I Lost It at the Video Store [Expanded Edition]: A Filmmakers' Oral History of a Vanished Era by Tom Roston

I Lost It at the Video Store [Expanded Edition]: A Filmmakers' Oral History of a Vanished Era Reviews

• 
  Melissa

  4 stars for content: arranged in an interesting format so that different filmmakers’ quotes about different aspects of video store culture seemed to be in conversation with each other. I would have liked a few more perspectives from people other than directors/distributors like critics, actors, archivists, etc.
  2 stars for the physical book: not entirely the author’s fault bc the original publisher went belly-up before publication, but the ink quality and layout of my copy from Createspace was really shoddy
• 
  Joe Kucharski

  As a teen, the video store was Shangri-La as both heavenly delight and challenges awaited. (Whatda mean there are no copies of Top Gun?!) In college, and this would be during the late Nineties after Tarantino and Smith elevated the hierarchical status of that local store to religious proportions, actually working at a video store was simply the Best Job Ever. Not necessarily the Best Pay Ever - but one could easily rationalize (and brother, I did) that the money being saved on video rentals could go towards rent and groceries.
  
  Or comic books.
  But that's another story.
  
  Tom Roston's I Lost It at the Video Store perfectly, and succinctly, captures the magic, the charm, and oh yeah, the faults of the reign of the video store. From the wonder of wandering the isles to the curation and quips of an elitist staff, Roston's oral history combines nostalgia with a progressive look at streaming.
  
  Dialogue is bantered about by the aforementioned Quentin and Kevin, who are joined by John Sayles, David O. Russell, Darren Aronofsky, and others. All with thoughts, memories, and ideas. All backing Roston's love for a bygone era.
  
  The expanded edition contains transcripts of live events Roston either attended or hosted - and they read like transcripts. Yet the meat of book is a feast for Gen Xers and movie snobs alike.
  
  Life moves pretty fast, to quote a Gen X video store mainstay. Now with streaming, things seem to move even faster. But once upon a time, for a short time, life was an amble down tightly-packed isles. Thank you, Tom, for the memories.
• 
  I.D.

  Some interesting views here and it’s affirming to see how many others shared the same experiences I did in video stores, but there are quite a few formatting errors and there needed to be more space between the header and text body. On the left side you keep seeing the authors name and it makes it look like a new person talking. Mix up the font or something. Also the book’s format of taking separate conversations and turning them into one big mock panel discussion is a little disingenuous, but in some places it really clicks so it’s not insurmountable. Fun read though.
• 
  Stephanie

  While this wasn’t quite what I thought I was going to get with a title like that, this book is still a great ode to the video store. It is told entirely through interview quotes which can get a little choppy and mono-visioned at times. It does manage to capture some of the essence of place for those that were around to remember (for those that weren’t most of the nuance of this work will go over their head). It gets a little specific title heavy.
• 
  Michael

  Quick, easy read, kind of repetitive.
• 
  Joe

  Congratulations, creators, you've revived my wildly unrealistic dream of running a video store.