Video Days : When Your Video Revolution Goes Stale, New Stores, Mail-Order Sources Add Some Spice
Statistics show it and we all know it: Millions of us are spending our weekends at home next to an old electronic friend, the television, and its new buddy, the videocassette recorder.
Many of us have abandoned the theaters to the teen-agers (the ones who aren’t back in their bedrooms using their VCRs) and the hot-for-the-moment restaurants to young singles and out-of-town visitors. For a sizable segment of the population, Saturday night out has turned into Saturday night in--bunched around the VCR.
Consider, for example, video freak Robin Smiley. The Los Angeles printing broker, a bachelor, owns seven VCRs--five Beta, two VHS--connected to five TV sets. “I love movies,” he says. “When I think about the past, so much is associated with the movies I saw when I was growing up. Now those sounds and images are things I can go to whenever I want.”
Ruth Prodan, who lives in Studio City and owns an aerobics-wear company, says she and her husband fit a lot of video into their busy lives, because the VCR allows choice and control. The problem with movie theaters, she adds, is that “you’re stuck there whether the movie’s good or bad. And then there are the uncomfortable seats and the people talking behind you . . . . Who needs it?”
A Gallup Poll last year showed that one-third of all Americans who were asked “What is your favorite way of spending an evening?” answered “TV.” And with videocassette recorders in 57% of American homes at latest count, TV often means “video.” The movies came home on 1 billion cassettes in 1986--and that was only rentals.
Most likely to be video devotees, according to a recent study by the Denver-based marketing consulting firm National Demographics and Lifestyle, are science-fiction readers, real estate investors and motorcyclists. Least likely: Bible readers, gardeners and fishermen. Working women are the fastest-growing video group.
Not only ordinary folks love their video. “We’re talking major video fan,” says Connie Pappas, publicist for one video celebrity, Elton John. She notes that the rock singer has a system at his Los Angeles home that enables him to play VHS tapes in three different formats--American, English/European or Australian.
But despite the obvious VCR frenzy, many video fans haven’t branched out much past their corner store. Some have become such stay-at-homes that they have videos delivered, like pizza, from such services as Video Valet and Video Butler. Most, though, find themselves browsing through the same (or little-changing) selection of Hollywood flicks and grabbing one or two--often without much enthusiasm--to take home.
If you’re a video couch potato about to take root, here are some ways out of the Video Rut:
MORE IN STORE
The first thing to learn about video stores is that they aren’t all next to doughnut shops.
OK, most “mom and pop” video shops do seem to be in a strip shopping center next to a convenience store. But it’s the video stores with more--real emporiums that offer more than the top 100 flicks--that concern us. (Back east, the newest thing is called a Video Hut, which really is just a little hut, sitting in a parking lot like a Fotomat, and offering only the 30 best-selling movies. Period.)
To get the best sense of the possibilities, head for the Sunset Strip. There, at 8844 Sunset Blvd., right across from the giant record store that gave it birth, is Tower Video.
Even at a beyond-the-ordinary video store like Tower, feature films rule. There are row after row of them, divided into such categories as drama, action/adventure, comedy, cult (from “Eraserhead” to “Buckaroo Banzai”), nostalgia/classic and X-rated.
Special Interest Videos
But here are other tapes, too: children’s, music, stand-up comedy, special interest (a wide-ranging tag that covers everything from a Jane Fonda workout to a documentary on polar bears), old TV shows . . . and not just in the dribs and drabs mom and pop offer. There’s a big, separate for-sale section. Rental fee: $1.99 per day per tape.
Just a block east of Tower is one of the Southland’s three Videotheque stores (at 8800 Sunset Blvd.). The two others are in Beverly Hills and Westwood, and the selection at all three is large and varied.
The two big West Hollywood stores make an interesting contrast. Tower is “Aliens”--busy, a little chaotic, maybe even scary when the weekend crowd is fighting over the last copy of, well, “Aliens.” Videotheque is “Out of Africa”--sophisticated, classy, a little stuffy.
At first you might think you’re entering a video museum: Videotheque keeps its cassettes behind locked glass doors and organizes a lot of them by video company rather than category or title.
