Mandy Kaplan:
Welcome to Make Me a Nerd. I’m Mandy Kaplan, a mainstream mom whose mission it is to explore the world of nerd culture that I’ve been missing out on and afraid of my whole life. If you are new to this podcast, welcome aboard. The concept is quite simple. I’m a person who likes Taylor Swift and fantasy football and reality TV. I have not explored sci-fi, fantasy. Oh, my guest is rolling his eyes at all the things I like. We’re off to a good start. You know, I just haven’t been a classic nerd.

This is my journey. I have friends and colleagues and total strangers come on and try to make me a nerd about something. This episode, with the incredible Jason Yeung — returning guest, voiceover artist — this one’s a little different, because I begged him to come on knowing that he had worked at video stores. And I used Jason. He doesn’t know this. I wanted to see this movie, The Last Blockbuster.

Jason Yeung:
Oh, what?

Mandy Kaplan:
And I said to Jason, you must love this movie. Come on my podcast.

And here he is to nerd-ucate me about video store culture. Jason Yeung!

Jason Yeung:
Hey, thank you. And I wasn’t rolling my eyes at the stuff. I was rolling my eyes because fantasy football season’s coming up and I just learned I’m drafting first in my league. And I don’t like going first. I think going first is the worst position that you can draft in fantasy football.

Mandy Kaplan:
It’s tough.

Jason Yeung:
But that’s neither here nor there.

Mandy Kaplan:
Are you going Bijan, Gibbs, Chase? What are you doing?

Jason Yeung:
Oh, you know, smart money tells me to take Bijan, but I don’t know. The first-round pick is always the worst. In my league, we’ve been playing together for 10 years. The first pick has never won the championship in all the ten years we’ve been playing together. And so I’m like, I’m already cursed.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah, no, it’s right.

Jason Yeung:
I’m already cursed.

Mandy Kaplan:
I have thought about — because I’ve done a couple of episodes of this show like in reverse, where I make someone a nerd. Tommy Metz, for example, my friend of the show, one of my best friends, really knew nothing about Taylor Swift. So I had him watch the Eras Tour and I nerd-ucated him about Taylor Swift. And I’ve thought, could I get a fantasy football newbie to come on and I could nerd-ucate them?

Jason Yeung:
Oh.

Mandy Kaplan:
But I really don’t know how that would work, because I don’t necessarily want to just watch the league or anything. I want to recruit someone who says, oh, I don’t get it.

Jason Yeung:
Oh yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
I don’t know it.

Jason Yeung:
Oh yeah.

Take that person, drop them in with another group of people who know what they’re doing already, and see how far they can go. Because I can’t tell you how many times I’ve played fantasy football and one of my friends is like, I want to join, I’ve never played before. And they win. They go so far.

Mandy Kaplan:
They auto-draft, they don’t know what they’re doing.

Jason Yeung:
They auto-draft.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah.

Jason Yeung:
Oh my god, my first time playing, I didn’t know what I was doing. I drafted a kicker in the first round, because I was like, this kicker is the highest-rated player in the thing, according to this app that I have.

Mandy Kaplan:
And the first time — amazing.

Jason Yeung:
In the first round. And I came in second place that year in the league. I had no idea what I was doing. Drafted the kicker first round. I was picking eighth.

And the reason I remember it so vehemently is because I got so much crap from the guys at work. And I was working at the video store at the time, so it was all a bunch of employees at Hollywood Video back in the day. And I got ragged on so badly for the first four weeks of preseason that when the first week came out, I won. Shocked.

They’re like, this is stupid. Jason is the worst player ever. How is he winning? And I got to second place that year. I almost won it all with a kicker as my number one pick.

Mandy Kaplan:
Well, I’m glad you didn’t, because I can continue to believe in the fantasy football gods.

But you mentioned working at Hollywood Video. Was that a chain like Blockbuster, or was it privately owned?

Jason Yeung:
Yes, so it was a chain like Blockbuster. At the time it was the second-biggest video store chain in the world. They had 4,000 locations or so at their height. And they were competing with Blockbuster directly. My first store I worked at was across the street from a Blockbuster. And so I actually got to know the managers there and stuff like that. We had competitions and release days and stuff. It was such a fun time.

But yeah, it was their main form of competition. And it was a great experience. And oh my god, watching The Last Blockbuster, it brought up so much nostalgia. I didn’t know that the last Blockbuster was in Bend, Oregon. I thought it was in Alaska. And so that shocked me. But it also made me think, how far is Bend, Oregon from me? I can go there. I can road trip up there and see it. Because it brought back so many emotions and feelings for me — that first job, and just the video store experience that nobody gets to see anymore. It’s so sad that it’s not around anymore.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yes.

Yeah. Based on this movie, The Last Blockbuster, which is a documentary from 2020 about the only existing Blockbuster store — based on this movie, it gave off nerd vibes so fast. And I imagine, and I mean this with complete respect and admiration, but I imagine that the crew of a Blockbuster or Hollywood Video were a nerdy lot. I was shocked to hear you mention fantasy football.

Jason Yeung:
Oh, yeah, no.

Mandy Kaplan:
Were they into rewatching movies over and over and over, and deep diving, and that type of thing?

Jason Yeung:
Oh yeah, absolutely. So I worked in the video store field for a long time. By the time our stores ended up closing down here in Arizona, I was a general manager — much like, what was her name, Sherry or Sandi? Sandi. I was at her level. I was running stores and stuff like that.

Mandy Kaplan:
Sandi.

Jason Yeung:
And yeah, we had a lot of first-time job seekers coming in here. So you had the new workforce coming in and getting their first experience in work. A lot of them, it was their first experience with that nerd culture. So again, coming in and realizing there’s sci-fi movies, there’s all these other kinds of movies out here — and being able to educate them and seeing them get passionate about Hollywood, seeing them get passionate about movies, filmmaking, that side of it.

