Blockbuster Documentary Netflix

Enjoyed it

Funny how they really don’t want to admit Netflix was their demise

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that Blockbuster smell hits your nostrils.

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Every time they discussed that I was trying to remember the smell and can't. It was unusually frustrating.

I did enjoy the doc.

Deal back in the day was, if we all did well in school that week, mom would take us to the rental store after dinner on Friday and we had to agree on a movie to rent. It's weird to think the current young generation has no concept of anything outside of streaming

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It’s also funny how a company that was so hated during its peak is now looked at so fondly.

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They were an easy target b/c people hate late fees and the selection could be weak in the smaller stores since they tried to keep most of their stock current but it was easily my favorite job ever. I had forgotten little things like how going to the video store was part of date night and how it actually kind of helped you get to know a person in a pressure free environment or how it was common to run into people you knew at a store if you went during the peak Thursday-Saturday night hours.

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Blockbuster Documentary Netflix

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The truest winner writes history. Netflix doing a doc on the demise of a company/industry it destroyed.

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Netflix doing a doc on the demise of a company/industry it destroyed.

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Except if you watch the doc thats actually not exactly true.

Paramount used them like their own personal piggy bank to transfer their debt and then later got screwed by the Lehman Brothers collapse.

Back in the NES days, I really wanted to play Bases Loaded. I remember we went back to the store like 3 or 4 times because every copy of Bases Loaded was fricked up. Now matter how much we blew into the damn cartridge...we couldn’t get that shite to work. I eventually got Roger Clemens baseball with a bunch of fake names that were very close to the real names...Lavine instead of Glavine, Judge instead of Justice, and Johns instead of Smoltz. Good times

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the smaller stores since they tried to keep most of their stock current

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I think my local Blockbuster was especially lazy. I seem to remember looking for an 80s action film (can’t remember which one) that should have been on the shelf but when I couldn’t find it and asked the workers, they said it wasn’t that it had been rented out already but that they didn’t carry it period.

Edit: this was the week Airbud came out. And I remember seeing a dozen copies that up front.

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I think my local Blockbuster was especially lazy. I seem to remember looking for an 80s action film (can’t remember which one) that should have been on the shelf but when I couldn’t find it and asked the workers, they said it wasn’t that it had been rented out already but that they didn’t carry it period.

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That wasn't laziness, that was the model. If a movie was a certain amount of years old and wasn't a huge renter it was going to be either sold off or destroyed. Also ,if a movie was really old it wasn't going to be replaced if it got broken or stolen. They only had so much physical space and a large portion of it was dedicated to newer releases that were high traffic movers.

You could walk the same aisles over and over again and spend an hour in that store trying to pick a movie.

Physical rentals took forever unless you absolutely knew what you wanted.

Now Prime/Netflix it takes a minute. You don't like it, click on something else.

But a physical rental you had to be damn sure you were going to like it. Two trips to the store, rental and return, fees, late fees. That was investment of time and money we don't see today. Movie better not suck.