH because it is such of a time.
>> Guido: Yeah. It's such a distinct look. And what's odd about it is how uniform they are. Like, it'll be the same box design for Cujo as it is for Mr.
>> Rob: Ayres Smith goes to Washington, minus the art. Everything else is basically the same.
>> Guido: It's like, very strange. You've got these contemporary horror movies, classic movies, romance, comedy. So it is an interesting.
>> Rob: And as we're discovering, too, when you're packaging these or putting them up on shelves, they Stand out because they're a lot bigger than the normal video store box. And we think of that, of course, with like the Disney movies, but it's different. Like, as you said, when it's just a random drama or a horror movie that's a quarter the size larger than everything else around it.
>> Guido: I'm sure that's part of why they did it. But of course, for collectors like me, it's very frustrating when you have, non uniform things. When one is slightly bigger than the other, it's like, oh, come on, wasn't.
>> Rob: That the thing when they had the Simpsons DVDs years ago and like, they shaped like Homer's head, but it didn't like, fit on the shelf with everything else?
>> Guido: Very frustrating. Very, very frustrating. All right, well, I'll say my first memory, Mine are a little less specific. The first one, my number three memory is I can remember the video store as a place where I got to walk around by myself a lot, even as a little kid. So obviously there were other examples of this. Particularly in the time I grew up, people weren't quite as concerned about losing their kid or anything. So. So like, I went to the comic store by myself a lot, all of that. But I remember, like, the video store was a place where I'd go with my family, like an older sister or a parent. But then as soon as we got there, like, I could go wander around on my own. They'd wander around on their own, we'd pick our movies and then we'd go check out. So that was a really fun experience. And then of course, we. Once I was old enough to drive and get to video stores further away on my own with friends, that was a whole other version of it. But I just always remember getting, getting to be a little bit independent in the video store and wandering. And that's a, that's a fun memory.
>> Rob: Yeah. We were lucky in that the second video store I went to when I was in middle school and high school, which is where my next two memories come from, was walkable to my house, walkable to the high school, so we didn't even have to drive. So you're totally right. It was something that made you suddenly feel like an adult. And right down the block was a Dunkin Donuts. So you'd get your vanilla culada for your walk home after going to the video store. And you could do all that without a car, without a parent. It was pretty glorious back then.
>> Guido: So what is your number two memory of those places?
>> Rob: Okay, so talk of the town Video, Allendale, NJ. My best friend Anders and I would rent all of our movies from there. And we always tried to find the weird stuff. It wasn't one of those video stores, I don't think that had some of those super obscure horror movies that you hear about. But one movie did had was Hobgoblins, which is kind of a Gremlins knockoff. But it's below Critters, it's below Ghoulies. And of course we got it thinking, oh yes, very schlocky, very, you know, little puppets, not animatronics puppets. And we got it thinking, okay, this is going to be a great fun horror movie. And we hated it. We thought it was one of the worst movies we ever have seen. Now of course, if I saw it today, I'd probably enjoy it for those exact same reasons. But what we did was when we returned, we even. And I wish I could remember exactly what we said, but we wrote a note saying how bad this movie was and put it in the VHS and.
>> Guido: Thought you were doing the, doing the world of justice.
>> Rob: Exactly. And for all I know, like it was taken out once they checked them to make sure the movie was in there. But who knows? Like the way the Clerks were, maybe they didn't even open up to see if it was.
>> Guido: Someone still has that known and remembers.
>> Rob: Someone could still have that note today. Yeah, I, I'm curious. What happened to it?
>> Guido: Well, my second memory is a little bit like yours. A little bit of kind of taking control and breaking the rules, I'd say. And it actually came back to me. We were recently on a radio show called Dim the Lights with Jenny and Amanda. And it's also in podcast form on Demand, so people can go listen to more of us on that fantastic movie radio show out of upstate New York. Dim the Lights. And I was reminded that I used to be a big bootlegger back in the day.
>> Rob: So you can't compare me putting a paper note in a vhs, varying bootlegs.
>> Guido: But you were trying to, you know, defy the system with your.
>> Rob: Yeah, mine wasn't come with an FBI warning.
>> Guido: But I used to do this a few ways. I mean, I had two VCRs set up and was big into duplicating tapes and found a lot of ways to, to do that and was pretty good at it from a young age. I don't even remember why or how, but I was. And. But the other thing that I would even do sometimes is I would take the label off of a tape and Put it on another tape so that I could have that movie. And it was, yeah, it, sounds horrible and it's against the law, but I was like seven or eight and so I forgive myself.
>> Rob: I'm surprised you were able to figure that out at that age, though. That's sophisticated.
>> Guido: I don't know how. Someone must have told me. I mean, it's pre Internet. Even so it's not like I went online to figure this out.
>> Rob: No, if you were 12 or 13 doing that, I go, okay, I get it. But like, eight is already.
>> Guido: Maybe I was 10. I mean, I don't really know. But I just remember also back at this time, this is the time when you couldn't really buy movies. They weren't selling them. They were selling them for $90 so that only video stores could buy them. So I remember things like Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. I remember the Bodyguard being one that I couldn't get. Dick Tracy, they weren't releasing and so, like, it just was so frustrating to me. And some of these, they wouldn't show on tv, so I couldn't record them. And, at a very early age, I wanted everything. And that's the hoarder I've become. So. All right, what is your number one video store memory before we get into our conversation with Alex?
>> Rob: Okay, number one is the movie Requiem 4 Dream. But specifically. So this was a movie that my friend, again, my friend Anderson and I really wanted to see, but we weren't allowed to see it because it was not rated or was actually rated NC17.
>> Alex Ross Perry: I would think so, yeah. No.
>> Rob: And was not playing anywhere in suburban New Jersey. It was playing in New York. And we would go to see some other movies in New York, but our parents did not allow us to go to Requiem Fortune, so we had to wait for it to come out on video because we really wanted to see it. We were really hyped up. And of course, like Talk of the Town, this video store, it was a small mom and pop, so they really just had one copy of it there. So it's probably a Friday afternoon and both of us being like the big nerds we are, we're like counting down to the end of the day to the weekend until we can m watch this movie all about drug addicts.
>> Alex Ross Perry: And.
>> Rob: And we, like raced there because our biggest fear was that someone else will have rented Requiem for Dream on a Friday at 3 o'.
