Remembering Blockbuster With One Remaining; Did Enron Ruin Them?
Let’s pause for a moment of silence as two of the three remaining Blockbuster stores in the United States have closed. One store in Bend, Oregon remains and, let’s be real, there’s no way that thing stays up much longer. Did you know that you can technically kind of blame Enron for the downfall of Blockbuster? We will get to this at the end of the post. This got me (and Trillballins & KenJac in the latest Lights, Camera, Barstool episode) thinking back on all the great times at Blockbuster. I figured no time was better than now to take a look back on such a legendary store.
THE THRILL OF GOING TO BLOCKBUSTER
Things obviously became different as you got older, weekends turned into nights spent out and your early to late 20’s were spent at bars, not Blockbuster. But the thrill of going into a Blockbuster was always huge. There were hundreds of movies to pick from and the visits always lasted quite a long time. Now and then you’d zip in and out when you wanted a brand-new movie, but it was the times when you’d go in for 30 minutes or more to search for the perfect older movie that I remember the most.
I was almost never allowed to rent more than one movie, so the agony of having to only pick just one was horrible. I’ll never forget that back in sixth grade I was on a James Bond pick and I couldn’t decide between ‘Dr. No’ and ‘Live and Let Die’. Well, I picked the former and was severely disappointed because it meant I had to wait for the next weekend to try again.
Would you try and find something random? Would you go for a few different movies you had in mind? Would you go for one of the employee picks (I never did this)? With that last question, ‘Seinfeld’ perfectly captured the ups and downs of a video rental store. You never really knew what to expect, what you’d leave with or if the movie would be any good, and that was the thrill of Blockbuster.
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NOT HAVING WHAT YOU WANT
This was the worst thing possible when going to Blockbuster. The disappointment of going into the store knowing exactly what you want, only for it to not be behind the empty VHS or DVD cases was the lowest of lows. Again, this plays into the thrill of it all because it was basically playing the movie lottery, but this always resulted in rage and anger.
Your last bit of hope? The return bin. Ah, the famous return bin that was usually stocked full of movies waiting to find their way back on the shelves. Can you imagine how pissed a Blockbuster employee would be every time someone asked them to sift through that bin? If a kid walked up to me and went “Hey, do you have any copies of ‘Godzilla’ in the bin? Do you mind checking?” I would be livid. It was always a complete mess and had dozens of movies. When they did have the sold-out movie in the bin though, it was like hitting your number on the craps table. Such an exhilarating moment each time it happened.
So, I say to you former Blockbuster employees, thank you for your service.
GO-TO RENTALS
So, what would happen if you struck out on the movie that you wanted? Well, you could always resort to your go-to rental. What was your go-to rental at Blockbuster? Everyone has a few movies that they rented over and over again. The three I probably rented the most were ‘Return of the Jedi’ (back in 1997 before George Lucas pooped on them with his revisions), the original ‘Planet of the Apes’ movies and ‘Major League’. There were probably a few more, but those were usually my backups if I was getting yelled at to hurry up and make a pick. The backups were key because if your movie wasn’t in stock or you needed to hurry up and didn’t already have a pick, you could not leave the store without a movie.
RETURNING THE MOVIES
Late fees sucked. That’s for sure. Reed Hastings, the founder of Netflix, famously had to pay a $40 late fee for a movie, which was part of the reason he founded Netflix. They sucked, and it was a massive sticking point with parents. You did not want to deal with the wrath of your parents if they had to pay a late fee. I’ve seen some people tweet at me that they’d sometimes create different accounts to avoid late fees, which is pretty smart. During its downfall, Blockbuster removed late fees but got sued over misleading information and marketing after they actually did have some fees and rules.
I don’t want to talk about late fees. I want to quickly touch on the movie chute. The movie chute was an experience by itself. Nothing quite like sliding that thing down the metal slide into the bin, knowing you completed the rental experience. Trillballins mentioned on the podcast that you needed to double tap and make sure that the movie actually made it down the chute. Apparently, people would open the chute and check if a movie got stuck and then steal it? A wild move, but I can see it happening.
VIDEO GAMES
I, like most people, rented a lot of video games at Blockbuster for all of my systems: N64, GameCube (what a purchase), Xbox and then Xbox 360 (Blockbuster was gone by my PS3 and PS4 days). Renting video games was an amazing way to test out a game and not waste $60 at EB Games or GameStop. You could also play some games (shoutout to the Virtual Boy) while you browsed the store.
My video game horror story with Blockbuster was the time I ran into the store to rent Banjo-Kazooie for the N64 and I got major league cucked by a kid who raced in front of me to pick up the one remaining copy. That shit lives with me to this day.
SNACKS AT THE REGISTER
You had to get a snack with your movie. There was no question about this and if my mom said no, I still begged. I usually got my way because I was a spoiled little shit. A listener (tweet below) reminded me of the thing I would get the most: the popcorn tub. This shit was never really all that good because it burned the bottom of the tub and the kernels at the bottom. It also only ever popped half the height of the tub. This was the definition of a rip-off.
Nowadays I pop popcorn on the stove with the use of some tips from Alton Brown.
Trillballins said on the podcast that he thinks Twizzlers from Blockbuster tasted better than Twizzlers from anywhere else, much like what people say about getting a Coke from McDonald’s.
DID ENRON RUIN BLOCKBUSTER?
To be fair to Enron (I mean, Enron was awful, so I guess I shouldn’t be fair), Blockbuster did turn down a $50-million offer to buy Netflix outright. So, they really screwed themselves over with that, but it was a deal with Enron that they had their eyes set on.
A 20-year agreement was going to allow Blockbuster to stream movies over Enron’s fiber-optic network. This was going to revolutionize the way people watched movies and, if it had worked, would have saved Blockbuster from impending doom years later. The deal was terminated right around the time Enron began to flounder and months before whistleblower Sharon Watkins took down the company for good. Using mark-to-market accounting, Enron was able to make hundreds of millions of dollars off of the deal, despite the fact they hadn’t and wouldn’t actually make that much money. The whole Enron story is wild, and you can learn tons of details about the scandal in the amazing documentary, ‘The Smartest Guys in the Room’.
There’s debate about whether or not the technology would work, and, on Blockbuster’s end, they had trouble securing rights from studios to stream movies. But there’s no question that the Enron fiasco for Blockbuster, which delayed the company into being “too late to the game” for streaming services, may have been one of the biggest nails in the coffin.
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Look, I can say I miss Blockbuster all I want, but the truth of the matter is that Blockbuster has no place in the current movie landscape. I still think it would be useful for video games, but I doubt I would even step foot in a Blockbuster if one opened by me, except for the quick nostalgia trip one or two times. A lot of people have mentioned Blockbuster alternatives over the last few hours, so I will need to eventually address that.
All we have left is to just remember the store and, for people like myself, the memories that helped make me a Big Time Movie Boy.
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