{"id":803,"date":"2012-03-28T16:04:24","date_gmt":"2012-03-28T14:04:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/?p=803"},"modified":"2015-04-27T19:19:04","modified_gmt":"2015-04-27T17:19:04","slug":"video-killed-the-video-store","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/video-killed-the-video-store\/","title":{"rendered":"Video killed the video store"},"content":{"rendered":"

We all knew this day would come. Last Friday, the M\u00fcnchener Filmpassage shut its doors. This wasn’t just any video-rental place. It had the largest selection of English-language films anywhere in Germany, including numerous titles released<\/span> directly to video that no one would have known about otherwise. I’d go in looking for one film and come out with four or five.<\/p>\n

I pride myself on doing original research, and whenever I’ve written about a film, I’ve gone to the Filmpassage, checked out the film and watched it, usually twice, to make sure everything I said about it was correct.<\/p>\n

No matter how rare the film, I could always find it there<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

You’d think that all video-rental places would have, say, the top 500 classics in stock<\/span>, but they don’t. You’ll usually find contemporary<\/span> films about gangsters and explosions, not the complete works of Buster Keaton<\/a>. The Filmpassage was a big exception. No matter how rare the film, I could always find it there.<\/p>\n

The staff included an older man who, as far as I could tell<\/span>, had actually seen all these films. Customers would have an old film in mind but not know the title. They’d name an actor or actress and mention a scene from the movie, and he’d know which film it was and what shelf it was on. I doubt that any of the online movie portals that have replaced him offer this kind of service.<\/p>\n

We saw this coming, of course, because it had already happened in America. Three years ago, my friend Steve made the decision to close a video store in Bloomington, Indiana, that he had owned for several years. He described it<\/a> in a story for a local magazine.<\/p>\n

\n

“The Cinemat was a library-style video store, featuring a ‘long tail’ catalog of all the titles you’d never see at a major chain. We never had more than two copies of any one title; instead we stocked the widest variety of movies possible. Our pride and joy was our foreign and documentary sections and our \u2018Directors’ Wall.\u2019”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

When it became possible to rent movies through the mail<\/span>, this wasn’t a cause for concern<\/span>.<\/p>\n

\n
\n

“People have often asked us how we coped<\/span> with a national competitor<\/span> like Netflix. We never had trouble competing with them. If the three movies sitting on your coffee table from the top of your Netflix queue<\/span> aren’t quite what you are in the mood for tonight, you’re stuck. In contrast, we had 5,000 titles in one room. …<\/p>\n

In fact, when I’d work the counter<\/span>, I had to come up with<\/span> a strategy for helping the many customers who came in without an idea of what they wanted to see. All they knew was that they wanted ‘something good.’ Usually they were overwhelmed<\/span> by the choices available to them. So I began asking them a series of binary questions:<\/p>\n

‘Do you want to see a foreign film… or a domestic<\/span> film?’
\n‘…a narrative film… or a documentary?’
\n‘…an old movie… or a new movie?’
\n‘…a drama… or a comedy?’
\n‘…an action film… or a talky film?’<\/p>\n

And so on. By about the fourth or fifth question, I’d be able to steer<\/span> them to a section of shelves that would have ‘something good’ for them. It’s proven to be a useful technique for helping anyone who’s overwhelmed by choices. It certainly proved the value of going to a physical store.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Steve used a second room in the business as a caf\u00e9, a little movie theater and a place for live music performances. But when Netflix started offering a download service, the convenience was more important to customers than any secondary benefits Steve could offer.<\/p>\n

\n

“What I’ll truly lament<\/span> about closing is the loss of another decent<\/span> Third Place \u2014 some place that’s not home and not work \u2014 where people could come and entertain themselves beyond just picking out<\/span> a film to take home. The real value of the place was in bringing people together face-to-face to talk, first about videos over coffee, then about projected movies over popcorn, and finally about live music over beer.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The M\u00fcnchener Filmpassage didn’t have any such space, but in other respects<\/span> it was like the Cinemat. When you were there, you knew you were among people \u2014 staff and customers alike \u2014 who were aware of just how many good films are out there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We all knew this day would come. Last Friday, the M\u00fcnchener Filmpassage shut its doors. This wasn’t just any video-rental place. It had the largest selection of English-language films anywhere in Germany, including numerous titles released directly to video that no one would have known about otherwise. I’d go in looking for one film and come out with four or … >><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,42],"tags":[72,14,23],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=803"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1587,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803\/revisions\/1587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}