Future Shock

In New Orleans, the video rental store returns

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In May, the once-obsolete artifact that was the video rental store made a quiet return to New Orleans. Owner of Future Shock Video, Eden Chubb, has sourced and curated a collection of films that could be placed on shelves, held in hands—concepts the newest generations have relegated to ancient history. For our Film Issue, we reached out to Chubb about this revolutionary championship of physical media, and why she feels it is a fragment of culture worth preserving. 

I read that the concept was inspired by the Atlanta business Videodrome. Can you tell me what about that store excited you so much?

Simply learning that it existed! And not only that it existed but that it was thriving. I missed video stores and wanted more than anything to set foot in one again, but before that point I had simply assumed, like the average person, that any lingering video stores were in their death throes. It had not occurred to me that there could be an entire world of physical media fans out there, that reports of the death of physical media had been greatly exaggerated, and that it was actually seeing a resurgence. It's a good reminder that just because you don't know about something doesn't mean it doesn't exist. 

"I think the value of an experience is intrinsically linked to effort, and I don't want to live in a world where effortlessness is the ultimate goal. Buying bread is easier than baking it from scratch. Texting your grandmother is easier than visiting her. Buying shoes on Amazon is easier than going shopping with your friends. But the easier option is more isolating, more forgettable, and more disposable. We are being convenienced to death." 

—Eden Chubb

When did the pieces come together, in which you decided you wanted to replicate it in New Orleans?

I heard about Videodrome on a podcast called Stuff to Blow Your Mind, which is based in Atlanta where Videodrome is located. They started doing a segment about weird/obscure movies and would often talk about renting these movies from Videodrome. So I was simultaneously getting more interested in weird cinema and feeling jealous that Atlanta had a video store and we didn't. And once I got more into the world of video stores and learned about new video stores opening up in Los Angeles, I felt more confident that it was not a completely insane thing to attempt. 

I started out just doing movie screenings to get the word out while slowly building up a collection, sort of hoping an affordable/free space would fall into place. Eventually someone did come up to us and offer a free temporary space! He really believed in the idea and wanted to help make it happen. A lot of people wanted to help make it happen. 

This was also around the time when the Neutral Ground Coffee House was forced to close after forty years. It was a very rare communal space that had the air of a funky neighborhood bar without any alcohol or (usually) loud music. It was an all-ages space that wasn’t tailored to kids or adults—it was just an awesome place to hang out and bump into friends or meet interesting strangers or just sit quietly by yourself. Multiple generations had shared it (including my dad and me) and in a flash it was gone. I could never create anything as amazing as the Neutral Ground but it did get me thinking how important it is to have funky community spaces that are open to every age and interest. 

Can you articulate why you are so passionate and drawn to these older formats of film, as opposed to the current streaming landscape?

The biggest advantage of physical media is that once you own it, no one can mess with it. You will not wake up one day and find it disappeared. You will not wake up to find a different version of the movie on your shelf. It won't be censored, re-edited, or relocated. As more and more people grow weary of being jerked around by streaming companies, it makes sense that they would reconsider physical media as a way to take back control.

I want to re-frame the notion that physical media is inherently antiquated. You’ve got weirdos like me watching tapes on an old tube television because they like /not/ seeing every pore on an actor's face, but there is a huge subset of physical media fans who prefer the HD picture quality offered by Blu-ray. There is a whole world of boutique Blu-ray companies combining the physical ownership and immutability of discs with crisp picture quality, and they are very much of the present. (I would like to add that Blu-rays look absolutely fantastic on my tube television.)

Physical media never went away—DVDs and CDs have been chugging along this whole time, while vinyl records and cassette tapes have famously seen a resurgence in sales and new manufacturing. There is a reason physical media could not be killed, and it's not just out of some nostalgic desire for historical cosplay. It's because some people prefer the experience of physical media, and there is no reason to tie that to a particular decade. We're here now, in the present, and this is what we like.

Can you talk about why the activity of getting out to go and select a film from a store, as opposed to the more passive scrolling on a streaming platform, is valuable?

Value is the key word. I think the value of an experience is intrinsically linked to effort, and I don't want to live in a world where effortlessness is the ultimate goal. Buying bread is easier than baking it from scratch. Texting your grandmother is easier than visiting her. Buying shoes on Amazon is easier than going shopping with your friends. But the easier option is more isolating, more forgettable, and more disposable. We are being convenienced to death. 

If you make the effort to leave your house and go to a local business, see a movie with your eyes and touch it with your hands, look someone in the face as they excitedly extol its virtues, and then take it home as your special chosen movie, that is inherently a more valuable experience. You are going to give that movie more of your attention because the process from start to finish was a highly deliberate act. 

Apart from all that, video stores are just fun. I genuinely believe this is a more fun way to pick a movie. It feels good to browse a video store. 

How did you stock your store? Where did the films come from?

All over the place. Estate sale, thrift stores, eBay, boutique Blu-ray distributors, some less official channels, and a lot of public donations. You can open a video store on a budget if you aren't in a rush, because once word gets out, people start donating movies and players by the truckload. People have donated really awesome movies I never would have heard of otherwise. 

Part of my work day is researching movies—either tracking down a source for a movie on my wishlist or else looking up movies that people have donated to see if they would be a good fit. There’s a lot of guesswork involved, and sometimes I’m surprised by which titles become popular rentals and which don’t. But I like a wide variety of genres, and I stock what I like. 

Enough people rent VHS tapes that I treat them like any other movie on the shelf, though I do try not to let them crowd out the DVDs and Blu-rays. Some video stores have a tiny separate VHS section or don’t mess with them at all, but I just mix them all in together. New Orleans has a lot of tapeheads.

When I was first building the catalog I would eschew titles that were available on free streaming services, but soon realized that those things changed so often it wasn’t worth keeping track of. Movies that had been streaming everywhere would suddenly be streaming nowhere, or vice versa. Too ephemeral and unreliable, which is the whole problem.

What has the response been like? 

Now that we’re sharing a space with another business with shoppers who were not necessarily seeking out a video store, I do encounter people who were completely unaware that physical media was still a thing. It can take a little more explaining, and the phrase I hear most is, “ooh just like Blockbuster.” I’ll take it, I guess! 

But for the people who have spent time missing video stores and thought they’d never see one again, it can feel like stepping back into Narnia. I love seeing regulars who come in every week, especially families with young kids. I love hearing people talk about the movies after they return them. It’s the kind of vibe I was hoping for, and the reason it needed to be an honest-to-God video rental store and not just retail. I hate the idea of a tape just sitting on someone’s shelf as retro decoration—that to me is a dead artifact. Movies are meant to be watched, otherwise they’re not part of a physical media revival so much as a trendy aesthetic. I love knowing that my movies, especially the tapes, are out there living life.

Visit Future Shock at 2855 Magazine Street (inside Slow Down New Orleans), or online at futureshockvideo.biz.