But it’s an atmosphere that many of the show folks in the nearby hills prefer, and you might spot Elton John or Whoopi Goldberg here. Rental fee: $4, or $2 after membership is paid for ($50 a year or $100 lifetime).
Cornucopias of cassettes though they may be, Tower and Videotheque don’t have everything. For high-brow offerings, particularly foreign films and arts tapes--ballet, opera, etc.--Budget Video (1534 N. Highland) is a good bet.
Budget is the mighty midget of the Los Angeles video boutiques. It looks smaller than even a lot of mom-and-pop outfits, but somehow 7,000 tapes are stuffed into those packed shelves.
Expand Your Sources
One reason: With rare exceptions, the videos are not divided into categories. They just run along the wall in alphabetical order. You might expand your cultural boundaries as well as your video sources here, reaching for a copy of the Beastie Boys video and deciding on “The Barber of Seville” instead. Or vice versa.
Down the middle of the store stands an ample videodisc collection. One thing you’re not likely to find at Budget is a copy of “Debbie Does Dallas”--the store had exactly a dozen X-raters when we were last in. Rental fee: $3 a day Monday through Friday, or $3 for the whole weekend.
Another small but outstanding location for arts-oriented tapes is Vidiots (302 Pico Blvd., Santa Monica), which specializes in more outre cassettes--performance art, poetry readings, underground films. The selection is small but select, the clerks knowledgeable and helpful.
A Video Bonanza
In the Silver Lake area is the surprising Video Journeys (2730 Griffith Park Blvd., at Hyperion). Over a cleaners and next to a Mayfair market, the place doesn’t look like much from the outside, but inside waits a video bonanza. The store is more bountiful than most in classic/foreign films, children’s tapes and TV series (just about every episode from the British-TV cult favorite “The Prisoner” is on display). It’s a great family store, keeping the X-rated items in a separate back room. Rental fee: $1.50 (or $1 with a $19.95 “lifetime membership”) for most tapes, $3 for adult videos ($2 with membership).
But what if your tastes are more proletarian and you still want a good selection at the right price? The Wherehouse might be for you--at least the high-tech one at 7127 Sunset Blvd. (near La Brea).
Unlike some other stores in the chain, this one has a laudably large selection in the usual movie categories, plus some instructional and other special interest tapes (about 70 VHS and 50 Beta last time we were in)--though just about zero arts videos. The price is the big selling point here. Not only is the rental fee a mere $1 a day (at all stores), but the Wherehouse has also just started a plan rewarding “frequent renters” with free TVs and other gear.
Other notable Los Angeles-area stores are Rocket Video (7422 Melrose Ave.), L.A. Video (273 S. Western Ave.) and Video West (805 Larrabee Ave.).
Besides the Wherehouse, two other chains--Music Plus and 20/20--are better-stocked than you might expect. And for specialists--and we mean specialists --there’s Video France (2345 Westwood Blvd.), where almost all the films are from guess-where, and Martial Arts Video (111 W. Pacific Coast Hwy., Wilmington).
VIDEO BY MAIL
Even the stock at the biggest video stores represents only the tip of the iceberg. To get to the rest, you head for the phone--and the mails.
Using catalogues from video mail-order houses opens up a whole new world for VCR owners, especially when they want a lot of tapes that aren’t movies.
Here are some of the things you can learn from direct-mail videocassettes:
--”Shoeing the Horse”: 40 minutes on the fundamentals.
--”Goose Calling”: a 90-minute seminar with expert goose-caller Bill Harper.
--”Beginning Appalachian Clogging”: dancing, not plumbing.
--”Cut Pile Rug Weaving”: 101 minutes of step-by-step instructions “on warping and weaving weft and pile yarns.”
--”Advanced Chipping”: half an hour on “one of golf’s most misunderstood strokes.”
We found all of the above tapes listed in the most complete special-interest catalogue, The Video Schoolhouse, 265 pages crammed with instructional, informational, sports, arts and other tapes. Just a few of the areas covered are gardening, history, fishing, cooking, parenting, self-defense and family relationships. The catalogue is available for $8.95 from Sallyforth Inc. in Monterey (the price includes two $5 coupons good toward rental or purchase). Call (800) 345-1441 for more information.
