Back in March, in a fit of exasperation following whatever the latest media acquisition was, I wrote ANTIGRAVITY’s April issue Letter From an Editor as an ode to physical media, and its practical importance in a world of increasing precarity. Following publication, I received the most feedback from strangers that I’d ever received—people reaching out through email and social media to commiserate together and share an appreciation for physical media. One of those outreaches was from Future Shock Video, a new video rental store in New Orleans: a light in the dark. Founded by Eden Chubb and her husband Aaron Miller, Future Shock is an outgrowth of Chubb’s own exasperation at the precarious and lifeless nature of watching old movies in the age of streaming. The endeavor began as a pop-up in addition to screenings around town, starting with A Goofy Movie for Father’s Day in 2023, and continued with regular screenings at Sea Cave. At one of these screenings, a generous film enthusiast offered his basement in Mid-City, which became Future Shock’s inaugural location. After that building was sold, they found a new home at Slow Down, a clothing store on Magazine Street, where Chubb spends her weekends working the store. I met Chubb and Miller a few months back in their former location to discuss the joy of physical media in physical spaces and ownership of art, and to talk shit about streaming services.
How did the idea for starting a new video rental store come about?
Eden Chubb: I think when I found out that there were other video stores that still existed that I couldn’t go to, I was like, I just really want to go to video stores, so that was the only way I could go to a video store.
What other ones did you know of?
EC: I somehow thought they just didn’t exist at all, but then I found out about Videodrome in Atlanta, and I was like, oh, it’s actually doing really well, it’s huge. And then I started finding more and more, and there [were] two that opened up recently in L.A.—and I [thought] this might not be totally insane.
How long ago did you start thinking maybe this isn’t insane?
Aaron Miller: Maybe a year and a half, two years ago?
EC: Really trying to actually do it about a year ago.
AM: Yeah, it was about a year ago because last summer when we went to Wisconsin we were actively acquiring tapes and movies and VCRs—
EC: And visited a video store that’s in Madison [Four Star Video Rental].
Did you start with a really big collection already?
EC: I started collecting after I wanted to open up a video store.
Obviously video rental stores were a very normal business model for a long time, so I’m wondering what kind of research you did on the financial side to figure out, “Is this still a thing that can happen?”
EC: Uh, none. [laughs]
AM: Part of it felt like filling a need. Eden was like: Hey, this is a thing that I need to do, I can’t be the only one.
EC: That, and I needed it in order to be able to live in this world.
I’ve been in here before, and I see a lot of VHS specifically. But I know a ton of people don’t have VHS players anymore. I’ve seen y’all post about renting VHS players, and maybe repairing VHS players. Do you sell them? Are you looking to sell them?
EC: We’re looking to get enough that we can sell. Originally I was trying not to focus on VHS and was mostly gonna do DVD and Blu-ray on the [outer] shelves, and then have a shelf for VHS in the middle, but then people just kept renting the VHS tapes. More people have VHS than I originally thought. It’s honestly almost 50/50 in terms of what gets rented.
That’s surprising to me.
EC: Yeah, it was surprising to us, too. And then we were like, “OK, I guess we’ll just not worry about it then.”
So y’all repair VCRs here?
AM: Yeah, at our house right now. The three on top [of the shelf] are ones we either found at thrift stores or maybe someone gave them to us.
EC: Those are all tested and cleaned up and those are for rent.
Do you have a background in repairing?
AM: Just a tinkerer. Luckily, there’s so many of them out there and there’s a pretty large knowledge base. You just start Googling around if you have a specific problem. There were also a lot of books written back in the day when people would actually choose between repairing their own thing or bringing it to a repair person—obviously that still existed in the ‘80s and ‘90s. It’s a lot of learning, it’s just tinkering, and like: OK I have this one and it’s doing this one problem. Now that I’ve figured out that problem—obviously there’s lots of different manufacturers that make them, but because all the tapes are the same, there’s a rough standardization of everything, they all have the same components, and they all function in the same way. So if you can fix a problem in one, you can usually fix that problem in other versions of VCRs even though they are technically all different.
EC: And there are a lot of Facebook groups and forums of people who know this stuff and you can usually just ask a question and five guys will be like, “Try this.”
This is helpful to hear because I have recently gotten into film photography and I was given a film camera that doesn’t work and I’m trying to figure out how to make it work. But I don’t even know where you send that kind of thing.