It’s so cool.

Mandy Kaplan:
It wasn’t necessarily people who were already film lovers. A lot of them were like, I need a part-time job, I saw you were hiring.

Jason Yeung:
So yeah, I would say it was probably half and half. Half of it, because again, it was a big entry kind of job. It was very much a first job for a lot of people. And so we had high schoolers and stuff like that. We had nerds and jocks, which is how fantasy football came into my workplace, because we had a bunch of high schoolers who were into football, and some college kids who were big into that kind of stuff.

But then you also had the people like me. And several of my friends who I’m still friends with to this day — some of my best friendships I’ve ever made were from those original jobs. And they were huge nerds. They were film buffs, they were cinephiles. They knew directors’ names even before that was a popular thing.

So it was a good mix. There was a lot of nerds, and then the people who came in who weren’t really — kind of left nerdy after that. They ended up having a favorite movie.

Mandy Kaplan:
You nerd-ucated them, the way you are with me. Yes.

Jason Yeung:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
So I worked at Coconuts Music & Movies. I was not a manager, Jason, but I did get keys at a certain point. I did that when I was 17 and I loved it. And downstairs was movies, upstairs was music. I was always upstairs. But if someone got sick or they needed the help, they would put me downstairs randomly a couple times.

Downstairs, we got to pick what movie to put in the store, right? On the screens. And I think it had to be from returns. You couldn’t just open a movie and pop it in, like you probably could at a Blockbuster. Ours was like, you had a certain pool.

And my manager came down and I was watching a JFK assassination documentary. And that is a nerd topic for me. And he was like, what are you doing? You’re supposed to watch something popular and exciting that gets people to want to rent it or buy it or whatever. And I was like, oh, sorry. That’s what I was watching.

Jason Yeung:
Yeah, that’s a bold choice.

Mandy Kaplan:
So —

Jason Yeung:
That’s a bold choice. If I was your manager, I probably would have said the same thing. Why? Why were you watching —

Mandy Kaplan:
I was not sent downstairs after that, I don’t think. Knowing me, it would have been like Singin’ in the Rain. But yeah.

This movie, The Last Blockbuster — yes, it’s about this one store and Sandi Harding and her family and how they’ve maintained it all these years. And I really liked her. I liked the family.

Jason Yeung:
Oh yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
I was into that. But it’s also about this culture that is dead. The culture of going to a video store on a Saturday night, spending time picking, choosing, getting more than one movie, getting candy.

That is something I deeply miss.

Jason Yeung:
Oh yeah, absolutely. And again, first off, Sandi seems like the sweetest person in the world. I can understand why she has such a positive relationship in that community and with her employees and everything else. She seems genuinely like the sweetest person in the world. So first off, shout out to Sandi for that, because she was fantastic.

But absolutely — watching that movie, it made me think, ah, my daughter never really got that experience.

Mandy Kaplan:
Right.

Jason Yeung:
‘Cause it was a thing. It was a highlight of your week back when you were younger.

I remember when my parents would take us to Blockbuster, or any of the video stores that were around us. We had some mom-and-pop ones back before Blockbuster kind of blew up and was everywhere, like Starbucks. It was such a crazy thing. And there’s something about tangibly walking an aisle and seeing a sea of movies and cover art, and just the smell of DVDs and concessions —

Mandy Kaplan:
Yes.

Jason Yeung:
— that makes me go, oh my god, why did this go away? And it was a multitude of factors, as we learned in the movie. A multitude of factors that killed my chain of stores as well. But man, I miss it so much. It was a staple of society at that time. If it was still here, it would solve so many problems.

I’m going to say it right now. It would solve so many problems right now. Because being able to spend time with your family, go around, make important decisions about what you’re going to watch for the next three days, committing to them and having to commit to them — you don’t see that anymore.

Mandy Kaplan:
Well, the demise of the video stores also contributes to all of us lacking social interaction, lacking being in a community, talking with people.

And it’s very upsetting to me. We’re all staying home and streaming. We’re all on our screens rather than communicating or meeting people.

I was in a lobby of an audition the other day. And I’m accustomed to chit-chat. And I looked around and I was like, so where’s everybody from? Oh, nope, nope. They were all on their phones.

No one wanted to talk or get to know anybody, and it broke my heart. And I feel like that’s where society is. I get it. But if we could open up video stores again, people would go out in the world again and talk to people.

Jason Yeung:
Absolutely. And I was telling my daughter the same thing after we watched it. She’s like, oh, you used to work at one of those places too. I’m like, yes, I did, thank you. It was like ten years of my life. My goodness, child, come on.

But going in there — as a kid for me, I remember it was such an important decision. And it taught me how to socialize, because I had to actually go, and I knew the people’s names at the stores that I’d go to. They made recommendations on things.

I got into gaming because they were like, oh dude, no, you don’t want to play this one, you want to play this one. The cover art looks really cool — ’cause I went in there and I wanted to play a game, Pilotwings. I was like, that looks really cool. And they’re like, no, man, it’s not what you think it is.

Mandy Kaplan:
No, not Pilotwings. Don’t play Pilotwings.

Jason Yeung:
No. And so yeah, I mean, you being the king of the nerds here — queen of the nerds — you know that Pilotwings is —

Mandy Kaplan:
Yes, absolutely, yeah.

Jason Yeung:
— a garbage game.

Mandy Kaplan:
Garbage.

Jason Yeung:
And so he got me into other games, and I was like, oh man. And that’s what kind of tripped it up here.

So the fact that they don’t have that, and the fact that attention spans are so short now because you can just change media at the snap of the fingers —

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah, yeah.

Jason Yeung:
When you rented a video, that was your media for the weekend.

Mandy Kaplan:
You committed. Yes. That is $3.99. That is important. And you watched it.

