Latest / Secret Movie Club Podcast / SMC Pod #209: The movie repertory theater, the video store, and the streamer

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SMC Pod #209: The movie repertory theater, the video store, and the streamer · Secret Movie Club Podcast

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Hello, Secret Movie Clubbers. Welcome to Secret Movie Club Podcast 209,
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the repertory theater, the video store, and the streamer.
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Wonderful to have you here. We are heading into mid-February, 2026.
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Happy Valentine's Day to everyone tomorrow. Whether you're celebrating it with a lover, a friend.
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Yourself, your dog, a book, a movie, a hike, whatever, you're my Valentine.
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If you want me to be, if you don't, I get it.
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It's cool. But I wish you guys a happy mid-February. Today, I wanted to talk about...
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These three methods or institutions or services of movie culture and their distinct
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advantages and disadvantages for each one, the repertory theater,
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which has been around for almost as long as movies have been around,
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the video store, which became a phenomenon in the 80s, 90s, and then started
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to peter out in the aughts.
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It's actually really interesting to see how small a period of time relative
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to the period of time that cinema has been here, that the video store was a key mover and shaker.
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But it was for 30 years, more or less.
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And then the streamer, which is the newest kid on the block,
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but now the dominant kid on the block and has been hugely disruptive.
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For better or for worse, I am an optimist. And what I'd rather do is look at
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the unique benefits or pros, cons, merits.
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Demerits of each of these deliverers of movie culture and then get to the point
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of what can we take from each of them and how could we maybe put them all in
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service of the next chapter of movies.
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Chapter one or part one will be that unique look at each and the pros and cons of each.
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Chapter two, we actually started a new thing this week.
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And if you go to our social media at Secret Movie Club, that's our Instagram
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or any of the social medias you like to follow.
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We're going to try to ask our audience what their thoughts are on the podcast topic.
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And so part two is going to be reading some of the great feedback.
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We actually got a lot of great responses.
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Part three, we'll be looking at the future and maybe what we can take from all three of these.
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I will give you the ending at the beginning.
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I think there's a hybrid here that we can get at. And I think rather than being...
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Elitist or snobbish about or defeatist or absolutist or whatever.
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I actually think there are aspects of each that are still relevant that can
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maybe be put into something for the future. So that'll be part three.
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As always, please go to secretmovieclub.com. If you wait a moment, a box should come up.
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Put your email in that box. You can get on our newsletter. We are going to resume
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sending out that newsletter within the next week or two.
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It's been quiet for the last few weeks because I am still programming,
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but I think I'm pretty close to having at least our March and April.
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And so I am determined to launch in February, our March and April.
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So get on that newsletter. We're going to start announcing events as soon as we can. Okay.
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You can email us, as always, at community at secretmovieclub.com and follow our social media.
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Go to secretmovieclub.com, the website.
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And the cheat code for events, if you're in the Los Angeles area or you want
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to come to the events, go Google Eventbrite and Secret Movie Club.
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Make sure it's our logo. You can look at it on our Instagram.
4:06
And if you follow us there, when we start announcing events,
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you, too, will get the notifications. And we'd love to have you.
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So come see movies with us. Be a part of our movie community.
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2026 is our 10th year anniversary. And I really want this to be the ground zero,
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the foundation of us doing what we can, doing our part to launch the next chapter of cinema.
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I will also tell you that Secret Movie Club Podcast 210 will be another forward-looking
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movie culture pod about movies and AI.
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If you are on social media at all today, I'm recording this on February 11th, 2026.
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And they were showing all these clips now where they're grafting like Tom Cruise's
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face and Brad Pitt's face and
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then writing dialogue about the Epstein files. And I mean, a lot of junk.
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To be sure. And then a lot of crazy statements, probably to get eyeballs and
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drive traffic. But AI, it's done. It's here.
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That genie ain't going back in the bottle. So I really think rather than being
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ostriches and sticking our heads in the sand, if we are people who grew up loving
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movies, I think we got to wrestle this thing head on.
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I want to talk about it. That will be next week. But do not worry.
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We are not going to become a solely topical, What are we going to do? Movie podcast.
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We have pods upcoming about Louis Bunuel and George Stevens and a whole bunch of great stuff.
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But the next two podcasts are going to be about these things,
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because I do think it helps us if we're movie makers, movie lovers.
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Let's figure it out. OK, let's get to the podcast theme today.
