Ulli Diemer — Radical Digressions

• Home
• Articles
• Browse
• The Attic
• Newsletter
• About
• Contact
• Print View

The Video Store

By Ulli Diemer

I’m just back from a successful visit to the video store, having checked out three films I’m looking forward to watching. This evening I will ... Sorry? What? What is a video store? Seriously? It’s – you know – a store – a store where you go to rent films you want to watch. The films are on Digital Video Disks (those of us in the know simply refer to them as ‘DVDs’). You take the ‘DVD’ home, put it in your DVD player, turn on the screen, press Play, and reach for the popcorn.

You thought video stores had all vanished years ago? Not at all.

My video store (yes, Toronto boasts more than one) is Bay Street Video, on Bay just south of Bloor. Head into the mini-mall, past the optometrist (“When was the last time you had your eyes checked?”) past Tim Horton’s and the people sweating in the gym, and there it is, Bay Street Video, in all its timeless glory. Shelves, rows and rows of metal shelves, and row upon row of film packages for you to flip through and explore. A red sticker tells you it is available on DVD, a blue sticker tells you it is available on Blu-ray. No sticker means it’s out. There are also quite a few films which aren’t displayed. This is where a search on their website can be helpful.

Finding a particular film can sometimes be a bit of a challenge, because films are displayed by genre. Would the movie you are looking for be on the Drama shelves? Is it, or does it think it is, funny? Then maybe Comedy. Or maybe in the Action section, which I tend not to visit, but which I presume is where I would find Seven Samurai or March of the Penguins. Is it good enough to have made it into the Criterion Collection? Then try there. And of course some are organized by Director.

Earlier this year, a couple of people at the office told me I had to watch Interstellar. I am often woefully out of touch when it comes to popular culture, and I hadn’t heard of it. I checked Bay Street Video’s website, found they had it, and went to the store and looked for it in what seemed to me all the likely sections. No luck.

So I went to the counter and asked. “It’s under Director,” was the reply. Ah! No further information was offered. I persevered. “Would you be willing to tell me the name of the Director?” I enquired. Thus prodded, he (the taciturn staff person) told me the director was Christopher Nolan. Apparently I was one of the half-dozen people on this, or any other inhabited planet, who had never heard of Christopher Nolan.

I was entertained by Interstellar. (Thanks Hamna! Thanks Mads!) But now that I have heard of Christopher Nolan, I do have a few questions for him, like: Why do those Interstellar crew members striving to save humanity have American flags on their uniforms? Why are those remote space colonies (turn right when you reach Saturn, zip down through the wormhole, and then go straight – you can’t miss them) flying American flags? And, if the scientists planning to colonize space with 5,000 frozen embryos are worried about having enough genetic diversity, did it not occur to them to include a few non-American embryos, like, you know, from Asia or Africa or South America? Is their real agenda to populate the entire galaxy with people who look like Elon Musk?

You may be wondering, am I so out of touch with the modern world that I haven’t heard of Netflix or any of the other streaming services? As a matter of fact, I have tried Netflix from time to time, while travelling. Hotels and B&Bs typically come with an enticing array of viewing options for the weary traveller, mostly golf shows and cooking shows, but sometimes also Netflix. Somehow I just haven’t had much luck with Netflix. I think of a film I’d like to see, and they rarely have it.

I also have an aversion to signing up for things that will then come off my credit card month after month, for ever and ever, until I die, and probably even after that. OK, I’ve got a cellphone (two actually – long story) and I manage several websites which have to be paid for that way, but mostly I avoid signing up for anything that doesn’t have a clear expiry date. (Except life: I wouldn’t care to know the expiry date on that in advance.)

And I loathe having what I am watching interrupted by advertising. That’s another good thing about DVDs: there are no ads, except sometimes a few previews for other films – and I actually like previews. Previews are good because (a) you learn about films you might like to watch, and (b) you are alerted to films which you would never ever want to watch under any circumstance.

Another good thing about renting films on DVD is that often the film you’ve rented comes with a second disk of additional content, typically interviews and discussions, occasionally whole films. I usually enjoy those supplemental features, and often I learn things I didn’t know. For example, I watched Andrei Tarkovsky’s Mirror, and was both blown away and confused as the film flipped between different time periods and perspectives. Then I watched the accompanying feature and one of the reasons I couldn’t quite follow who was who and what was going on became a bit clearer: Tarkovsky uses the same actress, the luminous Margarita Terekhova, to portray both his mother and his wife.

