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[James Arnold Taylor] My entire life has been movies.
I was what they call a latchkey kid.
So, I was brought up with the TV. That's how I learned to do what I do.
The reason I do what I do is because of movies.
[Samm Levine] Without movies, you're only getting
half of the story of what our culture was at any given time during any decade.
[Brian Posehn] Renting movies was huge.
And when I was a kid, uh, I had to rent the VCR, too, first.
I would get one for the weekend and then get a stack of movies,
at least four, and then watch them over and over.
[man 2] I've missed that act, like, getting in your car with your girlfriend
and arguing over what you were gonna watch.
You had to watch one of her movies so you could watch one of yours.
It was just a…it was a neat time.
[Kevin Smith] Blockbuster became the dominant beast.
Like, it was it. It was a name that you never imagined would go anywhere.
Like McDonald's.
Like, we got to see a corporation built up in our lifetime.
We also got to see a corporation die.
It's stock. One million shares!
-Oh, my God! -…of Blockbuster Video stock.
-Oh, no. -What, is that bad?
I still have a Blockbuster card.
What happened to Blockbuster?
[Posehn] Why did Blockbuster Video go out of business?
Was it Netflix?
Netflix was really the nail in the coffin.
For sure, Netflix.
-Netflix. -Netflix.
-Netflix or streaming or…
Yeah. So look, most people think
Blockbuster went out of business because of Netflix,
but that's not the truth.
Um, what really happened was…
[Smith] My hat's off to them, man. Like, there must be a story behind it.
There must be a reason. Perfectly rational explanation
for why they're holding out hope.
We all live in the same plane of existence,
but they live, clearly, in a different reality than I do.
And I'm not saying mine's better,
but it's like their reality still supports the neighborhood video store,
whereas my reality, that's dead as the dodo.
[keys jingling]
Okay. So once we get in here, we got, like, 30 seconds,
which is actually longer than I always give it, but…
to get in the back room.
[beeping]
Yeah. Well, it's Saturday. It's not as full as it is on Mondays.
Believe it or not, back in the day when we rented a lot more,
there would be many mornings when we would come in
and these doors would be open, movies would be out to here,
and they'd be all the way filled to the other side.
And so it would take a long time to get all the movies pulled out.
Now, unfortunately, it's not as busy as it used to be,
but still a little bit more manageable,
so we can pull the movies out in the morning.
Once the doors are open, we fill the candy, we fill the soda,
and then just walk around and make sure
that they didn't leave the broom in the middle of the floor.
And, you know, stuff like that.
As the "Blockbuster mom,"
um, you know, I'm always… [chuckles] walking around
reminding them that I'm really not their mother,
so I don't really need to clean up after them.
[cash register dings]
All right. Store's ready to open.
[Lauren Lapkus] This Blockbuster mom is Sandi Harding,
the general manager of the last Blockbuster in Oregon
and one of the last Blockbusters on Earth.
She considers herself a Blockbuster mom
because she's employed nearly every teenager
in her hometown of Bend over the last 14 years.
Sandi, how much has changed since you first started at Blockbuster?
All right, so when I started in 2004,
Blockbuster Video had roughly 9,000 stores and over 60,000 employees,
um, and now,
we have about 12 stores, um, and I would say,
with 12 stores, maybe a couple hundred employees.
[Lapkus] From 9,000 stores down to 12.
So, what happened? Maybe it's best to start
with why video stores exist to begin with.
After all, we don't have music rental stores,
and besides the library, we don't have book rental stores.
To explain, meet Alan Payne, a Blockbuster franchise owner
who once owned 44 stores across America.
But at the time of this interview, only three remained.
So, tell us, Alan, why video rental?
Why video rental?
Well, you got to go back to the early days, right?
To the early '80s…
when VCRs came along and, uh, studios decided
that they were going to sell movies directly to the consumers.
They could play a movie on the VCR.
Only problem is, they thought those were worth about $100.
And they probably thought that was a bargain,
because if you're gonna pay, at the time, probably $7 to go to a movie,
well, that means 11, 12 people could watch a movie
one time at your house,
and they're already in the red. That's the way they would look at it.
So, they had to charge $100 for that.
Very quickly, some very ingenious entrepreneurs decided that,
"Well, we'll buy them and rent them."
The studios subsequently sued those stores,
went all the way to the Supreme Court
to determine whether or not people had a right to do that,
and the Supreme Court ruled against the studios.
Did you know that?
So, that's what enabled the business to explode,
because at that time there was no legal risk.
And the studios very, very quickly found out
that they were dead wrong,
and that rental became their biggest source of revenue.
[Lapkus] In the '80s and '90s,
a video store was like a license to print money,
if you could afford to open one.
That allure is what attracted Ken and Debbie Tisher
to this beautiful town, Bend, Oregon.
[Ken] In 1990, my wife and I
moved up from California to Bend to open a video store.
To get it up and running cost us about $400,000,
-which was about all of our savings. -[drill whizzing]
So, we were, uh, hoping it succeeded.
-[interviewer speaking] -Pacific Video.
That's the name my wife thought up.
We were almost gonna do Coyote Video, and with a howl.
The "Coyote Video," and, uh…
But we ended up with Pacific Video and everybody thought we were a franchise.
And like it or not,
a lot of the smaller stores went by the wayside.
It certainly wasn't our intention, but it's just the nature of the beast.
Yes, I know. I know. I lied to you, Luke.
I know, I should have told you the truth about Darth Vader,
but what are you gonna do?
This lightsaber was your father's.
He gave it to me after five years in that clone war.
You know, I had to hide this saber in the most uncomfortable place.
Yabba-dabba-doo!
Fred Flintstone here, and this is The Last Blockbuster.
[laughs] Oh, brother.
[Taylor] My life without movies would be an empty void.
[altered voice] In a world of no movies, one man…
Now, there was always video stores growing up
before Blockbuster that we would go to.
There was Captain Video in Santa Barbara, where I'm from.
Uh, renting a movie for me when I was a child was an event.
It entailed me and my sister and my mom all going together,
and my mom would pick one,
and she'd allow me and my sister to each pick a video,
and so it always became a bit like a treasure hunt.
I remember the first time I went to rent a movie.
And I said to the clerk,
"Give us, like, the most disgusting horror movie that you have."
And he gave us Bloodsucking Freaks,
which, if you've never seen the movie, still, to this day, holds up
as, like, a horrifying transgression of cinema.
[sizzling]
I kind of get the impression that it was this way everywhere,
but I don't know if it was, but I could rent all the rated R movies.
You know, so I'd just rent Friday the 13th, one through seven and…
I was hooked on the videotape.
And the third movie I got,
which I watched, and I just kept paying the late fee,
was Scarface…
which at the time,
for like a 13 or 14-year-old was not a great idea,
but for me…
It really shaped me.
[Levine] I remember telling my dad
I wanted to rent that Pink Panther movie
because it had the cartoon Pink Panther on the cover,
and I remember him saying,
"This isn't what you think it is. You're not gonna like it."
And we got into an argument, and he said, "Okay, you can rent it,
"but you're going to have to watch it."
And I said, "Fine."
And so that's how I saw the Peter Sellers Pink Panther
when I was six years old, and had little to no idea
what I was watching the whole time.
[muffled screaming]
Classic movie, Heavy Metal. Uh, my nine-year-old son has seen this.
And he's less impressed by the kickass lady
holding a sword, flying on a giant bird,
and more bewildered…[laughs] or impressed by the insides.
He's like, "How does that even work?"
And he just was looking at it. "Wait, the movie's on the tape?
"And then you put the tape in the thing?" "Yeah, buddy. Pretty simple."
[Jared Rasic] Going to the video store with, like,
your mom or your dad or your friends, getting a video, and getting a pizza,
and coming home, and, like, watching a pizza with… Or watching a…
[Eric Close] And I always remember being disappointed
if what I wanted was not there.
And then, the first thing you do
is you go right to the counter, and you go,
"Hey, um, when's this film supposed to be turned back in?"
You know? And I remember times when they'd say,
"Well, it's supposed to be…it's late.
"It's supposed to be back in by, you know, by noon."
So, you'd kinda hang out, kinda going,
"Hey, what movie is that you dropped?" "Oh, hey I'll take that." You know.
[Taylor] And then Blockbuster came along. And then it was like,
it's not just a little closet with a couple of videos.
It became this world of videos.
There's also something kind of comforting about the blue and the yellow,
and you're just like, "Oh, okay,
"I can chill in here at midnight, nothing bad will happen."
And it was… [sighs]
I am sure everybody's saying that already.
There's this peace when you walk in and you go, "The world is mine.
"I can accomplish anything right now."
Everything is at my fingertips. I love it. I miss it like crazy.
[man on advertisement] Blockbuster is America's family video store.