Several other general-subject catalogues are worth sending for. One of the most notable is from the Santa Monica company Greenleaf Video; call (213) 829-7675 in California or (800) 255-4687 from outside the state.
Mail-Order Videos
Some video companies specialize in mail-order business, too. Morris Video, a Hermosa Beach firm, has more than 200 videos (especially how-tos) in its free catalogue. Information: (213) 533-4800. Connecticut’s Video Yesteryear has hundreds of nostalgic videos--old films, cartoons, documentaries and so forth, mostly public domain. Information: (800) 243-0987. Indiana’s Kartes Video has a wide variety of offerings, from movies to cooking to “How to Pick Up Men.” Information: (800) 582-2000. ARP Video has more than 100 cassettes on aviation, cars and the military. Information: (800) 843-3672. Holiday Video Library specializes in travel videos. Information: (213) 945-3325. NFL Films Video just may have everything you ever wanted to see about pro football. Information: (800) 635-8273. There are several companies offering performing-arts tapes, among them Kultur, (800) 458-5887; VAI (212) 799-7798; Home Vision, (800) 323-4222, and V.I.E.W., (212) 674-5550.
A terrific film-oriented catalogue, Movies Unlimited, is a 560-page monster that’s worth its $6.95 price simply as a movie/video reference book. Dividing films into hundreds of categories by actor, director or subject and indexed by title, the catalogue also contains fairly extensive listings in other areas--mostly notably arts, sports, television shows and Laserdiscs. Information: (800) 523-0823.
QUALITY CONTROL
One thing the catalogues won’t do is tell you whether a movie is worth renting. Besides asking your video store clerk for recommendations--a potentially disastrous undertaking if he’s never enjoyed anything but a Chuck Norris film--there’s help at the book store.
If you buy only one movie/video reference book, make it Leonard Maltin’s TV Movies and Video Guide. Maltin reviews over 15,000 films, rating them between four stars and “bomb” and including such details as director, length and video status of each entry.
Rating the Movies
Steven H. Scheuer put together the first movie-rating guide back in the ‘50s and he’s been editing updates ever since. Maltin surpassed him with details and Scheuer has been slow to catch up, but the latest edition of Scheuer’s Movies on TV makes a good effort. Films on video are noted with a dagger symbol.
For even more details on film credits plus a decidedly British (and old-fashioned) view of the cinema, there’s the more costly Filmgoer’s Guide by Leslie Halliwell. The companion work is Halliwell’s Filmgoer’s Companion, a fascinating, near-encyclopedic guide to film makers and actors.
Less satisfying is Mick Martin and Marsha Porter’s Video Movie Guide. It costs about the same as the Maltin and Scheuer tomes but covers far fewer movies, and neither original studios nor video companies are mentioned. Even worse is Rating the Movies by the editors of Consumer Guide: only 3,300 movies are reviewed.
Guide For Parents
For parents, there’s “Kidvid: A Parents’ Guide to Children’s Videos” by Harold Schechter. While not as complete as one might like, “Kidvid” gives a lot of information and opinion on the 300 or so titles it does cover, including company, price, suitable-age range and rating.
For the real video fanatic (with money to spare), there’s the Video Sourcebook, a 2,300-page hard-bound book listing and briefly describing (but not rating) just about everything available on video, movie or otherwise. It costs $150. Information: (516) 364-3686.
These reference works are updated every year or two, so keep that in mind if you go looking for them in used book shops.
The top two magazines in the field are Video and Video Review, both easy to find at newsstands. Both are full of useful articles (on equipment and software), listings and reviews. Video gets our nod because of its detail work (for example, listing video companies and phone numbers for listed releases) but both are recommended.
What else is there? Plenty, in the ever-changing world of video. If keeping up with hundreds of new releases a month isn’t enough for you, you can always start studying up on the new video-machine formats due to hit the electronics stores this fall or early next year--Super-VHS, ED-Beta, CD-Video. Or you can have people over for video parties.
If you’ve tried everything and you’re still getting jaded with video, you can always go to a movie theater. Maybe that guy who sat behind you last time and talked all the way through the film has bought a VCR.