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The repertory theater the video
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store and the streamer this whole topic
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came to me because i came across or was thinking weirdly about a movie from
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about 30 years ago now i was thinking about theo angelopoulos's i think it's
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1995 a movie from about 30 years ago ulysses gaze starring Harvey Keitel,
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a movie I really recommend you check out, a movie I love.
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And I just realized that there are all of these movies that,
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are not easily discoverable, not on the streamers.
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And also, even if you could find them illegally because you bit torrented or
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whatever, that's not helping those movies at all.
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And I thought, man, the great thing about the video store was that over time,
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the greatest video stores would have a whole section devoted to Theo Angelopoulos.
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I'm thinking just here in Los Angeles, a video stores, two of which are still
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open, three of which are still open, thank God, and really in many ways were the best.
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Vidiots in Eagle Rock, which actually is really pointing away,
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I think, in all sorts of ways on movie culture.
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The Videotech, which is now in the Highland Park area, used to be in South Pasadena,
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and Cinephile, which is still right next to the new art in West LA.
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Back in the day, and wherever you are in the world listening to this podcast,
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I'm sure you have your video store that you loved if you just got really into
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movies and had to just inhale and consume everything.
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I would go to Cinephile, which is still there, and I highly recommend everybody go.
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Go to Cinephile Vidiots and Videotech wherever you are.
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They're all amazing institutions, and they deserve support, and they are fighting the good fight.
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But I would, for whatever reason, go to Cinephile.
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And I would go from USC. I get in my car. If I went late at night,
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there was usually no traffic on the 10.
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It's like the Californians. I take 10 to the 405. I get off at Wilshire and I go to Cinephile.
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And if I was into Tekashi Miike example, I would ask the amazing folks behind
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the counter, the video store clerks,
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hey, I saw a DOA. That thing was incredible. What else should I see?
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And they would take me to the Takashi Mi A.K. section, which had a cool nameplate.
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And they'd say, oh, listen.
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They're the big ones. But you should check out Bird People of China.
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You should check out Rainy Dog.
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You should check out actually DOA is a trilogy. You should check out DOA 1,
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2, and 3. You should check out Visitor Q.
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You should check out Juvenile Big Bang Love. I mean, Takashi Miike at this point
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has made over 100 movies, incredible Japanese filmmakers.
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So then I would just consume them. And so this thought came,
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Theo Angelopoulos, Ulysses Gaze.
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What about all these movies that you would have ultimately discovered at the
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video store that you just can't stream? In fact, somebody, one of the comments
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was, you cannot stream Happiness of the Kotakuris anywhere.
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And that's a Takashi Miike movie, one of his best, crazy musical that has hilarious
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musical numbers, a lot of grisly deaths, zombies, claymation.
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It's awesome and crazy and a movie everybody should see, but you can't stream
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it. So that's where this came from.
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And based on that, I was like, well, you know, there are all these things that
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are good and bad about each of those ways of celebrating movie culture.
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Let's talk about the movie theater.
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Repertory movie theater has been around in some form since almost the beginning of cinema.
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In a weird way, you could actually argue that the first movie.
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Theaters, not the Nickelodeons, but the first theaters were like the Lumières
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or Melies or whoever was showing movies they had made were a kind of version
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of a Cinematheque or a rep theater.
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Then as the new technology became commercially viable and lucrative,
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it became something else.
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And we're not going to get into that today. But even shortly after that,
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you started to get film societies and film clubs.
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And a lot of the movie makers who would go on to become our greatest movie makers,
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people like Louis Boonwell, were part of film societies or film groups that
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really recognized that this film.
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Medium was producing great works of art and they wanted to get into it.
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And so they would find prints, whether they were 35 millimeter prints or 16
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millimeter prints, they'd all get together and they'd watch them.
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And those were the first rep theaters, I think as early as the 1910s, 1920s.
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So the rep theater was really the way that you would get into cinema culture
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other than the first runs for about 50 years.
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And what's interesting about that and that culture, and there was so much that
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came out of that, the Cinematex screen started to spring up.
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People like in France would be one of the biggest examples of this.
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Film critic turned really film dad and pioneer.
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Andre Bazan would found the magazine Cahiers du Cinema, get writers and movie
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lovers like Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard and Claude Charbol and Jacques
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Rivette among and Alan René writing for the magazine.
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And then these film critics would go on and start to make movies.
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And then Henri Langlois would form the Cinematheque Francaise and they would be showing movies.
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And so all these there was this incredible, vibrant film culture in the 40s, really the 50s and 60s,
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where you were going to the Cinematheque and you were seeing people that suddenly
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were making movies and becoming sort of hot shot movie directors,
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art house movie directors or what have you.
