The true story of the world’s last Blockbuster

On Monday, Netflix began streaming a title it could only have dreamed of twenty years ago: “The Last Blockbuster.”

The documentary tells the unlikely story of a Blockbuster Video store in Bend, Oregon, that gradually became the last remaining outlet of what was once a global chain – and the movie has no bigger fans than at the store itself.

Dan Montgomery, 36, has been the Bend Blockbuster’s store manager for twelve years. He says that when the documentary came out last summer, Bend held drive-in screenings of the film, and the whole town came out to see it.

“It’s been a lot of fun,” Mr Montgomery toldThe Independent. “Obviously, doing the documentary and being able to film it during the process of us actually becoming the last Blockbuster worked out well.”

The Blockbuster in Bend was founded in 2000 by Ken and Debbie Tisher (now Debbie Black). It had originally been their own business, called Pacific Video, but after ten years of competing with Blockbuster, the Tishers decided to join the franchise. At the time, the chain was huge – with over 9,000 locations around the world at its peak, Blockbuster dominated the video rental business.

And then it didn’t. In 2010, Blockbuster LLC declared bankruptcy. In 2011, it sold its company-owned stores to Dish Network, a satellite TV company, which then closed them all down just three years later. All that remained were a few franchise locations, running under the “Blockbuster” banner but operating on their own. By 2019, Bend had the only Blockbuster left in the world.

So how has the last remaining Blockbuster survived without Blockbuster?

“Very well, thank you,” Mr Tisher, who still owns the store, toldThe Independent.

He says a big part of the problem with Blockbuster Inc was its CEOs, who in his opinion didn’t understand the rental business.

“They ran it into the ground,” he said.

Today, however, the Bend Blockbuster is doing a brisk business, thanks to a combination of publicity, old-fashioned customer service, and tourism fueled by 90s nostalgia.

“The store’s been doing fantastic, even before we had the documentary,” Mr Montgomery said. “The documentary just added to it. We have a lot of locals that really love coming to our store, and having to come in and pick out movies.”

What impact Netflix’s release of “The Last Blockbuster” will have on the business remains to be seen, but Mr Montgomery and Mr Tisher are optimistic. The film’s star is the outlet’s effusive general manager, Sandi Harding, whose staff call her the “Blockbuster Mom.” Ms Harding started working at Blockbuster in 2004, married a fellow Blockbuster employee, had children who eventually worked at Blockbuster, and even adopted her cat from a Humane Society event in a Blockbuster parking lot.

With all these connections to the chain, no one would be surprised that she’s the star of “The Last Blockbuster” – except for her.

“I had no idea they were going to put me in quite as much as they did,” Ms Harding toldThe Independent. “It’s very sweet to get to be the face of our store, but I don’t want people to think I’m a one-woman show, because I have an amazing team behind me.”

Perhaps the most ironic aspect of the film’s release is that it’s on Netflix, which was once one of Blockbuster’s meekest competitors. Back in 2000, the company was doing so badly with its mail-order DVD business that it offered to sell itself to Blockbuster for $50 million and rename itself Blockbuster.com. Blockbuster turned them down.

Twenty-one years later, Blockbuster no longer exists outside of Bend, Oregon, and Netflix dominates the streaming industry all over the world.

So what is this store’s secret? How did it manage to survive when literally every other store of its kind did not? The people who run it point to a number of reasons.

For one thing, not everyone likes to watch movies online. Mr Montgomery says many older customers prefer to rent a video in person rather than deal with what they call “complicated streaming apps.”

Mr Tisher concurred, saying there’s a certain “tangible” quality to the Blockbuster experience.

“It’s nice to actually go in and interact with people who, when you tell them what type of movie you’re looking for, rather than getting an algorithm, you get somebody who has some ideas and you can ask a couple of questions,” he said.

Added to that, the outlet’s status as the world’s only remaining Blockbuster has actually helped business.

“When we became the last one, there flocked in all these tourists,” Mr Montgomery said.

Mr Tisher says he can’t even count the number of out-of-state license plates he sees in the store’s parking lot, and wishes he could charge people for all the selfies visitors take in front of the sign.

“We’ve gotten literally millions of dollars worth of free publicity in that one year when everybody and their brother were doing promotions on us,” he said of 2019, the year it became the last Blockbuster.

The store has become such a tourist attraction that it’s even started selling its own merchandise. On the Bend Blockbuster website, customers can now purchase Blockbuster t-shirts, hoodies, key chains, beanies, magnets, and numerous other items – all of which help keep the business afloat.

And then there’s the nostalgia factor. Some parents take their children to the store to show them how Mom and Dad used to rent movies, almost as if visiting a museum.

“People can come in and really get a taste for what it was like to walk around in a Blockbuster,” Mr Montgomery said. “A lot of people bring their kids in and they don’t know what this is.”

But how does a business that depends so heavily on in-person traffic survive during a pandemic? Surprisingly, that hasn’t slowed the store down either.

“The store did exceptionally well in 2020,” Mr Montgomery said. As people found themselves stuck at home and other entertainment venues shut down, renting a DVD to watch at home became an ever-more popular option. And aside from requiring masks and limiting the number of customers indoors, the Bend Blockbuster hasn’t missed a beat.

“If anything, it has only helped our business, because the locals have been coming in and renting more,” the store manager said.

Finally, there’s the simple factor of luck. A video rental business that started in the VCR’s heyday, then joined a corporate giant at its zenith, then outlived that giant, then survived just long enough to become the much-publicized last of its kind – just at the moment when Americans were becoming nostalgic for the 1990s – has had its fair share of good fortune, and Mr Tisher knows it.

“You work your ass off in a business, but if you don’t have an element of luck, you probably aren’t gonna make it,” he said. “We just hit it at the right time and we’ve had a good ride. No complaints.”

“The Last Blockbuster” is now streaming on Netflix. It’s also available on DVD and Blu-Ray at the Blockbuster in Bend, Oregon.