Physical media shaped different generations of filmmakers. One of them, Alex Ross Perry, studies the golden age and the downfall of the video stores in Videoheaven. Consequently, the film explores the home video as the main distribution format after the original theatrical window. Known for his independent films, such as Her Smell (2018), Queen of Earth (2015), and Pavements (2024), Ross Perry has a twenty-year career and is recently exploring Documentary filmmaking. In Videoheaven, the director explores the impact of VHS rental stores on the construction of media consumption over four decades. In 1977, Video Station in Los Angeles became the first video rental shop in the United States. Combined with the decision of the five major distributors (Paramount, Columbia, Walt Disney, Universal, and Warner Bros.) to license their catalogues for release on home video. In the subsequent years, with access to the tapes and the spread of the VCR (Videocassette Recorder), the shops became a communal place to discover films and share one’s taste with others.
Therefore, Ross Perry divides the forty years of existence of the video stores to understand how they would impact different generations. He does so by analyzing the representation and portrayal of the venues in films and TV shows. Both in the time of their popularity, and now as an object of the past, the reconstruction of something that does not exist anymore. Firstly, the director structures his documentary through an archival approach; the film is composed entirely of fragments of varied movies and TV shows from the last fifty years. He creates a formal dependence on the figure of the narrator, represented by Maya Hawke‘s voice, which does not imply her personal opinions or memories. She is responsible for elaborating and externalizing the director’s thesis; he also wrote the narration. In this sense, Videoheaven is a three-hour documentary essay on the birth, popularization, and collapse of video stores as a physical factor in constructing the customer’s taste in cinema. The rental shop would be intermediate for the audience, who would connect with new releases and explore an entirely unexplored library of curated titles.
The director divides his view on the history of video shops into six parts. The first one, What was a Videostore? is a general introduction to these spaces, as new generations will learn about them as a fact. This overall view shifts from the VHS era to the dominance of DVDs. It would also corroborate the extinction of video shops. At one point, they were so cheap that it would be more reasonable to acquire them than to rent. The director provides an overview in a few minutes of five decades of impact and influence in popular culture. In the second chapter, we have a more profound analysis of the explosion of spaces as a source of access to the best of cinema. In the second part, the 1980s and the Rise of Videostore, the director examines the first films to portray the space as a narrative tool. The master of body-horror cinema, David Cronenberg, is the first to include the VHS narratively in Videodrome, released in 1983. A year later, another genre legend, Brian De Palma, portrayed the home video as an essential part of his Body Double. Hence, the renting venue would become an integral part of the screens too.
The presence of them in the media is the main topic of the third part, Hayday of the Videostores, which focuses on them as setups and locations for films and TV shows. Seinfeld and Friends are TV shows that used the stores as romantic encounter places for the characters and their romantic interests. Another example is The Holiday, which also uses a Blockbuster store as the location for romantic interests to get to know each other. The fourth part refers to the adult-only section of the stores, commonly present in independent ones, whereas the franchises would not feature a pornographic section. The film also mentions how the portrayal of renting porn from the shops would be ridiculed and sensationalized as comic moments for movies and shows. Another point of ridicule portrayal in media is the clerks, the theme of the fifth part, seen as arrogant cinephiles, disrespecting the taste of the customers.
Ultimately, the last part is the heartbreaking and inevitable point of the film. In The Decline and Death of Video Stores, Ross Perry explores the factors for the disappearance of communal places for home video. The late fees and other additional costs to rent a film would influence customers to buy DVDs, which would be widely available in retail stores like Best Buy, Target, and Walmart. Additionally, streaming and its promise of easy access to catalogues also played a part in the death of video stores. In the end, Videoheaven by Alex Ross Perry is a melancholic and fascinating journey into the importance of the rental stores. Even though the length makes it an exhausting watch, it is a heartfelt retrospective of a crucial element in the taste creation of millions of people.
Videoheaven is now available to purchase at your retailer of choice.
Learn more about the film at the official website for the title.
