Vidiots: film nerd Mecca

Vidiots video store on Pico is one of the great things about living in Santa Monica. The place would be perfect if it had a slightly longer rental period and a bigger space. But these are minor quibbles. I don’t know of another video store in Los Angeles where a person could rent a Danish miniseries, classic films by Hitchcock, and new releases, all within one room. It should be a non-profit cultural mecca like the Getty. It’s that cool.

Like a library, it’s organized by film director and to some extent by genre. The grunginess is part of the appeal. I brought my mother, a movie buff, in a few years ago when I was breaking free of Netflix and weaning myself from HBO and premium cable. She was in awe of the clerks’ knowledge of film. The young guy who waited on us had at his fingertips the name of some obscure character actor from the 1940s, and rattled off, Rainman-style, a few other movies that the actor had been in. I thought I’d have to pry my mother out of the place; she was in danger of the guy half her age out for a date.

These days it seems that even the behemoth Blockbusters are not doing so well. The Blockbuster on 14th and Wilshire put up a sign that urges passers-by to try them out because it’s in the neighborhood. Obviously Tivo, DVR, Netflix, and Internet sites like Hulu are skimming off the customer base. I’m all for patronizing Blockbuster too, out of both a desire to support local businesses and plain old nostalgia. But I was disappointed a few weeks ago to find that Blockbuster didn’t carry “Caddyshack”. In fact, my query was greeted with a tilted head, why-would-we-have-that kind of response. Blockbuster is so all about having 83 copies of “Saw” or whatever is new that I often can’t find movies that are in the canon – even if that canon is the canon of bad taste or stuff we like but won’t admit to. Vidiots, on the other hand, has the dated and the campy movies alongside the timeless and subtle ones. As long as the average film buff still references it in some remote corner of his or her mind, it will most likely be found at Vidiots. You might have to get the truly ancient stuff on VHS, but it’s there.

Vidiots
http://www.vidiotsvideo.com/
302 Pico Blvd.
Santa Monica, CA 90405
(310) 392-8508