The End.

[licensed under Creative Commons by kamshots]

My top ten film endings ever – in no particular order

The Breakfast Club – They leave detention a little cheesier and a little happier, freeze frame on Judd Nelson punching the air triumphantly. What has he succeeded at? I have no idea, I’d have thought getting all soppy was a failure on his part but a freeze frame of Judd Nelson punching the air triumphantly is a brilliant thing. More films should finish with them.
Life of Brian – A brilliant final image. So dark but so funny. Rows of crucified people dancing. Best musical number in a film ever, even if the song is utterly cringeworthy when removed from that context.
The Muppet Movie – Crazy Harry blows a hole in the soundstage roof, a rainbow comes in, Kermit sings ‘life’s like a movie, write your own ending – keep believing, keep pretending’, which might be the sagest advice ever. Then the camera pulls out to reveal THOUSANDS of muppets singing ‘We’ve done just what we set out to do, thanks to the lovers, the dreamers, and you!’ I hope I never become too cynical to appreciate the Muppets.
Poltergeist – The traumatised and filthy Freeling family check into a cheap motel. As the camera pulls away, we see the door open and the TV is unceremoniously pushed out on to the balcony. Am I reading too much into it or is this the most perfectly succinct comment about on the forces that are really destroying family life?
The Last Waltz – Ends at the beginning. The first song we see them play is actually the last song they ever played together. Don’t Do It. My favourite film of all time.
Rocky – everyone forgets that he actually loses the fight. But he’s won. And everyone knows it cos he went the distance. Makes me cry.
Don’t Look Now - I’d love to see how it’s written in the original screenplay. ‘and then she turns around, it’s not his daughter – it’s a fucking terrifying witchy-faced dwarf with an enormous fucking knife. She looks at him ruefully then stabs him in the throat’. It should be the biggest ‘you what???’ moment in cinematic history, yet it seems to make perfect sense as the last piece of the rule-defying filmy jigsaw.
Watership Down – The rabbits finally in their new safe home, the first new generation of baby rabbits frolicking about, Hazel watching them old and tired from the distance, is quietly visited by the rabbit spirit. ‘I’ve come to ask if you would like to join my Owsla. We shall be glad to have you, and I know you’d like it. You’ve been feeling tired, haven’t you? If you’re ready, we might go along now.’ and then Hazel lies down, breathes a couple of dying breaths and follows in spirit into the sun. Like the film itself, relentlessly sad yet uplifting.
The Graduate - He steals the girl away from the wedding, she’s already married, though. They run out of the church with everyone cursing them, get on a bus, sit down grinning and slowly the smiles fade. A happy ending silently made bittersweet by letting the camera roll just that bit longer than the usual freeze-frame moment. Beautful. BEAUTIFUL.
Sullivan’s Travels – Preston Sturges’s film about a popular film director who decides to take the road ‘slumming it’ in research for his next film – a serious film about the suffering of humanity. When eventually, assumed dead, he finds himself as low as he can go – as an anonymous convict in a deeply rural place he finally sees the real people he craved, uneducated, damned prisoners watching a Pluto cartoon and loving it. It’s there that he comes to the conclusion ‘There’s a lot to be said for making people laugh! Did you know that’s all some people have? It isn’t much but it’s better than nothing in this cockeyed caravan!’

Yeah. So, this is my roundabout way of telling you that the one place in Oxford where you could actually find all of these flicks is facing its own finale. Death scene. Unexpected twist. Denouement. End titles. Closing number.

Videosyncratic is closing.

Just before Christmas it was apparent that we’d completed our tumble from profitable to ok to break-even to loss, and there’s no point chucking money into an independent video rental business. It’s an outdated concept, right? Going out and renting a video. Who would do that now you can download them or rent online or illegally torrent them for free, or buy them below wholesale price at the supermarket. Or just watch something from the ten billion hours of crap stored on your Sky Plus? It’s funny how quickly something can go redundant. But things move on and change and that’s absolutely how it should be. Like powdered egg to our grandparents and Saturday cinema matinees to our parents, we’ll one day tell our confused and uninterested kids about how we went to choose and borrow films from the local ‘video shop’.