It does sadden me. The people they interviewed for this movie, for some reason, almost exclusively came from The Big Bang Theory. I don’t know if you connected those dots. But Brian Posehn, Kevin Smith, who’s made many appearances, Lauren Lapkus, who’s a regular and now she’s on Stuart Saves the World — she was the narrator.

The Big Bang Theory feels akin to Blockbuster, and the nerdy energy those guys on that show gave to their cons and their video games and their movies. That’s what everyone in this movie had. And I liked tying together The Big Bang Theory, which I love deeply, and I did an episode on with comedian Lisa Arch. She was wonderful.

These people all have this reverence. That’s the word I’m missing. For Blockbuster, for video stores, for renting movies. And they’re hilarious about it too.

Jason Yeung:
Very true, very true. And so many people who are currently in the entertainment field, they got their start with their love of movies from theaters and from video stores. I feel that very passionately because I’m the same way. I grew up with that media around me.

And Hollywood, I think, has lost a step or two, definitely, since changing of businesses and stuff like that. You can say there’s a million factors as to why it happened. But I think one of the reasons is because they don’t have that connection with the younger generation anymore. The younger generation is not going to movie theaters like we used to. And they’re not getting to experience the joy and the power of filmmaking and all that stuff there, video games, entertainment stuff, the way we used to.

It’s a different way they’re receiving the content now.

Mandy Kaplan:
Right.

Jason Yeung:
And yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
It’s disposable. It’s scrolling. You scroll on TikTok and you scroll on your TV, you press play on something, and then you go to the next thing.

Jason Yeung:
Exactly. And again, I’m not trying to be one of those people who — things were so much better in the olden days. I’m not trying to be that person there.

Mandy Kaplan:
Back in my day. But they were.

Jason Yeung:
Back in my day, things were better. Kids with their long hair and their punk rock music. So no, I’m not trying to do that here. Everything always changes, moves forward.

But I think that is an important thing — when something is culturally embedded into you at a young age and you grow up with it, you have a different connection to it. And those industries, we can see, are struggling, because I don’t think that the young kids that are coming up, the TikTok generations and stuff like that, they don’t have that same connection.

So why are they wanting to support this industry, or filmmaking, or things like that in general, when they’ve got a YouTuber or a TikToker that they can go to and get their quick fix and their quick spike of dopamine?

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah. I think we’ve talked about this before. My son used to watch other people play video games on YouTube. And that drove me crazy. Why don’t you play the video game? But he wanted to watch other people play it.

He doesn’t do that anymore, but it was years of that. I couldn’t understand it.

Jason Yeung:
Yeah, I mean, well, again, I watch them too. So I’ll still watch people play video games and everything too. But at the same time, yeah, it’s the same thing.

Mandy Kaplan:
Okay.

Jason Yeung:
For me, what I personally believe this is, is people can’t be bored anymore. They can’t be bored anymore.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yes, yes.

Jason Yeung:
And so instead of being bored and forcing your brain to engage in other ways — and again, boredom is a good thing, for anyone out there. Boredom is a good thing. Being bored and being able to sit with your thoughts and force yourself to recognize the fact that, hey, my body is doing X, Y, and Z right now and there’s no outside interference, is an important thing.

But man, when you’re bored and you can just turn on something and there’s somebody who’s playing a game, you just kind of get lost in it.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah.

Jason Yeung:
And it’s a different mindset.

And again, I don’t know. I blame Blockbuster. I blame Blockbuster for this, because again, if they were still here, who knows? We might not be in the situation.

Mandy Kaplan:
Well, I see your point now, and don’t tell Casey that.

I know you are not a singer, Jason. You have made that abundantly clear to me. But when we come back from a word from our advertisers, I’m going to make you do a sing-along with me.

Jason Yeung:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
The theme song for Blockbuster Video.

Jason Yeung:
Oh, God.

Mandy Kaplan:
When they mentioned it in this movie —

Jason Yeung:
Oh god. No, no.

Mandy Kaplan:
— it took me back so fast. Do you remember it? Blockbuster Video.

Jason Yeung:
No, and I refuse to sing it. Because you know why? I worked for Hollywood Video. I bleed the red colors of Hollywood Video. Blockbuster was my — that’s like going up, say, as an Eagles fan, and going up to a Cowboys player and saying, let’s sing the Dallas Cowboys. No, it will never happen. They will die before that happens.

Mandy Kaplan:
Wow, what a difference! Okay. I thought I could get you to sing, but that eludes me still.

Let’s get into this movie. This movie might have been made on a budget of $1.83. They were very tongue-in-cheek. They acknowledged that they had no budget.

They wanted to tell a small story about this woman Sandi and keeping her Blockbuster alive. They didn’t pretend it was something grandiose.

Lauren Lapkus, the narrator, even says, hey, we couldn’t afford an actual 80s song, so here’s some music that sounds kind of like it came from the 80s, in the narration. But that made me love this movie even more.

Jason Yeung:
Absolutely. And again, obviously it’s not a choice, in that they have a budget that’s razor thin, and you make do with what you can. But I think it was a very, very smart way to acknowledge it. To straight-out come out and say, we have no budget for this here, we have these kinds of things — because that’s exactly what the people who are working in those stores are saying. Sandi over there, she is working on a shoestring budget. I’m sure she’s nowhere near as busy as they used to be.

That first moment when she was talking about the return, the drop box, where we used to have movies spilling out onto the floor —

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah.

Jason Yeung:
I was one of those people that had to pick up those movies and sort them before we opened up. And we used to have people lining up down the side of our store on release days because they were excited to go in there and get one of the movies. So I was like, oh my god. I think it tied in perfectly.

And I think the creative team and the directors who were behind this — they did such a good job of making it feel like a low-budget thing that you would get at a Blockbuster. It was perfect. It was beautiful.

