The (Crazy) True Story Of My Video Collection

Synopsis: “An epic story about one man’s obsessive movie purchase, and his need to let it go…12 years later!” (Rated PG; 12 years, 4 days)

Why do I look so down-in-the-dumps? It wasn’t easy giving up my prized movie collection, there’s quite a history behind it. To understand what happened with me today, on March 18th, 2013, I must first revisit the past…

1996

A few months after graduating high-school, my friend Josh Rothstein told me to swing by the new Blockbuster Video store where a staff of new employees were helping to get the store ready for its grand opening the next week. After chatting with Josh for a few minutes, he told me to fill out a job application. The thought of working while I was in college honestly hadn’t even occurred to me yet, and Josh was only being half-serious, so I took the application and did a very Boaz-typical thing: I filled it out as a prank, and it looked something like this:

NAME – Freddy Krueger

ADDRESS – 666 Elm Street

REFERENCES – Jeffrey Dahmer, Jack the Ripper, Charles Manson, Josh Rothstein (yes, I included my friend’s name)

HAVE YOU EVER BEEN CONVICTED OF A FELONY? – “Convicted?” No, I’m too smart for that!

You get the idea: amusing, juvenile answers. I then walked away to chat with Josh, and was surprised to find the store manager laughing as he read through my application that was left out. He then approached me, and asked when I could start. Confused, I explained that it should have been obvious that it wasn’t a real application. He laughed again, and insisted that I work anyway, and could get started the next day. Feeling confused, and caught off-guard, I accepted the job offer; and so began my illustrious career at Blockbuster Video, which would last about 3 1/2 years and create my massive video collection….but I’m getting ahead of myself.

1997

I got another job working for a Beverly Hills real estate attorney, Stacy Sokol, organizing his office, and wasn’t exactly enamored with the minimum wage pay I was getting from Blockbuster; so it was time to call it quits. Speaking with my manager, I informed him of my new job and that I was done. In a panic, he asked me if I could stay on anyway. I answered no, I would be making twice the money at the other job, so what was the point? He then asked if he could create a new job just for me, where I’d come in on Saturday nights (their busiest night of the week) and just stand around giving people movie suggestions. I was so blown away by the flattery of this idea – and absolutely loved doling out movie suggestions – but realized that this would mean not being able to go OUT to the movies on Saturday nights, and again I politely declined.

Exasperated, my manager asked me, “What WOULD keep you working here? Just tell me!” I laughed, and jokingly responded:

-Not needing to wear a uniform

-Doing whatever I please when I come

-Not having any shifts, and showing up whenever I want, for however long I want

-Getting the store a better selection of movies (a constant irritation of mine when they didn’t have the movies I was trying to recommend)

The response by my manager? “DONE!”

1998-2000

Over the course of the next few years, I was a strange version of an employee of Blockbuster Video, which made no real sense. I wasn’t a manager, but I did have a manager’s password which gave me some authority, and allowed me to make purchase orders. I didn’t wear a uniform in spite of the fact that even managers needed to wear those navy-blue polo shirts with khaki pants. I was still paid a lowly minimum wage. Whenever the district or regional managers would come by, I was told to go home or pretend I was a customer so they wouldn’t ask me any questions. I showed up for an hour here and there as I pleased, and I spent my time giving recommendations to customers (who loved me), cleaning up and organizing the shelves (in line with the “neat freak” aspect of me), and most of all ordering new movies for the store.

During this time, countless employees came and left, including my friend Josh. I went through 8 managers in total, each one of them inherited me as this bizarre fixture to the store who they could not tame. I sang the same tune each time a new one was hired.

NEW MANAGER – I hear you don’t do normal things here, that needs to change. From now on you’ll be wearing  a uniform and working a normal shift, we can’t just have a job that exists exclusively for you.

BOAZ – No problem, I have another job at a law firm, I was only here for the free rentals and to enjoy improving my community store, so I understand.

Previous manager whispers something to the new manager.

NEW MANAGER – Okay, we’ll make it work.

In the meantime, the store slowly but surely began to burst at the seams due to the vast number of movies I was ordering. Try to understand, I was like a kid in a candy store being given the ability to order NEW delicious candies, along with the realization that I couldn’t get any cavities or be stuck with any bills. It was a beautiful thing for this movie-loving college kid at his local video store!

The movies which were originally facing forward, with plenty of space between them, became closer and closer together as I kept adding more and more titles to its video library. Eventually, many of the shelves needed to display side-facing movies, in order to fit them all. Customers would know that if there was a movie the store didn’t have, you could just ask Boaz and he’d order it no questions asked. There’s little doubt that it became the best-stocked video store in the country. Were these all great movies? Absolutely not. If they had Puppet Master II but not the other sequels, I made sure to order them, spare no expense! In fact, there were hundreds of movies which were out-of-print and the only way to get them would be by finding a preexisting copy at another Blockbuster location and ask them kindly to send it to me. I literally spent hundreds of hours finding those stores, and getting them shipped to us. Every day the UPS delivery man was my personal Santa Claus, delivering anywhere from 5-20 boxes just for me. It was not uncommon for me to show up after missing a few days, and finding a pile of boxes behind the counter that looked like they were barricading an attack from enemy fire. And in case it isn’t clear: I loved it!