It occurs to me that when a film is called Mirror, that should alert you that the usual conventions of film-making are likely to be transgressed. I think of Jafar Panahi’s The Mirror, in which – spoiler alert! – the ‘fourth wall’ between the actor and the film crew is suddenly erased. The Mirror follows Mina, a first-grader in Tehran whose mother is late in picking her up from school. Since they always go home by bus, Mina decides to take the bus home on her own. But which of the many buses to take? Not an easy thing for a seven-year-old to figure out in the chaos of downtown Tehran. We follow Mina’s adventures until, suddenly, about a third of the way into the film, she looks directly at the camera and announces that she doesn’t want to act in the film anymore and wants to really go home now. Then she angrily stomps off on her own to find her way home – still wearing a microphone and with the camera following her. Panahi’s slyly subversive approach, which leaves you wondering – is this real? is this scripted? – also ripples through Taxi, made when Panahi was forbidden to make films, which led to him set himself up as a taxi driver filming passengers in his taxi as he drives around Tehran.

My walk home today from Bay Street Video was less adventurous than Mina’s journey through Tehran. That gave me time to think. Specifically, I was thinking about why I like getting my films at a video store.

Walking, that’s one thing right there. It’s a half-hour walk from my place to Bay Street Video, and then another half hour to walk home. I like walking, but somehow I find it difficult to just ‘go for a walk.‘ I need a reason, or a destination. A video store expedition offers a reason, a destination, free exercise, and time to think.

Maybe even too much time to think. I found myself thinking that if Ilya Ilyich Oblomov, the tragically lethargic central character in Ivan Goncharov’s novel Oblomov, had had a video store to go to, his life might have turned out differently. But, alas, in 1859 there were no video stores, and so Oblomov stayed in bed because it was easier than getting up. If Oblomov lived today, he’d have a Netflix subscription and stay in bed forever. I suspect that our increasingly digital world, which allows us to do almost everything without leaving home, is producing an epidemic of what Lenin called ‘Oblomovism.’ Lenin would not have had a Netflix subscription.

My reason for going to the video store, obviously, is to get films to watch. I have different strategies, or techniques, for doing that. I have a list of films I want to see, and sometimes I go in, find the films I want, and take them to the counter to check out. Really straightforward. A few minutes later I’m heading home with new movies to watch, and several new stamps on my loyalty card. Yes, Bay Street Video has paper loyalty cards, none of these new-fangled digital loyalty points stored in an anonymous database. You can hold your colourful loyalty card in your hand, count the stamps, and see how many points you are away from getting a free rental. How cool is that?

Checking films out is really easy, but the process is not 100% foolproof. One time, I went in to rent The Navigator, a 1988 film directed by Vincent Ward. I’d seen it before, liked it, and wanted to watch it again. All went well, or so I thought, but when I started playing it at home, I was puzzled to find that I was watching a film about laid-off railway workers. My memory may not be perfect, but since The Navigator is set in the fourteenth century, this didn’t seem right. Also, the film I was watching was in colour, whereas the first half of The Navigator is in black-and-white, because, you know, they didn’t have colour in the fourteenth century. It turned out that instead of The Navigator, I had been given The Navigators, a film by Ken Loach about, yes, laid-off railway workers. No doubt the two films are filed next to each other in Bay Street Video’s cabinets.

As it happens, Ken Loach is one of my favourite directors, and I was pleased to discover a Ken Loach film I hadn’t seen. It was good. So, thank you, Bay Street Video, for giving me a film I otherwise might never have seen. The next time I went in, I did manage to successfully rent The Navigator, which is subtitled A Medieval Odyssey, and which I highly recommend.

Another thing I like about Bay Street Video is that Canadian films are flagged with a little Mountie riding on top of the cover. It was one of those Mounties who caused me to discover Eve and the Fire Horse, in which the young protagonist (born under the sign of the Fire Horse) asks a question which to my mind shatters the myth of a benevolent God: Why did God drown the Pharaoh’s horses? They didn’t do anything wrong.

