If you worked at a video store, what would you watch?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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Title of thread:

Nothing. I have harbored such a strong antipathy for movies for about 25 years now that I have sometimes said rashly that I would rather be deaf and blind than see one.
In the early 80s I rented Airplane! from a local Wherehouse store. I thought it would be funny. Well, pearls before swine…
In one scene a sick little girl is wheeled into the plane on a hospital gurney, with an I.V. in her arm, accompanied by her mother and a nurse. Fine and dandy. But a stewardess comes into that passenger compartment playing a guitar (seems like a swipe at Helen Reddy in Airport '75); and although she delights the passengers, and the men in the cockpit (Peter Graves and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) with her singing and music, she then swings the guitar around so that the neck snaps the I.V. tube, killing the little girl :frowning: ; and for good measure the stewardess smacks the grieving mother in the face with the guitar neck. If that is humor, I am Mikhail Gorbachev’s niece!
So I would watch nothing on the screens in a video store, were I customer or employee.

22

Porn.

really though, if you want something running in the background, go for the classics, the oldest movies you have - preferably the oscar winners.

OR,
the action classics,
the terminators
the die hards
independance day
the lethal weapons
Men in Black

Sell to the men. Women probably know what they want, but a good action flick could be an easy upsell.

23

Just FYI, the little girl does not die. She puts the IV back in (it was not broken or snapped, the IV needle was just pulled out of her arm).

And one bad, or tasteless, or offensive movie does not make all movies bad, tasteless or offensive.

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You could have a good couple of weeks (or months) of showing the AFI’s Top 100 movies of all time or even use the Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com) list of top 250. Or if you wanna go by theme night:

Aliens night:

  • Alien
  • Aliens
  • Alien 3
  • Alien: Resurrection

Star Wars night:

  • A New Hope
  • Empire Strikes Back
  • Return of the Jedi
  • Phantom Menace

Kevin Smith night:

  • Clerks
  • Mallrats
  • Chasing Amy
  • Dogma

Star Trek night:

  • (II) Wrath of Khan
  • (IV) Journey Home
  • (VI) Undiscovered Country
  • (VIII) First Contact

Tom Clancy night:

  • Hunt for Red October
  • Patriot Games
  • Clear and Present Danger

Indiana Jones night:

  • Raiders of the Lost Ark
  • Temple of Doom
  • Last Crusade

… just to name a few.

25

Or you could just go the Blockbuster route and play N’Stink videos and AOL commercials. :slight_smile:

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OK, so she doesn’t die. All the same, if they were going to show the stewardess’ carelessness she should have been repaid in kind with a punch in the mouth or her guitar broken over her noggin–or something, violent or not, to even the score.
Apparently this kind of attack on viewers’ sensibilities–assuming they have any–was not confined to Airplane!, if snippets of other movies I have seen since are any representative sample.
Cases in point:
Back to the Future, 1985–For the first half of the movie Fox’s character either suffers severe abuse or metes it out, to a limited extent. (One scene shows his father’s employer, in the family’s home after wrecking their car, and calling the kid “Buthead!” in his own home. Marx and Engel would be drooling.)
The Believers, 1987–this was apparently a knock-off of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. A friend (?) conned me into going to see this movie. I was so angry when it was over I have not gone to the movies since. Throughout the movie characters who were apparently extraterrestrial, were leading innocent Earth people into dissolution and death.
My point is not that negative situations exist in movies. It is that in the last 30 years or so, the content of movies seems to appeal to viewers’ latent sadism, which may be why the apparent death of the sick kid was included in the story line for Airplane! in the first place. It’s as if the moviegoing public has become a horde of armchair serial-killers who would commit atrocious crimes, given the opportunity. With my volatile temper and thin skin I think it’s just as well I don’t go to the movies at all.

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Uh, dougie, what do you want? A movie that features a bunch of people sitting around reading newspapers? People go see movies because they display things that don’t normally happen in real life. It’s a temporary escape from reality. Celluloid dope, if you will.

Airplane! had a LOT of exaggeration for comic effect. If you took it seriously, I think you missed the entire point of the movie. It’s almost like a cartoon. We know Wily Coyote couldn’t stand it mid-air for 5 seconds (let alone order products from Acme and have them arrive in three seconds), but we watch it anyway. You’re taking this stuff way too seriously. Armchair serial killers… :rolleyes:

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Dougie, it pays to pick and choose your movies like you would books, though it does appear your personal selection would be limited. Offhand, I’d suggest movies based closely (not loosely) on real-life events (PG-13 or better), as they would tend to be less offensive. For example:

Apollo 13
October Sky
Remember the Titans

Or perhaps you could stick to romantic comedies (though nowadays the sexual references are often more overt):

While You Were Sleeping
Runaway Bride
Sleepless in Seattle
etc.