Mandy Kaplan:
Right. They even used popsicle sticks — they would tape on, like, the president of the company was named blah blah blah, and they would put his face on a popsicle stick and pretend he was talking, just to make it more entertaining and take any pretension out of it.

Jason Yeung:
Yep.

Mandy Kaplan:
It invited us into this world and made us feel welcome, in the way that I have found all of nerd culture to do. When I tell people what I’m doing, they welcome me. No gatekeeping. You’re going to love this. Can I introduce you to that?

And one of the best ways this movie did that was, they interviewed those celebrities I mentioned, and then there was Doug Benson, who was huge in the movie — he’s a stand-up comedian. Adam Brody was probably the biggest-name celebrity. And then they had this guy named Jared, who was just an avid video renter. And they chyroned him the same as everybody else.

Jason Yeung:
Yep.

Mandy Kaplan:
They treated him the same as everybody else.

Jason Yeung:
Yep.

Mandy Kaplan:
They didn’t make it a point to say, well, he’s not famous. His opinions matter just as much. And I liked that.

Jason Yeung:
Oh, it was beautiful. They also had Kumail Nanjiani. They got him for free because of the text message. So a shout out — that’s a very, very good plug right there from him.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah.

Jason Yeung:
But yeah, they did such a good job as far as breaking out — ’cause I didn’t know who everyone was when I watched the documentary the first time.

Mandy Kaplan:
Okay. Oh, Ione Skye.

Jason Yeung:
Yeah, yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
Sorry, I just —

Jason Yeung:
I knew a few of them, but I didn’t know who all of them were. But none of them felt like they had the same weight in the thing.

Mandy Kaplan:
Mm-hmm, right?

Jason Yeung:
So I think they did a great job of giving that customer, that person — and again, when he was talking about how he goes in there and does things, I’m like, oh my god, I know this customer. I had 30 of these customers in my store. I knew them by first name.

I got so familiar with my customers — and granted, I’m also a big people person, so that also helps — but they would come in and I would learn about their grandparents. I would learn about their — some of them shared their medical history, which was unprompted. I had one lady come in, she was the sweetest person, but she started talking to me about her gallstones and all these other things that I wanted to know nothing about at the time. But she was the sweetest lady, and I would recommend movies and things for her, and I recommended games for her grandkids ’cause she used to watch them.

And it became really like family there. And you really get that sense of how important these things were to that customer. You know what it’s like.

Mandy Kaplan:
So where your store closed — where do they all go to get that interaction? I hope not just to a bar. But it felt like Cheers, right?

Jason Yeung:
Yeah, yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
I’m not telling you what your life felt like, but this movie, the way they portrayed video stores — it’s like, yes, you could talk to the bartender, you could talk to the other regulars that you saw every Friday night. Where did they all go to get that fix?

Jason Yeung:
I mean, there was really no other place to go. The emergence of streaming, the emergence of Redbox and Netflix, which were huge players — obviously not the be-all end-all, there was a lot of mismanagement, especially on our Hollywood Video side. We actually merged with Movie Gallery, which was another big chain, and it was a nightmare. We lost capital and all the million things that went into the reason why they shut down.

But my goodness, there was nowhere else for them to go. Once my stores closed down, we were the last stores in the Arizona market, because we were part of a franchise group that had twenty-plus locations in Arizona and Las Vegas. And once we shut down, there were no other video stores — except there were a few Blockbusters still, but a lot of Blockbusters had already closed down at that time as well.

Mandy Kaplan:
When was this? Do you know a year?

Jason Yeung:
This was back in 2006, 2007-ish, I want to say, off the top of my head.

Mandy Kaplan:
Okay, because the movie told us that in 2017, Blockbuster went from 9,000 stores to 12 stores.

Jason Yeung:
Yep. Yeah. But the fall started happening way earlier than that. And that’s partly because 9,000 stores is a lot of stores.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah.

Jason Yeung:
That’s a huge amount of stores. So not every store is going to be viable. So obviously they’re going to make some cuts, because you open up locations, hope for the best, and then in three years, if they don’t make their margins, then they shut ’em down.

But yeah, we had one Blockbuster that was in our area still that was up and running. They stayed for a while, but two others shut down and we actually inherited their business first. And so we were okay for a little while, and then eventually it caught up to us, and then we shut down. And then there was really nothing else out there for my community, my local neighborhoods, to go to at the time.

Mandy Kaplan:
Right. And as a manager — we see a lot of Sandi working, her responsibilities, which some of them surprised me. She still goes to Walmart, Target, other places to buy the DVDs to then put in her inventory. Did you do that?

Jason Yeung:
Yep, absolutely. So you had distributors, you had vendors that sold you movies in bulk and things like that. But to get restocks and certain things, depending on your contracts, we had to order a certain amount of product in order for them to deliver to us.

So for smaller things, like a simple request, I’d have to go to the store. When new video games came out and we didn’t get as many as we needed, or we were expecting fewer customers to show up and the game came out and it got a more positive buzz and people wanted to play it more, I would have to run down to GameStop, to Target, to Walmart, and just try to get as many as I can.

They actually knew me by name at the Walmart, because at first they thought I was a scalper. They thought I was coming in and buying everything to go and resell. I’m like, no, no, no, I swear I’m not one of those people. I’m just — I have people who want to rent these at my store and I’ve got to get them.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah.

Jason Yeung:
So they’re like, okay, we get this now. So I became good friends with the electronics department managers over at my local Walmart for a good chunk of years. Because we tried our best to forecast how many we’re going to need. But you never know. Some things are hit and miss, and then you have to go buy more.

Mandy Kaplan:
Well, that’s another question. How do you know if — I’m just making up a title of a famous bomb, but Waterworld. I guess it already had its theatrical run, so you would know, oh, everybody hated it.

Jason Yeung:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
It didn’t do well, so I’m not going to buy forty copies of Waterworld.

Jason Yeung:
Exactly.

