Reel Politique: Links of Interest, a new Movie Madness
Over the late holidays I decided to renew my acquaintance with Movie Madness, the popular video store in Portland, Oregon, on about SE 43rd and Belmont. Movie Madness is fabled for having everything, or at least hard-to-find videos, and though there are several other stores in the area with an equal interest in the non-pedestrian (such as Video Verité in the Mississippi area of town), Movie Madness also offers DVDs and VHS tapes of films that are, strictly speaking, not available on DVD or tape, which compels film buffs to drive to the store from all outlying regions. But my reasons for visiting the shop were to absorb the new layout.
For many years, MM has been a long, low blue building with a rabbit warren of tiny cramped aisles, like a coastal book shop. In 2007 owner Mike Clark began extensive renovations. Outside, the building is gray, with a new movie style marquee and a private office with its own staircase in the back for the owner. Inside, the rabbit warrens are broken up and the store is one long retail space, with the store’s fabled memorabilia housed behind glass along the new west wall diorama. Managers and other elites now have small windowless offices along the east wall. One of the peculiarities of the new layout is that upon virgin scan it seems as if there are fewer DVDs in the place, instead of more, an unexpected consequence of the more open layout. And the employee area that houses the actual discs looks just as cramped and tiny as the old store.
But some things never change. Over the course of several holiday visits, I was reminded of MM’s quirky personality. Do any of the people who work there actually like movies? Or are they all in a band? In my non-scientific sampling, the only things shown on the TV in the corner are rock videos and old TV shows (which musicians apparently love). Doesn’t anyone put on an old Hawks film, or a Tarkovsky epic? Also, as is well known, the clerks are often cranky, indifferent, and contemptuous employees (especially if Mr. Clark or a manager are not around), more inclined, on a slow afternoon, to talk amongst themselves in loud tones about their relationships and what band they saw last night rather than leap to aid a customer. One tall Asian lad refused to actually face me; he leaned against the counter with his arms folded and his back to me, looking away, until the last possible moment when he had to take my credit card. Just this past Monday, I tried to get the counter clerk to look for a disc in the back despite the fact that I couldn’t find the box, but she found my explanation so utterly familiar and repetitious that she kept interrupting me with impatient “heard it all before” tones. When I complained about being interrupted, she went quietly livid — but couldn’t do anything more, because her manager was standing right there; God knows what gale wind force I would have faced otherwise. Instead, she came back from the rabbit warren and, in that passive-aggressive manner honed by retail clerks over centuries, practically threw the discs at me, muttering emotionlessly and in as few words as possible the mantra “back on Saturday.” Granted, I’m a shambling, unpleasant-looking person who clearly doesn’t deserve the respect that ordinary people are accorded, but being a clerk is part problem-solving, part salesmanship, and part therapy, and some common courtesy is appreciated even by the dregs of the earth - for that is, after all, the job. Netflix, by contrast, is never rude. Still, Movie Madness remains a great resource, as long as you learn to minimize contact with the employees.