Scarecrow Video -- Get A Life? Why Bother When There Are 29,000 Choices At America's Best-Stocked Monument To Movie Rentals?
MARK STEINER SAW three.
Patrick Mathewes saw four.
Sean Axmaker saw seven.
Movies.
Over one weekend.
"It was a slow weekend for me," Sean says.
They begin like they do every Monday, at their cluttered desks in the small one-room office with the stacks of videos, the gray carpet and gray walls plastered with bumper stickers, postcards, flyers and posters of Krzysztof Kieslowski's "Blue" and "White," Ingrid Bergman in "Spellbound."
They talk.
Sean: There's a ton of Otto Preminger films coming up this month. Six, including "Fallen Angel."
Mark: Oh yeah?
Patrick: The other movie I saw was a Visconti. I'm really becoming a Visconti fan.
Sean: I am too! Against all expectations. I saw four Fords. I saw "Dr. Bull" and I highly recommend it!
Sometimes these guys shut their eyes during the previews of movies they want to see so their first viewing won't be spoiled. They scowl at ushers who start cleaning up before the final credits have rolled.
They flinch if you talk to them too soon after a movie has ended. And while the movie's on, don't even think about talking. Shut up and watch the movie, Mark's likely to be thinking. He'd probably like to strangle you. He's too nice to do such a thing and if he did, well, he'd miss watching the movie.
They know extraordinary things: When a film is out of sequence. When a movie's a remake, a ripoff. When a film opened, how one influenced another, and when it was quoted.
They rent movies. They write about them. They drive to Vancouver and Portland to see them.
They buy them, they find them, they work with them and mostly, when they're not watching, they talk about them.
"Patrick. He asked me what my favorite film sequence that featured the song `In the Mood' by Benny Goodman was," says a friend.
"To which I said, I don't know, but I think you need to get out a little more!"
"GEORGE GREW up going to the movies.
"George would sit there and watch the same movie over and over."
George then founded Scarecrow Video. George is talking, in his store, about himself.
George Latsios was born 37 years ago in Greece and he never saw TV until his family moved to the U.S. when he was 10.
"Ever since, growing up in the States, I wanted my own movie theater," he said.
Latsios lived in Allentown, Pa., and he recalls turning 19 and buying himself a present, a one-speed, top-loader, bulky, heavy VHS videocasette recorder with a non-detachable remote control. He paid $1,200 for it. It was 1977 and video stores wouldn't appear in his city for another several years. Movies had to be ordered through the mail, which is what Latsios did, starting with "A Boy and His Dog."
It proved ridiculously expensive to open a movie theater. So after he married and moved to Seattle with wife, Rebecca, Latsios opened a video store because he didn't want to be a desk-man and he loved movies. He named it after his favorite character in "The Wizard of Oz." It was a 2,000-square-foot former storage facility and it looked empty even though it had 619 titles, largely his collection: every Sherlock Holmes with a mix of foreign, action, horror, science fiction and Bergman.
It grew famous the way good bistros do. The locals went to it because it was local. They loved it and raved. Others heard, checked out the fuss and were hooked, too. Latsios hired staff, bought movies and filled every empty inch, even hoisting a shelf behind the bathroom door to hold tapes. The clientele grew.
Latsios ran out of room when the store had close to 18,000 titles. After nearly two years searching, he settled on Roosevelt Way, in between a travel agency and Lost Sock laundry.
The two-story store currently offers more than 24,000 videos and 5,000 laser discs, a 19-seat theater called The Sanctuary, two movie databases, three types of licorice, a restroom and the Ruby Slipper espresso bar.
Scarecrow is a monument to movies. It carries more movies than any video store in the country. If it's available on video or laser disc, you can figure this store has it.
Roger Ebert came in here and went nuts, Latsios says, beaming.
It can take an hour just to walk through the place.
`Usually, the Three Stooges section (of other video stores) has maybe six or eight films," says a husky Latino, who prefers Humphrey Bogart or Errol Flynn when he's feeling serious, something romantic when he's sad. Tonight he wants to laugh and he's eyeing a low shelf in the comedy section. Twenty-three Three Stooges tapes stare back. He's practically giddy.
THROW THEM in the crowd at REI on a Saturday in spring and they would not stand out. Brown, slightly wavy hair that falls below the shoulders for Sean and Mark. Jeans, T-shirts and beards. A buzz and mustache for Patrick, khakis and sweater with a rolled-down collar.