Another Mountie led me to notice New Waterford Girl, which was on my list but I wasn’t actively looking for when I spotted it. And nudged by one of those Mounties, I also – finally, more than 50 years late – watched Goin’ Down the Road. In the film, released in 1970, Joey and Pete get their first view of the Toronto skyline coming down the Richmond Street ramp from the Don Valley Parkway. Seeing that view on-screen, I too felt a sense of seeing a strange city, only my case, it was the city I live in, completely unrecognizable in that view from half a century ago.

If Canadian films are fairly easy to spot, thanks to the Mounties, finding films in Bay Street’s Foreign section (i.e. Foreign-except-American) can sometimes be a little tricky. Will a film be found under its original title if it is French, German, Spanish or in another Latin-alphabet language? Or a translated version of the title, and if so, which version? Jeder für sich, und Gott gegan Alle, or Kaspar Hauser, or The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser? Le gamin au velo, or The Kid with a Bike? La Pivellina or Little Girl? And the folks at Bay Street Video have a, well, slightly inconsistent approach to definite articles in titles. Hint: if the title of a French film begins with ‘La’ or ‘Le’ or ‘Les’ and you can’t find it, try looking in the L section.

One of the things I like about video stores, as well as the used-book stores I also regularly frequent, is precisely that they are individual and often a little idiosyncratic. They have character. They are run and staffed by actual human beings. I’m pretty sure that actual human beings, not algorithms, decide what is found on their shelves, and those human beings often have opinions they are willing to share.

I was in Doug Miller Books recently, and told Doug I was looking to discover a new mystery author. Did he have any authors he would recommend? Of course he would! He took me to the mysteries, showed me a book by the author he was recommending, but then frowned and said I wasn’t allowed to buy the book. Why not? ‘Because you have to read his books in order, and I don’t have a copy of the first in the series. So you’ll have to wait until I get a copy in.’ My momentary disappointment was dispelled when Doug pointed out another book, by a different author, which he would allow me to buy. I felt lucky, and happily handed over my money.

Much as I appreciate Bay Street Video, I regret the loss of so many of the video stores that used to enrich our city. It used to be that if a video store didn’t have what you were looking for, you could go to another one and try there. There used to be three or four video stores within a few blocks of where I live, each with its own strengths. Suspect Video, next to Honest Ed’s, another now-vanished institution, was strong in a few areas, and could have been stronger if it hadn’t devoted so much shelf space to merch. Queen Video on Bloor had a great and diverse selection where I could always find something, whatever my mood. (Queen Video on College had staff who had a tendency to sneer if your choices didn’t meet their approval, so one tended to avoid that one.)

The best, as far as I was concerned, was 2Q Video on Bloor at Shaw. The store was relatively small, but they had an amazing selection. (Translation: their tastes, which leaned to foreign films and Criterion, aligned with mine.) 2Q was half a block from my office at the time, so when I was ready to leave work, I might phone my partner Miriam and ask “Would you like me to pick up a movie?” “Sure!” she’d say. “Anything in particular?” I’d ask. “No, just get something good.” And the thing about 2Q was that I could always find ‘something good‘.

Then and now, I might sometimes look for a film on my list, but often I just browse. ‘Films that I have never heard of‘ is one of my favourite genres. When I mentioned this to someone recently, she said that was so ‘random.’ But actually it’s not random. I pick a section that suits my mood, and I start browsing. I flip through the covers, and when a title or image interests me, I’ll read the description. And if that interests me, then I’ll consider it. That’s how I found some of my favourite films.

Serendipity is something I have increasingly come to appreciate, not only for finding films, but in life. (Serendipity: n. “The faculty of making happy and unexpected discoveries by accident; happening upon things information, etc., by chance.”)

Road trips, for example. I was looking at photos of past road trips, and I was struck with how often we ended up in places we hadn’t been planning to go, because we left plenty of room for changes of plan, and suggestions from other people. Not every whim and change of plan worked out, and sometimes we got a bit lost. Being lost isn’t always so bad either. “Lost” can be thought of as a synonym for “somewhere else,” and sometimes the somewhere else turns out to be pretty good indeed. There is a lot to be said for serendipity, and for ending up in places you didn’t know you wanted to be until you got there.

That goes for travel, for finding films, and for life.

And now (three days after I started writing this) I’m going to head over to Bay Street Video again. We’ll see what I find.

Ulli Diemer
July 14, 2025