Mom N’ Pop documentary trailer looks back at the video store era

Many of you reading this probably remember the glory days of the video store era, when we had to go out to brick and mortar stores and pick up physical media copies of movies to get our cinematic entertainment and build our movie knowledge. That era is being celebrated director Bobby Canipe’s upcoming documentary Mom N’ Pop: The Indie Video Store Boom of the 80s/90s. A release date for the documentary hasn’t been announced yet, but a trailer is now online, and you can check that out in the embed above!

Mom N’ Pop: The Indie Video Store Boom of the 80s/90s is described as being

The TRUE Story of the Indie Stores, Gas Stations, & Tanning Salon Rental Shops! A true indie documentary exploring the history of video rental stores. Told by the people that experienced it. The owners, employees, filmmakers, distributors, and customers.

Back when Canipe was just getting the project off the ground, he posted the following statement on IndieGogo:

I’ve been visiting the video store since the late 80s, as early as I can remember. Back when going to the video store and grabbing a pizza was the most exciting thing I could think of. To this day, some odd 30 years later, its still an exciting concept that I absolutely love to reminisce on. I’ve seen documentaries about the larger video rental stores, and those were fun, but it didn’t really explain the nostalgia that myself and many others had. I frequented smaller, indie, “Mom & Pop” rental stores. Gas Stations that had a few rows of tapes. Tanning Salons that had tapes in the front and tanning beds in the back. I still remember smelling tanning lotion while looking at the horror selection.

Anyways, enough rambling. My goal with this project is to create a documentary that covers the little guys. Those aforementioned video locales that didn’t get the large spotlight, but shaped my childhood. The often times, weird experiences that we encountered. The times we were allowed to rent movies that we probably shouldn’t have. I will talk with others like myself that grew up during this time. I’ll speak with past employees and hear their stories. I’ll go visit the past locations and see if they’re still standing, or have been renovated into banks. I’m going to talk to the owners and hear those behind the scenes questions, including “Why did so many tanning salons also rent tapes?”. Not only that but ill then reach out to distributors that worked with these indie locations and find out the logistics from that point of view. Then, last but not least, ill talk with filmmakers that had their movies in the stores. Films like Video Violence and Killing Spree that you didn’t see much in the larger chains, and ask them how being in indie stores benefited their films.

It sounds like I had the same experience going to video stores as Canipe did, since the ones I frequented as a youth were local stores and gas stations. A large chain video store didn’t come to my town until years later – and even then, the closest Blockbuster was a good 30 minutes away. I have a lot of nostalgia for those days, so I’ll definitely be watching Mom N’ Pop: The Indie Video Store Boom of the 80s/90s when it’s released into the world.