Blockbuster's bankruptcy filing in September made it official: Technology is killing the video-rental store -- and a piece of American culture with it.
Alan Sklar feels it. The 61-year-old has stood behind the counter of Alan's Alley Video in Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood for 22 years. Revenue is down, and his staff, which reached 10 a few years ago, is now about five. "If we pay the bills, we're happy," he said.
Many nights are very quiet.
He lists the culprits. "Netflix, Redbox and on-demand," he said, over Audrey Hepburn's voice emanating from a television in the corner playing "Funny Face."
"People like things being given to them. We don't see as many warm bodies."
Since the first video-rental shops emerged in the late 1970s, they have served as shrines to films and created new social spaces for neighborhoods, often reflecting their personalities. They drew cinephiles, rebellious teens seeking movies of which their parents might not approve, and budding young actors and directors who canonized them in their work.
But new movie-delivery methods have made brick-and-mortar stores obsolete. In 1998, Netflix (NFLX, news, msgs) started shipping DVDs to consumers at home. Cable companies expanded their on-demand movie offerings, making it easier to find a movie from the couch.
In 2007, there were 16,237 video-rental stores in the country, according to the latest data from the U.S. Census Bureau, down from 23,036 in 1997.
An 'inconvenient' truth
"The video store became inconvenient," said Joshua Greenberg, a program director at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, who wrote a book about the history of video stores.It all began in the late 1970s. A few studios began releasing video cassettes and budding entrepreneurs -- including George Atkinson -- saw an opportunity. He opened Los Angeles-based Video Station in 1977, renting films to people who didn't want to own them.
Hollywood was leery, fearing that rentals of movie cassettes could eclipse sales of them, and tried to fight the video stores.
The market developed slowly because video cassette players weren't cheap. But as prices dropped, the market flourished, and by the mid-'80s, the country was full of mom-and-pop stores, with their own local flavors, from independent films to racy ones.
Shops such as Kim's Video in Manhattan's East Village became a home for a new generation of reference-spouting film fans. Patrons there and elsewhere came to love their quirky "dude behind the counter" keen to help them sift through what was new, good and suited to their tastes.
Quentin Tarantino spent several years working at a shop called Video Archives in Hermosa Beach, Calif., while writing his first screenplays.
"I got to be little Mr. Critic at the store, putting films in people's hands, and arguing my points about why this movie was good and this movie was bad," the director told Charlie Rose in a 1994 interview.
Alan's Alley Video and others held on as the chains swept in. Blockbuster, founded in 1985, had thousands of stores and Hollywood Entertainment was chasing it. Boasting cheaper rentals than mom-and-pops, they played up their selection, not their expertise. Rental stores branched out beyond movies to video games, music and mammoth cartons of Milk Duds.
Continued: Movie stores become movie stars
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