>> Alex Ross Perry: Clock.
>> Rob: So, like, both of us bolted out of school, got there. Of course, luckily it was on the shelf and we, we rented it but that was the kind of excitement that you don't get, of course, with streaming today, where it's like, oh my God, I hope it's going to be there.
>> Guido: It's going to be there. Can I get it? Someone else get it? Yeah. How long do I have to wait? Yeah, it's like library books. I still know people who take books out of the library and they'll be like, oh, that one's on hold, or I'm waiting for that one. And it feels so, I don't know, folksy and old timey, but it's exactly what would happen at a store. So.
>> Alex Ross Perry: Yeah.
>> Rob: Well, what's your big number one?
>> Guido: My number one also came to me in our great conversation on Dim Lights. I was thinking about that collecting and hoarding, which you and I now both do and have created an entire life out of. And for me, one early signal and early start to it was the previously viewed video bin. So at the local Palmer Video store in Montclair, New Jersey, every week, probably more often, but every week there was this giant bin and they would just fill it with the new previously viewed movies, which of course was mostly the big titles, but sometimes smaller ones that they're cycling out. And they were, I don't even know, $1.99, $3, like they were so cheap. And again, you couldn't buy a lot of tapes. And so I just remember searching through that bin every single week and finding something, I'm sure every week and looking for the treasure that I was going to fall in love with and beginning to amass my collection of movies that has never stopped since then.
>> Rob: You see my, my video store again, same one I've been talking about. They had some new movies and out on DVD seals, but I don't remember them having a previously viewed either. I was so snobby and I only wanted like an actual new sealed version. Or they actually didn't have them.
>> Guido: Well, probably. I mean, granted used stuff still got sold, used DVDs and videos, but probably it started to go out of fashion as movies became more affordable. When you could buy a new movie for 1499, did it matter if you could buy a used one for 4.99? Quite as much.
>> Rob: And did you have a, particular find that you remember from the used bin?
>> Guido: I want to say Elvira was one that I did finally get from there. And so I owned a legit copy because I think I had previously bootlegged it. So Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, felt like a real treasure to pull out.
>> Rob: Of that bin that feels like one of those movies that probably they did have multiple copies when she was one of the most famous people in the world for a short time. But it was a time so after that they were like, okay, what are we doing with five copies of Misters of the Dark?
>> Guido: Yeah. so that is our lineup, our countdown of our memories of video stores. We want to hear all of your memories if you're listening or watching. So please put in the comments what you remember from your video store. Fondly. But let's get into your conversation with director, writer, video store activist, Alex Ross Perry.
>> Rob: Welcome to the Sleepover Training Company Retro Countdown show. Super excited to be joined today by Alex Ross Perry, director of Video Heaven. And I have some questions for you, Alex. Thanks for being here.
>> Alex Ross Perry: Thanks for having me.
>> Rob: So, of course, Video Heaven, all about video stores. So what was some of your earliest personal memories of video stores? What was your kind of go to video store growing up?
>> Alex Ross Perry: Well, the go to this is suburban Pennsylvania. and there's a commercial in Video Heaven of the chain West Coast Video. Oh, yeah, because that was it for a while. This is sort of in the late 80s, before blockbusters would have been the default west, Coast Video was a Philadelphia, New Jersey based chain.
>> Rob: Well, I'm from New Jersey, so we had a West Coast Video and they were the ones like, because I remember I rented Pink Flamingos from West Coast Video because they wouldn't have that at Blockbuster, but they did have it at West Coast.
>> Alex Ross Perry: Right. An unregulated. You know, it was a small chain but essentially mom and pop. And in my memory distinct because they were all bright red. The shelves were red, like red. you know, wood paneling and movie theater lighting. A shelf.
>> Rob: Oh yeah, yeah.
>> Alex Ross Perry: Would have, you know, golf ball sized. Yeah. Light bulbs on every shelf. So the whole store was like blinking and kind of magical. And a lot of the ones near me were also something else. One of them was a, cookie bakery and a West Coast Video. And then another one I think was an ice cream shop. And that west coast video was the local Ticketmaster outlet.
>> Rob: Oh yeah, yeah.
>> Alex Ross Perry: I also remember going there. This is pre Internet by far, six in the morning on a Saturday to line up for tickets to things. So West Coast Videos were kind of everywhere. And Movies Unlimited, which is also also a Philadelphia chain and I think kind of famously the first proper video chain, starting in like 79 maybe, which was all Philadelphia at the start. There was a bunch of those around and there was one of those in the shopping Complex where I got my haircut. So I would always go into the Movies Unlimited. And at that time I was going to Blockbusters because by now, in the early 90s, those were around. But then you go into Movies Unlimited and there's movies, they don't have a blockbuster. So it didn't really make sense anymore, to suddenly see like, oh, wait, there's. This is an entirely different thing. So those were kind of my three, you know, ages, like five to ten. And the library also. Yeah. Oh, yeah.
>> Rob: I mean, the library was big. It's almost like the other. The other video store for many of us was getting all that stuff from the library.
>> Alex Ross Perry: Now. It is for me now. Yeah. You know, down a little further south from here where I live, every library has a huge DVD selection. and they're all the same library system. So you can just get stuff across to your library if it's at another location at the time you want it. But, the kind of bigger library that's one town over is insane amount of DVDs. Every time I'm there, there's stuff I end up taking home. And, yeah, it's just a resource. So I'm kind of right back where I started.
>> Rob: And you worked in a video store. Because I know from 2005 to 2007, you worked at the iconic Kim's Video in the East Village. I probably rented from you because I lived in the East Village there and was there twice a week, usually renting from them. So can you tell us a little bit more about that experience, how that influenced Video Heaven? Because you have a segment and video having about the Clerks. And I think one of the things that people warned me when I started moving to the East Village was like, oh, the Clerks at Kim's, like, you gotta. They're gonna comment. I, no one ever even commented on a movie I rented. I don't think anyone recommended a movie to me. But there was this aura about the Clerks.
>> Alex Ross Perry: Yeah, yeah. I also worked in the Suncoast when I was in high school, which is my first actual job, which was all sales in a mall.
>> Rob: Oh, sure, sure. Yeah.
>> Alex Ross Perry: So that was distinct in its own way. mostly because I worked there during the introduction of dvd.
