Much More Than the Second Time Around

When I first took the job at the video store, I did so largely because I thought it would be a way to hang out and watch movies all day. This is, in fact, the standard activity you think of when you think of video store clerks - scruffy guys who know a lot about film, watching movies and hanging out all day, occasionally getting up to fetch someone a copy of Hot Shots Part Deux.

Unfortunately for me and my juvenile employment fantasies, we don't technically get to watch movies all day at the video store. Oh, sure, we have TV's in the back where we play whatever new releases are out that week. But on the big TV monitors all around the store, we play these old VHS tapes some guy from Tennessee made from laserdiscs for the store some time in the late 90's.

The tapes are composed of trailers, special features from movies like The Godfather and Notting Hill, big numbers from famous musicals, clips from old TV shows, music videos and concert footage. Here are some of my favorite bits from the tapes:

(1) The trailer for Copland

This isn't a great movie, but it has a clip from this one scene where De Niro is berating Sylvester Stallone. He says this one line of dialogue that has become my single favorite moment from any tape:

"I gave you a chance to be a cop, and you blew it!!!!!"

I think they use the "you blew it" part on Howard Stern as a sound effect. It's an awesome little moment from a forgettable film.

(2) Roxy Music playing a cover of John Lennon's "Jealous Guy"

This bit pretty much rules. It's from some old Roxy Music concert available on Laserdisc. The song just sounds terrific, Brian Ferry's kind of in the zone...It's a great rendition of one of my favorite Lennon solo songs.

(3) Louis Armstrong playing "I Cover the Waterfront"

This is an old scratchy black-and-white clip of Louis Armstrong and his band playing this standard. He even does this funny little introduction that goes like this...

"How y'all doing this evening...We're gonna play one of the good old good ones for you. I COVER THE WATERFRONT! 'I Cover the Waterfront.' It sounds like this."

Really terrific song.

(4) HBO First Look: Meet Joe Black

Man, Meet Joe Black sucked. I only like this feature, on the Meet Joe Black DVD, because both Claire Forlani and Anthony Hopkins come off like completely pompous, ridiculous egomaniacal asswipes.

Have I ever told you guys the Anthony Hopkins story, wherein Mr. Hopkins verbally abuses me? I was at the press junket for Mask of Zorro, covering it for the Daily Bruin, and I began a question with "Mr. Hopkins..." So Tony interrupts me, remember I'm a 19 year old kid, and instructs me to refer to him as "Sir Anthony."

Then, later, he told me he wanted to eat my liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti.

So, yeah, the guy's a real piece of work...In this featurette, he's really on a roll. "I love to make jokes on the set. Love jokes. I have a wonderful sense of humor," he says at one point.

If you unironically stay stuff like "I have a wonderful sense of humor," doesn't it kind of prove that you don't have a wonderful sense of humor? I'm just checking.

Claire Forlani, if you can believe it, is even worse. She talks about the script for Meet Joe Black, first of all, like it's goddamn "Notes from the Underground" and "Ulysses" combined.

"It was just this magnificent work of art. The first time I read it, every time I read it, I discovered something brilliant, something new."

Have you seen Meet Joe Black?

(5) The trailer for The Conversation

Great movie, great trailer. I like all the bits with Hackman yelling, but particularly right at the end, when he yells: "This is Harry Caul! Can someone hear me!"

(6) The trailer for Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid

This Sam Peckinpah movie featured a soundtrack by Bob Dylan, and Bob's first-ever fictional film performance (in a career that would include such non-classics as Hearts Afire and Masked and Anonymous). So the trailer has a cool Bob Dylan song in the background, and at one point the narrator goes, "And in his first film performance, recording star Bob Dylan," and then Dylan spins around on a barstool and almsot looks in the camera.

It's just more enigmatic pseudo-ironic inscrutable Bob Dylan shit, and I'm a sucker for that stuff.

The only problem is, there's maybe a grand total of 8 working tapes in the store, each of which is only about 3 hours long.

So in any given shift, you see a tape repeat at least two full times, sometimes three. And in every two week period, you see each tape at least once. So I'm at the point now where I'm not only tired of all the clips on all the tapes, but I've actually memorized their sequence.

For example, I'll hear the trailer for Shaft and know...KNOW...that next will be James Brown and his band performing a song called "Too Funky." (The Shaft trailer and the James Brown song, by the way, pretty much totally rule...At the end of the trailer, the narrator goes..."Shaft is rated R. If you want to see Shaft, ask your mama." Sweet.)

