Video Horizons in Astoria looms long and large

Neal Cummings has owned and run Video Horizons in Astoria for the last 40 years. It’s now the city’s only video rental store, and one of only a handful of businesses in Oregon where you can rent or buy movies on VHS or DVD. We talk with Cummings about how he got into this business, what keeps him going and why he thinks people still want an alternative to streaming movies in the digital age.

This transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. Thirteen years after Amazon Prime started streaming, 17 years after Netflix and Hulu, Neal Cummings is still running an old-fashioned video rental store in Astoria. As reported not too long ago in The Oregonian, Cummings opened Video Horizons almost 40 years ago. It is now the city’s only video rental store, and one of only a handful of businesses in Oregon where you can rent movies on Blu-ray, DVD or VHS.

Cummings joins us now to talk about physical media in this streaming age. It’s great to have you on the show.

Neal Cummings: Thank you, Dave.

Miller: I just noted there are just a handful of businesses like yours alive now, in Oregon. Movie Madness is a well-known one in Portland. There’s the famed last Blockbuster in Bend. But you’re a kind of an endangered retail species. Why do you think you’re the last one standing in Astoria?

Cummings: Because of my stubbornness. I just refuse to give up. There was a point there when COVID hit that it was awfully tempting, when we had to do curbside-only, my business really dwindled to next to nothing. And someone was buying out the building that I was renting from, so it was really looking like the end. But I just made this decision. I love what I’m doing so much that I had to stay in it.

And instead of downsizing, I actually bought out a store from Seattle – Rain City Video – 20,000 very unique and very unusual films that I was so excited to be able to secure. I increased my inventory by 20,000 movies at that point, rather than giving up. It was a gamble, but I’d been doing it for 35 years at that point. So I had 40,000 movies and curated a nice collection. I had a nice customer base, to be honest. So, I didn’t want to give up.

Miller: I was thinking about this in preparation for our conversation, because – correct me if you think I’m off base – this is just imagining a different reality. But it struck me that if COVID hit in 1988 or 1998, it would have maybe been good for the video rental business. You still would have had to do curbside, but you would be competing only against movie theaters, where people didn’t want to convene or maybe couldn’t convene at the beginning, as opposed to the ease of couches.

Cummings: I think you’re probably right. Yeah, in fact, a lot of customers had that opinion. “Oh, COVID must be great for you. Everyone’s staying home.” And I’m thinking, no, that’s really not the case because, actually what happened was a lot of the older clientele that I had at that point got their grandkids to teach them how to stream. A lot of people learned how to stream who really hadn’t been doing it before, because they had to stay home. So instead of increasing my business, it really cut it by two-thirds, at least.

Miller: Had you been telling those older clientele that streaming is very difficult?

Cummings: Yes. I spend hours of my day explaining, “Oh, it’s so hard!”

Miller: Literally impossible. Keep coming back to me.

Well, I am curious about the makeup of your clientele. You said you have wonderful customers. I mean, without profiling, stereotyping too much, can you give us the different demographic groups that are the heart of your business?

Cummings: Well, honestly, it’s people who’ve been with me for so many years. I’ve curated a certain person who really likes getting my advice. I’ve learned their tastes and I have customers that I know they’re only gonna like action movies or comedies, or movies that don’t have a lot of thought to it, or movies that are fantastic. So I learned my customers’ likes and dislikes, and I curate the new movies to them. I have a certain group of people that just love that. They just love coming back and getting my opinion. So that’s a large share of them – the clientele who’ve been with me for years.

Miller: Before we get to the other part of the clientele, I’m curious … because obviously the big tech companies feel like they have figured this out as well. Instead of a human being who knows their customers, literally knows them as people, and knows their likes and dislikes, and can recommend a movie, they have algorithms to do that. But when people come in, how often do they just say, “All right, Neal, what should I watch?” as opposed to, “Where is ‘Total Recall’?”

Cummings: I think there is a certain clientele that doesn’t want to think. They don’t want to have to have to go into the algorithms and do all that work. They just want to come in and say, “What’s a good movie?” And I curated that. I was there for that, and anyone I hire has to be able to do that as well. They have to be able to interact with the customer, and that’s always been important to me. And I think that’s one of the reasons I’m still alive to this day.

Miller: When you hire people to work there, is it basically just a movie quiz?

Cummings: Yep. I give them a quiz.

Miller: Really? What kind of questions do you ask?

Cummings: I ask basic questions, like, “How old do you have to be to rent an R-rated movie?” And, “What would you say if someone asks, ‘What’s a good film?’” And then I have a list of actors and I have them name three of the movies that they’ve been in. Everyone gets a number score on their test.

But I really don’t just go by that. I honestly go by feel, too. I have to know that they’re really into movies, and what I probably end up doing more than anything else is that … I hire my best customers, which kind of works against me because they get free movies after that point.

Miller: We asked folks on Facebook how often they rent videos now, as opposed to streaming.