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And then maybe you were picking up the magazines back then.
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And it was a whole ecosystem. And it was getting huge.
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I mean, here in America, it was slightly different. But.
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Certainly in New York and it's slowly in Chicago and Los Angeles,
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you would get rep theaters like Film Forum.
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You would have collectives like Jonas Mikas or Andy Warhol or Stan Brakhage
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or Shirley Clark, John Cassavetes.
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These people forming kind of film collectives in the big cities.
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The big cities would do these retrospectives. They'd show you.
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The great works of the movie makers and then people, I think,
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like Pauline Kael writing in The New Yorker.
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I think that Kael understood in film criticism, if you have a really hot take
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that angers people, you're probably going to get talked about a lot more and
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there's going to be an exponential effect because you're going to anger a bunch of people.
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Then if you wrote milquetoast, benign, wow, boy, do I love this movie and that movie.
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And, you know, Cale really came to prominence partially because she wrote this
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article called Raising Cain,
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where she felt that the authorship of Citizen Cain was owed much more to Herman
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Mankiewicz than to Orson Welles.
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Totally disagree with her on that. Although I think Herman Mankiewicz deserves a ton of credit,
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but I think her taking on Orson Welles was a way of really skyrocketing her
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in the film debates at the time and her reviews. And I always say this.
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I actually I disagree with Pauline Kale, I think, at least 70 percent of the time.
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I disagree with the people she championed or with the fervency she championed them with.
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I disagree with the people she took down, et cetera, et cetera. But boy, do I love her.
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Do I love Pauline Kael? Because she loves cinema and she was a great writer
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and she knew how to get everybody talking. And I love reading the Kael review,
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even though I often throw it down.
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And I'm like, ah, Pauline, ah, but I don't know how you like,
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but I admire the hell out of her. And I would have loved to have met her and talked to her.
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Now, I think the thing that I'm realizing as I talk to you is,
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of course, TV was a kind of proto video store.
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Albeit the movies were chopped up horribly, interrupted by commercials,
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edited like no one's business, pan and scanned like no one's business.
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So a lot of people were watching horribly butchered, adulterated versions of great cinema.
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But I know the Coens in Minnesota, they were being introduced and exposed to
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a lot of great cinema because of midnight movies.
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And they were seeing eight and a half for the first time because,
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you know, somebody up in Minnesota was using it as filler to advertise for their car lot.
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Ethan Coen talks about this. So that that's something that I think it's probably
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not right to say that the rep theater was the only vehicle or messenger of movie love.
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TV certainly was huge, huge, huge.
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But I would say for movie lovers for 50 years, if you got the bug,
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you were going to the rep theaters and you were finding out what they were playing.
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And to this day, in L.A., New York, Paris, London, Berlin, Chicago.
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People still will get the printable calendars. I remember this wonderfully.
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I would get the New Beverly's calendar.
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I get the New Arts calendar.
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I get the American Cinematech's calendar. All institutions that are still with us, thank God.
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And I would put it up on my fridge. And I'd go, oh, man.
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I remember I saw a full metal jacket and the thin red line at the New Beverly.
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And I just have such a vivid memory of A, being in that seat for six hours,
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because those are long movies.
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And then we would all, and I did this too, would smuggle in beers from time to time.
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And somebody was sitting in the back and kicked over a glass bottle of beer
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and we heard it fall and we heard it roll down.
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It was concrete back then underneath the seats all the way to the front.
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And it was just some great little idiosyncratic detail of being in a rep theater
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and watching those movies that I loved. I love that.
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And so the rep theater, I would say the pros, you're seeing the movie on a print.
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So before digital, it was always film prints they got.
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So it was the way that the filmmakers intended it, the way they framed it.
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It wasn't pan and scanned.
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You were having a social experience because you were going to a theater.
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You were meeting other really intense movie nerds and cinephiles and probably
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knowingly or unknowingly mingling with the next generation of movie makers.
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And from that, just having really intense, great experiences, which are so, so key.
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I would say that what detracts is if you didn't live in a big city that had
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a really robust movie rep scene, you were limited in your ability to do that.
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Certainly there were art theaters, and a lot of there are, and much more to
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the point earlier, there were art theaters that probably acted as kind of sort of rep theaters.
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But if you were not in LA or New York or Paris or wherever,
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You probably were really, and still to this day, are a little frustrated at
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all the great cinema that was happening in the rep theaters.
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Also, I would say that there was, you know, film school would also be a way
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that a lot of people got into film, but it's.
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There was not a democratization, I would say.