>> Rob: I think there's like, one still around in like, Ohio or something like that. Yeah, yeah.
>> Alex Ross Perry: Ah, could be mall in Florida.
>> Rob: Exactly.
>> Alex Ross Perry: You know, some mall somewhere has asuncus that you see pictures of every once in a while. The Kim state. I mean, you know, like the. The clerk conflict question. In promoting Video Heaven, Showing people this film. Film's three hours long. Roughly an hour of it is the clerk, examination. And of course, as we say in the film's text, for whatever reason, nine out of 10 scenes depicting the relationship between a clerk and a customer depict it as negative. They depict it as negative for one of two reasons, drama or comedy. I can't even tell you how many times since we've been screening this film. People say, you know, I went to video stores my whole life. Nothing in this film resembles my experience. Yeah, twice a week for 20 years, never had a bad moment. Where is that? Why isn't that. You have three hours of movie clips here. Where's that? And I say, no one, no one made a movie. Yeah, that's not dramatically or comedically worth putting in a movie. But that was my experience behind the counter. And as a customer. I worked at Kim's 40 hours a week, maybe twice a week. There would be some altercation, argument with a customer that would keep that reputation alive. But that's still like 39 and a half hours of absolute, mundane, pleasant, exploratory, educational interaction. And then Saturday night at 11 o', clock, some drunk person. Yeah. And you have 20 minutes of argument, and then it's packed because it's Saturday night. And then 40 people go out and they're like, I was in Kim's the other day and like, this clerk was just going off on this customer. And it really was a funny reputation that I don't know if other stores in the East Village had it. You know, there's obviously more likely to have someone come in and kind of be out of their mind and maybe fighting on St Mark's Place in the early 2000s than on Main street in Catskill. But, I think in the movie we kind of point at this and just say that, yeah, there was three CD stores on St. Mark's Sounds and Norman's. People probably aren't going in there and having fights because there's just too much material. And we say in the movie, like, movies are different. Taste about movies is different. And it brings out whatever feeling the people are reaching for. If someone's alone and depressed, they're coming into the video store looking for something. If someone's with a group of 10 friends, they're coming in and looking for a party movie. And people just bring different attitudes into the video store because they're not there to buy a CD that they're theoretically going to own for the rest of their life. They're there to select what the next Two hours of their life are going to be like. So it's a very immediate process. I think people come in, you know, a little wired, a little like. Yeah, ready to. Ready to go. But also. Yeah, it was just the location and the kind of.
>> Rob: Oh, yeah, well, there was that hotel right there. This. Get the hotel right there. Yeah. No idea.
>> Alex Ross Perry: One of the only things that survived on St. Mark's raised pizza in the same hotel.
>> Rob: And do you think it all. Obviously there were these huge macroeconomic things that happened. And of course you touched on a lot of that in Video Heaven. But do you think in some small way the negative depiction of the clerks in these movies, did that have any, even a small part in the downfall of the video store?
>> Alex Ross Perry: My theory or my thesis that I arrived at, six years into the 10 years I spent working on this movie, is that. That it. It was the reason. There is no other reason, in my opinion. I can't back this up with facts. But if you wrote your dissertation on something, you can't back it up with facts. Yeah, you just say, this is my. I've analyzed the material available to me and this is the thing I'm telling you. And that is how I feel about it. but I didn't know that to begin with. I knew when we started the process and read Daniel Herbert's book Video Land, I knew the state of the video store in American retail culture. I knew my role in that, but I didn't think too much about, well, what is the thing? What's the X factor? And then five, six, seven years into this process. So we started in 2014. So this is pandemic, really. 20, 20, 20 and 21. what was then remaining of stores has even gone further into decline by the time we're really digging in on the home stretch of the movie. But it just occurred to me, the more time I spent with the clips, that you could not make a three hour essay film entirely of scenes from films and television in a bookstore.
>> Rob: Yeah, yeah.
>> Alex Ross Perry: You could not make a three hour essay film entirely of scenes in a record store. and bookstores and record stores still exist. There's one everywhere. Yeah.
>> Rob: I mean, here on Catskill on Main street, there's a bookstore and record store. I mean, now there's video store because we're sitting in it. But.
>> Alex Ross Perry: But that is not on the other Main street. No, my channel. There's bookstore and a record store. Count over. My daughter goes to school, there's two bookstores in a record store. And I just thought to me it's very obvious that among other factors, primarily timing, technology, all the rest, I think video stores could have survived that music survived technology, music survived MP3s, Napster, the Internet, itunes, music survived all of that to the point that cassette tapes are now popular records. That's 15 years ago that the LP industry started crawling back. Now it's on the cassettes. But combined with the Internet, you weren't watching Must See TV and having Jerry and Elaine saying this CD stories a hellhole. Get out of here. Everyone here is a pain in the ass. I'm running into the last person I want to see. The guy behind the counter makes me want to leave. You just didn't do that with music stores in pop culture in the same way. So I arrived at my own conclusion from these 180 clips that the key difference between movies and the other forms of physical media or narrative storytelling like books and music is just that. We have 180 of these. And 140 of them color the experience of being in a video store as explicitly stressful, awkward, unpleasant or negative. Yeah, I know why that is. Again, it's dramatic and it's comedic. But I believe consciously or subconsciously this began to affect the mind of the average customer at exactly the same time that more options appear. And this to me was like the one two punch that eradicated spaces like this from every main street that bookstores skirted by.
>> Rob: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think especially damning in the film are the sitcom clips because they're probably because you had this finite amount of time that they had to get it out there, there especially, show it in a bad light. But how did you come about researching, finding these 180 clips and also the other research? Because for example, you determine in it that Body Double, a movie I love that was the first film depiction of video stores. So how did you discover that that was the case?
>> Alex Ross Perry: It's just time. Again, it was 10 years. The piece of material in Daniel Herbert's book that he cut out of his book that dealt with video stores on screen, was well researched. He was, was trying to put it in his book. That was his graduate dissertation. He cut it out of the book. But he had like 30, 40 key texts, including Body Double, but not citing it as the first one, just noting it. we started with that basically unfinished chapter. He still had his researcher, so she made a spreadsheet with more film title, the year, description of the scene, length of the scene, 40 seconds, primary location, you know, Clerks, incalculable You know, some of these movies have 30 minutes in a video store. So she just organized it for us, and we just kind of built it from there. You know, anytime someone says, where'd you find these clips? My answer is like, you have to say, which one? Like, which one do you mean? Yeah, everyone has a different story. 60 of them were found by Dan Herbert and his researcher. The other 120 have 120 different explanations of where they came from. Body Double just. Again, it was in dance writing, so it was a key text, along with some of the other highlight obvious ones, the ones everybody can cite. Watermelon Woman. Yeah.
