Why Dvd Rental Needs Clerks

They're still there, hanging on, the DVD rental and video rental shops - but only just

.

As online dvd rental sites and online streaming continue their march into the future the shops themselves are getting left behind.

The new services are smoother, give consumers far and away more choice of films and are usually much cheaper than the old model - so why does it feel so sad?

The answer can be found in the Kevin Smith film 'Clerks' that well-known low-tech launchpad for Jay and Silent Bob which (less famously) features a video rental shop worker.

He might, in the Kevin Smith way of things, be a semi skanky stoner but he certainly knows his movies.

So when I say clerks there in the title I don't mean the actual moody looking teenagers but the film - you see, clever isn't it?

Video rental stores are full of this kind of romance - just look at the Mos Def and Jack Black comedy 'Be Kind Rewind'.

Tarantino famously learnt all that he now knows about floor to ceiling gore from working in a video rental shop.

However, it's rare that you see a character stick a blu ray rental into their player or act out a heart-warming plot while working in a DVD rental packaging warehouse.

This hardly seems to be because movie-makers and production companies are unwilling to turn the camera on themselves either.

The number of films about the film industry itself must run into the hundreds and there are even a number which begin to eat themselves entirely, narrating on the film that's being made even as it's filmed.

In this category we can safely put the Kaufman penned 'Adaptation', the adaptation of Tristram Shandy called 'A Cock and Bull Story' and the serial killer comedy 'Man Bites Dog'.

If DVD rental online is to grab a piece of the romance of traditional rentals then it needs to get these kind of narratives on film.

How about a Lovefilm love story?

It could have two characters separated by society who send each other love letters in their dvd rental envelopes and then it turns out that one of them is writing from beyond the grave.

It's not going to work really is it?

Meanwhile, kiosks have started cropping up all over the place.

These don't have the romance of the stores either - just the regular mediocrity of grocery stores, convenience stores or fast food restaurants.

It seems like - a new 'Clerks' aside - the rental romance is going to go the way of the drive in cinema.

by: Julia Cook

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