If you are not offended by the violence per se, but rather the laisse faire context, I personally think Schindler’s List, Braveheart, and Saving Private Ryan portray violence with good historical accuracy and are worth watching for their treatment of the subject. They are, however very graphic and not 100% historically accurate (but few movies are).

If more people like you would support the kind of movies you like to see, they’d make more money, and more of that type would get made. But as far as movies being sadist goes, the Three Stooges and Laurel & Hardy weren’t exactly models of good behavior. And weren’t Westerns always full of people shooting at each other?

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Maybe dougie should just stick to Disney movies.

A really funny prank would be to take a copy of South Park : Bigger, Longer, and Uncut and slap the sticker for The Little Mermaid over it. Boy, that’d be a hoot! :slight_smile:

30

Errr and give that tape to dougie. Otherwise, it would just be a pointless exercise. :slight_smile:

31

Dougie,

The point of Airplane is that it is satirical of all of the airline disaster movies that came before it. It was never expected to be taken seriously. As Neutron said, it is a live action cartoon. It tries to show the silliness of some of the movie forms that came before. Judging by your comments, you don’t go to a lot of movies. That would cut down your appreciation of the satire. BTW, you are the first person I’ve run across that totally hated this film. But, I will grant you that there is no film or play or book that everyone will like. Everyone has their own tastes in entertainment.

As for a trend in film making towards violence. I agree that it has gotten more graphic, however violence has been part of entertainment for hundreds of years. Hamlet is one of the bloodiest works of art ever written. Every one dies! Romeo and Juliet has teenage sex, drugs, gang warfare. Oedipus Rex has patricide, incest, wars, famine, self mutilation. Art is filled with violence. It is in our natures. Life is full of conflict, that is why people tend to find conflict interesting.

That’s jus my humble opinion.

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Great Detectives Night
The Zero Efect
The Maltese Falcon
The Drowning Pool

Adventure Night
The African Queen
The Man who would be King

Misadventure Night
Adventures in Babysitting
U-turn
The Man with one Red Shoe

Family Values Night
Dad
Feild of Dreams
Addams Family Values

Hands across America Night
Philadelphia
Raising Arizona
North to Alaska

Action Night
Die Hard
Rumble in the Bronx
First Blood

Romance Night
Murphy’s Romance
Sleepless in Seattle
Love Story

Sports Night
He Got Game
Bull Durham
North Dallas Forty

33

Every night I’d be in charge of the vid selections would be Warren Miller night…anything you want, as long as it’s ski flicks.

34

… over and over and over. It never gets boring!

35

I worked in a video store, Hollywood Video, and the rules were thuswise, during the day you could only play Disney animated movies. Note, this doesn’t include Toy Story, which was computer animated. From the hours of six p.m. to ten p.m. you had to play the Hollywood advertisment tape, which was clips of all the movies that were new that month. After ten p.m., you had your choice, the Hollywood video or a Disney video.

Hell, I liked Aladdin the first 50 times I saw it. And don’t get me started on the Hollywood tape. They had this special going on about “First Rites” movies, which were independent movies that Hollywood decided to sponsor. One of them, “The Eden Myth” was featured prominently on one of their videos. “The Eden Myth” is about incest, and the clip consisted of one of the people in the movie yelling, “Oh my God! Oh My GOOOOOD!” This horrible scene would repeat itself every fifteen minutes. I’m guessing they did this because Hollywood Video is a “family friendly” store. (Well, at least I didn’t work there when the tape was repeating the choruses to “Yellow Submarine” and “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” nonstop. I like the song “Yellow Submarine”, but to listen to just the chorus every fifteen minutes?)

Lucky for me, the managers at the store didn’t give a damn about their job. (I don’t think anybody did.) So anything that didn’t have hardcore sex scenes or extensive swearing was up for grabs. I’d play “The Princess Bride” because only the most hard-hearted would object to that movie, or every once in a while some harmless movie I’d find on the shelf. When I made them order the Transformers movie, I made them play it non-stop. Funny thing is, nobody gives a damn about Disney movies, but when I play anything else I always have people coming up and asking “What’s this movie you’re playing?” And then they’d rent it.

Just another reason I think all these corporate franchises, and they’re weird backstage deals can all go to hell.

36

It’s just like in real life where people ignore the real problem and just do some feel-good superficial crap and claim to be helpful when in fact, they’re not. In short, it’s funny because it’s true.

Besides, if you can’t laugh at some else’s misfortune, what can you laugh at??

37

Hey, Swiddles, besides our outstanding good looks and incomparable intelligence, we have something in common. :::
Ahem:::I use to manage a video store. ( Impressed?)

Along the lines of themes, we use to have every day themes.