You know, we have more kids' videos than any place else?
More movies, more nights, more fun.
♪ Blockbuster Video Wow! What a difference ♪
[Lapkus] So, just what did make Blockbuster different?
Maybe we should look at how it got started.
It took place in the '80s, so let's cue up some '80s music.
Or for budget reasons, something that sounds like '80s music.
-['80s music plays] -Perfect.
The year was 1985.
David Cook was a software engineer in the oil and gas industry in Texas.
When that industry hit the crapper,
Cook's wife convinced him to start a video store.
Cook opened a store in Dallas and named it Blockbuster Video.
From the start, he made Blockbuster different
by having a bigger selection, staying open until midnight,
and actually putting the tapes out on the shelves.
While most video stores kept the merchandise behind the counter,
at Blockbuster, you could pick up the box, take a closer look and read the back.
At the same time, Cook wanted the experience to be family friendly.
That means something was missing.
That door that was made of beads.
That you had to be 18, to look over, but you kinda glared over.
There were usually bells attached to it so that the person behind the desk knew
when someone was coming or going from there.
But then when Blockbuster came, it was like…
-[serene tone plays] -sterile, clean.
You'd get a call or a person in a week looking…
And there would be people that you would…
I'm not saying people in like a trench coat and a hat,
these are, like, suburban dads,
looking for, like, "Where's the cheerleader movie?"
It's like, "We don't got that, buddy."
[Lapkus] But what may be the single most important thing
that made Blockbuster different was Cook's software.
While other mom and pop stores were still using pencils and log books,
Cook used databases to streamline his inventory
and make checking videos in and out more efficient.
That meant he could replicate stores much more quickly than competitors.
Just a year later, Blockbuster had 20 stores,
and that caught the attention of garbage man, Wayne Huizenga.
Well, less a garbage man and more the CEO of Waste Management,
the largest garbage company in the country.
While Cook was looking to grow the business through franchising,
Huizenga bought Blockbuster, and was able to bring in enough capital
to grow the company quickly by gobbling up competitors
and converting them to Blockbusters.
Corporate Blockbuster had begun,
and at one point, there was a new Blockbuster opening
every 17 hours.
Wow.
[Rasic] Usually I'll be at home,
and I'll think of some very specific movie that I haven't seen in a really long time.
And I'll think, "Well, hey, I live right by Blockbuster.
"I'll walk down there and see if they have it."
So, the last one I wanted,
very specific, was Insidious 2.
So, I was like, I'm gonna walk to Blockbuster,
I'm gonna get Insidious 2.
I grab my keys, lock my door, I walk out my driveway,
and then I just have to take one turn,
uh, cross the railroad tracks.
So, I get to Blockbuster,
um, look around, find the movie myself,
which is my favorite part is like, okay, gotta go to horror,
gotta go to the I's, you know, like, actually finding it.
So, I go up to the counter.
They say, "Hey, are you ready to go?"
And I'm always like… I'm never in a hurry to leave.
So, I'm always like, "I guess." And they're like, "Okay."
If you're a regular,
you know that they either want your driver's license
or they want a Blockbuster card.
So, if you just have it ready so they don't have to ask you,
then you're like, "Yeah, I'm a regular."
So, they take it,
they, like, pop the lock out of the movie,
they check to make sure it's there. They check it, they beep it,
and they tell me if I have any late fees or not.
They're like, "So, it appears you have $4 on your account
"from when you rented Deuce Bigalow."
And I'm like, "I didn't rent…" You look around, like… [laughing]
"Oh, I didn't rent Deuce Bigalow.
"Uh, okay, how much is it?" And then you pay it
'cause you don't ever want them to bring up Deuce Bigalow again.
My favorite is if you have, like, two or three movies,
one's a new release, one's a season of a TV show,
and one's an old movie, they're gonna be like,
"Okay, this one is Thursday by 5:00.
"This one is Friday by 2:00 "or Wednesday by 1:00."
And I'm like, "I'm never gonna remember that."
And then they're like, "Here's your receipt. It's all on there."
And then I'm like, "Cool,"
and I throw it on the ground and I walk out.
[Sandi Harding] Tuesday mornings are new release day,
and so every Tuesday morning,
I have to look through and see what movies that we still need to get
that we didn't get through a vendor.
And then I literally go around to Walmart and Target and Best Buy
and anywhere else I can try to find movies and buy what we need.
I do the same thing for our new for-sale movies
and for customer requests that we don't have in the store.
And when I can't find locally, then I started looking on Amazon,
and do my very best to find whatever the customers need.
[beeps]
[Rasic] Sandi is an amazing human being.
Like the second or third time I ever met her in my life,
she started treating me like family.
Um, if you go to this Blockbuster and they don't have the movie you want,
Sandi will literally just go and buy it, and then they will have it from then on.
[Ken] Sandi has absolutely been key
in the last few years that she's been there
because she's taken it to heart. She likes it and, uh, people like her.
[Lapkus] And now, 112 Seconds with Lloyd Kaufman.
Come on in, welcome. Welcome to Blockbuster New York.
We've got 500 copies of Suicide Squad
and absolutely no copies of the Troma movies.
Not even Toxic Avenger.
So, come on in and let's talk about… [clears throat]
the greatest company in…
Yes. Yes, siree. This says it all.
Greatest American symbol of true monopoly.
Blockbuster Manhattan. Come on in.
[interviewer speaking]
Why?
I'm just curious. Why do I need to do that?
[interviewer speaking]
You don't know [bleep] anything about me, do you?
Oh, you do?
Oh, all right.
Well, can't you just put the… you can't put the chyron?
[interviewer speaking]
You just haven't done your research.
I'll find out when you start asking questions.
Greetings from Troma Ville. I'm Lloyd Kaufman,
president of Troma Entertainment and creator of The Toxic Avenger.
Most of the people in the entertainment industry
are the scum of the Earth, so I'd have to go to Texas
and go [bleep] of the corporate Blockbusters.
They were rude. They were scumbags. They had no respect.
Tear it up!
They're not gonna get rid of us.
-We're the… Troma is the herpes -of the movie industry.
We're not going away.
[screaming]
The only Blockbusters Troma would get into were the franchises.
The difference between the corporate-owned stores,
namely the ones that eventually Viacom,
which owns Paramount and MTV and all that stuff
and had an old fart who had, uh…
who God knows…
if he was still around… [bleeping]
[screaming]
[Lapkus] And this has been 112 Seconds with Lloyd Kaufman.
Okay.
[Ken] We were the dominant store.
So, we then multiplied to a second location,
then a third location.
We had three Pacific Videos at one time in Bend.
And for those who don't know, Bend is a huge movie town.
Blockbuster moved in,
and we didn't even know Blockbuster was there.
They were down the street from us.
But once REVShare hit, that was a whole different ballgame.
-[interviewer speaking] -Sure.
Back then, you couldn't purchase a movie.
Um, the price of a video cassette,
it was sort of astronomical.
Do I really love Terminator enough
to spend $99 on it? I think I do.
Before, the economics were the same
whether you were a franchisee or whether you were an independent,
you bought your movies from the studios
at roughly between 70 and $75.
And if you were a Blockbuster, maybe you got a break of a buck or two.
Every video store pretty much lived and died by their new release section.
And so the mom and pop store, on its best,
like, "Let's go crazy."
You know, "Terminator 2 is coming out."
Three copies max.
-Haven't got it? -Mm… I'm out.
[Smith] Blockbuster offers the promise of, like,
"Come on in. We got 100 copies."
[Ken] Blockbuster had the foresight to go to the studios
and negotiate with them revenue share deals.
Which means, instead of paying $72,
you paid maybe $2, $5,
and then you shared the revenue with the studio.
And when they totally cut the independents out, saying,
"We didn't have the financial ability to pay them."
That was the beginning of the end of the mom and pop store.
[Rasic] Like, I remember walking into the Pacific Video
when the sign was in the door saying,
"Starting next week, this Pacific Video will become a Blockbuster."
Like, I remember seeing that.
But I don't remember what the story was. Yeah.
They made us an offer we couldn't refuse
because they said they were gonna open another store
in Bend, if we didn't convert.
[Doug Benson] Oh, my God.
That'd be an interesting narrative film.
Kinda like Up in the Air with George Clooney
when he flew around firing people.
Like a guy whose job it is to fly into a town
and shake down the rental store and say,
"We're gonna open up a Blockbuster…
"if you don't do what we say."
[laughs hysterically]
But I remember, like, a week later, going in,
the movies were all the same, the vibe was the same.
It was still a ma and pa video store,
just with the branding. Like, that's really all it was, so…
You know, it's really easy to be like,
"Ah, corporate!" But, like…
If you really think about it,
this Blockbuster has been a ma and pa video store
for over 20 years.
