Coupeville Sports

We have to go back … to the “good ol’ days.”

Everyone needs a good, irrational New Year’s resolution.

You know, the sort where other people hear it, then they nod and slowly start backing away, looking for a convenient exit. That kind!

So, instead of going with the pack and picking something normal like losing weight, or committing to never, ever comment on anyone’s inflammatory Facebook posts, I’m doing my own thing.

Which is to pretend like it’s 1997 again, and I’m back snug as a bug in the first part of my 15-year video store “career.”

I started at Videoville in ’94, and by ’97, things were humming.

My first nephew popped into the world, and we were well on our way to a (brief) time when a store in a cow town, in the middle of a rock in the water, would be renting 500 VHS tapes almost every Friday and Saturday.

I kid you not.

Movie studios loved video stores in ’97, and the free stuff, from advance screener copies of movies to autographed star photos, t-shirts, leather bomber jackets, and a whole lot of candy, cascaded down.

And to make things even better, it was a glorious year for movies. Or, at least that’s how I remember it 25 years later.

I mean … L.A. Confidential. Boogie Nights. The Fifth Element. Ulee’s Gold. Con Air. Grosse Point Blank. Men in Black. Austin Powers.

Even some film about Kate Winslet letting Leonardo Di Caprio freeze to death cause she wouldn’t share her rather ample hunk of floating wood after that iceberg punched out the world’s snazziest boat.

That one made a few bucks, I think.

But 25 years is a fairly long time. Toss in the additional 34,602 films (estimated…) I’ve seen since then, and who knows whether I can accept my Swiss cheese memories as fact.

So, I’m going back. Sort of.

My plan for 2022 — my resolution, as it were — is to watch as many films from 1997 as possible, to see what has held up, and what should have been chucked on the recycle pile.

Back then, we lived in a streamlined VHS fantasyscape, where a solid video store would have pretty much everything you were looking to find.

In this blighted streaming world, where “everything,” which often means nothing, is a click of a remote control away, it’ll be interesting to see how much of ’97 is readily available.

But what the heck, it gives me a mission.

I mean, how else will I know if the moment in Anaconda where the snake swallows an EEEEEVILLLLLL Jon Voight whole, barfs him out, then re-swallows him, is still a banger?!?

Sort of doing God’s work over here, is what I’m saying.

Want to follow along throughout the year? Pop over to:

https://letterboxd.com/davidsvien/list/we-have-to-go-back-rewatching-1997-in-2022/