Musician and filmmaker Brendan Toller stared out from a pink-lit living room, explaining how, with Best Video closed, he would have to dig into his own film archive for movies to watch under lockdown. “One of my favorite films that I have, that I know I’m going to be watching in this quarantine bunker, is Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, by Fassbinder.” Toller went on to explain that Rainer Werner Fassbinder, in the ups and downs of his career, had a breakthrough with his story about an interracial couple in Germany. The film was itself a remake of Douglas Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows. And, most important, Toller said, “this is one of those films that changed my life. What I’m always looking for in art, I say to people, ‘well, it did or didn’t change my life.’ This film … changed my life.”
Toller’s three-minute recommendation was the fifth installment in “A Favorite Movie,” the brainchild of Hank Hoffman, Best Video’s executive director.
“A favorite movie,” Hoffman said with emphasis. “Not necessarily the greatest movie of all time, but one that’s close to the heart.” The idea, he hoped, would encourage people to pick slightly more obscure, or even somewhat unloved movies.
So far, 10 installments in, he has not been disappointed. In the first recommendation of the series, musician Brian Robinson declared his allegiance to the 1991 Bruce Willis vehicle Hudson Hawk. Val McKee sang the praises of 1985’s Fandango. Best Video founder Hank Paper weighed in on the 2017 Argentinian film The Last Suit. And Institute Library manager Eva Geertz said she “had a movie picked out immediately,” but her husband said “I can’t believe you’re not talking about” the movie she championed in her short video instead: the Coen Brothers’ Intolerable Cruelty.
The short video series is part of Hoffman’s work “to maintain an ongoing presence” for Best Video, “so people remember what the point is,” he said with a chuckle.
When Best Video shut its doors in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, Hoffman looked around for artifacts he could populate social media with. “I’ve got hard drives full of audio recordings from Best Video, and videos” of live musical performances, Hoffman said. “But a large part of our identity is connected to movies. So I thought of ways to touch base with our clientele, who are film fanatics. A lot of people like to come in and talk about movies.” Sometimes “polarizing movies,” he added. “I really liked Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. I’ve definitely handed it out to people who said, ‘I thought that movie was terrible.’ People like having Best Video around to still talk about movies and get perspectives on movies from human beings instead of algorithms.”
Hoffman is continuing to collect video recommendations from Best Video members. But what are some of Hoffman’s own favorite movies? “There are a few that would come to mind for me. Like Repo Man. It’s brilliant comedy, sci-fi, satire. It’s punk rock, it’s a cult film.” He said. A Hard Day’s Night. Battle of Algiers — “that made a huge impression of me when I saw it in college,” Hoffman said. Monterey Pop, which to Hoffman captured the moment “when the whole hippie counterculture thing was still fresh and innocent,” even though, he added wryly, “it curdled pretty quickly. And of course it just has great music in it.”
Hoffman and the staff of Best Video, in short, could have done the short video series themselves. After all, together they’ve seen thousands of movies.
But to Hoffman, getting videos from members were more interesting “because of that exchange back and forth,” which has happened for years at Best Video. “I tell people what I like, but it’s always coming back the other way.”
Stepping Lightly
Best Video’s last event before the government-mandated shutdowns went into effect was its monthly open mic, held on March 11. “I was going up and wiping down the microphone between performances,” Hoffman said. “It felt wrong.” Thursday’s and Friday’s shows of that week were cancelled because the musicians themselves decided it wasn’t worth the risk. After that, Hoffman said, “I couldn’t imagine continuing to post shows.”
The week after that, the coffee shop was open for people to come to the side door. But on Sunday, March 22, even that stopped.
Brian Slattery Photo
Hoffman.
With weeks of no activity, Best Video’s staff and board are now figuring out how best to resume their operations, whenever government restrictions ease and whenever public sentiment tilts back toward being able to congregate. “Without knowing that it’s completely gone, how many of us are going to feel comfortable going out? And how soon?” Hoffman asked.
So far, Hoffman said, Best Video management imagines bringing back the cultural center’s activities gradually, not unlike the way they were phased out in March.
“We’re talking about what things we can do that would be safe, and that we can provide as some kind of direct service,” Hoffman said. Best Video’s members are “still paying something per month and at the moment they’re not getting anything.” He noted that no one has called to stop making payments, “but eventually they will.”
The first order of business — “probably,” Hoffman said — would be to start allowing members to rent videos again. Because members have already paid, no money would need to change hands. Members might be able to call ahead and arrange a pickup. One or two staff could man the store, bringing the videos to people in the parking lot. “All we would have to do is clean the DVDs,” Hoffman said. But since the beginning, he has been erring on the side of caution. “You’ve got to step lightly and carefully,” he said.
Best Video has every intention of persisting through the outbreak. “The Great Give will be something of a test,” Hoffman said. “We’re trying to find the funds to tide us over.” He noted with some irony that “our nonprofit business model is based on people not being in a wholly digital world. The pandemic really strikes at the heart of why people value us.”
“In the interim,” he continued, there are the recommendations from Best Video community members. “It’s the virtual video counter,” he said. He explained that cultivating a film community at the cultural center was a two-way street. The staff had movies and television shows they championed, but were also always receiving feedback from Best Video’s members when they came by to rent videos. “That’s the way we hear about things. It’s part of the dynamic of our interactions at Best Video.”
Hoffman hasn’t seen all the movies that members recommended, but plans to. Meanwhile, he’s interested in getting more videos from the film-watching community. “If they’re interested in doing one of these, they should get in touch with us,” he said, through Best Video’s main email address: [email protected]
His only real problem with the way the videos are being received might be what you’d call a lack of drama. “I’d like to see people weighing in on the comments,” he said. “I have a feeling people aren’t choosing controversial movies.”
That led to the thought that maybe Hoffman would do a video recommending a controversial film himself, “just to stir the pot a little bit,” he said.
To check out Best Video’s ongoing member recommendations, visit the cultural center’s Facebook page or YouTube channel. The Great Give, which allows one to donate to Best Video and many other nonprofits in the greater New Haven area, runs May 5 and May 6.