Uh, so this is my husband, Brad.
My son, Jeremy, my niece, Ashley,
my son, Alex, my son, Ryan.
-Josh, who is basically an adopted son. -Yeah.
And Sam, who is actually an adopted daughter,
Ryan's girlfriend.
And we're a Blockbuster family.
Everybody's worked at Blockbuster.
I know this is a small group with us right now,
but in a heartbeat, I could call and probably have 15 people here
that were all our Blockbuster extended family.
And I think the next person that probably worked in the store
would have been my four-year-old at the time.
Yeah, I would walk around with a Blockbuster shirt on,
nametag and everything,
and ask people if they needed help or,
you know, like, eat dog bones in front of people
-if they wanted me to. -[all laughing]
So, yeah, I was a real…
real help to the store back then.
[Ashley] You were the mascot.
-Exactly, yeah. -[laughs]
I'd go to elementary school with the shirts on and rep Blockbuster.
It was great. It was such a fun time working there.
We had such a great crew and we got along super well.
And it was really fun to interact with the customers
and give them recommendations
and tell them what to stay away from, all that sort of stuff.
[Ron Flunches] One of my favorite things was seeing the staff picks,
when I would show up at a place, and being like,
okay, there's, like, some members of the staff who really like me,
and maybe I want to be friends with them.
Because I like Gremlins,
then they introduced me to another movie
that was similar to Gremlins that I didn't even know I would like.
And then some people, where you're like,
"Oh, okay, you're so hoity-toity, I'll never be friends with you.
"I don't want to watch this French movie
"about somebody holding a balloon.
"Get out of here."
[Paul Scheer] As someone who worked at Blockbuster,
one of the cool things was
being the arbiter of other people's tastes.
Letting them know, like,
you picked something cool that they would not have picked.
And they could come back,
"That was a great choice." I'm like, "Yeah."
Part of being a good salesman
is being truthful about when something's not good.
So, someone might come up and they'll have a new release
and they'll say, "What's this like?"
And I just didn't have a poker face. I would go…
"I didn't love it."
So, they would rent it, but when they came back they would say,
"Thank you for telling me. That was terrible.
"What else do you recommend?"
And then I could recommend more things.
The great perk of it is you get, like, basically unlimited free rental,
so that was a great perk.
I wouldn't call it glamorous,
but it certainly seemed like a more exciting place to work
than the grocery store.
Um, and it was.
'Cause I did work at a grocery store, and that was hard.
Blockbuster wasn't that hard to work at. It was pretty fun.
You put the movies back and then you can check 'em out for people,
and you put them in the box.
You rewind them if you need to and you put them back on the shelf.
And like…and again, you're surrounded by all these movies
and all these movie posters,
so it's constantly kind of interesting, too.
[Scheer] It was the perfect high school job.
We would mess around there so much.
We had a giant return bin.
So, there's this giant bin.
And our bin was actually inside our store.
We would hide inside that bin
and wait for people to drop their tapes,
and then grab it like there was a monster inside the box.
It was the most fun thing.
If we had phones that had cameras in it,
we would have taped the reaction of people,
but we didn't have that.
What a job this would be.
How amazing if I could be that guy
just telling people what movies to rent.
And then you go get the movies and you're around the movies all day.
Probably at the end of the day, you can take any movies you want home.
You could watch movies on the job.
I worked at a place called the Record Depot
in my hometown of Sonoma.
There I could dress like this,
which I loved, and sell you videos,
and then also sell you the new Megadeth record.
But at Blockbuster, you've got to wear some khakis.
You've got to wear ugly shoes.
You couldn't be sporting these Nikes at a Blockbuster.
And then you had the polo shirt,
the ugly polo shirt that you wore every shift.
And I'm sure it got stinky.
There was a girl who I was attracted to,
who was a customer in the store.
And she looked a little bit…
Actually, a lot like Jami Gertz.
Now you're probably thinking, "Who's Jami Gertz?"
And back in that time,
so were people thinking, "Who's Jami Gertz?"
But it was okay. I knew Jami Gertz
from some of the '80s movies that I grew up with.
Then one of my co-workers, Kelly,
she was like, "I know her." I'm like, "You know what we should do?
"We should set up a fake signing
"for fake Jami Gertz."
And we put up signs on the store
that Jami Gertz is coming to do a signing.
Now, the big flaw in my plan was, "A," I thought I was flirting.
Didn't really read.
"B," no one cared who Jami Gertz was.
So, my great plan was foiled by the fact that
no one wants to meet this person they didn't even know
that you'd have to kind of explain three levels of…
And now, looking back at the pictures,
I don't know how much like Jami Gertz she looked.
She was significantly younger.
I think that girl that we were kind of having fake sign
was like 16, and Jami Gertz, at that point,
probably mid-30s.
Getting that job was the reward.
Like, that was as good as it was gonna get.
You mean, I'm gonna rent videos? I'm gonna get them first?
I'm gonna open up the box when the videos first come in the store
so I can watch this shit before anybody else?
Drop the mic. I'm done in this life. Like, this is it. This is the pinnacle.
Are either one of these any good?
I don't watch movies.
Ah.
[laughs] It's crazy to think that I do this, right?
I never thought in a million years I'd be pulling computers apart
as a part of my job description.
Because they are so old,
we don't have excessive amount of parts.
And so I'm constantly Frankenstein-ing things -back together
and going in the back room
and digging out a part that I forgot that I had
to try to put the computer back together.
[exclaims] Gross.
So, this is the board that I need.
Without this inside the computer,
I can't plug in…
all the other parts and pieces of the system out front,
the POS system, to make it work.
So, this I desperately need.
These are basically our dummy computers that we use up front,
that when Dish Network closed all their corporate stores,
we were able to acquire from them.
So that in case we had computers breakdown,
we'd have parts and pieces, since they're pretty much obsolete.
They have floppy disks
which, um, 90% of teenagers have no idea what a floppy disk is.
I can't tell you how many times I'd call a store,
"Oh! Get out the floppy disk
"so we can reprogram the computer really quick,"
and they're like, "What is a floppy disk?"
So, that's pretty much everything we're gonna rob out of this.
I'm gonna stop there because I'm not doing anything again
until I wash my hands.
So… Oh, yeah, they're disgusting.
I was broke as an actor.
And I had a commercial agent. I was…
doing standup and I was doing a bunch of auditions.
I went on, like, 80… I wrote it down, like, 85 or 86 auditions,
and I couldn't get anything.
My next audition…
was for Blockbuster International.
-[trumpet blowing] -[tire screeches]
[man on advertisement] Meet Kate, Benny, Sandy and Bob.
They're the Blockbuster entertainment team.
They buy more copies of new films for you to rent than anyone.
I want 25,000 copies nationwide!
Blockbuster Video, the entertainment team.
[Jamie Kennedy] And it was me,
an actress, Sandy,,
another girl, I totally forgot her name, and Jim Gaffigan.
And we were the entertainment team.
-[fast music playing] -[whooping]
Run, Forrest!
You better run, boy.
Step on it. We nearly got him.
[whooping]
And we would… We were the team.
We would go on stage and wave,
we would go to Blockbusters, we would go to openings…
It was incredible.
I know. You had no idea I was gonna drop that gem on you, did you?
Then I started getting parts.
And I got a part in Romeo + Juliet.
[yapping]
I guess. I guess…
I knew people like Randy in Scream.
Uh, I read a lot about Quentin Tarantino before I got the part,
and I always equated it with
Quentin Tarantino who worked in a video store and I…
totally saw how he could be like that, and then…
you know, I mean, he's super beyond a cinephile, you know.
What's that werewolf movie with E.T.'s mom in it?
The Howling. Horror, straight ahead.
So, I went from making $9,000 a year working at Dominos.
There's another corporate.
And I made $99,000 for Blockbuster.
And since that job in Hollywood,
I've never had a regular job again.
[Lapkus] By 1994, Blockbuster had become an entertainment juggernaut.
From 20 stores in 1986,
their rapidly growing company ballooned to over 3600 stores with more on the way,
which caught the attention of "Old fart who runs Viacom,"
as our friend Lloyd Kaufman put it.
Sumner Redstone.
Viacom bought the business in 1994 for 8.4 billion dollars.
The following year, they created
the annual Blockbuster Entertainment Awards
to celebrate movies and stars loved by most people,
but who were often left out of the fancy-pantsy Oscars.
Thank you.
[Lapkus]They even had planned to build the theme park, just north of Miami
but behind the scenes, financial trouble began to brew.
Viacom had been using Blockbuster as a cash machine in its bid to buy Paramount,
borrowing heavily against future revenue.
We really almost, I say almost,
needed the enormous cashflow to service the debt.
So, strategically, it made a lot of sense
and also, we thought Blockbuster was a good business.
