My Last Blockbuster Trip

I'd been through the cycle of a Blockbuster store closing down before, and had fun picking my way through their pre-viewed collections, paying a couple of dollars for films in white paper sleeves that I would never have bought otherwise. When the announcement about the majority of the remaining stores being shut down was made a few weeks ago, I knew it spelled the end of the last Blockbuster store in my area, which was conveniently right within walking distance. I went in once last month, looking for a discounted copy of "Star Trek: Into Darkness" for a friend's Christmas present. No luck. I did get a couple of the shelf liner art cards, but only about a dollar's worth. The ones for the most recent movies were smaller, flimsier, and the artwork was often cropped. I didn't look at the DVDs, all selling for $5-7.

Last Monday I dropped by again on a whim to find a drastically different scene. Where the closure of other stores had stretched out over multiple months, this one was liquidating fast. Prices on all the DVDs without cases had dropped to $1-2 dollars, and there were tables full of long, narrow cardboard boxes that held them like the index cards in an old library card catalog. Several people on their lunch breaks were browsing in the store, but only a few were going through the discs. It wasn't hard to see why. The DVDs were loosely alphabetized, but to find anything you had to dig through the whole mess disc by disc, often struggling to read faded print on the sleeves. I took a look for the hell of it, and found mostly what I expected. They were nearly all titles from a year or two ago, extra rental discs that Blockbuster was taking the opportunity to cull from their online service. Everything had multiples, and the better titles had the worst quality discs, covered in scratches.

And then I saw it. The first disc for the Criterion Collection edition of Francois Truffaut's "Shoot the Piano Player." And it was in perfectly good condition, without a mark on it. Sure, there was no case and the second disc wasn't there, but I was still holding a premium quality release of one of the great French New wave classics, on sale for $2. I put down my purse, set "Piano Player" aside, and kept going. Two hours later I had dug out the first discs of the Criterions for Kihachi Okamoto's "The Sword of Doom," Chantal Akerman's "Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles," Jean-Luc Godard's "Alphaville," and Gregory Nava's "El Norte." And a Kino release of Andrei Tarkovsky's "The Sacrifice." Pretentious film buff that I am, I was practically dizzy. It made sense of course - obscure prestige films wouldn't get nearly as much traffic with the Blockbuster crowd, and Criterion never held much weight with non-cineastes. Of course the discs would have been overlooked.

"The Sacrifice" and "Alphaville" were in pretty bad shape, though, so I put them back. And though "El Norte" is a great film, I knew it was one of those pictures that I was never going to watch again, so it went back too. Instead, I plucked up regular old studio versions of Guy Ritchie's "RocknRolla," which I had been meaning to watch, and Shane Black's "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang," which I had been meaning to watch again. I paid $10 for five movies, three of them Criterion discs. The clerks confirmed the store was in its final two weeks. I'd only gotten through about a third of the store's remaining inventory, so I came back a few days later. On that trip I found Criterions of Ingmar Bergman's "Wild Strawberries" and Carlos Reygadas's "Silent Light." On my third trip today I found Peter Davis's "Hearts and Minds," Lynn Ramsay's "Ratcatcher," and Milos Forman's "The Firemen's Ball." I only bought "Firemen's Ball." I admired the others, but didn't feel the need to own them.

I also refrained from buying discs for Terrence Malick's "The Tree of Life" and the new version of "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy," though I was tempted. I like both films very much. However, since they were both post-2008, their rental discs had probably been stripped of all the usual extras and I'd be better off picking them up for a few dollars more at an after Christmas sale if I really wanted them. So I paid for "The Firemen's Ball," thanked the clerk, and walked out. The last Blockbuster Video in my area closes in three days. The unsold inventory will be sent to another closing store a couple hundred miles away for more curious fans to comb through. And as they do, they'll listen to the other customers discuss their memories of coming to the store over the years, give their condolences to the employees, and talk about movies, movies, movies.
And say goodbye.
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