Rewind This! Page #6

We'll never see Blu-Ray dominate

the market for 15 years.

It just won't happen.

When I first started

it was like,

I'm a college grad,

I've had a business, and now I'm

gonna work in a flea market.

People would ask me in church,

or whatever,

I sell movies

at the flea market.

And it's like "Ugghh!"

The funny thing about digging

through all of Wayne's stuff

at the house...

Is that there's no separation

whatsoever between genres.

Basically you'll have, like

The Brave Little Toaster

and then Enormous Wangs of

The Northern Yukon, er whatever,

and they're just, like,

right next to each other

'cause they're both

oversize boxes.

That's a great film, you should

check that one out.

We're The Picture Show.

Been here since 1990.

Got lots of customers that were

kids, would come in,

their parents would

buy 'em kids movies,

are now married and bringin'

in their kids.

So, that's the biggest thing

that keeps me goin'.

And so I have people comin' in,

most of them over 55 or 60,

that still like VHS,

still buy VHS,

that's what they want.

And then, young guys like you,

who are collectors,

and they want the old stuff,

and they wanna get into

all that.

This is a typical VHS buyer.

Uh, kind of, low-class.

Here's a movie about a

donkey named Paco.

"He'll steal your heart

and your wallets."

Wayne charges a lot for his VHS.

Like, you know, way more than

anyone else in America

probably charges for their VHS.

It's like a flat rate of 9 bucks

if he likes you,

10 bucks if he doesn't.

And there's no way on earth that

Paco is worth 9 bucks.

He actually is stealing

my wallets.

You gotta have

the real movie people.

The people that know

you can't get this stuff

on Netflix, or whatever.

Yeah.

And those people

are fewer and fewer.

I've just kept on keepin' on.

But you have a personal...

fondness for VHS I'm sure.

Oh sure, Yeah,

I still watch VHS.

And if I've got a choice

to watch somethin'

I got all this new stuff around

here, but I'll end up watchin'

an old movie. You know to me,

it's like an old friend.

We display about

17,000 titles on VHS.

We display about

12,000 titles on DVD.

Probably up there,

I have another...

15, 20,000 duplicates,

and around here

in the two rooms,

I probably have close to

another 50,000... VHS.

So, that's over 100,000?

50, 60, 70, yeah,

probably at least 80, 85, maybe.

And I don't really know.

I'm not countin' 'em.

This is the video room

inside Wayne's house,

which is like total chaos.

Like the earth has vomited up,

you know, 12 video stores.

You do the best

out in the country.

You don't wanna be in town.

You're fightin' all the

Best Buys

and the Wal-Marts and on and on.

Up there, I'm the

biggest movie thing

to a lot of people comin' in

from a 40 or 50 mile radius.

We can talk intelligently

about 90 percent

of the movies up there,

and we've probably seen

three percent of 'em.

If you don't know, then you go,

"I hear it's a good movie."

Or... "Yeah, that's a real good,

that's a pretty good movie."

Are you ever honest and say

"I hear it's terrible"?

No, no, no no no no.

That's absolutely a no-no.

And you go, "It's a pretty box,

look at the box."

Well, most of it, you've just

heard people tell you it sucks,

but you don't know it,

'cause I haven't seen it.

Nothin' was more depressing,

to me,

than to wake up

on January first,

and know exactly

what you're gonna make...

I want to at least have

the possibility of makin'...

$50,000 or makin' $10,000.

But at least I don't know.

It's still out there.

This VHS home video system

has every single function

you will ever need.

It was made by JVC,

the people who invented VHS.

A home video system

so advanced,

it's used in more sets

around the world

than any other.

But the best invention

is our cordless

remote control unit,

which puts every function

of the machine itself

into the palm of your hand.

VHS came out and the

rewind button was introduced.

That was pretty much

revolutionary for film-makers,

'cause you could just, easily,

with the press of a button,

just go back

and constantly re-watch

how Tom Savini stuck an arrow

through someone's chest.

You could go back and pause it

and look at it closely.

Also understand and dissect

the structure of editing.

Because usually editing is

designed to be very seamless,

and you couldn't figure out how

shots would be put together

to create a flow, and an effect,

and a gag especially,

or a stunt.

It's really increased

the ability

for people to understand

the language of film.

VHS kind of, I think, taught

a lot of people about

the nature of film,

the nature of editing,

the nature of sound,

and how those things mattered.

Not on purpose,

but on accident, like...

"Oh okay, this tape is

falling apart,

Oh, 'cause it's a physical medium.

Well, why is that?

Oh, because it's just

magnetic oxide stuck to a tape

in a pre-determined pattern.

Oh, okay."

Instead of having stacks of

film books,

we had stacks of VHS tapes.

That's what helped us discover

our love for cinema,

it's what inspired us

to go start shooting

our own movies.

And I remember even

cutting my first films

on two VHS players.

Everyone had a VHS deck

in their house in the 1980's.

That was, I mean,

everyone that I knew did.

So, you record something,

you put it on a VHS tape,

you can share it with everybody.

You could just leave

the camera running...

and you were also aware that

it was easy to record sound.

Um, so that was

really revolutionary.

And for someone who was raised

on home movies on film,

the idea of video

was almost magical,

it felt like this was

too good to be true.

Think about film history

classes. Film 101.

Whatever university you've been

in, whatever high school,

the first films you looked at

were the Lumiere films.

You've got a train

coming into a station,

You've got factory workers

leaving a factory,

and you're feeding a baby.

These are the canonical titles

of early cinema,

that every textbook has.

And they are home movies.

I made my first feature on VHS

when I was 12.

I would dress up my brothers in,

like a gorilla costume,

or we made fake guts

that came out,

or we did a fake

episode of Cops.

It's mostly unwatchable and

it's mostly deeply embarrassing.

# Papa was a rolling stone,

Yes he was #

# He was a rolling sto-one

Before that it seemed like,

well, making a movie

is like this whole

different thing.

There's no way that you

could ever do that.

That's what

people in Hollywood do.

But then, when I figured out,

you can just get a video camera,

and you make this movie,

and you can show it to your friends,

like, the next week,

that was so exciting.

And then I was kinda hooked.

Well, this sucks.

Come on let's go have a party

or something.

Eh, this is dumb, I'm bored.

Waste of time.

But I think it was the fact

that it was so accessible,

it was the fact

that it was universal.

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