Sean, Mark and Patrick look normal.
"They seem to be a cool thing to be now," says Chris Schneider, a manager at Scarecrow, explaining what a "film geek" is. "Means that they see everything that comes out. If they have spare time, they'll see a film or read about films. It's their main interest in life."
This is not to be confused with "pseudo film geeks," Schneider points out. Those who don't know what they're talking about.
Mark sees fewer films than Patrick, who last year saw 662 movies (including repeat viewings). Patrick's now trying to cut back. Sean wants to see even more.
Sean Axmaker grew up in Victoria and Hawaii.
He didn't live near a movie theater, but the family had HBO and that's how he fell into foreign films and classics. He was a teenager and he didn't always like what he saw. Some felt dull, but Sean kept watching. They were like books. These stories, affecting him the way a book couldn't. Immediately. Emotion that washed over him like certain rock 'n' roll.
In Eugene, in college, Sean studied films. He made, watched and worked with them. His professors would ask: "Hey Sean. `The Searchers.' 1956 or 1957?"
He always knew.
He once saw six movies in one day: "Shock Corridor" (twice). "Naked Kiss." "The Black Cat." "Peril." "Curse of the Cat People."
He's a walking film encyclopedia. He calls himself an independent film historian. This year, his goal is to see 10 movies a week. Over the next five days, his schedule goes like this: Two John Fords Monday. The new Almodovar Tuesday. Two more Fords Wednesday. Michael Powell on Thursday. A trip to Portland on Friday.
"There. Those are film geeks," says Chris. He's on The Ave, facing north and pointing to Sean and Mark ambling up the street.
Mark says no, he has a life. He plays basketball, watches basketball and writes for an online magazine.
Patrick says he's borderline.
Sean doesn't have much of a defense.
CABLE TV, PAY-PER-VIEW and videos were supposed to starve movies.
Since their arrival, they have only fed the craving.
By last year, 23 years after video rentals were introduced, more than 80 percent of U.S. households had a VCR. Consumers spent $15 billion renting and buying videos, six times more than they paid to attend professional football, baseball and basketball games.
The number of filmgoers keeps climbing. The number of movie tickets sold is at an all-time high and there are more movie screens than ever in the country.
Seattle is really movie crazy.
On a per-capita basis, more people go to the movies here than in any other city in the country.
The Seattle International Film Festival, which started May 16, is the largest and longest in the United States.
Twenty-five days.
Two hundred films.
One hundred thousand people, including Sean, Mark and Patrick. They each paid the $250 for a festival pass.
The climate makes Seattle a good film town, says Rebecca Latsios, a native East Coaster. The locals, too, are naturals.
"Seattleites are mavericks. They're introverted, but intelligent. Introverted and intelligent? That's a film buff right there."
In the Emerald City, there had to be a Scarecrow.
Everyone who works here has studied film, in school or recreationally. The 20-some, mostly twentysomethings, who are writers, filmmakers, cable-TV producers on the side, have their specialities: Breta Yvars, foreign films and animation. Mark Burgio, science fiction, horror, cult films. Lily Harwood, alternative. Gayle Truax, Polish and Russian.
They are hired for what they know and what they can tell those who don't.
On their feet all day, running boxes, pulling tags, auditing, batching in movies, but they get to take home two free movies per night and recommend their favorites.
In retail, it's the dream job. The work is to love movies.
Chris says: Like being paid to go to film school.
SCARECROW IS TO videos what Eagle Hardware is to screws.
Enter the store. Veer left. Zigzag through the directors section. The director, not the actor, is revered here, and on the shelves are the names of 357 of them, from Al Adamson to Fred Zinnemann, with every piece of work each has made that can be obtained on tape. Twenty Coppolas. Fifty-six Hitchcocks. Fourteen Rossellinis and 14 Woos.
No Sydney Pollacks or Lawrence Kasdans. Those two and about a dozen others were dumped from the director's section by the staff. They weren't saying anything and the store needed room for the Mike Figgises. There is also no Quentin Tarantino. He doesn't have that much work, the staff said, and even if "The Pulp Fiction" director did, they don't like him. He was the first director dumped before ever getting a section.
There are groupings according to special interests: Civil rights. Women's issues. The Bible. World War II. Westerns. Videos arranged by country of origin. Documentaries. A few workout videos and "how-tos." A children's section with animation and live-action subsections. Two walls of new releases. A third for monthly features, such as "Oscar Films." A pair of skinny shelves for special displays: Jackie Chan, George Burns. Four black folders of porn tapes. The glass counter stuffed with film-score CDs. Shelves of laser discs to buy. Bins of laser discs to rent.