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There was, conscious or unconscious, a perpetuation of an elite velvet rope
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kind of thing with the rep theater.
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And to this day, I live in Los Angeles. Secret Movie Club is a rep theater.
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But I feel there's a surf territorialism, if you know what that means.
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So here in L.A., there are a lot of beaches that people surf at.
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And if you are not a local and you show up to surf, sometimes the people who
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surf at that beach will chase you off or not want you there because they just
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don't want everybody surfing at that beach.
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And sometimes surf territorialism can get to like people getting in fights,
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people like fearing for their lives.
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Just crazy. No one owns the ocean, but that's the way it is.
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And there is that kind of thing.
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People become very tribal about the rep theater that they go to.
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And not everybody. It's a subsection of a subsection.
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But I feel that's not super, super helpful. Now, the video store really came
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into its own as I remember it. I was a little kid, like 82, 83.
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I remember the year my folks got divorced, 1983.
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I remember my mom moved down to Laguna Beach in Orange County.
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And within months of us moving there, this little video store called Video Laguna
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opened up. and at first it was in a very small space.
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Actually, it's interesting when you think about how your memory of it shows the rise and fall.
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I was in a small space and the videos were pretty expensive to rent and I know
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that they were very expensive for the shop owners to buy.
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But in 83, 84, my mom and then she remarried, married my stepdad,
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incredible guy, second father to me.
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They got a VHS player. For a while, there was like the beta VHS debate,
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but they got the VHS like so many people.
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And my mom would just start to rent movies for us if we were sick or Friday, Saturday nights.
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And that's how I saw Raiders of the Lost Ark. That's how I saw Jaws.
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That's how I saw a lot of classic movies that my mom would get for us because
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she had a hard and fast rule that we couldn't see movies above the rating.
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So that you know Raiders and Jaws were
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rated PG so that was fine but no R
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movies but with my dad who was you
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know after the divorce understandably it
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was a rough time rough time for both of them I think my dad particularly took
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the divorce really hard and I understand why completely and there was a period
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where it was tough for him he was not making a ton of money And the video store was a way for us to.
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You know, as the prices came down, we'd go, you know, we were with my dad every
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other weekend, my sister and I.
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And the first thing we do is we go to the video store on Friday or Saturday
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and my sister would pick a movie.
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I'd pick a movie. My dad would often pick a movie and we'd watch one or two
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on Friday, one or two on Saturday.
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And we just consumed movies and I loved it.
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It was great. My dad ultimately became a school teacher here in L.A.,
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and I have really fond memories about that. By the time I was about.
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Nine, nine-ish, ten-ish, is really
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when that took hold. And he was a schoolteacher to the end of his life.
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He died when I was 23. But for about 14, 15 years, my dad was an amazing junior
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high history teacher. And he thrived.
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He flourished. He was wonderful at it.
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But we never stopped that tradition. We always rented movies.
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And it's funny, like stand-up comics talk about how they realize that a lot
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of their impetus to become a standup comic came from wanting to make their dad laugh.
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I think a lot of my movie love came from these times shared with my sister and
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my dad of watching movies.
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And my dad got us everything.
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I've talked about this so many times, but ratings, man, I saw Blade Runner at seven.
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I'm pretty sure I saw The Shining at like eight or nine.
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I saw R-rated comedies. I saw nudity.
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It was awesome. Now I look at myself as a father to an eight-year-old and I'm
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like, I don't know that I'd show my son Blade Runner yet, but I think it's time for Die Hard.
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I think it's time for Die Hard. I don't know. I'm debating.
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But nevertheless, I think that the video store was a really wonderful democratization
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in that if you weren't in a big city,
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there was almost certainly a video store in your town and that was your rap theater.
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And so I think the pros and cons there are suddenly you could see way more movies much quicker.
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You weren't waiting for the programming. If you wanted to see Casablanca,
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you could go see Casablanca.
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If you heard about Juliet of the Spirits, Federico Fellini's Juliet of the Spirits,
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you know, I'm sure in a lot of video stores they didn't carry it,
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but even decent video stores were going to have some kind of foreign film section.
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You could probably, you know, count on at least being able to get eight and
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a half or seven seal or breathless or 400 blows, you know.
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And the grand illusion or rules of the game, so on and so on.
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And that was a huge thing. I know that's how I saw most of my cinema.
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I was in Orange County during the weeks and then with my dad,
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and I was not going to rep theaters till I was in college, really, till I could drive.
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So the way that I was consuming cinema was the video store.
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And so I think those are the pros for sure.