>> Rob: but we've got. Actually, what's so fun was I was watching the documentary, and we have posters in this store for Videodrome, for video violence over there, and for remote control above your head. So the movies that get, like, a nice little bit in your movie, it's like, oh, my gosh, I got posters.
>> Alex Ross Perry: Yeah. Those just kind of speak to what a video story is meant to feel like.
>> Rob: Yeah.
>> Alex Ross Perry: A video store is meant to have a, poster that looks like remote control.
>> Rob: Yeah, totally.
>> Alex Ross Perry: Or a video drone poster. So those ones were more obvious than not when we found them. But something like Body Double. At some point in your. In our Google Doc, you're just thinking, like, yes, Video Drone was a year before Body Double, but it's not a retail space. It's about videotape as technology. We just kept saying, like, boy, it'd be really helpful for the narrative of. Of our piece if this was the first one. I hope we don't find. Hope we don't find something from one Year earlier that doesn't hold up, to make any sort of useful argument for us, I hope we don't find something that's just like a boring, crappy, worthless scene set in the store. Yeah. And then there are earlier ones, screen time, which I think is 82. So a few years old. Body Double, you see it briefly in the film, but, you know, we can. Body Double is the first Hollywood film.
>> Rob: Okay.
>> Alex Ross Perry: Yeah. Yeah.
>> Guido: Ah.
>> Alex Ross Perry: independent films got a few shots off first, but the fact that it's in a Hollywood film is a key distinction when you think about just how widely seen some of these were. The difference between an independent film, such as the, Gorman Bouchard movie Disconnected, which is the same.
>> Rob: I love Disconnected too. Yeah. Yeah.
>> Alex Ross Perry: A much lesser known film. Because Body Double is a studio film that's stars and famous director. These independent ones are just less well known. But this is the useful thing about these must see TV sitcoms is these were watched by 30, 40 million people. Friends was not a little scene show. Yeah, if they're making fun of the porn section on Friends. I mean, I watch Friends with my mom like that. You know, you're just right there. While the porn section is made of. Made a mockery of. That's, like, as. As prominent as anything can be. So it's just an interesting distinction. But Body Double held that title.
>> Rob: Yeah. Yeah. Well, have you seen. We've got the whole Video Visions collection. Not in a video store, but do you know Escapes?
>> Alex Ross Perry: No.
>> Rob: It's, anthology horror movie. And a guy gets a videotape in the mail. Hosted by Vincent Price.
>> Alex Ross Perry: And then it's.
>> Rob: You're. He's watching them all on a videotape, kind of proto vhs, which you've also been involved with. And then, of course, it ends with Vincent Price, like, sucking the guy into.
>> Alex Ross Perry: Yeah.
>> Rob: I don't know the movie. But I was thinking.
>> Alex Ross Perry: I mean, was this released theatrically, or is this.
>> Rob: No, not. No, not made for tv, I think, just. Just released directly to video. And Severin has done. Severin and Intervision have done it on dvd.
>> Alex Ross Perry: I don't know it at all.
>> Rob: But I was thinking, like, oh, it can't be in it because it's not an actual video story.
>> Alex Ross Perry: I'm sure if we found that, there would have been some attempt to include the tape kind of when we're talking about. But if that's 86, it's so long after Videodrome that, like, tapes are pretty common.
>> Rob: Yeah, totally.
>> Alex Ross Perry: Whereas by 83, they were fairly new. And.
>> Rob: And it's narrated by Maya Hawke. How did you get Maya involved? And I'm also wondering, did you. The first clip in it is Ethan Hawke. Hamlet. Was that always in there? Did you kind of rearrange the order once Maya got involved?
>> Alex Ross Perry: It was always that way, Dan.
>> Rob: Oh, really?
>> Alex Ross Perry: Unfinished Chapter started with I Am Legend and ended with Hamlet. And unbeknownst to me, somewhere in my years of writing and organizing and editing. I flipped them for reasons that I think were just obvious to me at the time. Specifically when I realized, oh, wait, Hamlet is 2000. So this is to the date that I'm doing this, probably 2021. directly in the middle of. What does we say in the film? It's about 22 years after video stores started and about 22 years ago. So it was a perfect film to start with. It, helps to start with famous face, recognizable fun pop imagery. Obviously, Most people's Association is a blockbuster. So you want to start in a blockbuster, if at all possible. then I put I am Legend at the end. So that was just the way it always was for three years of temp edits and a scratch VO narrated by the film's editor. And we just never knew with the editing, who. What the narration plan was. Various different plans over the years. Maybe each chapter is someone else, a different performance, you know, whatever anything was. Anything was in play. And then just somewhere along the line, I just had the idea that it should be Maya. apropos, of nothing, I'm sure. But of course, by that point, she was in the movie, which wasn't the case at first, because again, 2014, when we started this in 15, 16, when we were really getting these clips, there was no Stranger Things. When it started, she wasn't on it. And when it started, they didn't have the video store as a location. So just the sort of way that the world kept writing the movie with us. A show that is, I would say, probably seen by over 100 million people. Yeah, yeah. Features as a recurring location, a video story. So eventually it's like, well, we start the movie with her father this way, and she's now probably most people's main image when they think of a contemporary period piece, content of a video clerk. And then I just was like, yeah, so we should just ask her to do it. Yeah, makes sense. It's a long narration. You need a voice that.
>> Rob: Yeah, she's got such a great voice.
>> Alex Ross Perry: Carries you along and does a lot of heavy lifting with statistics, analysis, dense academic blocks of text. And. Yeah, it really just had to be perfect. And just as soon as I thought of her, I was like, oh, well, that's perfect.
>> Rob: Yeah. No, she sounds. She sounds great. And, yeah, it's fun to then see her on screen in the clips in Stranger Things as well.