A blonde woman to a man with little hair after spending about 30 minutes in the store: "I can't handle this. Let's go."
This is the first floor. Return to new releases and head upstairs.
Purple, yellow, black rooms. Rooms lead to more rooms. More shelves to scour. Northwest filmmakers. Playwrights and novelists. Animation. Ballet. Jazz musicals. Horror. Japanese science fiction. Psychotronic. Shockumentaries, blaxploitation, sexploitation, Russ Meyer.
A white guy, early 20s, sweats, carrying a basketball: "Where'd they get all these movies from?"
The cinephiles, the enthusiasts, the famous; the lonely, the pretentious, the bored; the professionals, the linguists; the musicians, the professors; the couples on a first date and the student-with-an-exam-tomorrow-but-didn't-read-the-book-and-needs-to-w atch-the-movie-now - come here.
Scarecrow has about 52,000 customers. Two-thirds come from more than five miles away. They include people from Tacoma, Puyallup, Bremerton, Vancouver, Toronto. Customers have been known to fly in from L.A., book a hotel room, come to Scarecrow and rent movies. For a weekend.
Scarecrow opens seven days a week at 11 a.m. and it is not unusual to find two or three customers already standing at the door. These are not people intent on returning their movies on time.
Regulars come every week, every other day. Saturdays are the busiest. Four registers with a line trickling out the door. Eight hundred people probing and picking. Minds changing hundreds of times before movies are chosen. Between 1,000 to 1,800 taken home.
No film is ever retired, no matter what its rental record. "Smokey and the Bandit, Parts 2 and 3"? No takers for 2 1/2 years. They're here.
SERIOUS VIDEO watching demands a strategy.
Chris says some movies are made to be watched in mid-afternoon: "Local Hero," "Down by Law," "Stranger Than Paradise."
"White" was perfect for Patrick to watch after his red truck was hit.
Sean, when sick, watches a two-hour film about catching animals for a zoo. Makes him feel like he's in an adventure and part of a group.
To laugh, Sean chooses "The Palm Beach Story": clever and full of little moments.
When depressed, "Casablanca."
"You get to be in love with the woman and at the end, you get to be completely stoic and be the hero again. Doesn't every man want to do that?"
The first thing that pops up when Sean clicks on his Mac LC is his film journal. He started keeping it four years ago and he'll spend about a half-hour writing it in, once, twice each week.
It lists in order, by date, every movie he's seen, the title, the director, whether it was on film or video and whether it was a first or second viewing.
Sean lives near Green Lake, in a tiny studio with an original 1953 half-sheet for "The Big Heat," Burt Lancaster memorabilia, two large picture frames that hold film posters (he installs different ones every two to three months) and shrines to Orson Welles and Budd Boetticher.
He owns 550 films on video, around 100 laser discs and three VCRs.
He mostly watches movies alone because he lives alone, and usually at night.
He doesn't eat while he's watching because that can be distracting.
A boring film won't put Sean to sleep. Sleep puts him to sleep. Films do not. He calls it active viewing.
His bed is his couch and he will lie down on it, five feet from the 31-inch Mitsubishi TV.
MY AUNT WHO helped raise me worked in the Hollywood home of a director and a production designer. She often took me to work. I learned early: Movies were jobs first, entertainment second. I watched them but didn't let myself escape in them until I was 10 and saw "Star Wars."
That was it: I had a crush on R2D2.
It wasn't Luke or Han Solo. Not Chewbacca, too big and hairy and he growled. C3PO wasn't cute, that distinguished voice aside. But his pal, R2, with his beeps, smallness, loyalty, bravery. I was floored.
There were 10 theaters close to home. Lots of movies.
It only got better when Mom bought a VCR. We'd still go to the movies, sit on the side, watch the previews, eat our popcorn, but we rented movies whenever we could.
When I first moved to Seattle a year and a half ago, I still went to the movies but I started watching more of them at home. I was unsettled, reclusive, feeling thrifty and needed distraction. I'd rent up to six movies over a weekend.
When I watch movies now, I'm gone. I recite the Italian in "Moonstruck." I mambo to "Mi Familia." I ache for L.A. with "Blade Runner."
