Why I love and hate working in the video store...
People have no fucking taste.
After 6 plus years of working in an independent chain video store, this is what I have decided. Case in point, this week we have two major new releases. Mystic River, an Oscar-winning drama with great performances and a great script, and Along Came Polly, the latest piece of cinematic tripe starring Ben Stiller and Jennifer Aniston. Stiller is playing stock Stiller character A, the nervous nebbish who can't get out of his own way, as opposed to Stiller stock character B, the overamped athletic stupid guy.(That will be on display in theaters next Friday in Dodgeball, which I'm looking forward to seeing when it hits video because it has a Baseketball vibe to it. But I digress.)
And what are people looking for? Not Mystic River, that's for sure. I hate, hate, hate the customers in my store. Yes, I know I'm sounding film snob-ish, but the problem with working in a place like the store I work in is that people only want to see what's new and dumb, and don't want to hear that the movie they're renting sucks. (Another digression: Our management actually discourages us from having negative opinions of films. If we don't like a film, we're not allowed to tell people it sucks. I find myself ignoring this policy, because I can't tell people, "Oh yeah, Freddy Got Fingered and House of 1000 Corpses, great movies.") Another good example is Lost In Translation. Admittedly, LIT suffered from a bad ad campaign which made most people think it was a comedy, rather then the sweet little two person character study it is, but 80-85% of my customers hated it. They'd rather rent Just Married or The Duplex.
Of course there are good things about working in the video store. I get movies before the customers do. I get a discount on purchasing movies. And every now and then, we get free screenings of movies before they come out in the theater. Next Tuesday night, in fact, the wife and I are going to see The Terminal three days before it hits the theaters. And now that I have my DVD burner, I have access to an endless amount of movies. New addition to the collection - The Criterion 3-disc edition of Luchino Visconti's The Leopard, a 1963 period piece starring Burt Lancaster, Alain Delon, and Claudia Cardinale. Criterion has restored the original Italian version to its 3-hour running length, and has included the American dub as well(though it's not nearly as good.) I also added Kurosawa's Seven Samurai and DePalma's Sisters to the collection, and now I need to get more DVD's when I get paid.
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Only sort of half paid attention to Raw, but it was a good run-up to the PPV. Preview of the PPV to come on Thursday or Friday, as well as some thoughts on NWA/TNA once I've had a chance to watch the four hours of torrents that I downloaded.
After 6 plus years of working in an independent chain video store, this is what I have decided. Case in point, this week we have two major new releases. Mystic River, an Oscar-winning drama with great performances and a great script, and Along Came Polly, the latest piece of cinematic tripe starring Ben Stiller and Jennifer Aniston. Stiller is playing stock Stiller character A, the nervous nebbish who can't get out of his own way, as opposed to Stiller stock character B, the overamped athletic stupid guy.(That will be on display in theaters next Friday in Dodgeball, which I'm looking forward to seeing when it hits video because it has a Baseketball vibe to it. But I digress.)
And what are people looking for? Not Mystic River, that's for sure. I hate, hate, hate the customers in my store. Yes, I know I'm sounding film snob-ish, but the problem with working in a place like the store I work in is that people only want to see what's new and dumb, and don't want to hear that the movie they're renting sucks. (Another digression: Our management actually discourages us from having negative opinions of films. If we don't like a film, we're not allowed to tell people it sucks. I find myself ignoring this policy, because I can't tell people, "Oh yeah, Freddy Got Fingered and House of 1000 Corpses, great movies.") Another good example is Lost In Translation. Admittedly, LIT suffered from a bad ad campaign which made most people think it was a comedy, rather then the sweet little two person character study it is, but 80-85% of my customers hated it. They'd rather rent Just Married or The Duplex.
Of course there are good things about working in the video store. I get movies before the customers do. I get a discount on purchasing movies. And every now and then, we get free screenings of movies before they come out in the theater. Next Tuesday night, in fact, the wife and I are going to see The Terminal three days before it hits the theaters. And now that I have my DVD burner, I have access to an endless amount of movies. New addition to the collection - The Criterion 3-disc edition of Luchino Visconti's The Leopard, a 1963 period piece starring Burt Lancaster, Alain Delon, and Claudia Cardinale. Criterion has restored the original Italian version to its 3-hour running length, and has included the American dub as well(though it's not nearly as good.) I also added Kurosawa's Seven Samurai and DePalma's Sisters to the collection, and now I need to get more DVD's when I get paid.
----------------------------------
Only sort of half paid attention to Raw, but it was a good run-up to the PPV. Preview of the PPV to come on Thursday or Friday, as well as some thoughts on NWA/TNA once I've had a chance to watch the four hours of torrents that I downloaded.
posted by Jon M. at
11:36 PM
6 Comments:
THAN.
When we compare things, it's THAN.
When we discuss time, it's THEN.
And FIRST.
Dude, you seriously need to want to see some indy/old wrestling, we could get some serious Movie vs. Wrestling trading taken care of.
Bummerific?
Ok...don't watch The Shipping News, either.
Great movie. Nobody in North Haven has seen it, I'd wager.
Absolutely, and on both counts.
I find it amusing, and yet oddly inspiring, that our boy likes his wrasslin' and his joyless 2-hour sobfests. I find it disturbing that he claims to speak English like a native, but keeps messing up "than".
Sure, I'll watch just about any movie. I may end up paying for it in the long run, but I'll watch anything once, but it's good that I don't really care for the major Hollywood Fluff because while they're usually all gone on Tuesday afternoon, I can get stuff like Mystic River and City of God, like I did today.
And it's good for me that I'm one of the few people who rent the foreign flicks in the store. But seeing as our selection is sorta limited, most of the foreign stuff is either a BIG hit (Fulltime Killers, Tube) or a BIIIIG miss (Tomie - ugh, never wanna see that movie ever, ever again...)
For every Pact Des Loupes or Wasabi, there is a Sonatine with my name on it, it seems.
"This is total war."
What, as opposed to the PARTIAL WARS I'd heard so much about?
Idiocy.
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