{"id":387857,"date":"2021-12-30T18:54:38","date_gmt":"2021-12-30T15:54:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/how-one-newfoundlander-revived-blockbuster-in-his-basement\/"},"modified":"2021-12-30T18:54:38","modified_gmt":"2021-12-30T15:54:38","slug":"how-one-newfoundlander-revived-blockbuster-in-his-basement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/how-one-newfoundlander-revived-blockbuster-in-his-basement\/","title":{"rendered":"#How one Newfoundlander revived Blockbuster in his basement"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#How one Newfoundlander revived Blockbuster in his basement<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

\n There\u2019s a house in St. John’s where the video era lives on in all its grainy glory\n <\/div>\n
\n Corey Lynch has built a blue-and-yellow time machine in his St. John\u2019s basement. It\u2019s a portal to his own past, and maybe yours, too.<\/p>\n

Welcome to Megahit Video\u2014the alternative universe where it\u2019s Friday night, Netflix doesn\u2019t exist and you need to pick snacks and negotiate with your family or your friends about what video to watch, then hope all the copies aren\u2019t already rented out. In a literal sense, what Lynch has built is a deeply loving homage to the all but defunct Blockbuster Video chain. But in a truer sense, he has created pure, life-sized nostalgic joy. \u201cI am a lover of things<\/i>,\u201d he laughs, mentioning his extensive VHS and toy collections as evidence.\u201cI\u2019m general<\/a>ly all-in on the things I love. Now, of course I realize this is the extreme. I won\u2019t also build a toy museum next door.\u201d<\/p>\n

It all started with a pandemic renovation project and Lynch\u2019s search for a theme<\/a> for a new basement wet bar. He\u2019s a lifelong movie buff, so the idea seemed obvious, and his wife was game<\/a>. \u201cIt was craving that sense of nostalgia and making sure I had a place to go where I felt comfortable and warm,\u201d he says. \u201cThat was the experience of going to the video store when I was young\u2014it was so exciting.\u201d<\/p>\n

READ:\u00a0Wrestling\u2019s new golden era, packed into a Toronto church basement<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Lynch doesn\u2019t consider himself a nostalgic person, simply because he never left behind the things he loves. Megahit is stocked with his own collection of 1,000 VHS tapes, with about 350 on display at any one time, along with dummy movie boxes he crafted in Photoshop. This isn\u2019t a store where you can actually rent movies<\/a>; it\u2019s a monument to that extinct creature, like a museum exhibit. The attention to detail is what makes it all sing: a big promotional cardboard cutout of Uma Thurman in Kill Bill<\/i>, a \u201cBig Release\u201d wall with 30 (fake) copies of Independence Day<\/i>, a giant red M&M\u2019s figure holding up a tray of candy, the cobalt blue walls, every item you can see branded within an inch of its life.<\/p>\n

Lynch\u2019s favourite detail is the storefront. A contractor friend managed to procure and install a steel and glass commercial door alongside two steel-framed windows, so that when you step outside of Megahit and look back at it from the other side of his basement\u2014Lynch and his family live in his former childhood home\u2014there is the storefront, suspended in time. The windows look out into his daughters\u2019 playroom, but when Lynch films Facebook<\/a> videos of movie reviews or goofy comedy sketches inside the store, he erases that domestic glimpse with a greenscreen view of colourful St. John\u2019s houses.<\/p>\n

READ:\u00a0Eight blockbuster movie sequels coming out in 2022<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

And for actually watching movies, it\u2019s all about VHS for Megahit\u2019s proprietor\u2014a little grainy, maybe, with wonky tracking or sound, exactly the way movies feel in his memory. \u201cWe are an analogue video store for the digital age,\u201d he likes to say. It\u2019s easy enough to find VCRs these days, but what\u2019s tricky is finding TVs that connect to them, so Lynch has a dongle that connects the VCR to his MacBook so he can stream to his TV inside his Blockbuster \u201cstore.\u201d He has four VCRs at the moment, because they are not repairable. \u201cWhen they go, they go,\u201d he says. \u201cWe give them a Viking funeral.\u201d He watches movies, he says, \u201clike I\u2019m 14.\u201d Among his favourites are Big Trouble in Little China<\/i>, Halloween<\/i>, Jurassic Park<\/i> and Raiders of the Lost Ark<\/i>, which he considers a \u201cperfect movie\u201d that cannot be improved upon.<\/p>\n

Lynch sees Megahit as an immersive experience to be shared with everyone who holds warm memories of those Friday night outings (\u201cmembers\u201d are welcome to join the fun on its Facebook page). The name obviously invokes Blockbuster, but he deliberately gave it a generic tweak so that it would conjure up everyone\u2019s long-ago local video store.<\/p>\n

As a teenager, Lynch picked his way through the construction zone of a new Blockbuster about to open in St. John\u2019s, where he found a manager who hired him on the spot. That high school job felt like he\u2019d landed in Hollywood, with the crowd and energy every Friday night feeling like a nightclub. The video store was the place to be, until one day it wasn\u2019t. Blockbuster had 9,000 stores worldwide at its peak, but by 2018 just one remained, in Bend, Ore. Everyone retreated to their couches and their streaming services where they never had to worry about all the copies being rented. Good thing Corey Lynch, like the hero of many a good caper movie, built us all a time machine.<\/p>\n\n

This article appears in print in the February 2022 issue of<\/em> Maclean\u2019s magazine with the headline, \u201cRewinding with gusto.\u201d Subscribe to the monthly print magazine here<\/a>.<\/em>
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