'Mmmmmmm, Antichrist."
I hate Redbox. Let me get that out of the way. I see people standing at them at the grocery store and I want to stand over their shoulders and point them towards the quality titles rather than the easy dogshit they tend to choose because some pretty face is leering at them.
They took a hit. Lost some money. Didn’t live up to projections. They are a rectangle at the grocery store that farts out movies from a somewhat limited collection. I cannot weep for Redbox.
Case in point, the number one Redbox movie over the past 30 days is fuckin’ Salt (my in-depth review). Last night I was buying my typical Friday Night Pizzeria Pretzel Combos and subsequent and necessary Liquid Plumr and I overheard two petite young ladies standing at the video store/kiosk ruminating on films that were “the bomb”. I didn’t see what they were pointing at but it’s my guess none of their choices coincide with yours or my list for the best of 2010. I would bet they’ve helped keep the likes of Anne Hathaway and Kate Hudson continue the lifestyles they’ve grown accustomed to. Helped Zac Efron save up for an “H”.
As a child of the mom and pop video store culture, having spent thousands of hours from the years 1985-2000 chatting with the owners and patrons of Video Connection, Versatile Video, Video Land, Prime Video, and many others I think that places where people gather to discuss and choose movies are sacred. A lot of bad things happen there:
- Misinformed patrons. They think that because The Tooth Fairy has bought an endcap that it must be good.
- Staffs with an asshole’s taste. “Dude, The Boondock Saints is the shit!” “Put Klute down, can you see that someone just returned Stop Loss!”
- Giant round people rent like 20 titles at a time and then proceed to watch them while eating in a marathon enlargement ritual.
- Everyone thinks they’re an authority. Bad things happen, and a few potential Mads Mikkelsen fans are never given the chance.
- Someone inevitably rents Grease 2.
But they have/had a value. Many of us had our tastes shaped by these places. The video store is a haven even though the Blockbusters and MovieStops of the world have drastically homogenized them. The Redbox and its ilk take that a step further.
I must admit, I was pleased to see titles like Winter’s Bone available in these machines. They serve a purpose. Convenience. Cheapness. Not having to interact with a human being.
In the past a red box meant perhaps you should go rent a movie or something.
I see the value to the industry too. This vitalizes a market always in danger of stagnating. Blockbuster is failing because Blockbuster sucks. Netflix is evolving to meet our needs. It may work or it may not. The video market is ever-changing and one of the very few things in the entertainment business we actually influence. We’ll always need a way to see movies cheaply and without having to the buy them. In a perfect world we’d have digital download, On Demand, video stores, Redboxes, and maybe even a little gentleman who knocks on our door and sings the movies into a future device we’ll build made of love, heavy cream, and binary code. But right now the market is a powderkeg and I still see the Redbox as a shortcut. An interloper. An appeasement to the very heart of the mainstream whose seeming innocence masks a potential threat of cutting away at those last few bastions of amazingness. The kinds of stores Renn writes about in his (published not nearly enough) column. If we lose one Videdrome because of Redbox, then Redbox is my personal Moriarty.
Oh well. Maybe it’ll force them to take their crimson cyborg and use it as a weapon of good. Maybe they’ll consult folks like me for a bevy of “choice cuts” to sneak in with the Salts of the world.
14 comments
“Save up for an H” Bwah-ha-ha-ha-ha!
I blurted that out before finishing reading; this was a really good, funny and concise read.
heh…I rented “Winter’s Bone” and “Cyrus” from a Redbox last weekend…I don’t mind them all that much, there used to be a FANTASTIC video store in my town, I was employed there from 9th-12th grade and the owner really went out of his way to include obscure and hard to find titles and took requests from customers. I miss that place…
Netflix is for rentals that have been thought out in advance. Redbox, because of its placement in supermarkets and drug stores, is for impulse rentals. You weren’t going to rent a movie, but then you walked past the kiosk on the way out the door. So naturally the most popular movies are going to be the most disposable.
My does this ever smack of snobbish elitism.
Did it every occur to you that Red Box stocks “Salt” and the “The Tooth Fairy” because people actually want to see them, and some may even like them? That they are the result, not the cause, of the average person’s taste in films?
Did you ever think that a “Blue Box” chain that stocked nothing but Criterion discs would probably go belly up in six months?
The fact that you write for a site like this, and that I read it, pretty much proves that we are not the average movie watcher, and do not share their tastes. They are not people who take film seriously – they just want an hour or two of entertainment.
So long as I have Netflix, and can buy or rent more esoteric titles through other venues, who cares what Red Box does? If they are fairly providing a service people want to pay for, more power to them.
The article isn’t quite about what you think it’s about.
Never used redbox, or anything since moving south. I either watched films in theaters, bought the dvd, or watched it on tv.
From 1988 to 1996 was a great time for me. I had about a dozen memberships to video rental stores that ranged from famous(Suncoast) to obscure(Carousel Video). I’d go out, rent some films, get some food, drive around some, hit the comic shop. Just cruise. It was a magical time mostly free of adult cares and worries. I’d usually get a new release, a porn title, and an older film(you know, variety)
A sad confession: I’ve NEVER downloaded a movie legally or illegally, nor have I rented anything since roughly 2001 when the last video store near where I lived sold off 80% of its older stock to make room for ‘newer’ titles(ie, 25 copies of whatever was new). I plan after my upcoming wedding to get a Netflix membership and try it, but for now, I’m content to not rent anything. Besides, my video collection would entertain the free world for years if that was all that was left after a nuclear war.
That red box image was a noteworthy surprise.
I hate redbox with a passion. I work at a grocery store and it’s so annoying watching the lines form for Salt or Jonah Hex.
I must defend Blockbuster though, lately, the online pass as provided me with everything Netflix has to offer plus the ability to swap for titles in store and no extra cost for Blu-ray.
Most of the employee’s at the local store are idiots, but I usually know what I am looking for so I just ignore them.
I’ll always love the feeling of an ACTUAL rental store where I can go in and be surrounded by movies.
If Blockbuster is the last big rental store, than I support them!
1. Good
2. There’s nothing wrong with Grease 2.
This is either a “people have shitty tastes in movies” rant or a “all the good video stores are dying” rant, neither or which can be primarily blamed on redbox. All retailers push junk like “Salt” because that’s where the money is. And video stores have been dying long before redbox showed up. They’re late to the game in that regard. Their price is great and they make it easy to workaround the Very Long Wait of Netflix’s new releases. I don’t see a problem here.
I know it’s easy to dog on Blockbuster but not all of them are cesspools. My store is quite great with a knowledgeable, helpful staff. Online services are a lot cheaper/more convenient but a market still exists where people like to browse for movies. You won’t find me defending Redbox though, they’re all shitty.
I love movies. Let me get that out of the way. Nick sounds like a snob. Let’s get that out of the way too. I’ve never rented from Redbox, but I’ve seen some decent movies in the unit at my local grocery store. I’ve seen real shit, too. Sounds kinda like… I dunno, life. Variety, different strokes, etc. I do know if I started a business model based on a very small selection of videos available for a reasonable price in an automated dispenser located in convenient place where people frequently go, I’d also populate it with movies that did well at the theater, for the most part. Otherwise it’s not a business model… it’s a hobby. And a lot of people found in the funkier video stores in the 90s had movies for friends. I preferred movies AND friends. If Redbox is not for you, skip it.
“movies for friends”
This is a really good way of phrasing this phenomenon.
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