Mandy Kaplan:
But straight to video — how would you know?

Jason Yeung:
Yeah, so straight to video, you typically do less back in the day.

Mandy Kaplan:
When that became a thing.

Jason Yeung:
So back in the day, before streaming was popular, we had a lot of reliance on what our vendors were saying about market trends, and then how the movies did in theaters. So for the bigger ones we could forecast better. For the smaller ones we always erred more on the side of caution.

Because to run a video store — at least back in the day — the overhead costs were astronomical. I mean, that was a big factor in what killed a lot of these things. They had debt that they borrowed against. But a lot of businesses borrow debt against their debt and stuff like that.

Mandy Kaplan:
Because you were also only charging $3.99 to rent a movie. So it’s not like, oh, I just need to sell one Porsche and that keeps the door open for another month.

Jason Yeung:
Exactly. And we’re renting at $3.99. That’s not a full $3.99 that we make. We have the cost of getting it in. We have the licensing agreements. We have all these other things.

And a big factor in a lot of these things was the rents in some of our buildings were absolutely astronomical. The rent in our building at the time was around twelve thousand dollars per month just to be there. And so when you’re looking at $3.99, a shrinking market, bad decisions by upper management, inability to adapt to streaming culture and Redflix and Redbox — Netflix and Redbox, I mix those together — it’s very, very tough to maintain any kind of level of business.

Mandy Kaplan:
RIP Box.

Jason Yeung:
And I think Bend, Oregon — I think the documentary did a great job of describing the community and making it feel like, man, this is a community that feels slower-paced, it feels more intimate, it feels more like you know your neighbors. And that’s why I think that video store, along with their amazing manager Sandi, is able to survive versus bigger cities.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah. Absolutely, I agree.

I want to talk about a very controversial topic that might have contributed to the demise of Blockbuster. I’m not going to tell you what it is. It’s going to be very sexy, and it’s going to happen after this.

Welcome back. I want to let everybody know that Make Me a Nerd is a production of TruStory FM, engineering by the peerless Pete Wright. My theme song is “Wonderstruck” by Jane and the Boy. And I would be very, very grateful if you’re listening on Apple Podcasts, if you could write a review and leave five stars. That helps other people find the podcast.

And if you’re feeling extra supportive, listen up, folks. There’s a club. Five dollars a month gets you your episodes ad-free and early, and my eternal gratitude. Go to makemeanerd.com/join. And please, please hit that button.

Anything you want to plug, Jason? I know you’re doing some top-secret voiceover right now you can’t talk about, but is there anything you want people to check you out on?

Jason Yeung:
Well, if we come back and we do an NFL fantasy football podcast — fingers crossed, in the next 30 days I’ll be able to talk about it. But as of right now, I don’t have anything I can say.

Mandy Kaplan:
Okay.

Jason Yeung:
I would love to, because there’s some pretty cool things on the horizon. But I can’t legally say anything right now. And we’re coming up to the sexy part of the program, so we just gotta make sure.

Mandy Kaplan:
I want to talk about, Jason — I want to talk about late fees.

Jason Yeung:
Ooh, I love the way you say “late fees” right there.

Mandy Kaplan:
Right? This —

Jason Yeung:
Yeah, it just brings it all back.

Mandy Kaplan:
This was so controversial. I want to hear what it was like, because I’m sure you had some irate customers trying to debate, but I returned it yesterday, and — late fees. I know they enraged people, and I used to feel that rage when I was late. But I’ve turned around since this movie. What was it like dealing with customers complaining about late fees? Talk slow.

Jason Yeung:
Yeah, so oh my god. So let me tell you a little bit about just how I dealt with these customers, and how I got them to pay their late fees. Because you know, you pay for quality, and the best quality you get.

No, so yeah, late fees were always a sore point. And again, I remember when I first started working there, I got anxiety. Like, when I saw the customer’s name pop up and it popped up a little red flashing emblem saying, you owe three dollars for a late fee. I’m like, hey, you have a late fee? I was so timid about it.

My first manager was like, bro, what are you doing?

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah.

Jason Yeung:
I’m like, I don’t want to make them upset. He’s like, no, 90% of people don’t care. They’re going to pay it. And most of the time it’s only a couple of bucks because they were late on a thing. You’re going to have a handful of customers that will get irate. And they’ll get irate because it was three or four days late, or they’re having a bad day and things like that.

But yeah, oh my god, I had so many customers that would be willing to throw down. They’d be willing to get the police called, because they did not want to pay two dollars.

Mandy Kaplan:
Really.

Jason Yeung:
Yeah, at some of our locations we had people who would get physical. They would legitimately be —

Mandy Kaplan:
It was that grandma with the gallstones, wasn’t it?

Jason Yeung:
Oh yeah, absolutely. She was the worst.

Mandy Kaplan:
Crazy bitch.

Jason Yeung:
She was the worst. I’m so happy that she’s not around anymore. I’m just kidding, that’s horrible.

Mandy Kaplan:
Oh god.

Jason Yeung:
I’m just kidding.

Mandy Kaplan:
Jeez.

Jason Yeung:
I’m just kidding, that’s horrible.

No. But yeah, the late fees — you try to explain to people like, hey, you know what, it’s not my fault you didn’t bring it back on time. It is part of our policy. And if we didn’t have late fees, there’s no deterrent for people just taking our stuff and leaving. They get a brand new $30 movie for free, basically.

Mandy Kaplan:
Which is what happened.

Jason Yeung:
It’s exactly what happened.

Mandy Kaplan:
So Blockbuster, as their clientele is dying, as they are sputtering — they decide, no late fees. And they advertise it on TV. I can remember. It was like, no late fees. And Ron Funches, the comedian, is like, so, free video cassettes. Like, just take them and never return ’em. And he admitted he did that.