>> Alex Ross Perry: Yeah. I've never seen a documentary where the person's voice stops and then you see a clip of them, and without addressing it, the movie just continues. I thought that was funny.
>> Rob: Yeah. In fact, I think you wouldn't if you're unfamiliar with Stranger Things, which there are a few people I guess, out there that are. That it's like, oh, you wouldn't even necessarily know that.
>> Alex Ross Perry: Yeah, maybe not. I mean, it's pretty recognizable voice, but, yeah, I thought that was funny. I've never seen that one.
>> Rob: I love that. And you mentioned just now, like, that most people, of course, associate video stores with Blockbuster. You went To a Blockbuster. I did. Everyone goes to a Blockbuster. But how do you feel about now? If you type in video store on Etsy, everything's going to come up Blockbuster. Everything's purple and yellow. You even reference it in your movie. There was the show about the last Blockbuster and there's a lot of written about the last Blockbuster. Ben, Oregon how do you feel that Blockbuster is still so synonymous with video stores rather than the more mom and pop experience?
>> Alex Ross Perry: I don't know. I mean that's really more cultural analysis and like what, what communal memory gives us than anything else. It makes sense. As we say there were 10,000 of them at one point. So it's just an obvious by force of number. What else are people going to think of? I'm sure if you go on that scene, you look up hamburgers, you'll.
>> Rob: See a lot of stuff. Yeah, sure.
>> Alex Ross Perry: It's just not, it's just not surprising the way that during my lifetime, specifically like the mid-90s onward as Ah, we show with the you've got mail clips, chains began to just sort of dominate people's retail identity. So it's not surprising why that is. and people have nostalgia for it because it stands in for everything. Yeah. and certainly, you know, if you're talking to someone who's 50, they don't feel that way. If you're talking to someone who's 35, blockbuster was it for them. It was a blockbuster that probably didn't have a single tape, but it was still an experience that they viewed as valid. even though that was, you know, we're talking like the 2000s DVD era of Blockbuster. So. Yeah, it just depends. I don't know. I mean, I don't think it's like a bad thing. I don't have the same anti blockbuster, sentiments that some people do just because like the hypocritical. I went there all the time. Yeah.
>> Rob: And me too. And I mean I was lucky enough growing up that there was the local mom and pop place that I could walk to that did have tapes a little later than Blockbuster had. Some of the more out of the box things. But then when you needed the new release that, you know, the mom and pop only have the one of the. You could go to the block, certainly.
>> Alex Ross Perry: And that was pretty much my, my strategy as well is I would get new movies at Blockbuster. But then ultimately I had abandoned it and all of my renting and education and catalog filling in was all at tla, which was much closer to my house anyway. Yeah. And there Was I think ultimately eight or ten. TLA is all in Philadelphia and then one, on 8th street in Greenwich Village. Cool. Which is, you know, TLA is where the Watermelon Woman is filmed.
>> Rob: Oh, yeah. Okay.
>> Alex Ross Perry: Okay. They distributed it as well. They were a large distributor of queer films. And the store in the Watermelon Woman, which I think is the, like, center, you know, like inner Philadelphia location, just, you know, they all look the same, same shelving, same design. That scene plays out in front of their Verhoeven section in the Watermelon Woman.
>> Rob: well, I want to talk a little bit about, like, your whole, your last two years, because in the last two years you've directed or co directed the ghost concert film right here, right now, Pavements, which actually showed at the Highway Drive in Catskill or one town over in Cooksackie this summer. Video Heaven, of course, and a segment in VH Halloween, which is fantastic. And I love that. There's also a tie in to Video Heaven there. So how do you feel about these jam packed two years? How does that selection of movies reflect you as a person, as a creator?
>> Alex Ross Perry: you know, it's better to be busy.
>> Rob: Yeah.
>> Alex Ross Perry: A lot of these, I mean, all four of those things you just said, are what one might call side projects. yeah, I mean, look, it sounds like a lot when you put it that way, but like, when we were working on video Heaven for 10 years.
>> Rob: Yeah, sure.
>> Alex Ross Perry: Happens to have been finished now, which, you know, is more interesting on paper than it was in practice. Just because I just edited it one night a week at my friend's house. It's not like there was a concentrated period of working on all these at the same time. The only reason that Pavements and Video Heaven ultimately were finished close together and Pavements took four years from start to finish. the only reason they were finished close together was, the Pandemic and the Hollywood Strikes. Okay.
>> Rob: Two.
>> Alex Ross Perry: Pavements as a movie was started because of the Pandemic, but the focus I was able to give both of those films during the strikes of 2023, was more than I ever would have had. You know, we were able to just. Normally I'd have to do other things, but suddenly for seven months, I could work on video having three days in a row, which I had never once done. So I was able to get what previously would have been like two years worth of work done in six months. Because I was suddenly like, work on Video Heaven for six hours. Yeah, I can just sit and work on the text Today and tomorrow instead of like, oh, I have actual work to do. And, Payments was the same. We were just really focused on the edit during those seven, eight months of the writers strike and the SAG strike. So those two projects, like, kind of just rushed ahead because of those factors. And the pandemic was a huge factor in Video Heaven, really. Going from a shambolic assortment of research and clips into a cohesive, rough, ah, cut that we then were able to edit weekly for four more years and get finished. you know, stuff like the ghost movie. Like that was 10 months from the day I first got a call about it to the day that it was in theater. So, like, I'm talking 10 years for one movie, 10 months for another. Like, you know, things just kind of happen at different paces.
>> Rob: And VHS must have a quick turnaround because they're pumping them out.
>> Alex Ross Perry: Yeah, yeah. And that just came up as another little, you know, my segment's 20 minutes. Yeah, like, it was,
>> Rob: I love it.
>> Alex Ross Perry: And I think this in my life.
>> Rob: As familiar with the Kid Print. But Guido, my husband and co founder, was like, right away, he remembered that instantly.
>> Alex Ross Perry: It really depends. Some people really remember those. Remember the eyes. They remember seeing the standees in Blockbuster. They had one made. I've talked to people who made them, the filmers. Plenty of people have sent me theirs.
>> Rob: Oh, that's interesting.
>> Alex Ross Perry: Yeah, but that mean I didn't, I didn't. I didn't really know about them.
>> Rob: Oh, really?
>> Alex Ross Perry: until we found that clip that's in video.
