Interview: “I Like Movies”

With video stores having a bit of a resurgence in the past year, it’s perfect timing for some new films about the video store experience. Last year’s Sundance documentary “Kim’s Video” was just released in cinemas, and now the Canadian indie comedy “I Like Movies” finally comes to the US, after debuting at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival. This hilarious & surprisingly poignant portrait of a teenage cinema addict working at a video store in the early 2000s is a fantastic debut from writer/director Chandler Levack, and a phenomenal breakout for star Isaiah Lehtinen. I saw the film at last year’s Cleveland Film Festival, and I’m thrilled that I got the chance to talk with Levack about her own history with Blockbuster Video, writing about teenage male friendship, and her thoughts on film fandom today.

The film is about working in a video store, and you yourself worked in a Blockbuster Video. What memories do you remember best?

I think a lot of stuff that I put in the movie, like pushing that card around and stocking the shelf with DVDs. A lot of good screenings in the back room, on my lunch break, watching, I don’t know, Adaptation or something, with a chicken teriyaki sub from Subway. That was my whole education in film. So I miss going there on a Friday night with my parents and walking around for a couple hours and just picking movies to rent and the ritual of, you know, picking a movie. It was very sentimental for me.

I love that you recreated a “chain video store” since for a lot of people, that’s the kind of video store they remember going to.

It’s true. I think some of my like biggest discoveries in movies were literally just because I remember seeing the Ghost World DVD cover and I was like, I don’t know what this is, but I know it’s for me [laugh]. It’s just like, you would see these movies sometimes and you were just like, my destiny awaits, you know?

So when you were creating this kind of this fictional video store called “Sequels,” did you have to do a lot of research on what a Blockbuster Video looked like, or did you draw it from memory?

Yeah, there were things that were non-negotiable, like I knew that there had to be a carpet [laugh], and a certain kind of shelving that I remember having there, those weird wire racks that were like specifically retrofitted to fill a video store. I knew I wanted the little DVD box thing that you put the movies in, the return box. I knew I wanted the uniforms, like the sleeve of the polo shirt to kind of land in the crook of everybody’s elbow, and be sort of oversized, but weirdly form-fitting at the same time. And sort of just the color scheme of the video store and the graphics. So I did a lot of research. I looked at like a bunch of chains, not just Blockbuster, but Family Video, and there were a couple Canadian chains, like Jumbo Video. So yeah, I just did a lot of research. And then I guess the biggest thing was the computer screens, like not knowing what it looked like when you rented a video. I couldn’t find any images online. So then I ended up calling the last Blockbuster in Bend, Oregon, and I got them to take pictures of their computer system for me, which funnily enough, still looked exactly the same as when I worked there in 2003. So that was huge.

And Toronto still has a video store, Bay Street Video. Have you been there?

Yeah, we actually have two, there’s Bay Street and then there’s this other one called Eyesore Video. They’re both amazing. Bay Street is so cool. They have like everything you could ever ask for and they still get like all new movies all the time. And the people that work their are really nice and super knowledgeable about film. And then Eyesore is like a really cool, kind of more like a cult video store and they have like screenings in the back room sometimes. So I’m really grateful that both those places still exist. And they also lent us some DVD cases, and we’re really supportive of the movie when it was happening. And then we just got Vinegar Syndrome in Toronto too. I don’t think they have anything for rent, but it’s an incredible resource to have in Toronto. We’re really lucky.

I also love that on the video store shelves, you have a lot of copies of Last Night, which is one of my favorite Canadian films.

Yeah, at a certain point I was like, I think it’s gonna be easier to try to license movies if we ask Canadian filmmakers. So there’s a lot of Can Con [laugh], the only video store where The Saddest Music in the World by Guy Madden has a full shelf, treating it like it’s XXX (2002) or something.

Do you know if any of those filmmakers have seen the film yet?

Atom Egoyan has, he sent me a really effusive email back. It made my whole life actually. He was so generous about his support of the film. He said that the scene where Lawrence masturbates to Spartacus is one of the most affecting scenes in a Canadian film.

That’s high praise!

Yeah, I was like, wow, I can die now.