It could never have worked. And if you are an honest person who is just coming to rent a movie, right? I come in and, what’s the latest new release I want? My amazing manager Jason says, well, we have many, many copies, they’re due back tomorrow, come on back tomorrow and you can have it. And what happened was people were never returning their movies, so then the next person couldn’t rent it.

And I feel like they didn’t say this, but I feel like that contributed to the downfall of Blockbuster faster than anything. Faster than Lehman Brothers and the bubble bursting and Netflix.

Jason Yeung:
Oh, yeah.

And again, for a company that is bleeding money — not that they weren’t making money. Their stores, they were still making money. It’s that they had so much debt, so much stuff against them, that it wasn’t enough to even cover that. And then when you lose another two-thirds of your revenue in a month because you make this boneheaded decision —

They made a perfect analogy. It’s like, okay, there’s no fees or penalties for renting a car. Rent it, bring it back whenever you want. People would just rent a car and never bring it back.

Mandy Kaplan:
Right. It’s absolutely an inane idea. I just can’t believe that it flew.

Jason Yeung:
Yeah. The mismanagement from the higher-ups at that time in Blockbuster, and in Hollywood for that matter — for all the video stores. They were all scrambling trying to figure out how to salvage things, but they weren’t able to identify the real problems. Or they were just trying to ignore them, or like, hey, we can’t fix that at all, so we’re going to try to do other things that just made absolutely no sense.

And this was one of the stupidest things that I can recall. I mean, they should teach the downfall of Blockbuster in business schools. Well, not when I went there, they didn’t.

Mandy Kaplan:
They probably do. I wouldn’t know, but —

Jason Yeung:
There have always been businesses that have been adapting forever. Like, you look at Barnes & Noble. Everyone was saying, around the same time back when Blockbuster and Hollywood were open, they’re going to close down too. They’re going to go the way of the dinosaur. They’re still around. They’re still doing things, because their leadership is able to pivot, adapt, and cater to their demographic.

Blockbuster had so many opportunities to make pivots and to do things that were smart that could have kept them around in a lot of communities — definitely not the mega giants that they were, but they could probably still have a thousand stores maybe across the US in different communities that still worked. But they weren’t able to do that.

Mandy Kaplan:
Mm-hmm.

And there are record stores. Somebody pointed that out in the movie, right?

Jason Yeung:
Yeah, I think that’s a good one.

Mandy Kaplan:
There’s a nostalgia. And there’s a real desire to hold things that are tangible. I know that I used to read on a Kindle and I gave it up a few years ago. I missed books. I miss book covers, and going to bookstores — I’m obsessed with bookstores. And I think a lot of people returned to that. So I do hold out this little hope that DVD rental places could come back, because the nostalgia alone —

Jason Yeung:
Yeah, the nostalgia would be the big thing there for it. And for me, in the business sense, Barnes & Noble did such a good job — those kinds of places did such a good job of pivoting. And the younger demographic, like my daughter, she loves bookstores. She’s a big avid book reader. She doesn’t care about Blockbusters or anything like that, because there was nothing that kind of kept her in it.

So I think it’s much harder, because the younger generation just isn’t tied into it. And they’re not tied into Hollywood. I mean, when they were walking through and going, oh, the smell of this place — I know that smell. That smell, I grew up with that smell. I worked in that smell for so many years. And it’s so true.

Mandy Kaplan:
It’s plastic and popcorn is what most people —

Jason Yeung:
Plastic and popcorn. You’re walking through, you see the shelf talkers on the front of the new releases and stuff. And oh my god, it’s so good.

But the younger generation, they don’t have that anymore. And so I don’t know if it’d ever come back in any kind of meaningful way. Because again, the leadership at the top, they just couldn’t adapt, they couldn’t key into this. And you lose your ability to have these things, and it’s really, really sad.

Mandy Kaplan:
But something has to go away to become nostalgic. It has to — we have to move on from it and then return to it. So that’s a tiny hope I have.

Here’s a fun fact. Pete, play the fun fact sting. In September 2020, the world’s last operating Blockbuster in Bend, Oregon — she offered it as an Airbnb. Do you know about this?

Jason Yeung:
Oh, I did not know that.

Mandy Kaplan:
So Sandi Harding, who is brilliant, the store owner — it was transformed with a pull-out couch, bean bags, unlimited snacks, and classic VHS tapes.

It was a promotion, and she did it for four dollars a night.

Jason Yeung:
Oh my God.

Mandy Kaplan:
And then it went by the wayside.

Jason Yeung:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
But did you go to the website of the last Blockbuster store?

Jason Yeung:
I did not.

Mandy Kaplan:
Oh, they have merch out the wazoo. One of which is the candle that smells like Blockbuster Video.

Jason Yeung:
Oh my god. Okay, now I’m going to have to go and buy that.

Mandy Kaplan:
You gotta go buy your candle.

Jason Yeung:
I gotta go buy my candle.

Mandy Kaplan:
They have great nostalgic stuff, and also sweatshirts and hats and stuff, to support Sandi and support this store.

And it says, even if you can’t visit Oregon, you can still call the store’s Callgorithm — and then here’s the phone number — for personalized human movie recommendations. Should we call?

Jason Yeung:
Oh yeah, we should call. We should absolutely call.

Mandy Kaplan:
Okay, I don’t know what this is going to be. If this bombs, Pete, just cut it, please. All right. So I will dial. 541-385-9111.

[Recorded message:] Thank you for calling the last Blockbuster. We are located at 211 Northeast Revere in Bend, Oregon. Our store operating hours are Sunday through Thursday from 10:30 a.m. to 8 p.m., and on Friday and Saturday from 10:30 a.m. to — If you’re calling about an online order, please press two.

Jason Yeung:
Sounds like her voice. Sounds like her voice.

Mandy Kaplan:
[Recorded message:] If you’re calling to speak to a sales associate or a store member, please press one.

