Following a long wait and troubles with supply chains, permits and zoning administrators, Vidiots finally opened June 1 on Eagle Rock Boulevard to fill the once-empty Eagle Theatre.
Executive director Maggie Mackay told The Occidental in February that the famed video store and movie theater originally opened in 1985 in Santa Monica but constantly faced financial uncertainty during its 32 years of service.
While Mackay said business has thrived for the movie theatre at Vidiots, with waves of people coming in to see cult classics like “Blade Runner” and “Jumanji,” the reopening also came with an unexpected highlight.
“We have been very delighted that people are not only coming to the movie theatre in really high numbers but that the video store is as active as it’s ever been since 1985,” Mackay said. “We’re renting about 1,300 movies a week. We really did not expect that and it’s been incredible to see families and teenagers and multigenerational households coming in to pick movies together.”
When Vidiots in Santa Monica closed, there was a decline in movie renters, Mackay said. But when they reopened the store in Eagle Rock, customers were reviving the practice.
Robbie McCluskey, director of Vidiots’ video store and volunteering, said he worked briefly at Vidiots’ Santa Monica location before it closed. After working at both Vidiots locations, McCluskey said he has noticed that the clientele in Eagle Rock is a lot younger than the crowd that he saw in Santa Monica.
“I would say the average renter was probably in their 50s back eight years ago, and now the average person is probably late 20s or late 30s if you were to average them all up together,” McCluskey said.
This new wave of movie renters and film enthusiasts at Vidiots has attracted diverse crowds to enjoy the selection in both the screening rooms and the rental store, McCluskey said.
“Most weekends and nights we have sold-out screenings so you can come in to see a movie with a packed house of people that, for the most part, love the movie or are watching it for the first time or are showing it to a friend that has never seen it,” McCluskey said. “Just walking around the video store, even if you don’t rent anything, is a great resource to have to just look at all the movies that you could eventually watch or you could just talk about movies to just hang out.”
Liv Greene (senior) said she spent a lot of time at Vidiots over the summer, loving the community and the interesting activities they had to offer.
“Vidiots is the perfect place to learn about some really cool and obscure movies,” Greene said. “The library of films in the video store is huge and so exciting to me, and the selection of films they play in the theater is always so unique.”
Vidiots offers interactive screenings, such as a feature known as “Smell-o-rama” where every person scratches a different smelly sticker during certain points of the movie, Greene said.
“I thought it was a really fun gimmick and it was so cool to have everyone around me interacting with the film we were watching,” Greene said. “I went to the screening alone, but I felt very connected to everyone there.”
Despite current anxieties surrounding the future of the film business, Mackay said Vidiots will always be a community for movie lovers based on a shared love for all things cinema.
“In a time when everyone is talking about the end of times for the movies, we are seeing the exact opposite at Vidiots,” MacKay said.
