Like all good things I discover in my life, I hesitated to walk into the cool-looking video rental shop on Mission Street in South Pasadena almost a decade ago. I imagined all the cinephiles inside ready to pounce on the casual movie-watcher with “terrible taste,” unable to defend the merits of Sam Raimi’s Army of Darkness against Bergman’s Persona.
Many specialty places like used bookshops, record stores, witchcraft supply, and video rental stores (and let’s face it libraries) all have the judgy please-don’t-ask-me-a-stupid-question guy (yes, usually male) behind the counter. You generally have to earn their respect with some sort of transgressive know-it-all comeback or “deep cut” before they let you in on the shop’s little secrets like an OOP DVD of Matthew Barney’s Cremaster Cycle they kept hidden under the counter. I convince myself that it is part of the charm, like the Soup Nazi in Seinfeld.
Michael Strassner as Mark in THIS TIME
When I finally mustered up the courage to enter, it was like walking into a holy space and in many ways has remained so for me to this day. It’s the sense of awe that a temple such as this could exist in the era of streaming, built with such great taste and love. To my surprise, there was no Soup Nazi waiting for me. That sealed the deal.
The experience of being transported to a different world inspired me so much that I re-created it in my feature film This Time and shot the scene on location. Filming inside Vidèothéque was a surreal experience but also the most memorable of the shoot.
Leilani Nicol as Leila in THIS TIME (2026)
Perhaps “temple” is too rigid of a word to describe what Vidéothèque means to me. Oasis? Escape? Maybe I like the word “Portal” better, a place that allows you to slip out of your current reality. It reminds me of how David Lynch famously practiced transcendental meditation daily to tap right into the unified field of consciousness. The ultimate source of ideas. This is what best describes the experience of browsing the racks at this store.
On the worst days filled with self-doubt, times of emotional and creative highs and lows, it’s in browsing the racks that my brain turns off. During sleepless nights of early parenthood, I would take a rare break and walk past the spines, the strobing effect soothing me into non-thinking. Straight down into the same field. The racks, forming leading lines, offer a new way of framing reality, a sense of non-focus and immersion into the cinema canon. I feel that if I can’t make films now, I may as well be surrounded by it.
In classic LA landlord-douchery, Vidéothèque had to find a new home a couple of years back. An astronomical rent hike pushed them to leave their Mission Street location in South Pasadena and into their new Highland Park storefront. A real loss for the residents of South Pass but a huge win for us Northeast LA-ers. I was worried they would lose that “special something” but I was wrong. They didn’t. The spirit stayed and kept the portal open which, as it turns out, isn’t tied to an address, it’s just what you find when you get inside.
Vidéothèque is located at 4102 N Figueroa St, Los Angeles, CA 90031