Then one day in the year 2000, the 9th manager was hired, and she wasn’t going to deal with my crazy routine. This manager had been hired because apparently there was a lot of spending going on from our particular store (hmmm), and a strict “no more purchasing movies” doctrine had been created. This was both because we had more movies than the Smithsonian, and also because DVDs were starting to make all of these VHS tapes a thing of the past. Since I could not continue working the way I had enjoyed so much for the previous few years, I thanked her and left my job at Blockbuster Video.

Christmas, 2000

During a random visit to rent a video from Blockbuster one day, the only remaining employee who had worked with me exclaimed, “Boaz, you can buy movies for ten cents each!” I rolled my eyes, and said, “suuuure”, knowing this couldn’t possibly be true. He then explained, “No, I’m being serious. They’re getting rid of most VHS tapes in Blockbuster to make space for DVDs. What they’re doing is putting all of them at $2.99 each. At the moment, there’s a two dollars off per movie sale. But if you use my employee discount, it’s 20% off BEFORE the two dollars are removed, so it comes out WITH TAX to 44 cents per movie. But this week is Christmas, so we have 30% off; so it actually comes out to ten cents each…total. And you can totally use my employee discount to get whatever you want!”

If you think I was like a kid in a candy store WORKING there, just imagine how I felt knowing I could take them home with me. I literally went downstairs to Ralph’s, borrowed one of their shopping carts, and started to FILL UP the cart with a copy of every single movie they were selling. Ten cents each, how could I not?! In fact I didn’t mind if it was a terrible movie I would never want to watch twice, there were many places including Tower Records and 20/20 Video which would purchase any VHS tape for a 25 cents up to 1 dollar each, so there was literally no downside. Silence of the Lambs? Check. The Godfather Trilogy? Yep. Puppet Master III? Got it!

March 14, 2001

See that? It’s a photograph of my friend Kathi helping me with just a fraction of the movies purchased! This was March 14, 2001, a day we dedicated to start the massive process of going through the hundreds and hundreds of movies, putting them in cover boxes, alphabetizing them, and organizing them onto the shelves of my room and throughout the house. By the end, there would be nearly two thousand movies purchased over the course of a few months, and the shelves in my parent’s house looked like a cross between Blockbuster Video and an episode of Hoarders.

2001-2013

Over the years, countless friends would come over to borrow a dozen movies at a time. My friends Mike, Adynna, Steve & Nava even bought me a funny gift one year; video rental stationary so I could track who borrows what. (And no, I never charged anyone a penny for this, I just didn’t want to lose any!) But the more time passed, the less people borrowed them, and even I stopped using VHS tapes since On Demand and Netflix truly made the need  for it redundant. In fact I asked around and there was NOWHERE left to even sell these movies. 20/20 Video? Nope. Tower Records? Not anymore. Aron’s Records in Hollywood? Not even them.

In early March 2013, my mother asked me to “please get rid of them” so she could finally reclaim the 40 or so shelves in the house as her own, and put books and other sensible items on them. I came across a few people selling “vintage” items in their garage sales, including a handful of VHS tapes. I approached them and asked if they would like to sell countless more that I need to get rid of. Their answer? “No thanks, not even the ones we have here end up selling.” My mother had met a man who was willing to sell things on eBay for people. What was his answer when she asked him if he’d try to sell the video collection? “Sorry, no can do, they just won’t sell.”

March 18, 2013

Now that we’ve revisited the past, we are back in the present. The photograph above shows most of the shelves emptied of their video-contents, as I was putting them all into trash bags (with the help of our wonderful handyman Herminio) to take to the local donation center. Saddened by the thought of giving them all up, I realized it doesn’t have to be all-or-nothing in life. What if “just a few” of them stayed behind, so that this crazy collection that numbered in the thousands, could be just a few shelves of GOOD titles? Maybe they’d never be watched again, but I wasn’t quite ready to let go of everything just yet. So…

I separated the classics; kept movies that I would want to see if I had a “greatest hits” compilation of videos. Maybe they wouldn’t be watched anytime soon, maybe never again since we are now living in a digital age, but keeping these few HUNDRED allowed me to feel better about letting go of the other few THOUSAND.  Heck, giving up an addiction cold turkey isn’t always the right strategy, is it?!

I got a haircut (as seen above) and made the drop-off of the donation. All told they received 19 trash bags and 4 boxes FILLED with video tapes. The donation center was thrilled (and probably intimidated), and more importantly, my mother finally had her shelf space back. All was right in the world again. Boaz’s movie obsession would continue in the movie theater and via this blog, while the VHS obsession that started long ago by a college student filling out a prank job application, came full circle to an end.