Rewind This! Page #9

on the snowman.

'Cause if you do he's gonna

come to life.

Cool!

No it's not cool!

My sister in Minnesota

put a hat on a snowman

and it tried to kill her!

- F*** him, let's do it anyway.

- Yeah.

I decided to get

in this business.

One, it was economics,

I didn't have really a job,

I was working

at a porno theater,

I'd just had a son.

What am I gonna do with my life?

So the very first thing I did

was the obvious.

I took out a little ad,

30 titles.

Mexican horror titles

and some other obscurities.

I ran that ad

for a couple months.

The first week I got,

like $500 in the mail,

I was like, "Oh my god."

Make my copies, send 'em out.

And then the next week $1000,

the next week,

"Oh my god, this is insane."

So I-I quit my job...

and I started

being a bootlegger.

You'd read someone's ad in a

magazine and you'd respond,

and you would write down what

you had and what he had,

and you would trade.

And you'd make a copy

and it was usually bad,

four or five generations later,

but you'd still get to see

the movie you wanted.

And what started happening,

as I started to get into

more and more

extreme type of films,

is things would be

taken by customs.

It was really funny because

they've got this checklist,

and it said, "Your product has

been seized by Canada customs."

And I remember twice,

I ordered tapes that got

seized at the border.

And one of them was

Nekromantik.

The "necrophilia" box was

checked.

If you were ordering a movie

that was banned or prohibited,

you'd have the guy tape, like,

an episode of All in the Family

for like the first

five or ten minutes.

Of course, you're not gonna

have the tape labeled

Degradation of the Sh*t

Eaters, Volume 6,

He's gonna put, you know,

"All in the Family Reruns,"

or something like that.

That was a pretty solid trick.

To me, it wasn't offensive

in any way

because these films were

impossible to find.

And what they were doing was

helping spread these movies

and getting them out to people

to actually see them.

I think that's why in the

DVD market, in the beginning,

you were seeing large units

of things move,

because they could go to

a convention like this,

and say, "Oh, okay, those guys

were moving that many bootlegs,

or that many trades

amongst them.

It's a safe bet to put out a

nice remastered copy."

But I think it was

an important time,

and a lot of movies were

discovered by trading.

And in the case, specifically of

Dead Next Door,

there was such a long

window of time,

from the time it was made to the

time it actually came out,

that it was bootlegged a lot.

But it benefitted the movie

because everybody

found out about it that way.

We didn't have to go out and do

a bunch of publicity,

the publicity came to us.

It's kinda funny, you know, I'm

dealing with these companies...

I think they know,

maybe they don't,

but I feel kinda g-you know,

I maybe bootlegged

some of their stuff in the past,

and now I'm dealing with them

on a professional level,

playing their movies

in the theater,

but... these guys all know.

I mean, any guy that's gonna be

hypocritical and say, you know,

well the first time you saw

Cannibal Holocaust

was via a pirated tape.

And talk about

cruelty to animals,

McDonald's has to be

on top of the list.

I mean, when you think about

those poor little McChickens

walking around without their

McNuggets.

I think the appeal of

this type of material

that VHS definitely encouraged

and helped spread,

these viral videos,

are that they capture

something authentic

that wasn't meant

to be captured.

We finally go to the point,

I think in the last five years,

where just everything

truly is ours now.

Where, when you put something

out there, I'm sorry,

it's just-it's not yours

anymore. It's everyone's.

Before, you would have-

and in a way it was patriarchal,

and it was problematic,

'cause you would have to wait

for someone else

to approve of what you were

saying and presenting,

and have to go through

that whole dance.

But, in that there was a pre

selection process,

so that, by the time something

got to the screen,

you knew that someone thought

that it was worth something.

You look at YouTube and you're

like, "I love cat videos."

I could spend a good portion of-

and perhaps I do

spend a good portion of my day

watching cat videos.

Cat videos have

always been important.

If you look at what people were

shooting on film for home movies

in the 50's and 60's,

they were filming their cats.

But I think the incredible

pressure now is to understand

what it is you need to watch.

And the orthodoxy

comes really from

what other people are

clicking into.

And then the question is,

"Well, how do they find that?

And how is that discovered?

Duane, I was wondering, what

fashion trends do you follow?

Well I usually look

in magazines or...

see what the kids

at school are wearing.

Duane!

Already you can see

a remix culture

appropriating different clips

to do different things with it

besides just what the producers

in a centralized industry,

such as Hollywood,

or the New York television

networks do with it.

I don't watch stuff that I hate

and then put it on there,

which I think a lot of people think,

for Everything is Terrible!

They think, "Oh, it sucks so

you gotta put it up there."

It's like, no, I don't wanna

put anything up

unless it's incredible.

- Crack cocaine.

- Coke!

And this is

what you smoke it in.

It's awesome!

Makes you feel good all over.

Yes, some of the stuff we do

doesn't show people in

the best light ever.

But... they did produce

that stuff to begin with,

we're just spitting it back out.

- I'm Fabio.

- I'm Micky Dolenz.

- I'm Al Michaels.

- I'm retarded.

Hey Toby, you da man.

Oh, Mr. White, I'm just a tire.

There's so much

undiscovered stuff still.

How can we share that

with everybody?

Let's just organize this

as best we can,

because that's really all it is,

is just kind of taking control

over those tapes.

- Whoo!

- That's right, little buddy.

- Get away!

- Oh my god!

So it's fascinating that

these technologies,

you know, leapfrog each other,

building new uses.

And none of this is driven by

people really anticipating what

the new use will be.

It's almost like you have to

build a machine

and then see

what people do with it.

There's really no need

for archaic things

like cable anymore.

Stuff like that. It's like,

"Why would you do that,

when you can literally watch

whatever you want at any time."

I guess there are people

that are collectors,

and put things on their shelves,

and it reflects who they are,

and I think that that's a loss.

But I, um,

I think that there'll be

virtual ways for us to collect,

and we're gonna figure that out.

I'm sure studios

are really excited

about the way things are going,

about the fact that there's not

going to be physical media.

I mean, the Walt Disney

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