I think it’s fascinating that your two main characters, on the one hand you have this teenage boy who’s obsessed with movies and is very obnoxious about it. And then you have this older female character who is his boss at a video store, but really doesn’t wanna talk about movies. And that’s a lot of the tension of the film, because he can’t believe she doesn’t want to talk about them.

[laughs] Yeah, he can’t, he literally can’t. It’s like, well, what would we talk about then?

Was that part of the origin of the film, that you wanted to explore that tension?

I don’t know. It’s funny, I feel like as soon as I started writing it, Lawrence as a character was just so strong in my brain, and he kind of took over and I felt like I was just kind of like his secretary. I mean it’s interesting ’cause you’re right, he really doesn’t talk about anything else [laugh] but there’s still like a plot and a structure and a whole coming of age arc. But you’re right. It’s interesting how the film manages to get away with that, even though the thrust of it is totally just his complete obsession with popular culture and cinema that just monopolizes everything, every conversation, every interaction he has. I guess he talks about university sometimes too.

But to study film though! He’s going to university to study film.

Yeah, I mean, it’s really not till like the last three minutes of the movie that you even get a conversation about anything else, which I guess is character growth. I’ve been a pop culture writer since I was 18, and certainly movies and music and film have like really been kind of a locus point for me. And I guess I was just interested in someone with a real one track mind.

I love that you have a career as a film critic, so I’m sure you’ve seen a lot of director’s first films. Where there any aspects from famous first films that you looked up to, or tried to avoid?

I mean, I definitely watched a lot of first features by filmmakers that I really love and admire, which was kind of a good thing to sort of keep in mind, you know? Cause you’re like, okay, they didn’t start off making, I mean, Orson Welles did start off making Citizen Kane, but most people have kind of a, I mean, Bottle Rocket’s a great movie, but you know, it’s like a scalable wall to climb. They didn’t make Rushmore as their first film. So I think that was reassuring. Especially some stuff like the early Jaramusch movies or like watching Clerks again, you’re like, okay, this is just one shot, but the performances are so great, and that was a really great scene.

So it kind of helped me demystify. There’s also like this really great book that the Duplass brothers wrote called Like Brothers. And they were talking a lot about how with first features, all programmers are really looking for is like one really great scene or like a really great performance or like one interesting moment. So I think that helped me kind of take the pressure off. In Canada, a lot of our first features, there’s like kind of like a Canadian cottage movie that people I think always make, ’cause they always have access to a cottage and it’s always kind of like a Big Chill sort of movie, or like the stereotypical Canadian movies where someone goes back to their small town and they’re like the black sheep that moved to Toronto, and they have to come back ’cause like their mom is like dying of alcoholism or like somebody’s in the hospital and then it’s always like really loaded in front and someone’s like, oh, have you talked to mom? She’s not doing so well. And so I see that movie a lot and I was like, I don’t wanna make one of those like loaded Canadian dramas, even though I think the film does get there at points. I can’t even avoid it myself.

Those tropes definitely exist in American films as well. Your lead actor Isaiah has been working as an actor, but this is his first lead role, and the whole film rests on his shoulders. How did you feel confident that he was the right person for the role?

Yeah, it’s such a specific part and I think in the hands of like a different actor, I don’t know, I feel like I just fell in love so much with Isaiah that it’s hard for me to think of anyone else playing that role at this point. I just knew he was gonna be really extraordinary and special. There’s just something about the way that he held the camera and his range, both a comedic actor and a dramatic actor. I just kind of had this gut feeling that it was gonna be extraordinary and it was sort of both of our first films, so I think we both really just had to trust each other and sort of become this unit together because we were both taking a chance on each other.

We spent a lot of time watching movies together and talking about the film and really getting to know each other. So there was a really solid foundation there by the time we actually went to shoot, and I was really grateful for that because I think if it had been a situation where you’re just offering this part to someone, you’ve never met them in person before, and then the first time you meet them is just when they show up on set, like that’s not, I think I always wanna just feel really close to the person who’s the lead of a movie. Especially because my films are so personal, you wanna feel like it’s someone you really know and trust and that you have a really strong bond and relationship before you work together.