[Lapkus] Wayne Huizenga was eventually replaced by John Antioco,
the wizard who had re-vitalized Taco Bell by wrapping a taco in a cheesy flatbread
and calling it a Cheesy Gordita Crunch.
Sumner Redstone was hoping Antioco could
pour some of his famous hot sauce onto the Blockbuster brand.
Then in 1999, Viacom spun off Blockbuster and took the company public,
bringing in $465 million in its initial public offering,
while at the same time leaving it saddled with massive debt.
In 2001, they killed off the Blockbuster Awards
and began to see competition from Redbox, Netflix, on-demand movies,
and even every advertiser's worst nightmare, the dreaded DVR.
At nearly every turn, they seemed to be making the wrong choices,
and one choice in particular seems to stand out.
Did you know that Blockbuster had a chance to buy Netflix, but they didn't?
They had the opportunity, so I'm told, so I've heard, so the legend goes,
to buy them at a reasonable price…
You can have… Take it all, $50 million.
John had an opportunity to acquire Netflix.
[interviewer speaking]
Yes. In 2000…
Well… I know, it's, um… back in those days, yeah. It was possible.
His words is they laughed him out of the room.
So, they… Who set up the meeting?
[interviewer speaking]
Yeah.
[interviewer speaking]
Okay.
So, the story goes, uh…
So, I've heard that Netflix…
set up a meeting with Blockbuster in the early days of Netflix.
And I can only imagine it playing, like, a gangster movie or something
where Netflix just kicks the door and comes in and says,
"Hey, do you wanna work together or do you wanna go away entirely?"
[chuckling]
'Cause thing is going to revolutionize the way people watch movies.
And Blockbuster probably just sat back and laughed…
-[all laughing] -…and didn't take the threat seriously,
and, you know, showed them the door.
[interviewer speaking]
Oh, man. Hey, Blockbuster, you blew it.
[Lapkus] Yes, they did, Brian Posehn.
Everything blockbuster did at the time, pointed to bad management
who were too busy making money today to worry about the future
until it was too late.
[Harding] I remember we had six registers.
We'd have lines back to the back wall,
and so many people waiting to be checked out,
and it would just be insane.
[Lapkus] As Netflix and Redbox began to expand more rapidly.
Antioco realized he had to do something to stay ahead of these two companies.
His big idea to compete with Netflix?
Not only would they offer DVDs by mail,
but he would take it one step further.
[crowd chanting] No more late fees! No more late fees!
No more late fees?
-[all cheering] -[rock music playing]
♪ It's over… ♪
To this day, I don't understand how they planned to make that work.
It would be like… Avis Rent a Car
renting you a car and you just keep it however long you want.
I hate late fees. I feel like that really is what, kind of,
ruined it for Blockbuster, was late fees and rewind fees.
Things of that nature, just little nickel and dime fees anyway.
But I understand that you had to do it,
otherwise people would just keep those videos.
I know I did. I know I did.
[laughing]
I mean, it would not be uncommon.
By Saturday, we'd have no movies on the shelf,
and we'd have more angry customers because we had no movies
than we did because they owed late fees.
And most of the customers would be, like,
I would pay the late fees, just get the movie back.
[Ione Skye] I remember this family,
they didn't return their videos, on time.
And just, I would hang out at their house a lot as a teenager
and just seeing they would leave for weeks, their videos not returned,
and I'd be so anxious thinking, "Oh, my God." Like, my family was like…
"Return the… Remember, return your video. Drop off your video,"
my mother telling us when we were teenagers.
-'Cause it was… You know the late fees. -[interviewer] Yeah.
It was like a big deal.
I wasn't angry about late fees as much as I just was, you know, aware that, uh,
you know, you'd have to pay more money if you didn't bring it back on time.
[interviewer speaking]
Oh, it was all… totally the money. I didn't feel bad about that next renter.
[laughing]
They lost over $250 million in sales overnight.
The cashflow of the business was really cut in a third, basically.
[interviewer speaking]
No. Cut down to a third.
Whose idea was that?
Well, John Antioco was running the company at the time. He made the decision.
[Lapkus] With late fees now left on the dust heap of history,
Blockbuster was finally taking its new competitors seriously.
Ironically, Netflix founder and CEO Reed Hastings
had attributed his decision to start Netflix
to having to pay $40 in late fees for the movie Apollo 13 back in 1996 to…
You guessed it, Blockbuster.
Houston, we have a problem.
[Lapkus] In early 2006, Hastings noted on an analyst phone call
that Blockbuster was throwing everything it could at the growing company
except for the kitchen sink.
The following day, John Antioco mailed an actual sink to Netflix headquarters.
People started paying attention to these bad management decisions.
Especially a man famous for shaking up good companies
he thought were being run by bad people.
That man was Carl Icahn.
Nowadays, we would call him an activist investor.
Someone with a lot of money who buys up enough stock
to take control of the company.
Back in the '80s, these investors were known as corporate raiders.
But since then, people realized the value
in someone coming in and shaking up a company.
Once Icahn was on the board of directors, guess what he did?
There was a fairly comprehensive change in the senior management team,
starting with the CEO at that time, John Antioco.
[Lapkus] Wow! That was some serious corporate speak, Tom Casey.
Translation: Antioco got fired.
Icahn and the board then hired Jim Keyes away from 7-Eleven
where he had recently turned the company around
by offering free Slurpee's on July 11th.
Thanks for that, by the way.
But could he turn Blockbuster around too?
Today it's about making our content available anywhere, anytime.
So, we have brand new Blockbuster Express kiosks,
we have DVDs by mail, and then a Blockbuster-on-demand
with Blockbuster movies as convenient as a button on your remote control.
[Lapkus] After one year under Keyes, revenue doubled.
Things were starting to look up for Blockbuster.
[Tom Casey] Got Carl Icahn charged up.
Now, Carl put out a rare press release
for an activist shareholder to say how great management was doing
and Blockbuster's back.
But it was literally, a month after that, that Lehman went bankrupt
and the world all went to hell.
[man on TV] This is gonna be one of the watershed days
in financial market's history.
[reporter] It was a manic Monday in the financial market.
[bell tolling]
The Dow tumbled more than 500 points
after two pillars of the Street tumbled over the weekend.
Lehman Brothers, a 158-year-old firm filed for bankruptcy.
Yeah. So look, most people think Blockbuster
went out of business because of Netflix, but that's not the truth.
Um, what really happened was…
Blockbuster and Netflix were pretty evenly positioned to grow
in the mid-2000s and 2007, 2008, 2009.
They had capital, we did not.
And Blockbuster had inherited over billions dollars of debt.
We really needed the enormous cashflow to service the debt.
And with the debt markets says they were in 2008-2009,
did not have the wherewithal to invest in subscriber growth
as Netflix did.
If you stack up the two companies side by side at that period of time,
Blockbuster had over 7500 stores around the world,
had a by-mail business, had a growing digital business.
Netflix had a business by mail, and a small digital business,
which didn't really offer very much.
So, just in terms of the business metrics and business composition
they were fairly comparable. Both trying to grow subscribers.
One company with the capital to grow, and the other without.
[Lapkus] Thanks, Tom. So, there you have it.
If it wasn't for the financial meltdown in 2008,
we might all be asking each other
if we caught the new season of Stranger Things
on Blockbuster's and Home streaming service.
Or we could all be getting a lesson on equality
while watching Blockbuster's series The Handmaid's Tale.
Instead, Blockbuster was forced to make a decision.
[audience laughing]
Blockbuster Video on Thursday filed for bankruptcy protection.
Well, Blockbuster,
Seems our eight year tug of war over Tango & Cash
-…has reached its conclusion. -[audience clapping and whooping]
[Lapkus] Chapter 11 bankruptcy doesn't mean
a company goes out of business right away.
They're given a chance to find new financing.
But in the years following the financial crisis in '08,
there just wasn't any money to be found.
Ultimately, Dish Network bought Blockbuster in 2010 for $320 million.
A steep decline from when Viacom paid $8.4 billion for the company
16 years earlier.
Dish did try a few gimmicks to resurrect the stores, but in the end…
[reporter] Everything must go in every Blockbuster store.
The company filed for bankruptcy six months ago,
and now, it's closing up shop.
The week before they went out, I just rented a bunch of Game Cube games.
I'm like, you'll never get these back,
and you just gonna eat this because your going out of business anyway.
So, well, then that was a great decision.
[laughs]
I remember the day that they announced they were closing
because I was still asleep
and my mom kicks the door open and goes, "Hey, we got to go down early.
"The Blockbuster corporate just announced they were closing,
"and liquidating 600 some odd stores."
I was like, "What?"
I was working at the East Store at the time,
and we were re-modeling the store.
We didn't have a sign up.