John Wayne Day ( I beleive June 5th or thereabout)
James Cagney Day ( July 17th)
Errol Flynn day

Sports movie themes

Sequel days ( watch only the sequels to the blockbuster hits)

Before they were famous days.

Great Soundtracks, crap script days.

Sci fi days.

And so on.

I mostly remember the John Wayne Days, because the owner was a huge John Wayne Fan and we had nearly every John Wayne Film released to video to date at that time. So I would have a " Lets watch John Wayne’s films in the order they were released " week. ( Did the same with alot of other movie stars, but this was a Duke-a-thon -O’Rama Extravaganza considering the bulk of his work.

::::::::relevant sidebar:::::I caught one particularly fascinating script boo boo only because of this John Wayne O-Rama. I had just watched his first film-The Big Trail which is about the Oregon Trail and John Wayne leading a bunch of conestoga wagons (great scenery, even if in B/W) and there is a scene with hostile indians. Wayne rides up and raises his hands in the typical “How” fashion, muttering the indian buzzword, which was something akin to " Eh toh" and all is well because of this spectacular parlaying of redman jive and everyone lives happily.

Then in the next day or so, I put in another John Wayne movie, which was about 35 years down the line from the Big Trail and a cowboy ( well duh) flick. Same scenario as before with Wayne rushing in to save the day from hostile injuns and damned if he doesn’t say to this bunch of savages but the same indian buzzword. I had to stop that scene right there and go and get the Big Trail and FFWD through that until I found it so I could show someone. The boss just cracked up.
There are games you can do at this job. They are fun fun fun!
Assign one person to pick a bunch of movies from the shelf. Have them load them into the vcr, while whomever else working there does not look on the screen. Try to guess the movie coming up next by either the score or the opening lines. This was our all time favorite thing to do when really really bored on the job. We use to get the customers involved in this game and it was a blast.

38

Oh,the other game you can do, and we did not invent this game, but while SpaceBalls is playing for the 90th time on the TV, you can work on your list of 6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon.

Another one that has no title but could be called: Obsure Movies or Name the Flick is :

Name two actors that were in the same movie. Not necessarily starring roles. (One could be a first big flick for one, the other just starting out)and someone else has to name that movie.

Example: Dan Ackroyd & Mickey Rourke.

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Answer: 1941
It’s like a pringle… wanna nuther one?

Robin Williams and Emma Thompson.
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Dead Again.

This games ares not only beneficial for your mental health at this job, but are portable and anyone can play. EVERYONE LOVES MOVIES and it is something we all have in common. (Hint: great conversational starter with a cute guy/gal/hermaphodite) This information, which is totally useless, is something that will stick with you for the rest of your life.

39

Good suggestions. The thing is, after 8 PM, we really WANT to show movies with bad stuff in them, because we can. It’s the power of working the night shift. The schmoes during the day shift have to watch the kiddie stuff, we can throw in Dead Alive (where the woman eats her own ear) and no one cares. Well, I do, and after I stop hitting my coworker for grossing me out, we get on with work.

The Star Wars movies are inevitably put in by the Star Wars fan coworker. As are Indiana Jones. He loves his George Lucus.

Waiting for Guffman was a big hit, as the punky alternarock boys had never seen it. I think I might have lost cool points when I screamed, across the store and in perfect sync with the film “Well, you know what you are? You’re BASTARD PEOPLE is what you are, and I’m gonna go home and bite my pillow, that’s what I’m gonna do!” There was a long pause, and one of them said “Damn. How many times HAVE you seen this movie?”

Another favorite is to watch DVDs of movies we love, and turn on the Director’s commentary. Three Kings was FACINATING. Anyone who liked that movie, who has access to a DVD player, RENT THAT DVD. In fact, if you hated the movie, do it anyway. It was facinating. Very little work was done that night, as we were just staring blankly at the TV.

And Dougie, consider this statement: I’ve decided I hate books. I mean, I’ve read The Bridges of Madison County, and some romance novels, and they’re just a waste of time.

You’re allowed to watch crappy movies, just don’t assume the art of film is represented by those crappy movies. (yes, I disliked Airplane. As I dislike all those “satire” genre movies, Naked Gun, major Leauge, etc.) You want good satire? Monty Python’s Holy Grail. Or Mel Brooks. Anything Mel is usually great. Or you could just bypass the comedies and go to drama. American Beauty. Fight Club. The aforementioned Three Kings. Good flicks.

And people, a final plea. Please do not go into a video store, approach the clerk and say “I am looking for a movie.” without SOME idea of what movie you are looking for. I’ll be happy to suggest something, but only if EVERY suggestion is not met with “Eh. I heard that wasn’t too good. What else do you have?” feh.

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By-the-by, Shirley, Dead Again is one of my favorite movies of all time. I popped it in the other night, and realised how much I love it. Only got half way through, though. Feh.