>> Rob: Yeah, yeah. John Wall Waltz, right? Yeah.
>> Alex Ross Perry: Having this speech. Ah, it's a commercial. And I just for years was like, that's interesting. So when VHS came up, they told me the theme. I was like, yeah, it sounds like a perfect idea.
>> Rob: I dare say you have the darkest of the ones in VHS Halloween.
>> Alex Ross Perry: Pretty. Pretty. Yeah. Safe opinion.
>> Rob: But, but you kind of need that because if everything was super dark, if everything was on the. There's some that are a little lighter, more comedic, like it would be off. You kind of need a little bit.
>> Alex Ross Perry: Of everything so that. Yeah, obviously in a literal way, Pavements and Video Heaven and Kid Print are all about media infrastructure and distribution during my lifetime.
>> Rob: Yeah, yeah.
>> Alex Ross Perry: That's the through line is that all three of those movies are about what it, what it took to get your hands on a piece of a physical object that you can hold and consume during the 90s. which is kind of the story of my story of my existence.
>> Rob: This makes me interested, like, with what is next to video, what is Next for Video Heaven. And I'm curious because the movie is so much about physical media, about these physical spaces. How do you feel about the movie streaming on a platform where it is, where it is, this new kind of media?
>> Alex Ross Perry: Yeah, it'll be streaming in the spring, at which point it will be 15 months since it premiered. And we could control that because it's just a small nonprofit distributing the film. And, and really just me and three other people who weigh in on things. And yeah, we just kind of thought, why not like, give it a year. Any festival that wants it, any cinema, any micro cinema, you know, you have it here in a theater, but if you had a screen in here and 12 seats, I'd still come and support it and we would still have booked it. We still, we would charge nothing or whatever. Yeah, whatever you make, give us 30% if you sell 15. You know, we just wanted it playing in stores or in places that cared about it. just because we could. And you can't always do that. So, yeah, the streaming should be fun. I mean, it's a long movie. I, I don't expect everybody to want to sit in the theater for three hours and watch it.
>> Rob: A few people came in tonight going like, yeah, how long is it? It was like, Then you told them. It was like, oh, okay, yeah, that's why we got pizza.
>> Alex Ross Perry: Yeah, those people, I, you know, check in on that because I, I don't want to say no one, but basically no one has said, I really felt that runtime.
>> Rob: No, I didn't feel it at all. No. I think because you have the chapter M structure, it doesn't feel like, oh, I'm just watching one continuous thing.
>> Alex Ross Perry: Well, it's also, as I keep saying, 180 clips and then about 30 commercials, news reports. So that's an average of like every 45 seconds. The syntax of what you're watching changes. That's not like watching a three hour movie. That's like flipping channels. Yeah.
>> Rob: And I'm sure everyone has this moment where you're going and like writing down the names because luckily I didn't know some of them was here. But I was watching the one, you know, the one that I wrote down. I remember when this came out, but I never watched. It was the clip from the Canyon situation there. And it was like, this is really like dark and sexy and I'm like, And then it was like, oh, Paul Schrader.
>> Alex Ross Perry: I didn't remember Paul Schrader.
>> Rob: Bret Easton Ellis, like, so I'm sure tons of people are just discovering these movies from watching these.
>> Alex Ross Perry: I hope so. I mean, that's what in success we love about a good essay film. Los Angeles Plays itself, of course, is solely the reason that Killer, of Sheep became a canonical film. No one had seen that movie until it was in Los Angeles Plays itself. And everyone who saw that documentary came away saying, what is that one, like independent, like black movie? That's like, I've never. It looks incredible. The Exiles is also in that film. No one had ever seen that movie until Tom Anderson put a spotlight on it. Now those are movies that are on Blu Ray, perfectly available. We don't have anything nearly that intriguing, but certainly people take a lot away. I mean, Disconnected is one that.
>> Rob: Well, and I mean, I have that on Blu Ray from Severin, I think put it out. and so when I saw that, I'm sure it's the same thing for like movie nerds too. If you see a movie, it's like, oh, I know that movie already. I'm excited. I'm in the know.
>> Alex Ross Perry: A lot of people say that that's one they want to check out.
>> Rob: Yeah, yeah.
>> Alex Ross Perry: And we don't even really show that that's a horror movie.
>> Rob: No, no, you don't. You can't even tell. It could just be like almost a mumble core.
>> Alex Ross Perry: Yeah.
>> Rob: kind of movie. Yeah, yeah, that is.
>> Alex Ross Perry: That is one that a lot of people say, I'd like to check that out now.
>> Rob: Yeah.
>> Alex Ross Perry: And yeah, it happens. It's good. I mean, that's part of it. But streaming, you know, people, when I send someone a link to it, I'm like, by the way, you know, watch this in two sittings or seven sittings. It's just, you know, I spent ten years on this. I. There's no preciousness about it. If it being accessible allows it to be seen by people and become a talked about, seen, understood, crucial essay, film and film history, then I don't care.
>> Rob: How people see it and wrap up in a second. But one of the things I wanted to ask was that you talk about this is even in the trailer for the film as well, that video stores only exist now in movies, but we are sitting here in a video store. Obviously you were continuing some work with Kim's, so I'm curious, why did you include that, knowing that there are. Yes, they're very rare, nearly extinct, but there are these video stores that are still out there.
>> Alex Ross Perry: Yeah, this comes up a lot. And I think this is, again, you work on something for 10 years and then within six months. Oh, I should have clarified that because I don't think. I mean, yes, you can take away from this three hour film. This is the history of video stores. it's not. It's the history of video stores told through fictional gates. What I mean is, as a space in shorthand pop culture and as a space in shorthand retail, they are gone.
>> Rob: Yes.
>> Alex Ross Perry: Yeah, that is undeniable. I am obviously aware that they exist, but as a. As a placeholder for public interaction. Yeah, they do not exist anymore at all. Even though we are sitting in one. they're specialized, and you will not see them in contemporary film fictionalized stories in any way other than, I suppose, the remote possibility that some esoteric, film or show creates a reason to go to one. But if even.
>> Rob: Well, if Stranger Things didn't do it, then that's the period, the period never.
