The Last Blockbuster: An Epitaph to the Analog Age

Herein lies the greater paradox. The attributes that underpinned Blockbuster’s success, and undermined those of others, enabled the creative awakenings of countless people. The Last Blockbuster’s interviewees comment on special films they found because of the stores’ wide selection and cinephiles on staff. Blockbuster meant the end of an era for many small businesses, but it also marked the start of another that opened new possibilities by virtue of its sheer scale and variety.

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The Last Blockbuster (2020) is the latest retrospective documentary covering a fallen titan from the Analog Age. Like Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession (Xan Cassavetes, 2004) and All Things Must Pass: The Rise and Fall of Tower Records (Colin Hanks, 2015), The Last Blockbuster balances a historical overview of a large corporation with a chronicle of an individual in the ranks.

The Last Blockbuster is the product of collaboration between Zeke Kamm (producer and writer) and Taylor Morden (director). Kamm’s career stretches back to stints at Hanna-Barbera in the 1990s. Morden’s filmography is comparatively young, involving documentaries on forgotten bands, ska, and a fan-made tribute to Back to the Future.

Lauren Lapkus (Orange Is the New Black) lends spirited narration to a story that spans Blockbuster’s ascent in the 1980s to its virtual demise in the 2010s. Kamm and Morden’s historical survey is interspersed with celebrity reflections on the rental experience and the day-to-day challenges that beset Sandi Harding, longtime manager of the titular last Blockbuster in Bend, Oregon.

The filmmakers interview recognizable personalities who wax nostalgic about the store. Interviewees include Adam Brody (The OC), Brian Posehn (The Big Bang Theory), and Bend native Eric Close (Without a Trace). A few have firsthand experience as former employees of Blockbuster: Paul Scheer (The League) was a clerk and Jamie Kennedy (Scream) scored his big-break in Blockbuster commercials.

Kevin Smith (Clerks) delivers the most meaningful celebrity reflection. A writer and director, Smith is a well-known cinephile who delivers a contemplative angle on the cultural impact behind Blockbuster and video rental in general. Regarding Blockbuster’s final outpost, Smith compares Bend’s residents to Amazonian “uncontacted tribes”: they are a community not yet corrupted by progress – meaning, in this case, streaming media.

Alan Payne, a former Alaskan franchisee, does an exceptional job establishing the backdrop for video rental and Blockbuster’s ascent. The rental store emerged as an affordable alternative to watching films at home. Given the high retail cost of around $100 per cassette in the early ’80s, a $5 rental was a practical choice for the average consumer.

David Cook, a data engineer in Dallas, upended the rental market when he opened the first Blockbuster in 1985. He distinguished his operation with a family-friendly selection, available tapes on shelves, and service till midnight. Cook also leveraged his experience in technology to keep inventory and customer accounts on electronic databases, expediting service and sharing information across stores.

Cook tapped into commercial uniformity that could be mass-produced. Blockbuster grew in popularity, expanded regionally, and knocked out competition in its areas. In 1987, business mogul Wayne Huizenga bought a stake in the company and transformed it into a national chain. At one point, the film cites the company’s peak rate of growth in the 1990s as one new store opening every 17 hours.

Not all of these new stores were new, however. Ken Tisher, owner of the Bend Blockbuster, recounts his store’s “conversion”: “They made us an offer we couldn’t refuse because they said they were going to open another store in Bend if we didn’t convert.” Tisher couldn’t afford to compete: Blockbuster had a revenue-sharing agreement with studios that undercut smaller competitors.

Stores like Tisher’s became de facto vassals of a corporate empire. Sandi Harding notes that Blockbuster had an estimated 9,000 locations when she joined in 2004. By the film’s start in 2017, that number has fallen to an even dozen. By its conclusion in 2019, Bend is the sole holdout against streaming modernity.

How did this monumental enterprise collapse so swiftly? Enter the film’s closest figure to an antagonist: John Antioco.

Antioco served as Blockbuster’s CEO from 1997 to 2007, a crucial period that saw the company pile debt and miss key opportunities, such as the purchase of a fledgling Netflix. The filmmakers even reenact that misstep with puppets, magnifying Antioco’s comical error. Years later, Antioco responded to the growth of Netflix (and Redbox) with bewilderment and desperation. Tom Casey, Blockbuster’s former CFO, recalls in the film that Antioco’s sudden decision to end late fees in 2005 slashed the company’s revenue to a third within a year. Not by a third – to a third.