No, we took the sign down, like the day before
to move it over to like, uh, the other part of the building.
Everyone thought that that store had closed,
and the business had cut in half pretty much overnight.
It was shocking because obviously, it was the biggest video store empire,
you know, in the universe, but, like…
here in Bend in particular, that's all we had, was Blockbusters.
So, for me, it was like,
"Oh, shit! Are we gonna live in a town with no video stores?
"What is that gonna be like?"
So, it's down to just us and the three stores in Alaska.
Um, which makes me a little nervous
because I don't really know what's that gonna mean and…
Yeah, I don't know how much longer we're gonna have.
[interviewer speaking]
[clicks tongue] Um, I hope so.
[John Oliver] We'd like to talk about Alaska. [AUDIENCE CLAPPING]
'Cause specifically, we're gonna take a look
at one of Alaska's endangered resources.
One of Alaska's last Blockbuster stores is closing to retail sales today.
Wow! We seem to be rapidly losing something I didn't even know we had.
That was crazy 'cause I, I don't… I know of John Oliver…
I don't watch the show.
I'm not the right demographic.
There are apparently four independently owned franchises
still operating in the United States,
three of which are in Alaska.
If only, there were fun movie thing way for them to draw people in.
That night that he did the deal with the jockstrap and the other memorabilia,
around midnight that night,
it was a Sunday, my phone starts lighting up, you know.
There is no way for a Blockbuster in Alaska to get memorabilia like that.
Or is there?
Because a few weeks ago,
you might remember that we told you about
"Russell Crowe, the art of divorce,"
an auction in which to celebrate the end of his marriage,
he was selling artefacts from his career.
From the Gladiator chariot to this Lapa jockstrap,
he wore in the movie Cinderella Man.
It does sound like something we would do.
You know, buy Russell Crowe's jockstrap
and send it to one of the last remaining Blockbusters in Alaska.
Even that sentence is absolutely incredible to say out loud.
To the manager of the only remaining Blockbuster in Anchorage, Alaska,
at 5600 DeBarr Road number 5,
-all of this shit is yours. -[crowd cheering]
Just call us in the next 48 hours and we will send it to you.
We spent the next two days trying to contact them… which was not easy.
Because if you go try to find a phone number to John Oliver's show,
it is not there.
I have some good news for you. He called.
HBO host John Oliver has delivered on his promise.
And some prized movie memorabilia is now on display
in Anchorage's last Blockbuster.
[reporter] Yes, just in time for tourist season.
[Payne] They were great to work with.
They supplied the cases and everything to put it in
And it clearly helped the business.
But I told them… I welcomed it, I appreciated it,
but I didn't think it was gonna save the business,
so don't be disappointed if we close the store,
you know, after you've given it to us.
[Taylor] Oh, the smell of the Blockbuster video is…
Absolutely, I can…
I can smell that right now if I… Isn't that weird?
I'm in the store and the blue carpets, the yellow walls, the, the…
I can smell it.
Yeah, it smelled like, uh…
[chuckling] Orville Redenbacher popcorn…
in khaki pants.
[chuckles]
Soda's that has been slightly opened.
and so you can smell little bit of it.
[Kate Hagen] Burnt plastic, but in a pleasant way.
Um, that kind of library smell, of, like, dust media.
I miss that smell. They should make like a little, like a…
some sort of air freshener that smells like Blockbuster.
[Taylor] They're trying to give you that movie sensation,
but there was just the smell… I think it was the plastics and the tape,
and the printing on the…
because they would print their own things on, you know.
Yeah, there is a definite Blockbuster smell.
So, I just found out the Alaska stores are closing,
which means we're gonna be the last one.
[interviewer speaking]
I don't know what that means.
We thought there was a chance that
we might be able to go a lot longer in Alaska
but people's behavior has just changed dramatically.
So, uh…
the last two are closing right now.
That means we're it, and I don't know.
I guess we're next.
And I don't know how much longer we gonna have
and I don't know what that means.
You know, video stores and movie theaters have always kind of felt like my church.
They've always felt like the place where I go to feel the most, like,
the calm, normal human being that I've always wanted to be,
but I'm too weird to ever get there.
But I walk into a video store and I'm like,
"Oh, this is where I'm normal."
It's, it's really kind of isolating. It's…
And I fall into… We all fall into the ease of it.
And we can get everything anywhere.
We can watch a movie and download it on our Apple TVs
and we can do all of that,
but I still love the fact that you can go somewhere.
And I think that we're making a mistake, everybody.
They're living libraries. They're living film archives.
And for some of those films they only exist on one VHS copy,
they only exist on laser discs.
And by getting rid of so many video stores in America,
we're losing a lot of those films.
It is like a library. People were there, they all want to be entertained.
They all want to see what you're renting and talking about
"Have you heard about this?"
There's a real dialog going on.
And I think, having physical media allows you to interact with the public.
You have to go somewhere to get it.
By not being face to face with people…
left to their own devices, and the…
kind of veil of anonymity that doing this affords…
it's a shittier world, let's be honest.
The era of that time and what it represented for me was…
I do miss that. I wish we had that era around still.
People are eventually gonna be like,
"Siri, I don't want you to tell me what movie to watch,"
and they wanna go talk to a person.
And, I know that sounds like old band Gili and Claude
kind of but like, it's true.
You have to have a human being who knows the kinda person you are,
who watches you walk in, who sees that you're wearing like a Black Flag t-shirt,
that knows what you're gonna like.
You're not gonna get that from anything else.
It is truly the last standing bastion of a bygone era,
that at its peak was as big as anything.
I mean, I'm talking, like, if the NFL went away tomorrow,
how people would still talk about it 25, 30 years from now.
That's what the last standing Blockbuster is.
Do I miss renting from a physical store? No. Absolutely not.
I don't think anybody does.
-Yeah. -[interviewer laughing]
[interviewer speaking]
Oh, it's fine.
Uh, okay. Well…
Well, then I would say they are offering something else.
Not just…They're offering an experience.
And probably something more than just DVDs. People… It's not…
It's more of a relationship and an experience
than it is just getting a DVD.
Um, everyone from The New York Times to CNN to, uh, FOX News
to NBC Nightly News.
I mean, it's just been absolutely crazy around here.
Uh, and I can't believe I'm not on the phone at the moment.
But it's super exciting and fun.
Once the largest video rental chain in the U. S. with thousands of locations
will soon be down to just one little store.
Well, guess what? There is still one left.
Just next week one of the stores is gonna be the last one open.
[male reporter] The soon to be last store standing is in Bend, Oregon.
In its heyday there were close to 9,000 Blockbuster stores worldwide.
At one point, it's estimated a new store opened every 17 hours.
Now, there will soon just be this one.
Did you ever think you would be the last Blockbuster?
No, I didn't.
Hi, this is Sandi. Can I help you?
[reporter] General manager Sandi Harding says
customers visiting the Blockbuster in Oregon
treasure its customer service and familiarity.
[reporter] Sandi, great to talk to you. How did your store…
…become the last surviving Blockbuster?
[Harding] Well, you know, it is quite a surprise to us too
to be the last, uh, surviving Blockbuster store.
But I think it has a lot to say about our, uh, community,
about our staff, um, and just about how unique we are here in Bend.
Me and our owners live right here in town.
[sighs] I was talking about my typical Fridays,
and a year ago they wouldn't have been quite as crazy as they are now.
And it seems like every single morning,
even if we're on a day's off that I have between on mine orders
and selling out a product in the store, and a vendor calling me on the phone,
it feels like I'm constantly doing something every day,
and my husband is always like, "You're always working."
And then, of course, this week is the week that
I started making the beanies again,
which I really thought I would be good until fall,
and that I could get a stock built up,
but now I've got to get some online order's filled for beanies so…
So, it comes out looking just like a knit hat.
And the first couple ones I did, I actually made 'em that way.
But this is just so much faster.
And, like, I was telling Taylor,
I could get one of these done in about an hour.
[interviewer speaking]
I don't know. I really don't even know if they will.
Uh, you know, we signed our fourth and final agreement last year,
and so, now we have to renegotiate the whole contract and everything.
I really just don't even know if they're really gonna do it.
But I get it. I mean, they're also looking out for their…
you know.
It doesn't look very pretty right now, but then you pull apart.
And you have a pom-pom.
-Once we have it on there… -[phone chimes]
…we flip it inside out.
They're supposed to be cute when they pop up.
[phone chimes]
All those messages you're hearing is Messenger…
[clicks tongue] …with all the new people who want to be my friend.
[beeps]
Peaking at 9000 locations in the year 2004,
this chain of stores was down to one in 2019,
located in Bend, Oregon.
I sensed it that Bend would be a place where every…
Like, all the weird things would last just a little bit longer than everywhere else.