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The cons are things like a lot of times those movies were panned and scanned
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until Blu-rays, DVDs, and really in the 90s, it became late 80s, 90s.
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There was Laserdiscs, if anyone remember those prior to DVDs.
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Before that, movies were panned and scanned. Sometimes they were edited depending
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on the video story you went to. You couldn't see NC-17.
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Couldn't see the NC-17 Bad Lieutenant. You couldn't see the NC-17 Crash.
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You had to see the R-rated version of that. And also,
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probably you were losing out on the cinema, the movie theater experience,
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which really you can't discount how the great movie makers who grew up on the
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movie, the theater experience,
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were probably making movies pegged to their remembrance and their memories of
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what they felt in movie theaters.
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I think that, you know, in a video, when you watch it, you can you can love
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something and it's great and I'm all for it, but you can love it,
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but not actually see how the audience reacts to it.
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And I think weirdly that might account for some of the.
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And again, I think this is good and bad. I'm ambivalent on this.
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I'm not falling one way or the other.
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But really idiosyncratic movies could get made based on your love of the idiosyncratic
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movies you could get at the video store.
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But you were maybe not tethering it to a collective understanding of what moved an audience.
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And I think that when you see when world cinema had that incredible run,
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I mean, it's always having an incredible run, but I'm talking about the 50s
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and 60s, you know, Kurosawa, Bergman, Fellini.
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You know, those those filmmakers really were they were making incredible cinema.
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But it was still cinema pegged, I think, to the movie theater,
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to an audience experience.
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And I think there's something to that. Third part of this, the streamer.
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Let's just get into that.
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The streamer, you know, I remember the interesting transition of Netflix when
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it was a mail video store. And Netflix really was the beginning of the death
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of the video store, not the streamer.
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Netflix as a mail order DVD service was the death because they had a business
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model that the video stores couldn't compete with.
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You know, you paid a monthly fee and it was the beginning of the monthly subscription thing in a way.
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And you could watch as many movies as you wanted. So why am I going to go to
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the video store and pay $3, $4, $5 a movie and only get it for a few days when I can pay $3?
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Whatever it is, 10 to 20 bucks. And that's it.
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I pay that for the month. And if I want to watch 31 movies, I think you could
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get two or three at a time.
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So if you really were gunning, you could watch 30 to 50 movies for 10 to 20 bucks.
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That was the proto streamer. But then when the streamers came.
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You know, we're all now living in the age of streaming.
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And I'm recording this February, 2026. And I was actually just talking to some
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Gen Z folks who are helping with Secret Movie Club this year.
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And, you know, they were talking to me about how everyone has been into this
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six episode heated rivalry about, you know, two hockey players that get really
27:57
into each other and everybody loves it.
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And that's definitely something that the age of streaming and there's so much to talk about.
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But when we look at the, you know, Disney Plus, Netflix, Amazon Prime,
28:12
the model now as it exists is you can pay for no commercials or you can pay
28:19
for a tier with commercials.
28:20
All the streamers realized they had to produce original content.
28:24
The studios basically realized that they didn't want a license to Netflix.
28:29
They would rather, you know, keep their library and, you know,
28:33
HBO Max or whatever it would be.
28:36
But I think what's interesting about the age of the streamers is that, you.
28:43
Because copyright has always been king, IP, intellectual property,
28:49
owning the movie has always been key to retaining control of that revenue stream.
28:56
What we've seen has been this balkanization, this breaking up so that you have
29:04
to get a whole bunch of different subscriptions to see all the different movies you want to see.
29:09
Now, also, you're getting those subscriptions because you want to watch the
29:13
sports or you're getting the subscriptions because you want to watch heated
29:20
rivalry or you want to watch stranger things.
29:22
You want to watch the original content the streamers are producing.
29:26
But titles are coming and going all the time as well. The pros, and there are huge pros.
29:33
This is what I was trying to say at the beginning of this podcast.
29:35
The convenience, the ability to not have, oh, I got to return it kind of thing,
29:41
or I've got to be there at this time.
29:43
There is tons of convenience. Of course, that's also the huge demerit because
29:48
we're all getting flabby and we're losing discipline and we're losing the ability to say no.
29:56
Driving to the video store and getting the three movies, or I'm going to the rep theater.
30:01
I'm going to see this on the big screen. I'm going to have this communal experience.
30:06
And the other big con is what I was saying at the beginning,
30:10
too, about Theo Angelopoulos' Ulysses Gaze, which is, yeah, they're logarithms.
30:15
Yes, they can recommend things.