If my ceiling creaks because my upstairs neighbor is home, I groan. If the phone rings, I whine. If it's Sunday morning (my favorite movie-watching time) and the weather behaves, I rejoice. Sun means light seeps beneath the Levelors. The darker, the better. Rain, better yet.
It's an addiction, really.
"When I'm in the mood for watching a movie, nothing else will do," Rebecca Latsios says.
Exactly.
Not Ben and Jerry's Chunky Monkey.
Not champagne.
Not sex.
Movies. Florangela Davila is a reporter for The Seattle Times. Harley Soltes is Pacific Magazine's photographer. -----------------------------------------------------------------
Movies recommended by Scarecrow Video staff
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Movies to watch during a Seattle winter:.
"The Palm Beach Story".
"On The Town".
"Housekeeping".
"Zentropa".
"Don't Look Now".
"Christmas in July".
"Saragossa Manuscript".
"Berlin Alexanderplatz".
"Dekalog".
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When you're by yourself.
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"The Apartment".
"Sybil".
"Crusoe".
"The Black Stallion".
"Hatari".
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When you're too happy.
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"Schindler's List".
"Song of the South".
"The Civil War" (the PBS series by Ken Burns).
"Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer".
"Ballad of Narayama".
"Forrest Gump".
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When you're depressed.
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"Viva Las Vegas!".
"Singin' In the Rain".
"Every Which Way But Loose".
"Harold and Maude".
" 'night, Mother".
"Sid and Nancy".
Blake Edwards movies, like the "Pink Panther" series.
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When you're in love.
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"Diva".
"Kiss Me, Stupid".
"Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia".
"Hell in the Pacific".
"A Little Romance".
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When you've just broken up.
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"Schindler's List".
"The Towering Inferno".
"Truly Madly Deeply".
"The Brood".
"Strictly Dishonorable".
"The Abyss".
"Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia".
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When you want to break up.
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"Bitter Moon".
"The War of the Roses".
"Shoot the Moon".
"Smash Palace".
"Medea" .
"A Dream of Passion".
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When you feel like killing someone.
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"Hard Boiled".
"The Wild Bunch".
"The Brady Bunch".
"Mean Streets".
"Menace II Society".
"The Rapture" .
"Man Bites Dog".
"Henry: Portrait of A Serial Killer".
"Dances With Wolves" (then kill Kevin Costner).
"The American Friend".
"Straw Dogs".
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When you're on a diet.
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"The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover".
"Tampopo".
"Babette's Feast".
"La Grande Bouffe".
"The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, 2".
"Eating".
"The Best Little Girl in the World".
Anything with Dom De Luise or Shelley Winters (late in her career).
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When you need a vacation.
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"Planes, Trains & Automobiles".
"S.O.S. Titanic".
"The Poseidon Adventure".
"Hell in the Pacific".
"Deliverance".
"Woman in the Dunes".
"Danzon".
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When you're sexually frustrated.
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"That Obscure Object of Desire".
"Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid To Ask)".
"Every Which Way But Loose".
"The Bobo".
"Closely Watched Trains".
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When you're hungry.
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"Delicatessen".
"La Grande Bouffe".
"Eating Raoul".
"Alive" .
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When you've just lost your job.
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"Glengarry Glen Ross".
"S.O.B.".
"Bound For Glory".
"The Crowd".
"Duck Soup" or any Marx Brothers film.
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When you're pregnant.
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"Baby Talk".
"The Brood".
"The Fly".
"Xtro".
"It's Alive".
"It Lives Again".
"It's Alive III: Island of the Alive".
"Fargo".
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When you're having a midlife crisis.
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"Any Which Way You Can".
"How To Get Ahead in Advertising".
"Bliss".
"Lost in America".
"Shirely Valentine".
"Groundhog Day".
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When you're having a party.
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"The Party".
"Risky Business".
"Bedazzled".
"South Pacific".
"Leaving Las Vegas".
"Repo Man".
"Dazed and Confused".
"Viva Las Vegas".
"Danger: Diabolik".
"Barbarella".
"Faster Pussycat Kill! Kill!".
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When you're bored.
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Anything by Warhol.
"Death Race 2000".
"Vanishing Point ".
"Driller Killer".
"Weekend".
"French Can-Can".
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On a first date.
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"After Hours".
"Taxi Driver".
"Something Wild".
"What Happened Was . . .".
"Sirens".
"The Nutty Professor".
"Night of the Ghouls".
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When you're with your parents.
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"Parents".
"The Bad Seed".
"Maniac".
"Psycho".
"A Shot in the Dark".