>> Alex Ross Perry: Going away, that even Netflix, widely subscribed to, makes a show called Blockbuster, which is widely remembered. And that is an unmitigated failure and disaster. There is no contemporary future for this. Which is why these clips of things like we have of show, Yellowjackets, where there's sort of like a junk shop or like a retro nostalgia shop, and they have some tapes and they rent vcr. Like, that's. That's the contemporary state of video distribution on screen. So we do sort of seem like we are literally saying they're just gone. And the fact of the matter is, 99 out of 100 people would say that is true. Probably even, oh, yeah, more than that. Yeah, would say, yes, that is correct. Video stores are gone. I haven't laid my eyes on one in 20 years.
>> Rob: I have people come in here all the time, go, like, do people still have VCRs?
>> Alex Ross Perry: I think that, you can make that statement and you'll only be, criticized for it by people who have access to a video store. But all those people know that it's unusual they have access to a video store. this is an hour from me. It's the closest. Closest one. Yeah. Unless I go to the library. But, yeah, what we really mean is that this is not the film, is not saying, this is what video stores were, because, again, where are all the positive scenes? Where's all the good times? We don't have those in our film because they didn't exist in shows or movies. So we also don't have any acknowledgment of the state of the store today because those don't exist in shows or movies either. We're an essay film. We can only have a clip in the film if someone else made it. No one in 2024 is making, you know, a, new show where the characters, instead of getting coffee, go rent a movie.
>> Rob: Yeah, they could.
>> Alex Ross Perry: In L. A. There's five or six video stores in la. They could easily have that scene. Every single viewer of the show would say, what the hell is going on? What is happening? Why are these starting the video store even though everyone knows LA has a bunch of them? And the fact that people watching it would no longer say this makes perfect sense to me. I know the rules of the space. I know what that clerk stands for. I know the porn joke. That's how it was for 30 years now. People would say, what is happening? Yeah, what's going on? Or is no one going to address how strange this is? And because that's what we know, it sort of was just more dramatic and ultimately sadder and therefore more emotional to really lean into this being something that we can talk about in the past tense, but again, we're only talking about it in the past tense because it doesn't exist in films or shows anymore. Doesn't, not exist in the world. It just basically doesn't exist.
>> Rob: Yeah, no, that's a good point.
>> Alex Ross Perry: Thank you.
>> Rob: I think that makes a lot of sense. And yeah, I think it, I love the idea that you're talking about that it's not just an essay. It's not an essay about video stores, but video stores through media. And I think that really comes out, through the film.
>> Alex Ross Perry: Now, in retrospect, could I have added six sentences that clarified that? Probably, but I didn't know that until people started asking, because to me this was just so obvious the whole time we were working on a movie that obviously stores exist.
>> Rob: Well, maybe it's going to actually inspire people to then Google. Wait, are there still video stores?
>> Alex Ross Perry: Yeah, no. It's a fair point of contention that is sort of a miscommunication, but again, it just requires people to understand, like, I can only tell the story of the clips we have. And the clips we have are that for 30 years these were negative, unfulfilling, stressful places. Yeah. And now they're gone. That's the story. That's the story of video stores on screen.
>> Rob: Yeah. No, and, and even rescuing this video collection that we did, I mean, in its later years, I don't think it was being frequented that all, all that much. And, and that's what we're hoping to do is like, get it back out there. And actually revitalize it and make it fresh and make it new.
>> Alex Ross Perry: Of course. And that's possible and that's in play certainly for younger people who just obviously missed this or have seen it on Stranger Things and wish that they could get it on it. But in doing this movie's promotion and I'm confident, something that maybe was never there, people might want to build, but something that someone lost, they're never getting back.
>> Rob: Yes.
>> Alex Ross Perry: No.
>> Rob: One good point. Yeah.
>> Alex Ross Perry: Like I can't even tell you again, I'm talking about going to the library with my daughter and we're bringing home DVDs. She's grabbing some, I'm getting some. Every single time I've done this, whatever other parents were with act like I'm, you know, taking like a, like a scroll.
>> Rob: Yeah.
>> Alex Ross Perry: Like out of, of, you know, like an Indiana Jones, like you know, treasure chest. Because of course these people, you know, people are my age 40, 45, 50, they had VCRs, they had DVD players. They haven't had one in 10, 15 years. And it always kind of blows their mind that we have that technology.
>> Rob: Yeah.
>> Alex Ross Perry: It's not coming back for them. For people who never had it, it can come for them. Yeah. So it's an interesting distinction.
>> Rob: Well, I think that's one of the things that is my big piece because you were talking about record stores and I think the thing that's missing right now is the hardware. Because a lot of us, if you collected records 20 years ago, the only people that had records were like real audio files and older people because you were playing them on a record player that was from the 70s. Then once they started introducing those easy to access record players you could get at Walmart, then you saw the explosion. So I think that's one of the things that's lacking right now. I went to the Walmart here to go buy a Blu Ray player. They didn't even have a player, let alone obviously a VCR. You're, you're dealing with minimum 20 year old technology. So I think if some Sony or whoever starts to really put out especially obviously VCR being the most obvious, but even a DVD player or a Blu Ray player and getting them out more, I think you could see a return of some of this physical media. Do you think like the hardware is a big part of the issue?
>> Alex Ross Perry: I guess in a way I, I have a lot to say about this is neither here nor there. But I am, I am trying to figure this out. Yeah. for myself but because I've Gone.
>> Rob: Through like so many VCRs, even in the two months of having this store. And I'm like, gosh, if I had an unlimited amount of money, I think I would start a VCR plant. Because you've seen this now I can.
>> Alex Ross Perry: Tell you the exact price that would cost. I know that price to the dollar. yeah. I think that that is the missing thing. Yeah. And I can tell you exactly why that is and exactly what the, the pros and cons of that would be in the future. when I started buying records as a affected teenager, my parents thought it was crazy and I went to the salvation army. $5. 10 years later you could get them at urban outfitters for 75 bucks, brand new in a box.
>> Rob: And now like 15 years after that.
>> Alex Ross Perry: Yeah. You can get vinyl at Walmart.
>> Rob: Yeah.
>> Alex Ross Perry: So everything comes in phases. But the VCR thing is more complicated, I've learned, but also less complicated in other ways. more complicated because they actually stopped making them. Which wasn't true for record players.
>> Rob: Sure.