We're kinda like a small town in Canada or something
where everything happens a little bit later than everywhere else.
Like, of course, we have the last Blockbuster.
We had a RadioShack until a year and a half ago,
and a Sam Goody until a couple of years ago, and…
It's like half Twin Peaks, half Gravity Falls with like a dash of Twilight Zone.
What kind of town would have the last Blockbuster?
That is exactly…
It would have to be a place that really appreciates…
old stuff, you know. [chuckles]
[chuckles] Hey, that's cool. You know…
that the last Blockbuster that's in existence
is right here in my hometown.
Bend, Oregon. Who knew?
If there's some cats in Oregon still scratching it out,
you know, with Be Kind Rewind…
Nothing wrong with that. That's beautiful.
It's like the… you know, what is it they call 'em, the…
the, uh, uncontacted tribes.
Like every once in a while you see a story about, like,
"These cats live in the middle of Peru," or some such shit,
"and they've never seen, you know, an automobile."
[sighs] Um, obviously, it's a town with not strong Internet access.
So, a little bit rural. Definitely.
Um, a town, probably the population is a bit older.
Such an awesome place. And I think because it's not…
It's not one of your major cities.
I think a little slower pace of life, which is nice.
I think a lot of people look for that.
You know, it's very much about quality of life.
It's the reason I'm here is because I like the people.
Everybody's really cool, people are really health conscious.
You know, people are out riding bikes, hiking, cross-country skiing.
I mean, it's all of the above as far as the outdoor activities.
The Blockbuster thing, I had assumed
that it had closed and then re-opened.
But I guess that's not the case.
It's been open the entire time.
So, those lucky people of Bend, Oregon… Yeah.
That makes a lot of sense.
[interviewer speaking]
'Cause Oregon's cool.
And kinda dumb and nerdy… at the same time. [chuckles]
I didn't know there were any Blockbuster videos,
uh, stores left, you know.
Okay, there's one left.
So, I lived in New York for a few years,
and we had one down the street,
and I remember we used to walk by and kinda go… [laughs]
"Look at that place. It's funny it's still there.
"In this city. In this day and age. Wow."
But, yeah, how weird to go from, like…
you know, the most dominant fish in the sea
to a novelty act in an aquarium.
Which I… You know, right now the people in Oregon are like,
"[bleep] you! You're a novelty act."
"Twenty-five-year career on one black-and-white movie.
"You're the novelty act, Clerks boy."
Fair enough, I'm sorry. You're the good folks of the Blockbuster in Oregon.
You're doing the Lords' work.
Now that to me is crazy.
That I could not really get my mind around,
there is just one Blockbuster holding on.
In that way, it's a lot like an endangered species,
which is like, you don't even have somebody to mate with.
Like once you die, you die.
And so that's really… We got to protect 'em.
It's quite a shock when the Blockbuster started…
you know, feeling like they might actually go away.
[chuckling] And then they did.
Except for one brave, little Blockbuster…
[chuckling] The Blockbuster that could…
[interviewer speaking]
Okay, I'm gonna step back…
[woman] It's a great question!
You guys all talk about that…
♪ Love it! ♪
Like just today, for instance, I was getting coffee
and, uh, I was wearing my Blockbuster shirt
and I was like, "Oh, yeah, I'm on my way to work."
And they're like, "Oh, yeah, I know your homie that works there."
And I was like, "Who?" They're like "Sandi." I was like "Oh."
"Yeah, that my mom."
[all laugh]
So they're like, "Oh! That's crazy."
I'm like, yeah.
You go to anybody in the country and you go "You remember Blockbuster?"
And they go, "yeah, of course there was a Blockbuster." I go…
My wife is the manager of the last Blockbuster in the United States,
and they all know what that is. May not know where it's at,
but they know that it's the last one and that I'm married to her.
-[all laughing] -So…
♪ Somebody once told me The world is gonna roll me ♪
♪ I ain't the sharpest tool In the shed ♪
[reporter] Sandi Harding proudly remains
at the helm of the last Blockbuster in the world,
located in Bend, Oregon.
-Good morning. -Good morning.
-[teller] What can I get for you? -It's Sandi.
[Harding] I think the fact that you can come in, you can touch the movies.
You can walk around with them in your hand.
You can look at them…
We good?
♪ Hey now your an all-star Get your game on go play ♪
♪ Hey now, you're a rock star Get the show on, get paid ♪
♪ And all that glitters Is gold ♪
♪ Only shooting stars Break the mold ♪
♪ It's a cool place And they say it gets colder ♪
♪ You're bundled up now Wait 'til you get older ♪
♪ But the media man begs the differ ♪
♪ Judging by the hole In the satellite picture ♪
What is new? You're always working.
I know. Typical Blockbuster day.
-Out buying everything before we open. -I know, right.
I always loved going in Blockbuster
and just spending like an hour to pick out a movie.
Oh, it's the best.
-Yeah. -Oh, yeah. And-
We still see that every Friday and Saturday night.
♪ Hey now, you're an all star Get your game on, go play ♪
♪ Hey now, you're a rock star Get the show on, get paid ♪
♪ And all that glitters Is gold ♪
♪ Only shooting stars Break the mold ♪
-Here you go, Sandi. -You guys are on camera, so wave, girls.
-Hello. Hi from Black Rock. -Bye.
-Have a good day. See you later. -Bye, guys.
[interviewer speaking]
It was perfect,
like the Captain Marvel trailer you're watching on a big
50-foot screen,
and there's Captain Marvel flying right through Blockbuster,
and it was hilarious because
I was like, "Oh, yeah, we're right at that point now where,
"the nostalgia swing is going to come back around, and it's…"
it's pop culturally relevant again. And it's perfect.
[WOMAN reporter] Blockbuster nostalgia hit America and the world,
and the only place to get your fix
was our little Blockbuster that could, in Bend.
It was attracting attention from talk shows, YouTubers
and video store fans from all over the world.
A local brewery even created a Blockbuster beer.
It was a media frenzy.
[speaking Spanish]
We got out of the car and we were like, "Oh my God, it does exist."
[laughter]
Blockbuster… brings me back.
Do they all smell the same?
I drove here from sunny San Diego, California.
just to see the last Blockbuster on Earth.
[interviewer speaking]
About 15 hours total.
-Utah. -And Las Vegas.
Yeah.
It's so beautiful.
It's… I'm like a kid in a candy store right now. It's great.
And there's actual candy here, too, so that's good.
[woman chuckles]
It's the last one in the whole world now, not just America.
This is my last shot.
I want to relive my childhood a little bit.
I decided to send my writer, Adam, there to play a cashier named Kevin.
We set up hidden cameras and here's what happened.
We don't have an adult section.
ADAM: We don't have an adult section.
You look like you were looking for the old saloon doors.
No? All right. Sorry.
We flew in from Boston this morning.
My first job was a video rental store.
I'm 32. This is my little brother, he's 15
and he has never been to a video rental store ever in his life.
And I'm from Spain.
[interviewer speaking]
Just to see this.
It's a part of my life, 19 years of my life,
my best job was this one.
And so I said I have to go and see if everything is the same
or it's a little bit different.
But no, everything is the same.
Exactly the same.
[reporter] Is there something bigger than DVDs at stake here?
Oh, absolutely. It's a family business.
I mean, we have relationships here that we have created over the years.
I mean, I have… all my employees are family.
I mean, they call me the Blockbuster mom.
They're all getting married now and having kids,
now, I'm having Blockbuster grandkids,
and I mean, this is a family business.
-This is one of my Blockbuster babies. -Oh, yeah.
Actually, we closed the Redmond store on the 5th of March, last year
because she decided to go on bed rest.
We were just waiting for her to go into labor with Liam.
[interviewer speaking]
-[Harding] In Redmond, yeah. -Yeah.
[Harding] It's Liam's fault.
He kind of regrets it, though. He likes the movies.
Just had to come and see… the last Blockbuster store.
-So, you worked at a Blockbuster store? -Yeah, I was there for 14 years.
-What about you? -And I was there for eight.
Fourteen years for me…
[applause]
-Hello! Hi. -[man] Hi, guys!
[all] Hey!
[interviewer speaking]
Oh, my goodness. 500? I don't know. Gosh,
it seems like between radio and newspaper, and…
-It's probably around 500. -Oh, my gosh.
New York Times, USA Today,
The Washington Post, The Washington Journal, the AP…
Come on.
I know this is the right one.
Yeah.
This we received from a gal in South Carolina.
"But now we're in South Carolina,
"that makes a road trip to the Bend impossible.
"But if it was still in Oregon, if I was still in Oregon,
"I would surely come and rent some movies."
And then she sent the $5 bill as a donation
to help keep us, our store alive.
Sweet cards that are just saying if they still work, please
donate them to a loyal, local customer.