AM: I feel like a lot of times, you’ll go on forums and there’s like two people in the country—
EC: Well, two professionals.
AM: Yeah, there’s like a shop in Seattle that still services it or whatever.
EC: When we installed a landline phone in our house there was this guy that I emailed… and he just told me how to fix it for free. And I fixed it!
You messaged me saying, “Physical media! Yes!” I’d love to hear you talk about the importance of physical media.
EC: To me it’s the only way to really have ownership over the stuff we consume. I feel like the gleam of streaming kind of wore off and instead of it feeling like you suddenly had access to all the stuff you had before, it just felt like the exact opposite. You’re getting all of these proprietary streaming services who can control what you watch, and what version of what you watch—you don’t actually own something if it’s in the cloud. They can just delete it or change it at whim. I’m not into that. I’m not into letting giant corporations own all my shit.
Was there a time when you thought, “This seems cool,” or were you always like, “I’m gonna stick to physical media”?
EC: No, like you said in your article, I didn’t really question it at first.
AM: Just like, oh cool, Netflix!
EC: It was cool at the time. I was in college so I wasn’t thinking about what we were losing—
AM: And didn’t really have the ability to amass a collection.
EC: And it happened really slowly. It wasn’t until they started having instant-access streaming that it really became a threat to video stores. And made it so that we all stay in our little houses and don’t go to public spaces. I think streaming did change and it started to become this competitive business.
AM: When Netflix first started doing streaming, everyone was like, “They’re doing cool, risky stuff!” They did the fourth season of Arrested Development.
EC: Yeah, it would be stuff that TV had rejected! …Or you would get stuff from other countries. It was cool. But once they became the only game in town they stopped trying to impress you.
AM: And the market kind of got flooded. I remember last year when the actor and writer strikes were going on, I heard some factoid on an NPR thing that [said] in 2009 or 2010 there were like 200 TV shows produced—between all the networks and everything they made 200 shows. And that number [in 2022] was like 600. There’s all these different streaming services and they’re flooding the market. There are literally only so many hours in the day, so even if we’re all just watching streaming every single night, not everyone can still win, so it’s this race to the bottom.
That was another part of it. A lot of the streaming services, at the start, the idea was, “You can watch any movie! We have all these movies that you know and you like.” But as they started making more and more stuff, the focus became: We’re producing stuff.
EC: Once they replaced television, they didn’t really give a shit about old movies anymore. The breaking point for me was, we had all these streaming services, and we would want to watch an old movie, and the only way we could see it most of the time was to rent it on Amazon.
AM: We’ve come full circle.
EC: What a sad imitation of a video store! If I’m gonna rent it anyway, I wanna do it at a video store, not fucking Amazon.
One thing I like about the physical store is that there is a limited selection. This is what I have to choose from. There aren’t infinite possibilities where I get overwhelmed and spend an hour trying to choose.
EC: It’s not fun! There’s something about having to scroll through it individually, it hurts. It feels not pleasant.
Doing it with friends, everyone gets stressed out.
EC: It becomes really stressful. You can’t replace just being able to see something with your eyes in a physical space.
And being able to look at the cover art.
EC: And something catching your eye that you wouldn’t have noticed otherwise. That would just be buried on streaming, you’d never see it because it’s not in your algorithm recommendation.
The first time I came in, there was a Jackie Chan movie, Drunken Master II, on and it was really cool because everyone in the store just slowly gravitated towards the TV, enraptured by this fight scene. I would never know to pick this movie, but everyone was watching it and reacting to it together. It was a really cool moment. How often do you see that kind of thing in here?
EC: I think that one was particularly high in terms of that. But there will definitely be people who stop and watch and are like, “Oh yeah, I love this movie.” I think even more often you get that fun movie store playful debate about a movie, or rants, or fun discourse about movies that don’t even matter. I personally engage with that all the time with customers, it’s so much fun.
What is your hope for how this expands?
EC: I would love to go legit and have an actual space… I’ve had people ask if I’m hiring and I’m like, “I wish!” And then I’ve had other people who are just offering to volunteer because they really want to support it. I don’t know, people want it to exist.
For more info, including details on pop-ups, screenings, and rental return drop box locations around the city, check out futureshockvideo.biz and @futureshockvideo.
Top photo courtesy Eden Chubb
All other photos by Marisa Clogher
