RIP Family Video, but #SaveTheVideoStore lives on
The last of the major video store chains is turning out the lights. On January 5th, 2021, Family Video announced they were shuttering their remaining 250+ locations across North America. This came just months after they closed 200 locations in the fall of 2020 due to the Covid pandemic. Up until the end they were posting #SaveTheVideoStore on social media. Now, you can buy everything to discount DVDs to the very shelves of the store before they’re gone. While video stores still live on in independent stores around the country, sadly Family Video will no longer be one of them.
While never as big as Blockbuster, Family Video managed to outlast them, as well as Hollywood Video and Movie Gallery. They actually predated Blockbuster, founded in 1978 by Charles Hoogland. It remained a family business for its entire existence, and peaked at 800 locations, as opposed to Blockbuster’s 9000+ locations worldwide. But while Blockbuster collapsed under it’s own weight, Family Video hung on for another decade, thanks to the smart decision to own their own real estate, as well as buying their own movies, instead of revenue-sharing deals with Hollywood studios. But sadly, even they couldn’t survive the wrath of Covid-19.
There’s a comfort to these big box video store chains, not unlike a Barnes & Noble or Borders bookstore. If you’d been to one, you’ve been to them all, so when you walk in, you know immediately where everything is. Walking into a Family Video, just like a Blockbuster, you knew where the Action Films were, or the Classics, or the Kids Section. The bright color scheme is warm and friendly, and if it’s a Family Video, you could order a Marco’s Pizza right next door. Will they have the complete catalogue of Akira Kurosawa or John Waters? Of course not, but they will have a dozen copies of Ghostbusters, or Titanic, or whatever the current blockbuster is. And the fact that these stores were located all over the country meant that they created a brand, a shared experience for anyone who walked through their doors. It’s no wonder Blockbuster Video merch is available all over the internet (you can still buy a Family Video t-shirt on their website).
I didn’t grow up with Family Video; my local store was a Hollywood Video (which in my humble opinion doesn’t get nearly enough nostalgia love as Blockbuster does). So back in 2019, I made a point to visit the closest Family Video to my hometown. Walking around the store really felt like trip back in time to my own childhood, browsing the “new releases” shelves wrapped around the store and the candy selection near the register. When I was a kid, the video store felt like an incredible treasure trove of delight, and I can only hope some kid feels the same way about that Family Video location today. What will they think when the store finally closes for good? I also wonder what will happen to the building itself once they move out. Will it become a grocery store, or a Starbucks? Will the community even remember they once had a video store around the corner? My hometown Hollywood Video closed a decade ago, and you’d never know it ever existed.
A lot of people hated chain stores like Blockbuster, and for good reason. They pushed out the mom & pop stores, and they mostly stocked only the big Hollywood releases. If you were around in the 80s, when that transition from independents to chains happened, its understandable to be resentful. But I grew up in the 90s, and for me, Blockbuster and Hollywood Video was all I knew. It wasn’t until I moved to Los Angeles, which still has independent stores, that I fell in love with places like Vidiots, Cinefile, Videotheque and Eddie Brandt’s Saturday Matinee. When you’re a kid, you can only cherish what you have, so if all you had was Family Video or Blockbuster, that became part of your childhood, and eventually your nostalgia. If you’re lucky enough to remember the glory days of the 1980s with video stores on every corner, be thankful. For the rest of us, we’ll cherish what we had.
To be a video store fan in 2021 sometimes feels like a losing battle. The closing of Family Video is just the biggest blow in a series of video store closings during the Covid pandemic, meanwhile new streaming sites appear all the time, and now Warner Brothers is planning to release all of their upcoming films straight to HBO Max. There may soon come a time when new films aren’t even released on home video, which will truly hurt every remaining video store. Not only are countless films not available online (or on DVD for that matter) but losing the physical space that a video store provides is just as painful to a movie lover as losing a movie theater. It’s a loss of a communal space, and it hurts the film community.
So, when the population is fully vaccinated and it’s finally safe to enjoy the outside world without masks and social distancing, it’s imperative that we all step up to save our local community businesses, from bookstores to movie theaters to, yes, video stores. We’ve lost so much already in the past year, so we must fight for what we have left. To misquote Charles Dickens, “I will honor #SaveTheVideoStore in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.” God Bless Video Stores, every single one.
