Mr. Video was located in the City of North York, which would, some 11 years later, be swallowed up with 5 other municipalities to form the City of Toronto. You may heard Drake refer to the “6six” – this is what he’s talking about.
I lived just a meatball’s throw away from Mr. Video and The Bayview Mall, in a roomy red brick bungalow at 25 Risebrough Avenue. My parents, Valentino and Marianna, were hard working Italian immigrants who arrived in Canada in the mid to late 1950s. They had 3 children – my two older sisters, Antonella and Daniela, and me, Domenico.
As a child, up until my early teens, I had plenty of friends. We’d tire ourselves out with road hockey or play video games til our eyes burned and our hands got all blistered and sore or we’d hop on our bikes and be like banana seat bandits peddling from one goofball adventure to the next.
By the time I hit 17, though, that was all over. Friends fell away or I pushed them away and, by 1987, I was pretty much a loner. And, back then, few places were as welcoming to a loner than a video store.
That time in Mr. Video, though, I was not alone, but with my sisters and my younger sister’s boyfriend, Paul.
Up to that point, my film tastes were pretty awful. Teen sex comedies were my favourite – not rented but watched on pay TV or late night in the early days of cable when I couldn’t sleep. Renting, however, was still new to me. Not having a driver’s licence, at the time, I rented movies off of my sister Antonella’s account. She was nice enough to help a brother in need.
I remember renting stuff like “First Blood” or “Commando” or “Killer Klowns From Outer Space.” But, this particular day, Paul pointed to a video box and said I should give it a look. The film was “A Clockwork Orange.” It changed my life.
Going from “Killer Klowns From Outer Space” to “A Clockwork Orange” was like going from Ricky Nelson to Bob Dylan – “Poor Little Fool” to “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding.)” A bit of a leap.
Kubrick’s film opened my eyes to an art form. Now, suddenly, I started to notice when the camera moved and when it didn’t and what effect that had on me. I started to understand how light could sculpt mood and create space or limit it or tell us something about a place or a person. I began noticing how scenes were cut together, whether the individual shots were long or short and what it meant to cut from one image to the next. Juxtaposition – later understood as Eisenstein’s theory of montage – started to make itself known to me. In short, I fell in love with film.
That was 32 years ago. These days, I’m still head over heels in love with this wonderful, gloriously limitless, at times joyously unhinged, at other times rigoursly controlled alternately polite, rude, playful, invigorating, puzzling, dazzling, eye popping, mind bending and heart breaking art form.
I watch films, therefore I am. That’s about right.