It's getting pretty bad, though, my annoyance at these tapes. Apparently, my co-workers are able to successfully "block out" the tapes, and not pay attention to them, but it's pretty loud, and often it's the only real significant sound in the store, so it's hard not to hear what's going on...

Here are my least favorite bits on the tapes, in no particular order:

(1) A very long trailer for Fiddler on the Roof.

Man, I hate the songs from Fiddler on the Roof. Plus, there's nothing worse than working a job you don't feel like doing while Tevye is singing to you about pogrom life. It's so ironic, sometimes it causes me to feel physically ill.

A few months ago, that Gwen Stefani "Rich Girl" song, a take-off of the Fiddler tune "If I Were a Rich Man," was on the radio constantly. So I'd hear that goddamn obnoxious Topol version 3 times, and then on the rdie home, I'd be treated to Gwen Stefani and Eve's delightful, not-very-different rendition. Awesome!

(2) An Olivia Newton-John music video from the Two of a Kind soundtrack.

You may not remember Two of a Kind. It was the much-anticipated 80's re-teaming of John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John, who had charmed every fucking woman in America, apparently, with their surprise 70's smash Grease. Thank god there are no Grease songs on the tapes, or I'd have probably enlisted in the Marines at this point. ANYTHING to avoid having to hear "Beauty School Drop Out" even one more time.

The song, "Second Time Around" (get it?) is fairly standard 80's synth pop stuff, but the video is so cheesy and obnoxious, mixing footage of Newton-John dancing around like a spaz with footage from the "movie." Trust me, after 3 times a day...you get sick of it...

(3) Tom Thumb excerpt

A long (LONG!) clip from Tom Thumb, with a young Russ Tamblyn loudly singing the stupidest, lamest song ever written. Here are some sample lyrics:

This is my song
My very own song
I can sing it short
Or I can sing it long

Dee dee dee dee dee
DEE dee dee dee
Dee dee dee dee dee dee
DEE dee dee dee
Dee dee dee dee dee dee
Dee dee dee dee dee
Dee dee dee dee
Dum Dum Dum

This is my song
My very own song
I can sing it loud
And I can sing it strong

Doo Dee Doo Dee Doo
Dee Doo Doo Doo
Dee Doo Dee Doo Dee Doo
Dee Doo Doo Doo
Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo
Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo
Doo Doo Doo Dee
Dum Dum Dum

And that's when I reach for my revolver.

(4) The Music Man featurette

I don't have a problem with the actual film The Music Man. Some of the songs are kind of annoying, but I know objectively that it's actually pretty good, and Robert Preston is a lot of fun in that part.

But MAN, this segment with Shriley Jones introducing a montage of songs from the film is SOOOOOO HORRIBLY ANNOYING. At first, it always reminds me of the Simpsons' Monorail episode, one of my favorites, and that's not so bad, but once it starts flitting between segments of "Shipoopee" and all those nonsense songs from the play's second half...it really starts to get to me.

Plus that "Trouble" song! Argh!

(5) This PIXAR short called Knick Knack

I know, I know...It gives me no pleasure to pick on PIXAR. I love PIXAR. Toy Story 2 and The Incredibles are fabulous, tremendous entertainments, among the best animated films in recent memory.

But this old cartoon of John Lasseter's has this Bobby McFerrin song on the soundtrack and all these goofy sound effects...It's hideous. Having to hear it 3 times a day is torture. Actual torture. What on EARTH was this guy thinking when he put that on a tape to be playing on rotation in a store inhabited by human beings?

(6) Shania Twain performing "I Feel Like a Woman"

Again....WHY? WHAT IS THIS VIDEO DOING ON A COOL VIDEO STORE'S TV SCREEN?

Shania's a nice looking piece of wool, no doubt about it. But this song is truly atrocious. Not to mention, it's all nerdy dudes working at this store. This type of song has no place there. The entire soundtrack should be, like, indie rock and fusion jazz. And not just any indie rock, either, but low-fi 90's indie rock and Ween.

Seriously. I get embarrassed when this video comes on. I figure the customers are probably smart enough to know that I, personally, do not program the tapes or select their content. But still, I'm a grown man, and I'm standing around in the middle of the day behind a counter listening to Shania Twain. Employment at the store is no excuse.