It also meant that I would choose the world’s most obscure film that no one else wanted to watch.
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It meant Margit spending a full hour wandering the aisles, learning about new directors, cross-referencing actors. I’d come home for holidays and invariably suggest that instead of having family conversation, “Hey let’s rent a movie!” Everyone would groan. They even opened a TLA in my hometown neighborhood of Chestnut Hill. People couldn’t name a single John Sayles movie.”Ĭreskoff worked at the South Street branch and then at some of the other locations they opened across the city - and one in New York. But over the years it got harder and harder to give people the test, the younger generation just didn’t seem to know the directors as well. “They’d interview you and ask you to name at least three movies by specific directors. There was even a fabled test to win a coveted job. He thought that was funny.”Īs you’d imagine, the staff was informed to a fault - real-life Clerks. That’s when I met Russ Meyer, or when I got John Waters to sign an airplane sick bag I brought in.
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We’d bring in directors for special events. “It was a real cultural hub,” says former store manager Dan Creskoff, who worked for the TLA for 19 years, “We’d get everyone from the Mayor to the Breeders dropping by. Meyer was categorized in a section called “Midnight Movies” alongside Roger Corman and John Waters. There were directors that I’m certain I’d never have known about were it not for the TLA, like Eric Rohmer, Hal Hartley, Russ Meyer. A quirky Hal Hartley film? A sweeping drama like Atlantic City? A kooky Almodóvar pic? Do you plan to really watch the movie? No? May I suggest Ishtar? TLA was a film nerd’s salvation.Ī hot date might start at the TLA, where you’d spend an hour perusing your choices, talking to the staff, wondering what flick would suit the evening best.
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In Philly, we were one of the last cities to get basic cable so TV and videos were all we had. Shock on a weekend, or even vainly attempting to adjust the rabbit ears to try and get in Channel 57/ SelectTV and watch the dirty, dirty Swept Away. As a kid I adored movies - cheering to Shirley Temple’s escapades (may she rest in peace), thrilling to a creepy Creature Double Feature or Dr. There was their favorite director section and a wall of rotating TLA staff favorites - you always checked that section first.įor me, this was nirvana. TLA specialized in alternative or hard-to-find titles, cult classics and gay cinema. There were the basic genres, foreign films and then sub-sections by country of origin, directors and actors. Everything was categorized with notes, suggestions and labels as detailed as a fancy wine or cheese purveyor. Spending time at the TLA was like getting a doctorate in cinema. The video rental store was imbued with the same high-minded, eclectic sensibilities of its independent forbearers. Today, the building lives on as a concert venue, owned by concert behemoth Live Nation. There’s also a whole other piece to be penned on the Theater of the Living Arts origins as a theater group in the ’60s, which was founded by My Dinner With Andre’s Andre Gregory and included Danny DeVito and Judd Hirsch.
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, a film about a German teenager battling heroin.
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There’s a whole separate piece to be written about the movie theater alone - where, in high school, we screamed Rocky Horror lines, watched Repo Man, saw the seedy David Bowie-scored Christiane F. The shop opened in 1985 as a subsidiary to the Theater of the Living Arts, then one of the country’s leading repertory movie theaters. Just off South Street, the once punk haven (in the ’90s you’d still spot the occasional blue mohawk stroll by), the TLA was a cultural hub. Over the last few days, as we’ve watched Netflix get in bed with Philadelphia’s own Comcast for even faster, beat-that-buffer, on-demand streaming, we thought we’d “be kind and rewind” to a time when video store browsing was as good as the film itself. The year is maybe 1991 and I’m spending countless hours in a Philly video rental store called TLA Video. A whole world is opening up to me right here on 4th Street in Philadelphia. Swooning in front of an entire wall of French film VHS boxes, I ponder the names, the drama, the possibilities. Truffaut, Goddard, Malle stand before me, asking me to pick them up and maybe take them home.