Video Archives

Video Archives was a video rental store located in Manhattan Beach, California, and later moved to Hermosa Beach, California, owned and managed by Lance Lawson and Rick Humbert.^[1]

Video Archives

Industry	Video rentals, retail
Founder	Lance Lawson Richard Humbert
Fate	Closed
Headquarters	Manhattan Beach, California , United States
Products	VHS tape rental, Beta rental

History

Filmmakers Quentin Tarantino,^[2][3] Roger Avary^[4] and Daniel Snyder^[5] worked at Video Archives before becoming successful in the film industry. The store was also frequented by screenwriters Josh Olson, Jeff Maguire, John Langley, and Danny Strong.

Video Archives closed in 1995, and Tarantino purchased its video inventory and rebuilt the store in his home.^[6]

In a 1994 interview with Rolling Stone, Tarantino called it "the best video store in the Los Angeles area", saying "Video Archives is like LA.’s answer to the Cahiers du Cinéma".^[7] In 1992, Roger Avary described it as "less a video store than a film school [...] we'd have these intense, eight-hour-long arguments about cinema. Customers would walk in and they'd get into it. It became this big clubhouse of film making—and probably the best film-making experience anyone could ever get."^[8]

Video Archives is also the namesake of the Video Archives Cinema Club, the 20-seat micro-cinema at the Tarantino-owned Vista Theatre.

Podcast

On July 19, 2022, Tarantino and Avary launched a podcast named after Video Archives called The Video Archives Podcast with Quentin Tarantino & Roger Avary, in which they revisit movies from the store and discuss the films.^[9][10][11] They also discuss the films with producer Gala Avary and guests such as Eli Roth and former employees of Video Archives.^[12][13][14]