Okay, that didn’t work. It said Callgorithm, so I thought it was going to be like, hello, welcome to Blockbuster. If you like romance, press one.

Jason Yeung:
Yeah. Tell us that we’re voice actors, we were expecting —

Mandy Kaplan:
Right.

Jason Yeung:
That’s like — I miss Moviefone. I miss Moviefone so much. That was so fun, calling up Moviefone. “Hello, and thank you for calling Moviefone.”

Mandy Kaplan:
Right.

That was pretty good, Jason. This all made me really nostalgic.

She still works some things on floppy discs and her staff doesn’t know what they are. Sandi — just, everybody watch this movie. She’s so inspiring. She’s very down-to-earth, but she gets really used to the fame, which I like.

Jason Yeung:
Oh yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
She’s like, oh, I’ve done 500 interviews.

Jason Yeung:
Yeah, she is so natural when it comes down to just being in front of a camera.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah.

Jason Yeung:
Like, there’s no nerve. I mean, there’s probably some nerves in there, but she masks it so well. She comes off very natural and very authentic.

Mandy Kaplan:
Media savvy.

And she gets a makeover, right?

Jason Yeung:
Which is tough.

Mandy Kaplan:
When the movie starts, she has long scraggly hair, and then when they start interviewing her, she’s got beautiful hair. I wonder if she got that makeover at Images Full Service Salon, which shares the marquee outside with Blockbuster and Papa Murphy’s Pizza.

Jason Yeung:
Oh my god, you’re so much more perceptive than I — I totally missed that. I didn’t even see that.

Mandy Kaplan:
I’m imagining — so one thing we learn in this movie is that people make pilgrimages frequently to the last Blockbuster, which you’ve said you might do. Papa Murphy’s Pizza is probably psyched. They get all these tourists coming in for a slice.

Jason Yeung:
I mean, how many people need to listen to this podcast for you to go to the last Blockbuster?

Mandy Kaplan:
Oh, if I get — I don’t know the numbers. But I’ll go. I’ll pander to anybody for anything. I’ll go.

Jason Yeung:
I was gonna say.

But going back to like the Moviefone voice —

Mandy Kaplan:
Right.

Jason Yeung:
I actually used to practice voiceover when I was in the store. I would answer our phone like that at Hollywood Video. I would answer it like that. And I would wait for someone to press —

Mandy Kaplan:
Would people think it was like an automated thing?

Jason Yeung:
They thought it was — “Hello, and thank you for calling Hollywood Video, located here on Indian School and Dysart in Phoenix, Arizona. If you’d like to talk to an associate, please press one. If you’d like to do this, press two.”

And then I’d wait for them to press a button. “Hello, this is Jason, how can I help you?” And they’re like, hey Jason, what’s up? We’d go from there.

Mandy Kaplan:
Oh, that’s funny.

Jason Yeung:
I would actually do that all the time. And one of my customers finally caught me doing it. He caught me. I was on the phone, I was checking him out. And I remember he was one of my regulars. And I was on the thing and the phone started ringing. I’m like, oh, give me one second please.

And I go, “Hello, thank you for calling —” He’s like, bro, that was you the whole time?

Mandy Kaplan:
That’s been you? Yeah.

Jason Yeung:
And I was like — he’s like, bro, I swear man, I call up there all the time and I hear that voice and I’m like, oh man, they got a nice automated machine. It was really you? And he’s like, if you call the other Hollywood Video it’s just, hey, this is Hollywood Video, how can I help you?

Mandy Kaplan:
I love it. I would love to work at a video store. And I imagine Sandi gets multiple applications a day.

Jason Yeung:
Oh yeah. Everyone wanted to work at the video store, because one, it wasn’t like food service, and it wasn’t like traditional retail. So for a lot of people — and that’s one of the reasons why I jumped on it. My first job was there. I was there for 10-plus years. And quite honestly, I might still be there if the market didn’t go bust. I loved that job.

Mandy Kaplan:
Mm-hmm.

Jason Yeung:
That job was so fun. But we had so many. We would get applications — I had two filing cabinets full of applications because of how many we got. Because everyone wanted to.

And then once you start hiring high schoolers and stuff like that and they start coming in, they’re like, hey, my friend told me this place is a cool place to work, are you guys hiring? Give me your resume, give me this here.

Mandy Kaplan:
Right.

Jason Yeung:
And then back in the day, before there was Indeed and all these online application portals, we had physical ones, so we had to keep them all there.

Mandy Kaplan:
Sure. Yes, of course.

Jason Yeung:
And by law at the time we had to keep any physical application for a year. So we had a full drawer of people who were just coming in.

Mandy Kaplan:
Okay.

Jason Yeung:
We had two filing cabinets full of applications. So many people wanted to work there.

Mandy Kaplan:
And that was when there were all these choices. But this is the only one left. The one Blockbuster. So if you want to work at a video rental store, you have to move to Bend, Oregon, and apply with Sandi, I guess.

Jason Yeung:
I mean, that’s where I might be going to next. I mean, who knows? The next time I do a podcast, I might be in Bend, Oregon.

Mandy Kaplan:
I don’t blame you.

At the end of the movie, there’s true emotion. I teared up. They hand everybody that’s being interviewed a VHS cassette.

Jason Yeung:
The VHS tape, yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
And it’s clever, because they call it The Last Blockbuster, as if it’s the movie they’re participating in. Almost like in Spaceballs, how they watch Spaceballs the movie as they’re making Spaceballs.

Jason Yeung:
Yep, yep.

Mandy Kaplan:
But they get emotional, right? They crack it open and they’re like, oh, I haven’t heard that sound in 20 years. Oh, I haven’t touched this plastic. And they shake the VHS. And I got emotional too, for I guess just bygone times. Just something you can’t have anymore.

Jason Yeung:
Oh yeah.