I love the fact that the film is so much about teenage male friendship. It’s a really well drawn portrait of that kind of very intense kind of closeness where they’re hanging out all the time and they have all these in-jokes. Was all that on the page, or did you work with the actors to build that realistic portrayal?

I think I basically wrote it like me and my high school friends, so yeah, I don’t know how I managed to write teenage boys so well [laugh], I think I kind of wrote Lawrence basically like a girl, which explains I guess why he’s so emotional and high-key. But Percy and Isaiah had a real natural bond in chemistry and had a lot in common. And so it was a bit effortless, and the first thing we filmed was that Rejects Night video with them. So I think that was a really great icebreaker. As soon as I saw Percy, he kind of improved this, he just like jumped on top of the PT Cruiser and started like posing like he was on MTV Cribs and I was like, okay, this is going to be good [laugh]. He’s not afraid of looking like a huge dork, and I could just tell that like Isaiah was like, okay, great, this is someone who’s really fearless and that we’re gonna be able to really do this together. So yeah, I think it was partially just the natural chemistry of those actors and them clicking thankfully. And then, I don’t know, taking maybe some of my memories from high school, which were really dominated by Nibs and SNL, and just putting them into this framework of male characters. Cause you’re right, I think a lot of times male characters are, they’re a bit thinly drawn, and male characters aren’t often as vulnerable in movies when they’re written by other men, which I think is really interesting. And also, women rarely write male characters either. So it was kind of interesting to sort of get into the head of like a young boy and sort of figure out what makes him tick and sort of make him feel really volatile and emotional.

The film really captures what it felt like to be a cinephile in the early 2000s. How do you feel like film fandom has changed and evolved since then?

I mean, I have no idea what I would’ve been like in high school if I’d had access to like Letterboxd or the Criterion Streaming collection. It feels like this generation, I mean, I go to the movies in Toronto a lot and I always see really young people at all the cinemateque screenings, which makes me so happy to see a young a sold out screening of like Jeanne Dielman on 35mm, and you look around and everyone in the crowd looks like they’re like 25 and younger. So it does feel like there’s a generation that’s really starving for cinema and they’re really curious about it. So the access to streaming hasn’t turned them off from going to the movies. But I also think that maybe the sort of emotional relationship that they have to movies is different because I think there’s something about the fact that we could only access it by having like analog copies of things.

It just meant that it felt like such more of like a very emotionally charged kind of like primordial relationship to it. Like I was really dying to see Punch Drunk Love in the theater and then dying for it to come out on DVD. It was such a point of pride for me to like buy that DVD and own it, and I watched it over and over again, whereas now, almost any movie feels like interchangeable to me. I don’t have the same kind of relationship to it. Even when there are movies that I absolutely love and like saw two or three times in theaters, I don’t own the hard copies of anything anymore. I don’t know, I guess I just take it for granted that a movie is gonna exist forever and I’ll be able to stream it at any time.

Hopefully this younger generation also learns to prioritize owning films on physical media.

I do think that this younger generation, they’re really passionate cinephiles and they have such a better education about movies and also what movies mean and the cultural context and they’re really critically observant and and thoughtful viewers. And so it makes me really happy that there’s so many that it’s like there’s so many young cinephiles out there.

Have you gotten a lot of good responses to the film when you’ve taken it to different countries and different festivals?

I was petrified when the film was about to be released, especially that young people were just gonna think it was like super cringe and heckle me on stage or something. And so it was incredible that TIFF Next Wave, which is this young film festival that’s programed by teenagers across Toronto, that they selected it as their pick for the film festival. And then I’ve really been so lucky, over the last two years I’ve traveled to Taiwan and Norway and Argentina with the film, and France and Cleveland, it’s exciting every time to see new people respond to it. I’ve shown it for 80 year olds, I’ve shown it for Taiwanese high school students, and it’s just been so incredible to see so many different kinds of people watch it. I’m really excited to go to LA and New York soon finally for our North American screenings.

And it’s coming out right alongside the documentary Kim’s Video, so it’s quite the moment for films about video stores.

That’s so cool. I went there a couple times, but I was too intimidated to rent anything.

“I Like Movies” opens Friday, April 12th in New York and Los Angeles, with Levack doing Q&As in both cities.