Salon article on Video Store Closings ...

THE CLERK RIP

The clerk has been killed by the economy, Netflix, iTunes and Amazon. Computers might want your creative job next.

He may not look much like Justin Timberlake, but Jeff Miller is something of a Hollywood player. Or, rather, he was — until he got a call on Labor Day from his employers, the owners of the best and most important movie rental store in the orbit of Hollywood. For a decade the bearded, teddy-bear-like Miller helped run Rocket Video, a place frequented by directors, actors and aspirants, and staffed by obsessive savants. But thanks to Netflix, streaming video and the damage done to the store’s rental revenue, it was all over for this onetime destination – in a hurry.

A few weeks later, the inevitable closing party arrived on its stretch of La Brea Boulevard. “There was shock,” recalls Miller, a native of steel-belt Pennsylvania originally drawn to movies by old horror films and Abbott & Costello. “There were women who came in crying. There were people who wanted to take photos of their family with me because they’d grown up with Rocket.”

Some of the store’s patrons were regular film-lovers in the neighborhood; others were better known. Miller recalls William H. Macy renting ’70s porn before his role in “Boogie Nights,” Courtney Love coming by until she got angry about the store stocking the unsympathetic documentary “Kurt and Courtney” and blew up at the staff, Frank Darabont renting zombie films while he was conceiving the TV series “The Walking Dead.”

The shop’s most loyal celebrity customer was Faye Dunaway, who regularly came in to ask him for advice about foreign directors. “She said, ‘I was gonna take a film course but I figured I could just come in here and talk to you guys.’ ” She paid back the debt by doing numerous events at the store.

Rocket’s story – a strong reputation and longstanding community love, followed by sudden collapse – is not unique: Thousands of bookstores, record stores and video shops have gone under in the last few years. And with them, people like Miller have lost their jobs during the worst job market since the Great Depression.

The complete story. http://www.salon.com/2011/12/18/the_clerk_rip/?source=newsletter