Well, it just shows you the significant impact it had on us at that time period. When we were growing up, it’s such formative years, and it played such a big role in what we do now even. And just the emotions that you have, because that was time with family members. That was time with your mom and dad that you just don’t get back anymore.

Mandy Kaplan:
Right.

Jason Yeung:
And I totally felt the same way. I was like, oh my god. I remember those long magnetic locks in the DVD cases and the Blu-ray cases. I remember the sound and the click they made when you slid them in and out, and the magnet, and how you had to mess with the magnet sometimes because it just wouldn’t pop open.

The VHS tapes, and the row of VHS rewinders that we used to have, and the sound of them all going at the same time in the same moment.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yes.

Jason Yeung:
It brought back so many memories. That shows just how significant it was, at least at the time, to us. Because no one’s getting that upset or that emotional about things nowadays. But I don’t know, like I said, it was a piece of our culture that we just don’t have anymore.

Mandy Kaplan:
Well, Jared, the superfan, calls it his church.

Jason Yeung:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
And I understand that feeling. Do you feel that way? Would it be a place you actually get — spiritual might be a bit too far, but it brings you calm and peace and community, the things that are wonderful about church.

Jason Yeung:
Yeah. Well, exactly. And the things that are fun about community as well. I have so many friends that I’ve made from the video stores and the game stores that I’ve worked in. And I still see them, because I’ve lived in the same community for my entire life for the most part. I still see them, and my daughter, she’s surprised. She’s like, how do so many people know your name? I was like, well, it’s because I played a part in their life to a degree.

Mandy Kaplan:
Right.

Jason Yeung:
And when they came in to rent a movie or buy a video game or any one of these things here, they were coming in because they wanted an escape.

They wanted a place where they could go where, hey, it was welcoming. I could participate in the thing that I enjoy. And there are people here who make me feel good about myself, and I can escape real life for a few minutes, and then take it home, spend time with my family, enjoy these things, and bring it back and then do it all over again. That was a highlight.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yes.

Jason Yeung:
And I remember that. I remember taking — on my first dates. Granted, I didn’t date very much in high school, ’cause I was not a ladies’ man back in high school. But I remember going to my video store in high school, because my first job, I was sixteen years old, right into the workforce and into video stores.

I took the one girlfriend I had in high school to Hollywood Video on our second date.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yes.

Jason Yeung:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
They talk about that in the movie. You would go and hold hands and walk up and down the aisles and pick a couple of titles. It showed effort. It was a romantic thing to do, in a way. And then you knew you were going to go home and have dinner and maybe make out. Now it’s like, come on over, I’m going to press play. And there’s no romance to it.

Jason Yeung:
That was the hope. It never happened for that. No, no.

Mandy Kaplan:
Netflix and chill is not romantic the way it would have been to go to Hollywood Video.

Jason Yeung:
No. Well, it also helps with the icebreaker. Because if you Netflix and chill — granted, I’ve never Netflix and chilled with anybody — but if you do this, I imagine you’re bringing someone over to your house and then it’s kind of awkward and you’re like, hey, how you doing?

When you’re going to the video store, you have the entire walk up and down the aisles.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah.

Jason Yeung:
It’s in a public place. You get to comment on some of the crazy cover art that you see there. And like, this looks good here.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yep.

Jason Yeung:
I remember I was trying to — and again, this is probably why I didn’t get a third date. I tried to get her to watch Sharknado. Which is probably not the best movie, in retrospect, for a date. But I was like, oh, it looks cool. And she was like, this is such a bad movie. You want to watch that? I’m like, no, I don’t want to watch them.

So yeah, it brought back so much nostalgia for me, and I feel bad that the newer generations don’t get that, and it’s not in communities anymore.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yep. So, wrapping up this movie — it doesn’t have a very good rating on Rotten Tomatoes, which I was shocked by, because I thoroughly enjoyed it. Did you like the movie?

Jason Yeung:
Oh yeah, I liked the movie. I was again a fan of how they did it. I think the way that they set it up and how honest they were about it was something that was very refreshing that you see in these kinds of things.

But I also get why it wasn’t very popular. And that’s because, again, one, it was low budget. So I didn’t even know about this movie until you told me. And I worked in the industry.

Mandy Kaplan:
Mm-hmm.

Jason Yeung:
You know, I worked there. And then number two is the younger demographic — they don’t, you know. Last Blockbuster, whatever.

I remember I was doing a training call for my game stores and I was talking about our philosophy of how we go about customer service. It’s like Cheers, where everyone knows your name. You walk into a place and they’re always glad you came. And the average age was like sixteen, seventeen years old for this training group here.

Mandy Kaplan:
Right, right.

Jason Yeung:
It was like twelve kids. And they’re like, what’s that? I’m like, it’s Cheers, you know, like the old bar. You know, like the old movie stores where you used to go down there — and it’s like, there were movie stores?

I’m like, you all are the worst generation ever. My god. I’m ending this call right now. You’re all fired.

There’s no tie-in for them. They don’t care about it. And so I think that’s also part of the reason. One, it wasn’t marketed highly, and two, younger people and people who are interested just didn’t know about it or don’t care about it.

Mandy Kaplan:
That sucks. Because I enjoyed it and you enjoyed it, and it really brought back really fond memories and it sparked a great conversation.

Thank you for sharing all of your video store knowledge and love with me. And we’re done here. I can’t believe it.

Jason Yeung:
It was so fun. But yeah, I might, like I said, take a road trip up to Bend, Oregon to see it before anything else happens to the last Blockbuster. It’s an endangered species, the last Blockbuster. Watch the documentary. Support it, because it’s so important.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah. Yes. Go to the website, buy your Be Kind Rewind t-shirts.

Jason Yeung:
Yep.

Mandy Kaplan:
Let’s all support. All right, thank you, Jason. You’re so wonderful. And thank you all for listening. Until next time.

Jason Yeung:
Thank you.