My decision to join an online movie rental service was not based on any desire to improve my movie-watching habits, but was simply a by-product of my inability to be strong in the face of peer pressure. There are times, usually while trying to impress a girl, when I will present myself as thoughtful and fiercely individualistic. This is not an entirely accurate self-portrayal — while I have an inexplicable hatred of most authority figures, I invariably find myself goaded into some stupid undertaking when any one of my friends exerts the slightest amount of pressure on me.
In high school, I was always the person who you would call for a ride in the early morning hours on a Friday because a) They knew I couldn't say no to a ride request, even if the caller was slurring his words and was calling from some dive bar in Foggy Bottom nobody was sure even existed and b) I wasn't very cool in high school, so I'd invariably be stone sober.
My neighbor, Andy, was actually the one who came up with the idea. Somehow, in between not going to class and playing video games 12 hours a day, he had managed to stumble across a coupon for a free month of movie rentals from a prominent online movie rental company (I'm not going to tell you which one for fear that they'll dispatch somebody to my building to break my legs). This was back in January. Quickly, he hatched one of those lumbering, tenuously plotted schemes that only get thought up in coed dorms. Every month, another person would sign up for the free month of this service, and we would share the movies.
Most of our friends had reservations. At its best, the idea is stupid and ill conceived. At its worst, it is the kind of vague, not-quite-fraud that gets energy companies audited.
In the end, we were able to attract a few people — five in all — to join the plan. Not surprisingly, everyone involved in the scheme was male, took at least two courses from the "Easiest classes at UW" Facebook group and had a GPA 2.5 or less last semester. These are not the type of schemes that attract self-starters.
We used iTunes to decide the order of who would sign up for which month through a long process where each person is assigned one particular artist, and the first one whose singer comes up (It's how they picked the last pope) got to order movies first. I got March, the third month of the scheme.
Even though we were supposed to share the movies among ourselves, I eventually lost interest in the scheme around the time we tried to work our way through the entire "Highlander" series. I wasn't alone — while we were supposed to rent and watch the movies as a group, divergent tastes in cinema and unchecked selfishness had left our group in tatters.
When March came around, I was genuinely shocked to find out Andy was still holding me to our agreement. In truth, I just wasn't all that interested in being one of those people who joined online movie services. In my mind, I pictured the entire clientele of such services to be the kind of long-haired, passive-aggressive types that give film fanatics a bad name. I had never really focused on it before, but now that the opportunity was right in front of me, I found the whole concept of renting movies online to be vaguely disturbing.
It wasn't just my inner Harry Caul worrying about a multinational company having access to my viewing habits. Rather, my fear was that joining this service, even for a month, was an admission of defeat. I would basically be conceding to the world that I was too lazy to leave my building even to do something as simple as pick up a movie. This may indeed be true, but it was not a concession I was willing to make.
What eventually broke me down was the realization that I had not rented a movie in years. I carry a Blockbuster card in my wallet, but I haven't used it since 2002, when my dad lost the copy of "Alien" he had rented and, fearing an astronomic late fee, forbade anybody from my family from ever even entering a Blockbuster.
Earlier in the year, I was close to opening a membership at Four Star Video, but I ended up being intimidated when the grad-student clerk sneered at me when I asked him where "Elizabethtown" was. In retrospect, I probably shouldn't have allowed my confidence to be thrown by a grown man doing a job that can be filled by highly intelligent chimps.
I guess before I actually went online to look at my service's website, I had the image of a movie rental website as the kind of half-formed, badly run online empire that defined the late '90s. Not true, as it turns out. This particular company had a clean, clear design and was easy to use. This, of course, matters very little to people who are naturally adept when it comes to using computers, but for a person like me who is not only incompetent when it comes to technology, but also vaguely distrustful of anything involving new technology. I think this is a by-product of being a young child and having my dad feed a steady-diet of '70s era conspiracy-theory thrillers and sci/fi movies where inanimate objects somehow manage to wreak havoc on their flesh-and-blood masters. It is my secret fear that one day my computer, iPod and cell phone will either a.) kill me or b.) kill somebody else and frame me for the crime.
Once I got a hold of the site (something which took me about a half hour, which is quite embarrassing considering the only thing you need to do is type a movie name into the search engine), I started checking out the selection, which quickly escalated into a tense battle of wits between myself and an in-animate mainframe computer located somewhere in the hills outside Fresno.
The ads for this particular company boast that they have "practically" every DVD ever made, a claim I interpreted to mean that they had about 60 percent of all DVDs ever made. I was mistaken — when they say they have "practically" every DVD ever made, they are correct. They may be missing, like, 12 DVDs. I tried every obscure title I could think of, from "Avanti!" to "Zombi 2." They were all there.
Even when I thought I had them beat with something like "Abbott and Costello Meet Captain Kidd," I would later find out that this particular title was not available on DVD (which is a shame, since it deprives future generations of being able to experience Charles Laughton's subtle, nuanced performance as the titular captain). I couldn't beat this thing. As a naturally competitive person, I always find myself being drawn into these weird, ever-escalating battles of wits — only most of the time they involve human opponents, like basketball players at the SERF or the Madison police department. This was the first time I had ever squared off against a computer and, speaking frankly, I got my ass kicked.
I mentioned I am naturally competitive, which is true, but, unlike most competitive people, I am also a quitter. At the first sign of trouble, I bolt. Eventually, after a few days of being petulant over the fact that, yes, the supercomputer was smarter than me, I decided to give the technology another chance. Cautiously, I returned to my computer, and, after making sure this wasn't going to be the day it pulled a knife on me, I put in an order for "Ace in the Hole," "Black Christmas" and "The Omega Man," three titles which, I am sure, would have alluded me at any main-stream, bricks-and-mortar video store. They arrived about 30 hours later — I know because I skipped class to wait at my mailbox.
As I settled in with "The Omega Man," featuring a post-Moses, pre-NRA Charlton Heston, I realized that, whether I'd ever been conscious of it, I always used movies of this ilk as a blueprint for what my future years were going to look like. I always assumed that, one way or another, I would myself be in an armed struggle against an undead army. It just seemed sort of inevitable. Along with "Soylent Green," Heston managed to outline for an entire generation what the not-too-distant future will look like. It would invariably be dark, hot and full of shag rugs and other artifacts from the 1970s that I have to assume will come back into fashion around 2020. The villains were usually the undead or heartless multinational corporations.
If this pleasant experience dealing with this movie rental company has taught me anything (other than fraud pays) it has shown Chuck may not have been right about our future. While I still have reservations about the undead, I have to say, my opinion of the multinational corporations is changing. What if they are really on our side? What if, in the future, all of our corporations are like the one my friends and I have been defrauding for the entire semester. Maybe their only tangible product is going to be our happiness. Maybe, just maybe, they really do come in peace. Man, George Clooney is going to be pissed.
Ray Gustini is a freshman majoring in history and political science. Wanna talk film with him? Direct questions or comments to [email protected].