>> Alex Ross Perry: Like the, the assembly line has gone ice cold. which was, you know, it's like ah, the tube TVs just don't do it anymore. It's not that they sort of don't do it, is that they 100% don't do it. cassette players never quite went away. You can get now on, online. You see these on Instagram, like fancy, cool, retro looking Walkman. A M. Little snap it on your.
>> Rob: And when they Crossley came out with.
>> Alex Ross Perry: Those record players, they, a lot of.
>> Rob: Them had the cassette players as part of them.
>> Alex Ross Perry: These little Walkmen, they look retro, they look kind of colorful. They're 150 each. They sell out that you have to.
>> Rob: Get a pre order. Yeah.
>> Alex Ross Perry: So the demand is there. But the VCR has this one problem which is that the assembly line went away. But it also has this other thing which is that it's technology owned by nobody.
>> Rob: Oh, interesting.
>> Alex Ross Perry: M. Okay. 40 companies were making VCRs throughout the 80s and 90s. So that's good. That means no one owns it. Yeah. the bad side, the downside is that you'd have to ask 40 people, hey, do you want to make something that has niche interest at best? It's phenomenally complicated. Open up a vcr. It has a lot more moving parts.
>> Rob: Than I'm good at cleaning them. But once it comes to the electronics aspect. No, no, no, I can't.
>> Alex Ross Perry: It was described to me by an engineer as an absolute miracle that someone managed to Invent this. It's just improbable that, you know, magnetic tape, which makes sense for recording, that someone was able to create a device that you could read an image off of magnetic tape. But of course that device is this big. Yes. They were never the size of the tape.
>> Rob: Yeah.
>> Alex Ross Perry: The way a Walkman is basically the size of the tape. A discman is basically the size of a cd. they're enormous. And there's a reason for that. Yeah, they have a lot of parts. All of those parts don't exist anymore. So it's kind of complicated. Interesting.
>> Rob: Yeah. Well, I'm still holding out hope. And to wrap up one, we have a lot of lists on this show. So I wanted to see and maybe if you can't come up with all five, that's fine. But are there five movies? If you think of video stores, what are like the five movies that most pop up in your head?
>> Alex Ross Perry: Geez, I don't know. I'm really bad at. I, I think you sent me this, but I didn't.
>> Rob: No, no.
>> Alex Ross Perry: I'm not good at coming up with like lists on the top of my head.
>> Rob: Is there like one or one maybe? What's like the number one?
>> Alex Ross Perry: I mean it's just like, it would all be different like if I like I remember running from the library.
>> Alex Ross Perry: I remember renting the Land Before Time at the library. Okay. Yeah. If I remember west coast video, the one with the cookies. In my mind I'm probably renting not Home Alone but like, you know, live action movies of that era. If I'm thinking of like, well my blockbusters, like I remember the one, I always went there like on my birthday and stuff. And I remember renting Godzilla movies on my birthday annually from this one specific blockbuster. you know, Mechagodzilla and Deidre and the others. That's like a very specific memory of that one blockbuster. When I remember working at Suncoast Video, I remember working on Black Friday when Gladiator and X Men both came out on DVD and it was like a turning point. Oh yeah, video.
>> Rob: Yeah.
>> Alex Ross Perry: So like I have. Each store that I was in is sort of like defined by like a particular moment or a movie. you know, for my three years at Kim's, it comes down to something weird DVD called Dracula, the Dirty Old Man.
>> Rob: Yes. I, yeah.
>> Alex Ross Perry: Which is now fairly well known.
>> Rob: Yeah.
>> Alex Ross Perry: been put out by Agfa on Blu Ray, put out a soundtrack even. But for us that was just like a nightly watch, 65 minute film that I've probably seen 400 times. And sometimes we would just watch it over and over. And it was that kind of thing where every single person who saw it and heard it just stop at the counter, say, what is this? And that's what she wanted. Every day at the store was at Suncoast, we had like 30 movies we were allowed to watch. And they were, you know, Star wars and Grimace and things like that. What you wanted it at Kim's was most people leaning on the counter while you're reading them up and saying, what is this? Yeah, that, that was it. You know, for us it was always something like Dracula, the Dirty Old Man.
>> Rob: I remember for me, I think my best friend and I would go to our local mom and pop store, Talk of the Town Video in New Jersey. We rented Hobgoblins, which now I think I love, but I hated at the time. And I hated it so much that we wrote a note and put it in the tape box. So like, warning anyone else who would open this thinking, oh, we're so close.
>> Alex Ross Perry: They probably checked it to see if it was rewound and threw the note away.
>> Rob: Exactly, exactly. And I think the other one I always think of, because we were too young to go see Requiem for Dream in the theaters, our parents wouldn't let us. And we counted down like the hours on that Friday when it came out because of course that mom and pop only had that one copy. And we were like, okay, as soon as school ends, we gotta run to talk to the town, get that one copy of Reckon for a Dream.
>> Alex Ross Perry: Yeah, I, ah, mean I, you know, it's. I don't have like. Like these are the video store movies I have. Like these are the movies from this store that was, yeah, it was part of my life. and you know, it's just much more experiential that way. Because yeah, I mean, X Men and Gladiator as DVDs sound like they mean nothing to me, but like they don't mean that much. But just I remember that day was a very important day in my life and I think in the world, in the life of home video. Yeah. To see DVDs from summer blockbusters that were out just four or five months earlier, just, come out on Black Friday and have every single shopper buy that. That was very different than videotapes that were $100 each. That the business model was a store's buying this so they can rent it a thousand times.
>> Rob: Yeah.
>> Alex Ross Perry: so a lot of those. But ultimately, you know, came down to watching Dirty Old Man.
>> Rob: And last question for you are. Are logo. Our. Our motto here at, Sleepover Training Company is be kind. Rewind your childhood. So do you rewind?
>> Alex Ross Perry: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's pretty easy to just hit rewind, you know, while cleaning up from whatever you were drinking or snacking on. you know, by and large, except for the couple of tapes I brought home from. Well, not a couple, probably dozens at this point from Kim's work over the years. Everything I'm watching is mine. So I don't have to rewind if I don't want to. I'll have to rewind it eventually.
>> Rob: I love it. Thank you so much, Alex.
>> Alex Ross Perry: Yeah, thanks.
>> Guido: Be kind. Rewind your childhood.