Still my jam.
Yep, you’re all still wrong.
Back in 1996, two years into my 12-year run working behind the counter at Videoville, I relentlessly pushed a movie on renters.
A film which fractured Coupeville and exposed one simple truth — my taste in movies was often radically different than that of my customers.
That would be reinforced many, many, MANY times over the years.
Light one up for Reefer Madness: The Movie Musical, my old friend.
You can go hang out there in the corner with Hands on a Hardbody, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Apple, and the deeply misunderstood Cat in the Hat.
Don’t view it as a kid’s movie, but instead as Mike Myers crafting a warped tribute to old-school Catskills comedy, and you’ll be much happier.
But anyway, Bottle Rocket, which gave the world Owen Wilson (and his smashed-in nose) and Wes Anderson (and his love it or hate it cinematic style), was then, and remains now, a highly divisive movie in Cow Town.
In a 1996 world where most new VHS copies of movies cost between $70-$100 (it was a different time…), a lil’ store in Coupeville bought three copies of a micro-budget independent movie.
All because, battling a brain-splitting headache at 2:00 AM, I watched an advance copy of said film, and promptly convinced a VERY understanding video store owner, Miriam Meyer, only one move made sense.
Don’t pass on an oddball comedy from a first-time writer/director, starring an unknown goofball with a smashed schnozz, as many stores across America would.
And don’t buy just one copy.
Go for the deal the distributor was offering. A deal they probably thought no store would accept.
Buy THREE copies, get some bucks knocked off the overall price, and I would guarantee to rent that trio 300 times.
In a town the size of Coupeville.
So, we made a bet.
A bet I won, which resulted in Miriam buying the store Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure on LaserDisc — the format which was going to revolutionize the biz.
Until it didn’t.
Every employee arriving to work when video stores ruled the world in the mid-90’s.
We rented Bottle Rocket on VHS 306 times … and approximately 304 of those times, the reaction was brutal.
There was apathy. Indifference. And a whole heck of a lot of visceral hate.
Hate I still hear about to this day, a full 17 years after I departed Videoville.
Which begs the question — could I have been wrong?
Beset by a migraine, fueled by the heady mix of a microwave burrito and Excedrin, did I overestimate Bottle Rocket’s brilliance in the early hours of a 1996 morning?
Or was 99.2% of the town just flat out wrong, heathens with no taste for the finer things?
That existential quandary hovered in the air on a recent Saturday afternoon in 2023, as I returned to Bottle Rocket for the first time in 27 years.
No migraine, no microwave burrito, no Excedrin, just some presumably clear eyes taking a second look at the film which will forever mark me in this town.
Which is saying a lot, as I have mainlined an ungodly number of movies in my time.
The total number is unfathomable at this point, but I once tried to tally up the titles seen. When I hit 10,000, I quit counting.
That was a looooooooooooong time ago.
As a lark, I’ve been keeping tabs on my viewing habits this year, which you can view here:
https://letterboxd.com/davidsvien/list/recliner-life-what-i-watched-in-2023/
With my video store days long gone, and sports writing duties somewhat restricting my time, I’m still on target to hit about 500 in 2023.
Not a record-buster, but decent numbers.
But for every Chinatown and On the Waterfront in my past, there have been a gazillion lesser cinematic moments.
My nephews, after finding out I once paid to be the only person in a mall movie theater for a showing of the 2000 Jason Biggs “comedy” Loser, now find it hilarious to bring that nugget up 10 times a week.
“Man, Uncle David, you watch a lot of crap, don’t you?”
I do, I do. Just look at my Letterboxd list…
Taste, or lack of it, is in the eye of the beholder.
Or something like that. Now hush while I go watch a double feature of camp and schlock with Glee: The Concert and Sisters of Death.
My Roku seeing me choose movies to watch.
But back to Bottle Rocket, and my first viewing of it in 27 years.
Back then, it unspooled on a VCR.
This time around, it was streaming on Hulu.
Both times? Bliss, baby.
Time has been kind to Bottle Rocket. If anything, I think it’s better the second time around.
Over the years, Wes Anderson has become among the most precious of directors, each of his films even more hermetically sealed — lil’ masterpieces of elaborate art design aimed at a crowd of about three of us.
I like most of what he does, and outright love some of it, like The Grand Budapest Hotel.
That said, other modern-day filmmakers like the Coen brothers and Paul Thomas Anderson have proven to be his superior in my eyes.
And if we’re talking old-school pros like Akira Kurosawa and Billy Wilder, or the controversial but brilliant trio of Elia Kazan, Leni Riefenstahl, and Roman Polanski, he’s not even in the conversation.
But Wes Anderson is very, very good at a very narrow form of filmmaking, and give him his props for that.
Then go back and watch Bottle Rocket with fresh eyes after 27 years, and it’s a jolt to be reminded how different his debut film was from the movies he’s now best known for making.
There’s no all-star cast — Owen and Luke Wilson are first-timers, and Lumi Cavazos, so sweetly winning, was virtually unknown to American audiences.
Unless you had made a road trip from Whidbey to the theater in Mount Vernon to see her in the Mexican art house smash Like Water for Chocolate back in ’92.
Worth the gas money.
The ever-luminous Lumi Cavazos.
James Caan, of Godfather and Rollerball fame, was the only “name” in the cast in 1996, and his small role, as a weird (maybe) crime boss was a million years away from his normal hyper-intense roles.
Wes Anderson hadn’t become obsessed with art design yet, and the movie — a gentle, goofy comedy about slightly cockeyed people finding connections through small-time crime — plays out across normal Texas landscapes.
It’s laidback, charming, witty, a light dollop of fun floating through a too-tense world.
Martin Scorsese, perhaps our greatest living director, said Bottle Rocket “conveys the simple joys and interactions between people so well and with such richness.”
Are you going to argue with the dude who made Goodfellas, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore?
Simple joys … maybe that’s the problem.
In my push to hit 300 rentals, I might have oversold the film, made it sound like it would transform lives and inspire a generation.
Bottle Rocket is what it is, then and now.
Just a whimsical good time, something to ease head pain in 1996 or bring back good memories in 2023 of a time when video store life was in its prime.
I loved the film then. I love it now.
Maybe it’s time everyone else in Coupeville took 91 minutes to reevaluate it.
And if you still hate it afterwards? Well, you’d just be wrong.
Coupeville Sports 