30:18
There's ulterior motives to those logarithms. You know, they're channeling you
30:22
and funneling you because they want you to stay on and watch.
30:25
And, you know, the great thing about a video store clerk or the great thing
30:30
about being at a rep theater is someone will say, oh, man, you love oners.
30:34
Have you ever seen Theo Angelopoulos' oners in Ulysses Gaze where he uses a
30:39
oner to conflate the present, the past, the future, the personal, the collective?
30:45
I mean, Theo Angelopoulos' oners are some of my favorite oners of all time,
30:50
by which I mean a single uninterrupted shot.
30:54
And his oners in Ulysses Gaze are incredible.
30:58
And, you know, a video store clerk is going to tell you that.
31:02
And a video store clerk is also going to be the person who puts on,
31:06
they might put on Ninja 3 The Domination, the canon movie. And that movie is
31:11
ridiculous, but so good.
31:13
So crazy about a gym instructor who gets possessed by the spirit of a dead ninja
31:18
and then goes and kills people.
31:21
And like Phoenix, Arizona, I think it begins with an opening sequence on a golf
31:25
course. Oh, it's mind blowing.
31:27
You got to see it that, you know, Netflix isn't going to recommend Ninja three,
31:32
the domination, I don't think. So the problem there is that the logarithms aren't great.
31:38
It's not like a video store where everything is in one place and you can walk
31:43
around till you really find what you want.
31:45
And I find like so many things, and I think AI is just accelerating this exponentially.
31:52
You think you get a lot of options, but I actually think what's happening is the opposite.
31:57
I think what's happening is a winnowing and a narrowing of your exposure.
32:03
Really, what we all know if we love movies is what's great about movies,
32:07
it's the same if you're a reader, is once you start watching movies,
32:11
you just want to watch more movies. and you want people to tell you things you
32:15
never would have thought of.
32:16
That's what's great about movies. And then you discover Greek cinema.
32:21
Then you discover Soviet sci-fi.
32:24
Then you discover documentaries. You discover Frederick Weissman.
32:30
You discover the Brazilian New Wave.
32:32
The streamers as they are now, well, you only have so much money and then they're
32:37
going to only push their product and their titles.
32:40
And then their logarithm is pushing. So you think, oh, I've got all this access.
32:45
But in fact, the way the way it is, is, I think, often paradoxically the opposite.
32:52
I think we're getting winnowed down, winnowed down.
32:56
Now, there is even more of a democratization in streaming that I think is good
33:02
and bad, again, ambivalence, but I think filmmakers that never would have gotten distribution before,
33:07
and I mean good filmmakers, they can at least get their movies on these platforms,
33:12
and that's another good thing.
33:15
You know, I don't know how they did it in the age of the video store.
33:18
Maybe they went around and said, hey, I'll give you my movie.
33:22
You know, just rent it. But now you can put it up on Amazon Prime,
33:27
you can put it up on Apple, you know, Apple TV, you can put it up wherever.
33:31
And, you know, some people buy it and you can self-distribute it.
33:35
And that also is a good thing.
33:37
So there is a really quick cursory look at these things.
33:41
Let's move to part two and read some audience, get the audience community,
33:47
the Secret movie club community and hear their thoughts.
33:51
Here are some of the thoughts from the movie community.
33:56
Bobby Castro says there are no disadvantages for the cinema experience,
34:01
the repertory cinema experience.
34:02
But then Nana's way says from a physical accessibility standpoint,
34:07
that's not always the case.
34:09
That I don't think was an obvious point. I think if you have mobility issues.
34:14
Health issues, special needs, the rep theater, as wonderful an experience as it is for many people.
34:20
Shane Donahue gives a very long answer, but a great one, which is,
34:25
In the order of your listing, experience community access.
34:29
People you don't know coming together to experience the same thing together at the same time.
34:34
Watching a film on a big screen with a powerful sound system, it's unique.
34:39
Wandering the aisles, looking at titles. So now he's talking about the video store.
34:43
Wandering the aisles, looking at titles, maybe asking someone else,
34:46
searching for something or the clerk for recommendations.
34:49
A video store is a community meeting place. And then third, but as good as the
34:53
video store is, space is a premium.
34:55
Streaming can give you access to nearly any film you can imagine at the push
34:59
of a button in your own home.
35:00
And as of recent times, giving smaller creators a place where their work can
35:04
live with an incredibly low barrier for entry.
35:08
Forgotten Madness LA says this, Oh man, as a movie lover and former distribution
35:13
exec, I could write an entire book on this.