Casey argues that the company saw promising reforms after Antioco’s ouster. Blockbuster instituted rent-by-mail, on-demand viewing, and kiosks, achieving a brief turnaround. For Casey, Blockbuster’s killer came with the Crash of ’08. The economic panic late that year dried up investment and halted progress. Meanwhile, Netflix had set aside cash to invest in customer acquisition and streaming video – hence Blockbuster’s rapid slide from global rental chain down to a single location.

The notion of a Blockbuster in the late 2010s seems to befuddle us with its ancientness, something not lost on Kamm and Morden. Take, for example, a scene where comedian Doug Benson (Super High Me, 2007) visits Bend’s store. Benson oohs as he beholds the outside logo, then enters the store in awe, taking in old sights and sounds. He conducts an archaic rite for the audience: searching the aisles for a particular film (his own, of course), presenting a totem (his Blockbuster Card), and reenacting a checkout.

Interviewees even fawn over a Blockbuster cassette case, which becomes a modern reliquary. They reminisce about the look, feel, and even the sound of the snap when the case closes. There’s reverence on-screen for the object and what it represents. It’s symbolic of a bygone era that corresponds to a simpler and more optimistic time for the middle-aged subjects on-screen.

The Bend store’s significance lends it distinction. Harding becomes synonymous with this cultural and commercial outpost. There’s a montage of her appearances on local news stations and daytime talk shows. The store has transformed from a rental site into a mecca for ’90s nostalgia.

Besides being the store’s manager, Harding serves as the film’s pseudo-protagonist. Her lengthy role as the store’s manager has turned her into a kind of matriarch for her community. She’s hired many of Bend’s youths, serving as a secondary mother, watching these employees grow into adulthood and start their own families.

It’s easy for one to dismiss Blockbuster’s macro-scale dissolution as another instance of lavish misjudgment at work. But Harding, her staff, and their families remind the audience of the relatable folks who underpin these enterprises. Men like John Antioco come and go with fortunes to cushion bruised egos, but people like Sandi Harding cannot. A person’s livelihood is at stake when someone like Antioco blunders to the tune of billions.

There’s something else at work. Interviewees touch on a human element that keeps Bend’s store in operation. Journalist Kate Hagen offers a rich discourse on the cultural value at play:

The video store is a community hub, like any other community hub. Like a movie theater, like a rec center, it allows us to connect with each other. The video store is the place, but oftentimes it’s just a conduit for us to have conversations with other humans. And that’s beautiful, and something we will never get with streaming.

Throughout the film, the audience joins Harding in concern with an overarching question: Will Dish Network, owner of the Blockbuster property, renew Bend’s license?

Hagen’s later quote could serve as an epitaph to what would be lost: “The streaming services are not as much of a physical, emotional experience. And when we start taking those physical, emotional experiences away, what are we going to be left with but a black screen?”

A running theme in The Last Blockbuster analogizes the video store to the great communal archives of the past. Ponder the cultural loss when the Library of Alexandria or the Academy of Athens vanished in Late Antiquity. The media preserved in those places and the experiences they yielded disappeared. One could only find constrained alternatives – often censored or otherwise abbreviated – in distant cloisters or palaces of nobility. The aforementioned “black screen” becomes a metaphor for a dark age, like the one that befell medieval Athenians and Alexandrines.

Yes, the audience has convenient personal access to media via streaming. But like the cloistered texts of the Middle Ages, streaming media come compromised. Documentaries, behind-the-scenes footage, and deleted scenes that enriched the viewer’s experience are often gone. One may find an extra trailer or an occasional companion documentary on Netflix (as in The Other Side of the Wind, 2018), if even that. The consumer has opted for convenience over depth.

This doesn’t discount the negative repercussions Blockbuster wrought. The former monolith assimilated countless family shops it saw value in and muscled out those it didn’t. We have long bemoaned the loss of the humble family store on Main Street, USA, yet we bear part of the burden for that loss by matter of our choices.

Herein lies the greater paradox. The attributes that underpinned Blockbuster’s success, and undermined those of others, enabled the creative awakenings of countless people. The Last Blockbuster’s interviewees comment on special films they found because of the stores’ wide selection and cinephiles on staff. Blockbuster meant the end of an era for many small businesses, but it also marked the start of another that opened new possibilities by virtue of its sheer scale and variety.

Blockbuster was neither an absolute good nor wrong. It harmed and it helped. It benefited wealthy entrepreneurs, some of middling competence, and it provided opportunity for cinematic enthusiasts. It was a monolith, but one that encompassed thousands of individuals at one point. Some the common viewer may relate with (likely Harding), others we may not (probably Antioco), but they are all individuals nonetheless.

Kamm and Morden’s chronicle of a once-big property devolved into one small store is a testament to that conflicting dynamic.

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All images courtesy of 1091 Pictures.