The proudly funky Video 21 store was one of the first video rental businesses in the United States when it opened its doors in the fall of 1978. “Home video was still so new that they had to sell or rent the VCR machines to go along with the tapes,” Video 21 owner Terry Brand said. “And that was back in the day when VCR machines were about the size of a microwave oven.” Over the decades, Video 21 outlived bigchain stores such as Blockbuster Video, Hollywood Video and Movie Gallery by carving out a niche market. If you wanted to watch a hard-to-find documentary, an obscure cult movie, a classic film or a foreign title, you went straight to Video 21. “You could walk in Blockbuster and ask for a Jean-Luc Godard movie and they would look at you and say, ‘Huh?’ ” Brand said. “The one thing I’ve learned in this business is you can’t eyeball somebody and tell what they’re going to rent. They can roll up here in a beaten-car, wearing overalls covered in mud and say, ‘Y’all got the new Jean-Luc Godard movie?’ ” Brand, who bought Video 21 with help from his wife, Bobbie, in 1999, said he has watched a generation of filmlovers grow up in the aisles of his store. That first generation now has children of its own. Unfortunately, the second generation spends years combing through Video 21’s extensive collection of family videos, comedies and old horror movies. Video 21 is going out of business at the end of November after it sells off all of its stock. “I told one young woman, who’s been coming in here with her dad since she was a baby, that we were closing and she began to tear up,” Brand said. “It looked like I had binged her head with a mallet.” I know exactly how she feels. The hammer hit me, too. Along with the demise of the Miracle 5 arthouse cinema and the closing of Vinyl Fever music store, Tallahassee is losing another one of its most beautifully offbeat cultural institutions. Into the ‘Video Pit’ When I moved to Tallahassee to attend classes at Florida State’s Creative Writing Program in 1983, one of my first stops in town was Video 21. Even though I did not own a VCR or TV at the time, I had friends who did. I found that if you showed up at a pal’s doorway with a six-pack of cheap beer and rented copies of The Marx Brothers’ “Duck Soup” (1933) and Alfred Hitchcock’s “North By Northwest” (1959) in your hands, it made it easier to barge your way in for the next four hours. Not long after I started writing articles for the Florida Flambeau to help pay my bar tab, the other starving scribblers and I found a friend in Robert Howard. He was an older movie buff who lived with his wife and young family in a nice house near Mission San Luis. Unlike my apartment, the Howard home had air-conditioning, a working VCR and a large TV. On the weekends, we often held a “Video Pit” at the Howard’s cozy home. It was an excuse to go on a cinema binge. They usually had running themes. “Cheap Noir Night” might feature such zero-budget masterpieces as “Gun Crazy” (1950) and “Detour” (1945). “Creepy Polish Director Night” boasted Roman Polanksi’s “Knife In The Water” (1962) and “Repulsion” (1965). I’m pretty sure that the always-agreeable Howard made us move the “High-Brow Filth Night” screening of “Cafe Flesh” (1982) and “Liquid Sky” (1982) to Bob Townsend’s apartment, where no children could wander by the television screen and be scarred for life. All of these titles were, of course, rented from Video 21. By the late ‘80s, Blockbuster Video warehouses seemingly popped up in every strip mall in town. My fellow film snobs and I hated going there because they hired very aggressive clerks who yelled “Hello!” when you walked in the door and then chastised you for racking up late fees when you tried to pay on your way out. I hope Blockbuster used all the late fees I paid to buy a really big coffin. The corner store Over at Video 21, the mood was more lax, personal and agreeable. Brand liked to hire “film nerds” to work the front counter. Most of them were musicians such as Pat Barousse (”Insect Fear,” “Spring Break 82”) or writers like Jesse Bullington (“Sad Tale of Brothers Grossbart”) or a force of nature such as C. “Chip” Adolph Moores (the most brilliantly razor-tongued film critic the Flambeau ever hired). “I didn’t set out to hire musicians and writers,” said Brand, a former professional musician who is in his mid-50s. “But most film nerds tend to be musicians and writers.” If Video 21 did not have an obscure title you were looking for, Brand would go to great lengths to locate one. “I wanted to see ‘La Jetée’ but they only had the VHS copy,” my friend and former Seven Days of Opening Nights director Steve Mac-Queen said. “I took it up to the counter and said, ‘I’d really rather watch this on DVD but this is all you’ve got, so....’ He (Brand) looks at it and says, ‘Yeah, you need to see this movie in a good print. Tell you what, I own it on DVD so I’ll bring it in tomorrow and leave it behind the counter. Just ask for it and bring it back when you’re done.’ So the next day I went in and the DVD was behind the counter with a sticky note with my name on it. Watched it — incredibly great movie, definitely best seen as hi-res as possible — and returned it. Certainly never happened to me at Blockbuster.” The cantankerous Edd Guy Thomajan (1919-2005), who worked as a character actor in such movies as “Panic in the Streets” (1950) and “Miracle On 34th Street” (1947), was another customer who used to come in and badger Brand about tracking down a copy of the crime film “Boomerang!” (1947). Thomajan played a role in that early film by director Elia Kazan (“On The Waterfront”), who was Thomajan’s friend, boss and mentor. “I thought he was talking about the Eddie Murphy movie at first but he quickly let me know that this ‘Boomerang!’ did not star Eddie Murphy,” Brand said. “He told me that he was in it and I thought, ‘Sure, whatever you say.’ You hear a lot of things standing behind this counter.” A few days later, Brand got home and turned on Turner Classic Movies. “And there he (Thomajan) is, sitting on a pool table and talking to Humphrey Bogart,” Brand said. “He really was an actor.” When asked what some of the most popular titles have been over the years, Brand laughed and said, “I couldn’t keep the movie ‘Friday’ (1995) in stock. People would rent it and never bring it back. After I bought four or five copies of it and they all disappeared, I said to hell with it.”
Posted on: Sun, 27 Oct 2013 17:07:16 +0000
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