35:16
The magic of the video store was that it offered discovery. You could wander
35:19
its aisles and let something grab you, artwork, a face, a title,
35:23
anything. And sorted alphabetically by genre, you might go looking for Lost
35:27
in Translation and discover Albert Brooks' Lost in America.
35:30
The streamers put the video store in your living room, but instead of alphabetized
35:34
aisles, the algorithm and the subcategories have turned it into a Ross dress
35:39
for less, with everything out of place and strewn across the floor.
35:43
It's great because you have access to virtually anything. I can access every
35:47
Kurosawa film within two minutes and never have to worry about the only copy
35:51
being rented out, but it doesn't offer me a chance to discover something.
35:54
Rep theaters offer discovery as an experience. Even if you've seen the film
35:59
before, you get to experience the discovery of those who haven't.
36:03
Disadvantages that a sold-out crowd gets giggly, not knowing how to interact
36:07
with dated lines of dialogue.
36:09
And the laughter can prevent you from engaging with the film.
36:11
I went to see Vertigo at the Vista last year, and you would think it was a comedy.
36:15
Then I left feeling like I hadn't really watched the movie.
36:18
That can be a bummer. And I elided Forgotten Madnesses.
36:22
I mean, Forgotten Madness went into, they wrote kind of a mini-essay.
36:27
You should go read it on our Instagram.
36:30
JordanIsJustOK wrote this, In my own personal experience, I believe that the
36:34
true theatrical experience will generally enrich almost any film viewing.
36:39
And I say true theatrical experience to highlight the difference between a major
36:43
chain theater and an art house or revival movie theater where the audience actually
36:47
cares about movies and respects traditional theater etiquette.
36:50
Even if it is just a modicum of improvement, seeing a movie in a theater will
36:54
help create a deeper memory of the experience, Eliminating distractions,
36:57
really getting lost in the story, characters feeling the sound design.
37:01
These aspects of film viewing are almost impossible to recreate in the same
37:05
way at home or by streaming a film on a smaller device.
37:08
I've seen some pretty movies that were just a little better because of the theater I saw them in.
37:13
And I've also encountered people who watched certified masterpieces on a smaller
37:18
screen who thought they were just OK.
37:20
And he goes on. Great point. The distractions point is something we haven't
37:24
even tapped into. all of us do that my wife.
37:28
You know, when we watch anything, she's also playing games on her phone and
37:33
checking social media and stuff.
37:34
Now, my wife's an engineer. And when it comes to calculus and math and engineering
37:39
or building a car, her concentration is laser like.
37:46
But she's not really a movie person, which probably is the yin and the yang
37:49
of maybe why we're so well matched where we are different in quite a few ways.
37:56
You know she enjoys movies but they're not you know
37:59
she'll watch a movie kind of out of her side eye while she's doing
38:01
a bunch of different things on her phone and i think that's a
38:04
great point that when we're streaming even i'm guilty of this like an idea or
38:09
a thought will come to me while i'm watching a movie like i was i'm watching
38:12
penny serenade george stephens movie and i go huh i wonder how people are ranking
38:17
george stephens so suddenly i'll pause the movie and go and look at the rankings
38:22
of George Stevens movies.
38:23
And a lot of people engage. Now, I think I'm just sort of debating myself here
38:29
in this podcast, but I think that is a newer way of engaging with cinema.
38:34
And we just have to accept that a lot of people engage with cinema that way.
38:37
And it's not right or wrong.
38:38
They're getting information. They're asking questions. They're looking things up.
38:43
And it's maybe having a richer experience, maybe thinking about things and getting answers right away.
38:49
But there are definitely a lot more distractions than there used to be.
38:54
And streaming or watching on video, definitely that's a danger.
38:59
Thank you, everybody who wrote in. I hope you will keep doing that.
39:03
I love reading your stuff.
39:06
Please, please keep writing in.
39:10
What does this all mean? Why did you do a podcast on this, buddy?
39:16
I run a movie community company of movie lovers and movie makers.
39:23
And we, by and large, do a lot of rap theater.
39:26
I have this intuitive feeling that part of the key is taking what is great from
39:32
the previous ways of consuming cinema, be it in a rep theater,
39:37
which is still current, by the way, or going to the video store and the model
39:41
of a video store and looking at what,
39:44
for better or for worse, has developed from our streaming smartphone AI age
39:50
and figuring out ways to create a hybridization that can honor and promote the
39:59
experience that we all know.
40:01
But I think you can take all those things and make it Big Ten.
