As cinephiles ambled into the Plaza Theatre on one Thursday evening, Matt Booth, owner of Atlanta’s only movie rental store Videodrome, sat behind a table and sold merchandise. Booth greeted friends and customers in the lobby before Plazadrome’s most recent showing of “Maniac Cop,” a 1988 slasher film about three police officers searching for a killer in uniform.
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Plazadrome, a partnership between Plaza Theatre and Videodrome, was preparing for its 79th showing since 2018. “Maniac Cop” attracted 102 movie-goers, which Booth said was a lower turnout than normal.
Since opening in 1998, Videodrome has outlasted movie rental chains like Moovies Inc. (a cow-themed video store Booth once worked at) and Video Update. It sat on the corner as large video rental chains ate up small ones, and streaming services ate up the last of those. Most recently, it weathered a worldwide pandemic that shuttered small businesses. Nearly 25 years later, the video shop situated on North Highland Avenue remains a fixture in the Atlanta community and a beacon to the city’s cinephiles.
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Booth founded Videodrome with former partner Jeff Sutton when Atlanta was still growing. After working at a few video stores in the area, he felt the corporate locations weren’t meeting the needs of the customers. He started looking around for a good space and landed on the location in Poncey-Highland, one of the keys to them remaining in business, Booth said. Over the years, their landlord has kept rent low enough for them to stay.
Booth has added popular movies and new releases to his collection of cult classics, pulp movies and niche genres. He sees it as a library of film, one that adapts to the needs of his customers.
“What we’re really responding to more than anything is what our employees are into and what the customers are into,” Booth said. “And that’s how we’ve changed as the customer base has changed.”
Videodrome’s success in 2023 is a rare feat. According to IBIS World, there are only 668 DVD, game and video rental stores still open in the United States, down 15.9% from last year. Despite a shrinking industry and the damaging effects of COVID-19, Booth and staff have a quiet resilience.
“You know, as long as [Videodrome] is making money, we’ll stay,” Booth said. “I mean, 25 years seems crazy thinking about it now. It doesn’t seem possible, but it is.”
Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
Creative thinking
The past 25 years weren’t always easy. Despite Booth’s laidback attitude about being in business this long, it took creative thinking and plenty of pivots.
During the pandemic, Booth kept Videodrome open as a to-go spot. Customers could call or email with requests and pick up their movies outside.
“It was kind of a bummer because you couldn’t browse anymore,” Tommy Morgan, Videodrome employee of around 20 years, said. “And that’s one of the selling points of the store, is being able to browse or walk around, which is better than streaming services.”
To make up for slower business, Booth printed and sold more t-shirts and Videodrome merchandise. Some customers even sent them money, he said. He would wake up every day and work on grants and loans to keep Videodrome in business and his employees paid.
Booth and the staff felt like they had to keep the store alive during the pandemic, an urge they’d never felt so strongly before.
“We can’t let this put us under,” he said.
The pandemic wasn’t the first time Videodrome had to get creative. Around 2018, Booth noticed a drop in the store’s finances. He said they decided they could either work on expanding the brand and getting their name out there, or they could take the next steps toward closing the store.
“Everyone here that worked here at that time really wanted to do whatever we could to make it,” Booth said.
Plazadrome was one such change. Booth reached out to Christopher Escobar, owner of Plaza Theatre, to see if they could start showing their movies at the theater. Escobar agreed, and the first Plazadrome partnership brought 242 attendees.
Four years later and the event still attracts crowds.
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
More than a video store
Besides thousands of movies, Videodrome has another thing that Netflix and other streaming services lack: a community.
Brian Lonano and Blake Myers met at the Plaza Theatre in 2008. Years later, on a Thursday night in 2023, their short film, “Content: The Lo-Fi Man,” was about to screen before “Maniac Cop.”
Myers stumbled upon Videodrome in the ‘90s when the store first opened. As a film nerd, hearing about a new video store where he could rent “crazy, weird, off-beat films where they organized everything by director,” was exactly what he was looking for.
“We went there and instantly Matt was the coolest, and we loved his store and we were always there renting movies, and it just instantly became this center of people who love movies, or film nerds would just gravitate toward that,” Myers said.
When Lonano moved to Atlanta about 10 years ago, he immediately opened a Videodrome membership.
“After you visit enough times, they start to recognize you, they find out you’re also a filmmaker, you become friends with them,” Lonano said. “It’s so nice to be friends with those guys.”
During the pandemic, Lonano said he did what he could to make sure businesses like the Plaza Theatre and Videodrome stayed open, like offering donations and buying gift cards.
“It’s very important to me that these little, quirky things that give the city life and a personality have to stay and can’t be closed down,” he said.
With an estimated 25,000 individual film titles, according to Booth, Videodrome has garnered a reputation as a haven for cinephiles. Customers come in and talk to the employees about films, and they strike up conversations with each other too, Booth said.
“I have a lot of people all the time tell me they come in here and they have better conversations in here than they have at a bar,” he said.
The Videodrome crew see it as a library, albeit one where you can talk, Morgan added. When people watch old movies, Booth said, they realize the same things that happened in the past are happening now. And when he watches movies from other countries, he gains a better understanding of those other countries even if he’s never been there. It “connects you with the world in a way,” he said.
Although there are plenty of factors that could put Videodrome out of business, like their computer system from the ‘90s crashing, he thinks more people are finding an interest in films. Booth believes the culture is changing.
“I feel like we were ready for that change,” he said. “We’re here, ready for that change, and it changed toward us.”
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