And there a couple of old Blockbuster gift cards.
Again, it has three gift cards, and it says,
"While cleaning out my gift cards, I found these.
"Hopefully they're still valid. Please give them to a family or families
"that will benefit from them."
And I thought that was very sweet.
When I signed the last renewal…
"You just need Pacific video to send us a notice that they are
"exercising their fourth and final, um, renewal option.
"In case it helps, attached is the copy of the renewal."
And then, so, yeah,
"that kind of scared me a little bit when I heard "fourth and final."
[interviewer speaking]
Maybe they should keep the same exact color scheme
and keep it looking the same, and just rename it,
but it could be just like Video Store or…
Really, what I would do,
do the world's only Blockbuster/dispensary.
That's something I would look into if I was them. Just dead serious…
And snacks. Definitely lot of snacks.
I would make it more of an overall store
that kinda encompasses the '80s and '90s in general, and things like that.
So, maybe they could also buy a Talkboy or Teddy Ruxpin.
-Can you and I be friends? -Yes.
They should just stay open,
call themselves something else.
Blahbuster.
Blubbuster, or just Buster's.
Buster's Video Rental.
Anything where they don't ,you know,
"I don't want to spend a lot of money making a new sign."
Yeah, just put some tape up there.
[Jason] Dish owns that name, if I remember correctly.
Any corporation could use good press. So, good press is like,
"We let these kids keep calling this place Blockbuster,
"even though we don't have to.
"That's what kind of good people we are, and stuff."
But if they want a problem on their hands, then all they have to do is be like,
"Nah, we took this name because we're just corporate grinches."
[grunts]
Definitely not!
[Sandi laughing]
[Harding] We're putting on gloves because we have been moving things around all day
in preparation for the Russell Crowe memorabilia from the Alaska stores.
And we do not have the jockstrap,
but we do have a lot of the other pieces that the Alaska stores had,
and Alan is very gracious to allow us to borrow it while we're open.
And, so, now we're gonna open up the box, and we're gonna set this stuff up.
-Gosh, is he that small? -Russel Crowe seems a little thin to me?
[Harding] So, there are several pieces.
There's some from Cinderella Man, from American Gangster,
from Les Mis…
I can't say the word very well. Les Mis is what I always call it.
-Let's just re-- -Real leather.
-It is real leather. Can you smell it? -Yeah, you can smell it.
You know, this is so much fun when you're short…
-[man speaking] -[laughing]
…and you're trying to reach the very top on your tippy toes.
Which might be why I have my trusty bench.
This bench and I have memories.
It started with me at the West Store,
When Ken had to get me a bench 'cause I was too short to reach the top shelf.
Yeah, I hope this stuff isn't bad luck. I mean, it was sent to the Alaska stores,
in hopes of saving them, and it didn't.
So, let's hope we get better luck out of 'em.
[female reporter] When you guys hear that that's how your parents used to date,
is that they would come in here and spend an hour picking out a movie,
and then go home. What goes through your mind?
-It's kinda weird. -[reporter laughs]
When I first moved to L.A., my girlfriend and I,
that was, you know, our date nights.
We would walk through one together, and not really argue,
but try to find something that we both wanted.
That's kind of part of the whole date. That's how you get to know somebody.
Because then, if you split off and go into different areas,
and she goes to romantic comedies, and you're like in action,
and then you both bring back things and they're totally opposite…
You got Bruce Willis and you got Tom Hanks
and it's just, "Never the twain shall meet."
[Funches] I think those are classic dates, too,
grab some Chinese food,
go rent a movie together.
I mean, they still, I guess, do that now with Netflix and chill,
but that seems a little dirtier,
'cause it's just like, usually they're going straight to their house,
and they already got the movie ready.
They probably didn't even buy you food.
I felt that, that was really the date's…
is it appropriate to say foreplay?
That's the foreplay of the whole evening, isn't it?
[Skye] I mean, I wouldn't want to advise my own daughters this,
but how do you start making out?
And for me it was so easy.
You watch a movie and sit on a couch,
and maybe there's a little blanket over your laps,
and you sort of eventually touch.
Years later, when I worked at RSTI,
I had sex in a video store…
in the porn room, only makes sense.
Part of getting laid, right?
I mean, you're like, "What should we do tonight?
"Let's go dancing."
"I have a better idea. I make a mean spaghetti. You know…
"Let's go to Blockbuster. We'll get some red wine, and some popcorn,
"we'll rent too many movies.
"I'll make you some spaghetti, which is really hard to mess up,
"and we'll not watch the movie."
♪ Silver moon's sparkling ♪
♪ So kiss me ♪
I mean… that sign.
You've got to get a selfie with it. That's too cool.
Smile.
[laughing]
I can't believe I'm at the only Blockbuster in existence.
That's sweet.
I'm excited to go inside.
Hello. Oh, thank you.
Wow.
[whimsical music]
-[Harding] Hi, Doug. -Hi, Sandi.
It's so nice to meet you.
So, how long have you been running this one?
I've been at this store for 15 years.
-Did you see Captain Marvel? -I did see Captain Marvel.
Was that this Blockbuster? Or did they fake it?
No, they faked it.
-Jerks. -I know.
So many movies. See, this is what I used to do
when I'd go to the video rental store,
is, I would just wander around,
especially if you do it with another person,
you have to agree on a movie.
You just wander around,
not knowing what… I mean,
do I wanna watch this sad movie about dogs,
or do I wanna watch this movie with Alec Baldwin, I've never heard off.
It's so much choices,
I swear, sometimes I just would go to a video store
and walk around for a while and just leave,
like not even rent something.
It's too much. There's too many movies.
I love movies, but come on. [chuckles]
Oh, that's probably pretty good.
Um, let's see where the documentaries are hanging out in here.
Special interests.
These are… Look at that, right next to each other. I love it!
'Cause that was part of my conceit, when I, you know,
named this movie…
was that, uh…
everywhere where movies are alphabetical, they'll be right next to each other.
So, even if people didn't have much interest in my movie,
they might notice it because of Super Size Me.
He's making a second one of these now, I hear.
-So, this is Russell Crowe's… -[Harding] Yes.
-…fighting robe in Cinderella Man? -Yep.
And this sign is ironic.
It says, "Do not lean on the rope,"
which is what he would not want to do as a boxer.
-[laughing] -We have the John Oliver stuff,
and then here is all the stuff that people have sent us.
This is so cool.
Yeah, and everything that's up here, has been sent to us.
So, even the newspaper articles that have this state on them,
people have actually sent us those newspaper articles from their city.
I mean, look at the James Bond section.
Every James Bond movie.
Every Avatar movie because, you know, there's just the one so far.
I'm gonna take a picture of this and send it to Kumail…
because I don't think he knows that he's in a Blockbuster.
Oh, there it is.
Excellent pick, Zach.
Britney's… terrible picks.
Erica's, no good.
It's all about Zach.
[chuckles]
I actually like Baby Driver.
You got both Blarts.
All Blarts onboard. Total Blartosity.
Can't wait.
Look, they're even waiting to finish the trilogy,
and put Paul Blart 3 right here.
We got Paul Blart 2, Mall Cop: Blart Rides Again
because there's nothing like a title that repeats words.
What do you think about that lone Blockbuster Twitter feed?
[laughs] It's funny, you know what…
Do you like, look at it and laugh
-at the crazy stuff they write? -I haven't read it all
-…just because… -Oh, my God.
So, I looked on Twitter to see if there was a twitter account for this store
and there is an account called Lone Blockbuster,
and I started reading the tweets and they're really funny,
and they have a ton of followers.
They have 375,000 followers, follow no one,
and so I thought somebody hilarious that works here…
I thought maybe even Sandi wrote these.
I really like this one.
[reading]
Yeah, and I also got something else I want to share with you on my phone.
Kumail responded.
So, you're going to get him in the movie without having to get him in the movie.
So, I texted a picture of his movie The Big Sick
to Kumail Nanjiani.
I wrote… [reading]
And he wrote back…
[reading]
[laughing]
"No…"
"Bend, you dummy."
Bend, Oregon.
I'll be so excited if it's really in here.
[gasps]
Very cool. [laughs]
I'd like to rent a movie, please.
-You want to rent Super High Me? -Yes, please.
-We could do that. -All right. But let's use my new card.
On the flight up to Bend, I just kept thinking that
I'm crazy for being so excited to visit a place that
I'm not going to rent a movie while I'm here.
I'm just gonna leave, and fly home.
But I'm still so happy that I came to see it.
I didn't miss Blockbuster until I was in this Blockbuster.
Like, I had moved on.
But now, just seeing it and being here, I love it.
I mean… who doesn't love Blockbuster?
I can't think of anything to say nice about Blockbuster.
Well, I'm sorry. What can I say?
