Years after Blockbuster Video reshaped the way consumers viewed the home video industry, a documentary film is hoping to redefine how audiences remember that time — and the Blockbuster brand. The Last Blockbuster, a documentary film about the final surviving Blockbuster Video store in Bend, Oregon, is set for release next year, and the filmmakers joined the Emerald City Video Podcast to discuss some of the elements that make the concept great.
There is a week left in the film’s Kickstarter campaign, which has already been fully-funded and will result in a film release that will look at not just the final store, but Blockbuster’s place in the pop culture landscape.
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“It started last year, and there were still a dozen or so Blockbuster locations left,” director Taylor Morden said. “We started filming this thing and I thought, ‘It’s a cool story, there’s not many of these stores left, and we’ll maybe start watching as one by one they start closing.’ And that did happen and then it got sprung on us that the one here in Bend, Orgeon, where we live, is going to be the very last one left, and that gave us a sense of urgency and a renewed sense that this was going to be a great story. Yeah, we were already working on it, but the story has changed since then.”
Producer Zeke Kamm added that their most fervent hope is that the film is completed in time to make it to the shelves of the last Blockbuster — which is arguably more likely now than ever.
“They have no plans of closing right now,” Morden said. “With all the media hype, they’re actually doing better than they were prior to this. It’s a tourist destination now in addition to a cool video rental place.”
The store has been in the press since the final pair of Alaska Blockbuster stores announced that they were closing their doors, leaving Bend all alone as a blue-and-yellow island. Whether it is nostalgia, irony, or something else, there has been a powerful reaction to the revelation not just that there is only one Blockbuster left — but that there were any at all.
“People come out because it’s funny or cool or they have fond memories of it or whatever, but then they get in there and it’s just better,” Morden said.
The filmmakers found themselves wrapped up in some of that funny recently as they set out to locate a missing jock strap donated to one of the Alaska stores by TV host John Oliver. They are also not the only ones to find a way to support their local video store: a craft beer is being created to celebrate the Bend store.
“Once you meet the people and you find who the characters are, you have to explore that,” Morden said. “We thought maybe it was going to be just about this one store, but then you meet interesting people. We just talked to the man who owned the Alaska stores which closed just before this one, and he’s such a character we just had to include him.”
“I remember sitting there and saying, so many people have worked at Blockbuster, some of them must be hilarious, interesting, famous, whatever,” added Kamm.
The Last Blockbuster is currently in production, with an eye toward a release in May of 2019.
