Movie Vault

“Hey, thanks for coming in,” a voice shouted amid loud shuffling from a storage room behind the checkout counter. “I’ll be with you in just a minute.”

Tulip looked around Movie Vault wondering what kind of person buys physical media, let alone comes into such a dusty, depressing cave to add to their collection. The floor seemed as if it had never been vacuumed and the entire space smelled like it had been damp once in the 1980’s and had never dried out since. A corner room past the counter had an ‘adults only’ handwritten sign taped above the door and a beaded curtain to conceal it from the non-existent children wandering the aisles.

“Sorry, just wrapping up this shipment,” the same voice said, becoming increasingly muffled with each word.

She saw a section with VHS tapes in their tattered cases, looking as if they had been shuffled from one garage sale to another, with each owner treasuring them only until they ran out of space on their shelves. The fluorescent lights flickered above.

“Sorry,” he said, again, but this time greeting her face to face at the counter. He sighed and asked, “How can I help you today?”

“I’m looking for a DVD for my boyfriend’s dad,” Tulip said. “I can’t find it online. It’s called The Scalphunters.”

The man lost focus and started digging in a deep, long drawer, flipping movie cases rapidly. Tulip took the opportunity to sneak a drag from her vape and blew it behind herself. She didn’t think that he would even care if he did notice, though.

“Excellent choice,” the man behind the counter said. He appeared to be at least forty, but was certainly not old enough to have grown up on old westerns the way her boyfriend’s dad did. “Burt Lancaster is great in it. Are you a Lancaster fan?”

She slid the vape into her jeans pocket and gave him a confused look. “Who?”

“Burt Lancaster,” he repeated.

“I don’t know who that is.”

He shook his head in disappointment.

Tulip felt like she needed to defend herself. “I was born in 2007. I don’t watch that shit.”

The man appeared offended, then gathered his words. “Burt Lancaster is an all-timer. Have you seen Field of Dreams?”

“I’ve never heard of it,” she said.

“I can believe you telling me that you haven’t seen it,” he replied. “But you have never even heard of Field of Dreams? The whole ‘If you build it, they will come’ thing?”

“Nope.”

“Atlantic City? Birdman of Alcatraz? Airport? For the love of God, tell me you’ve heard of Elmer Gantry. I named my dog Elmer Gantry after that damn movie.”

“Those sound old. I don’t like old movies,” Tulip said, wrinkling her face in disgust. “They are too long and too slow.”

“Too slow?” The man scoffed, then turned around to search for a movie on the wall behind him erratically. “Action movies were prime in the 70’s. Coffy, Enter the Dragon, Mad Max. Kung Fu movies blew up then, too. Master of the Flying Guillotine completely changed my childhood. Walking Tall. Please tell me you’ve seen Walking Tall. Joe Don Baker just kicking ass with a big stick. Not slow at all. Not even a little bit. We had a dog growing up named Joe Don because of that movie.”

She smiled politely and nodded, not knowing what to say.

He turned his back to her once again. “I’ll help you find The Scalphunters after I find what I need for this order. Just one more moment, sorry.”

Tulip snuck another drag from her vape and looked around once more, seeing the rows of movies, organized by genre, to include two full rows of foreign films, two for documentaries and one for special editions. Each row had a specialized endcap and she noticed one for whatever the Criterion Collection was.

“Found it,” he said. “These SteelBooks are getting so hard to find these days.”

“What’s a SteelBook?”

“Collector’s edition,” he said, holding up the Blu Ray. “They are great for the specialty artwork on the cases. People love to have them on display in their collections. Less and less people these days, though.”

Tulip had never seen anyone decorate their homes with movie cases. “I see.”

He walked all the way around the extensively long counter, past the area filled with posters advertising their converting home movies to DVD service. Stacks of obscure electronics sat on the counters. Tulip wondered if they actually worked.

“We do that, too,” he said, seemingly reading her mind. “Tell your friends with old camcorders.”

She didn’t know what a camcorder was and assuredly didn’t have any friends who had one sitting around.

They walked down one of the lengthy aisles and he began to thumb through the spine exposed rows of movies, as if he needed to see a cover to trigger the memorizing, rolodex part of his brain to find the exact obscure movie. The sound of the cases slapping against each other became rhythmic. Tulip could see he was in his happy place and then, he quickly pulled out one from the masses. “Here you go,” he said as he handed her the DVD.

“That’s impressive,” she said. “You just happen to know where that random ass movie is?”

“Well it’s by genre, and then alphabetical.”

“But still.”

“I suppose it is a skill. I’ve been here for twenty-two years. It was my first job.”

“Wow,” she said. “Until now, I didn’t realize that places like this even existed.”

“Sure do. But not so much anymore, though. People don’t buy movies like they used to.”

Tulip peeked around the corner at an end cap on the back side of the aisle and saw an extensive display of Christmas movies, including everything from old VHS tapes to the most modern version of The Grinch. A specific title caught her eye and she peeled it from between two other movies on the tightly packed shelf. The movie case had a slight stickiness to it and a distinct yet faint smell of plastic. “My grandma loved White Christmas. I haven’t seen it since I was little. She watched it every Christmas Eve after dinner.”

The man’s face lit up as she showed some interest. “Now you’re talking. That’s a true classic.”

She held it up, gestured to the man and smiled. “This is a nice surprise.”

“Happy to help,” he said. His face confirmed he truly was.