I don't want a bunch of customers to hear it and then get concerned,
but, um, yeah.
Yeah. So, I reached out to Dish Network about a week and a half ago,
right before October 1st.
Um, because our renewal's up in November,
and I wanted to get working on that
and try to figure out, you know, how we can re-negotiate
and amend our contract, so we can sign it for another year.
And heard back from our rep who said,
"I'll check into it for you."
That's a week and a half ago and I haven't heard anything since.
And I'm really surprised.
Typically, they get back to me pretty quickly when I have a question,
and so I'm a little concerned.
Um, it definitely makes me worry a little bit
because, you know, if they don't renew it, then we're closed,
and that would be a very sad, sad day.
[interviewer speaking]
I don't know.
Yeah, yeah, yeah…
[chuckles]
Yeah, that does… you do feel it right away,
and then it just makes you wanna pop it open.
Every tape looked just like this.
It was all beaten up.
This thing was not meant to survive. The cars, the drops, whatever.
I also remember this plastic on here was always getting thrashed.
You know, you don't want to thrash this, but it's…
There's something about just kind of going like this,
and, you know, it's been used.
It's tangible.
It's a lot.
Just the idea that it's a heavy object
that if you leave it in a hot car, it'll melt.
That it's a physical object that has limitations,
I think, made it more precious,
than just like, yeah, it's streaming on Netflix.
Oh, look at this.
Just the weight of it…
like a little brick that you take home.
[cracks open]
That noise, you don't hear that anywhere else anymore.
Wait a minute. [chuckles]
There's already a movie called The Last Blockbuster?
[interviewer speaking]
No way!
How… am I in there?
Oh, that's fun.
And then I… Oh, man.
I actually got, like a little…
up through my spine just then when I opened the box.
Kids don't have this magic anymore.
-But this sound… oh. -[box clicks]
It's so satisfying than that one, you just make sure that it's closed.
[inhales]
It's good, and these little…
I don't know what you call these, but…
When I hold something like this in my hands, it is like,
um, going back to your childhood home
and picking up like a stuffed animal
or something that you…
had to have near you all the time when you were a toddler.
Then you could take the case and put drugs in it.
And do other things, and just hide trinkets.
It didn't have to be drugs, but, you know.
Obviously it's bulky if you've got five movies,
but there was something fun about that too, because it's a bounty.
Now you get it all digital. That's fine, but a bounty of…
You get four of these and put 'em in your bag,
fake 'em for books, go to school,
trade.
Currency.
Oh, look at that, The Last Blockbuster.
That's cool.
That's awesome.
I'm gonna have to see it now.
I love you put all the info on the side and everything.
[chuckles]
Can I have this?
[indistinct chattering]
[kissing]
[Harding] We are having our family barbecue.
Our Blockbuster family barbecue, huh?
You gonna say hi, Liam?
Say hi. Say hi.
Anyway, I get to enjoy the day with all my Blockbuster family, which is awesome.
[man] Working with Sandi, she was kind of like the mom here.
She gave us all a lot of chances. [laughs]
There's some stuff we got away with, that…
it was a little bit borderline, but we had a lot of fun working here.
She put up with a lot of tomfoolery, and just kind of messing around.
It was a really fun place to work, for sure.
Working with Sandi was awesome.
And she's still like my favorite boss, out of all of them.
Like she's so like understanding and sweet,
and she's really amazing.
Best boss you'll ever have. Hands down.
I'm trying to think of… my niece has worked here,
and my nephew worked here, and my sister-in-law worked here
and all three of my sons worked here.
Let's see, Ken Tisher and both his kids worked here.
Adam Cheek and his sister both worked here.
They're not here unfortunately.
Yeah, we had so many families work here, it's just crazy.
I can't even think of all of them right now.
I know I'm missing somebody, I'm sorry,
but we had so many families, and we loved them all.
-Anybody who's not afraid to get wet. -Okay, let's do this.
[camera shutter clicks]
And actually, Dan did an excellent job while I was gone.
I came back, the store looked fantastic.
Bathroom floor could be mopped,
but other than that, the store looks great.
Yeah, I knew he was listening to me.
[cell phone ringing]
Just a second.
Hi, this is Sandi.
[dramatic music playing]
Okay, great. Thanks. Thank you.
[chuckles]
Well, Brad and I were talking about the day that we may retire
and so we're talking about doing the snowboard thing.
And he keeps laughing going, "What happens if in six years,
"I retire and Blockbuster's still open? What are we gonna do?"
And I was like, "Well, you know already, I'm going down with the ship."
So, I am not leaving till Blockbuster leaves.
And so, who knows, maybe I won't be retiring in six years.
Might be a really good thing.
[Lapkus] Sandi, what was that phone call about?
Uh, well, they're gonna let us renew our licensing agreement again,
which means we get to stay open, which is awesome news.
Can't ask for anything better than that.
[Lapkus] So, the little Blockbuster that could survives…
for now.
We ask Ken what it would take to keep the store open indefinitely.
He responded with one word.
Customers.
[Lapkus] So, I guess if you want a video store in your town,
get out there and start cruising the aisles.
[Benson] If someone had said to me, "Oh, this is gonna stop being a thing."
I'd be like, "You're out of your mind.
"They're everywhere. Everybody loves it.
"Nobody I know doesn't rent movies."
It's a thing we do in our society.
[Posehn] You know, and I get it,
this thing of, you know, having things so easily accessible.
Just having movies on your phone is way easier
than getting on your stupid bike,
or asking your stupid dad to get in your stupid car
and take you down to the stupid Blockbuster.
But being a kid that grew up with this other thing,
you know, I missed the physical.
I mean, how long until studios, companies, don't even make DVDs, period.
And then, I don't know what… Um…
[Skye] It's sort of vulnerable in a weird way, like,
picking your movie in front of people,
and there's that man over there and these kids over there,
and you're in this communal space.
The community aspect is so amazing.
The video store is a community hub, like any other community hub.
Like a movie theater, like a rec center,
it allows us to connect with each other.
The video store is the place, but often times,
it's just a conduit for us to have conversations with other humans,
and that's really beautiful, and something we will never get with streaming.
[Jason] My feeling on the video store
is it may find second life the way the record store did
because so many of us grew up having this wonderful experience of
warm memories, walking through the door, looking, hunting for that latest release.
Bring it up to the counter, chit-chat,
and them giving you something back.
You gotta have this back in a couple days.
They'll always be someone out there
wanting to keep that alive.
Keep the fires of that wonderful, nostalgic sentimental memory,
like, burning.
The streaming services are not as much of a physical, emotional experience,
and when we start taking those physical, emotional experiences away,
what are we gonna be left with but a black screen?
-You're filming me, aren't you? -[man] Yeah.
[laughing] Yes.
I'm like, "Honey, we're going to Oregon."
You know what I like about the Blockbuster,
is it's a block and it's a buster.
And together they make a Blockbuster with a video.
I wonder how many of my videos are in there.
You know, it's crazy because I do movies I'm in…
and you go to Blockbuster…
I would sit for hours doing,
looking, watching, wondering,
am I in this?
This is Hollywood. This is the Johnny Carson
of, you know, my hometown.
So, I feel like Blockbuster just had this
energy and aura around it that made you feel like
it was all happening there.
And you'll make it a Blockbuster night.
Even now, it's a very satisfying sound for me,
the closing of the video cassette
getting, uh, the corners to meet, and, uh…
that's a physical sensation that I had.
You know, there's a click when you open up a video cassette.
There's a satisfying feeling of loading on the front loader…
[buzzing]
you could feel and hear the loading situation.
I did do, I remember now, I did do a photo shoot
right when The O.C. came out,
I did a photo shoot in like a Blockbuster shirt. Like throwing…
Maybe you saw it… yeah, yeah, yeah. [chuckles]
As if I was some cinephile, which I wasn't.
It genuinely feels like this is a place that could last indefinitely
because it still has the brand new movies.
It still has sodas and candy and popcorn and everything people want,
but it also has people there that care…
that care that you're not renting garbage.
That care that you're gonna walk out with a smile on your face,
as opposed to angry that they didn't have what you want.
[Jimmy Kimmel] Many, if not most, businesses around the country
are shut down right now.
But there's one establishment in Bend, Oregon,
that refuses to surrender to anything.
[reporter] Not even the coronavirus can stop the last Blockbuster on Earth.
It's still open.
The movie rental business is offering curbside pickup during the pandemic.
Customers can call the store ahead of time,
order a movie and pull right up to the front to grab it.
Store's general manager says they'll survive this challenge
for the same reasons they've stayed in business all these years.
Good for Blockbuster.
If they can make it, so can we.
[static]
♪ Make it one of those nights ♪
♪ Whoa, whoa ♪
♪ Make it one of those nights ♪