Patricia Seemueller wrote, “I borrow DVDs from the library, or I buy them from Goodwill. There are a lot of advantages, and I don’t like to have the inevitable period of endless searching I always end up in when I’m choosing from a menu at other people’s houses.”

Sean Berry wrote, “I love Movie Madness. I go there about once a month or so. They are the best.”

And Kat Perry wrote on Facebook, “I live near a Great American Video in Milwaukee. I canceled my streaming services and rent movies now.”

Cummings: That’s great.

Miller: Neal, what do you hear from your customers about the experience of getting and holding in their hands some kind of VHS tape, DVD or Blu-ray, as opposed to the experience of streaming something?

Cummings: I hear that every day, from numerous people, and it’s increasing as time goes on. It’s just amazing how often I hear that from the customers that come into the store. So many people are tired of the streaming process, they’re tired of looking it up on the TV, and trying to come to some sort of agreement as to what to watch. And you can scan for hours, and nothing really hits you.

Yes, the idea of holding it in your hand is something that’s always appealed to me and many of my customers. And I think it’s starting to really take hold again with the younger generation. We were talking about my clientele lately.  I also am seeing a lot of young people who really are taking charge of their life and wanting physical media to be a part of it. There’s still people with collections, who collect films, and they’re loving my store. They come in and they see 60,000 movies to choose from. They’re just slack-jawed, really, for lack of a better term, when they come into the store.

Miller: I actually had to look this up, because I wasn’t sure how to put 60,000 in perspective. And the Hollywood Reporter reported in the third quarter of last year – that’s the most recent time I could get this data for – that Amazon Prime had about 11,000 titles streaming as part of that membership, and Netflix had 8,000. So those two combined – two of the biggest streaming services – add up to less than a third of the titles that you have on offer. And it makes me wonder, broadly, what you have that can be hard for people to get just with their remote control.

Cummings: Oh my, all kinds of movies. We have a pretty vast foreign movie section. We have an independent movie section. We have a lot of different sections –martial arts section, superhero section. We have a lot of different genres that lend themselves really well to sections in the store, and people can come in and rent a lot of different films that they can’t stream.

I think if you combine the top 10 streaming services, it still doesn’t come up to 60,000 movies. So it’s pretty amazing, really. And that’s what I didn’t want to give up when COVID hit five years ago. I saw the possibility with the acquisition of Rain City Video that I could have that. That was a time for video stores that they were just throwing all their movies away – basically selling them to China for six cents a piece. My goodness. I heard that’s what Movie Gallery and Hollywood did with a lot of their films. They just ended up selling them to China for nothing.

Miller: What did folks in China do with those DVDs?

Cummings: I suppose that they either recycled them in some way, or maybe they had someone who went through them to discern whether they were collectible, but I have a feeling they were just disintegrated.

Miller: Or somebody is selling a copy of “Kindergarten Cop,” from a trench coat right now in the streets of Beijing.

Cummings: Well, that’s not really a collectible title, but I get your meaning ...

Miller: Though, it was shot in Astoria, right?

Cummings: Yeah.

Miller: Do you have a soft spot in your heart for any obscure Astoria movies? We’ve probably talked enough about “Goonies” on this show over the years to last for the next couple of years. What else do people not pay enough attention to that was shot there?

Cummings: Well, “Free Willy” was shot here. That shot of the whales out in the coves, you know, some of that was shot here. “Short Circuit,” the house is still here, and it’s actually been turned into a bed and breakfast. It’s a neat place to stay in Astoria.

Miller: Do people have ways to repair VCRs or DVD players, people besides our engineer, Steven Kray – who does this stuff for fun?

Cummings: Yes, absolutely. In fact, VCRs are the hot topic right now. VHS tapes, for some reason, I suppose it’s nostalgia or retro, have gone through a revitalization …

Miller: Because people are now fetishizing or appreciating the kind of wonky tracking, the look of VHS?

Cummings: I think they just want to show off to their friends, “How cool is this? I have all these movies and I play it on this unit here, and we can watch anything you want. This is not available on DVD. This is a rarity.” There are some of those out there like that, and some collectible VHS that go for high money, especially the horror genre. It’s incredible how collectible it is.

Miller: So, as I noted, you’re almost ready to celebrate your 40th anniversary. That’ll be in December, and it sounds like you’re still having a great time running the store. But do you think about retiring?

Cummings: Yes, I do. I’m 69. I’m having some medical issues now, it certainly has crossed my mind. I unfortunately don’t have any children to hand it off to, but they probably wouldn’t be interested anyway. They’d be off doing their own thing. So yes, I’d love to hand it off to someone. I don’t want it to fold. I’d love to hand it off to someone. I wanna keep it going. That’s something that I’ve thought about a lot, of course.

Miller: Neal Cummings, thanks very much for your time. Best of luck to you.

Cummings: Thanks, Dave. Appreciate it.

Miller: Neal Cummings is the owner of Video Horizons in Astoria, which is about five months away from celebrating its 40th anniversary.

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