40:06
Now, I don't think this means that you go to a movie theater where you're watching
40:12
a 70 millimeter print of Jacques Tati's Playtime, which was probably a bear to get.
40:19
Whoever the programmer was who paid for it, shipped it, has the projectionist
40:23
running 70 millimeter in the booth.
40:26
And then you let everybody get on their phones. Like, that's not what I'm saying at all.
40:31
But what I am saying is I think that you can find ways to meet people where
40:38
they are mostly, which is their phones.
40:41
Let them know about what you're doing. Get them to the theater.
40:45
When it is a theater, have everybody turn off their phones while they watch
40:48
the movie. But there's no reason why when they come out into the lobby,
40:52
you can't have all this movie history and trivia and things that now they can
40:55
go deep dive and you can have QR codes and things like that.
40:59
I think you can put out a lot of movie culture things. You know,
41:02
if people are no longer buying a Calle du Cinema physical copy,
41:07
although I love physical media and I still think there is a place for it and I would love to do it.
41:12
You could have a digital version of Cahiers du Cinema.
41:16
And, you know, so I would just say in short, because actually part three, I want to be short.
41:22
I think the key is never shutting yourself off to the new, because if you're
41:28
open and nonjudgmental, you begin to realize how people are engaging with pop culture.
41:36
And that is crucial if you're going to get them into the theater,
41:40
if you're going to get them to be part of movies.
41:43
So I think open-mindedness, non-judgmentalness, and a willingness to play around
41:49
with and engage, I think it's all about being open to that and not demonizing
41:54
it, not being like, oh, back in the day.
41:57
And so I just don't see that way of looking at things as all that productive
42:01
or even all that realistic.
42:03
I think it is a temptation and a byproduct of aging, and I get it,
42:08
But I think you got to fight it.
42:10
So, you know, we've got to take all these things and come up with the hybrid
42:15
and the hybrid ways of taking what has always been attractive about all these
42:20
models for the next generation.
42:22
So I'm going to get going on that now.
42:26
Okay, Secret Movie Clubbers, I am done for today. Thank you for listening.
42:32
Secret Movie Club podcast 210 will be movies and the AI revolution,
42:40
or maybe even more simply movies and AI.
42:45
It's here. We got to deal with it. So next week, we're going to talk about all
42:49
the weird things that are going on.
42:51
I saw, give you just a little taste. I saw another weird clip where,
42:56
like, talk about pop culture and political culture and movie culture all coming together in weird ways.
43:03
Somebody used AI to have Charlie Kirk bring in Jeffrey Epstein to a cafeteria.
43:12
You may have seen this thing.
43:13
And then Kash Patel drops like his tray. He's freaked out.
43:17
And he walks Jeffrey Epstein up to, I guess, Pam Bondi, if I saw that right.
43:22
You know, our current attorney general.
43:25
Kash Patel is our current head of the FBI.
43:27
And I know it was from a movie, but it was weird on so many levels.
43:35
Obviously, Charlie Kirk was assassinated. Jeffrey Epstein died in his jail cell.
43:42
And but if you watch that, I think most people would know that it was clearly
43:46
I mean, I think almost everybody would know because it had such production value to it.
43:51
It's like, well, that obviously hasn't really happened because it would have
43:54
been the way the media and the medium would have shown something like that would
43:57
have been completely different. But I think that what that AI shows us is just the world of hurt.
44:06
And we're already in it. I mean, really, when we're honest, we've been in it for the last 10 years.
44:11
But the ever increasing world of hurt we're in with the ease with which AI can
44:18
generate music and images and narratives and storylines. What does that mean
44:22
for moviemaking? What does that mean for the movie experience?
44:25
Again, I'm not coming at it from a defeatist or a cynical or a pessimistic point of view.
44:32
I just want to get into it because the sooner we deal with it and wrestle with
44:35
it, then engage with it, the sooner we can have agency and be a part of the
44:41
answer and the solution.
44:43
So that'll be next week. In the meantime, happy Valentine's Day, Secret Movie Clubbers.
44:50
You're my Valentine. If you want to be.
44:52
If you don't, that's cool. But thank you for listening. I wish you the best.
44:57
Keep watching movies. Keep consuming movies, however you're consuming movies.
45:02
Keep writing movies. Keep finding ways to make movies. And let's keep pushing this medium forward.
45:09
Fight the good fight run the race keep the faith uh i wish you all the best
45:15
i will see you next week i love you martha craiggy carmen pammy mabel my family
45:23
i love you guys with all my heart all right guys i'll see you next week peace.