Video shops have been my favourite places all my life. I practically grew up in the video shops of Headington – Bogarts, Ritz and the brilliant Oxford Video. When I went to film school, I discovered Alphabet Video in Edinburgh – the best video shop I’d ever seen, two rickety floors of forgotten classics. And a fishtank. Then there was the recently departed Mister Stacey’s Video Emporium in Cambridge. Possibly the world’s only leather-panelled video shop. I love video shops. I worked in them from the age of 18, loads of them, and it was my lifelong dream to own my own indie.

I’m really fucking proud of what we did with Videosyncratic. From the incredible selection of films we stocked to the surliest yet sharpest staff ever assembled. From the beautiful logo to the signed photo from Burt Reynolds. The stencilled artwork on the Cowley Road branch’s walls. The ‘ill judged forays into acting by rock stars’ section. The celebrity customers (Paxman! Branson! that chick out of the dictionary corner on Countdown!). The legendary battles between customers and staff. The instore gigs. The private school kid who puked everywhere then threw himself through a plate glass window. The cultural elitism. Rich Morley dressed as Wolverine. We did alright and we had a lot of fun.

It’s pointless pretend I’m not sad at having to pull the plug. VS is the best thing I’ve ever done and I think I’ll miss it a lot. I’ll miss the people. The regular dropper-ins – the Morleys, Ramages, Nixons, Marlers, Seajents and legion of others who prop up the counter for a chat. I’ll miss them. And most of all, I’ll miss the staff. I don’t know who else would handpick such a ragtag bunch of misanthropes but they made the company what it was. They defined it. I got endless complaints about the lot of them and every moaning letter or phone call made me proud of my guys.

But hey, there are new challenges, the idea of a life free from the general public, complaints about late fees (I suppose I can reveal now that the way to get out of late fees is… to be nice. Who’d have thought of the wonderful results basic human decency can have?) tramps wandering in to get warm, brainless Brookes students and the eternal fretting about finances sounds pretty OK to me. One of the things that does bug me is being one of the alarmingly frequent closures of cool indie shops in Oxford. I hate how this town is changing. The rents are too high, there’s a recession, global corporations are putting the squeeze on the little guys.

Independent businesses set up and operated because of the passion of the people who establish them are beautiful, precious, and increasingly rare things and should be cherished. Every single purchase makes a difference. So, if you’re one of the people who’ll be sad to be reading this, remember that if you want cool indie places to exist, you have to support them. If any of our customers defect back to Blockbuster, I’d be very sad. There’s one last indie video shop in Oxford – Movies on Walton Street. They’ve been the longest running indie vid shop in Oxford and it’s absolutely right that they be the last ones standing. You should give any business you would have given us to them, they’re awesome. And make the effort with the other independent businesses. Fratellis and Atomic Burger, Uhuru, Ryouki, Gameskeeper, Meli, Music Box, the book shop in Summertown, the Cowley Road and Wolvercote farmers markets. There are good people doing the right things for the right reasons. Supporting them is a joyous thing and if you don’t fucking do it, you’re looking at a future where every town is just a massive Tesco with a Nandos and a Carphone Warehouse either side.

Enough ranting. To those of you who were members – Thank You, even if we were rude to you, we genuinely appreciated your support and hope you had as much fun with your time in our shops as we did. Keep your membership card in a safe place because it forever marks you out as one of the cultural elite. If you weren’t a member, tough titties, missed your chance, loser.

Now, onto the fun stuff. As any of you who have closed down a business before will well know, it is a scary, scary thing. The cost of closing the shops, settling accounts, getting sorted is thousands of pounds. Which, as you may guess, we really haven’t got. SO. We’re having a bonanza. Summertown branch will cease trading at close of business on Sunday night. Starting on Monday, at Cowley Road branch, we’re selling EVERYTHING off. VERY CHEAP! ALL the DVDs, ALL the comics, ALL the graphic novels, ALL the T-shirts, even ALL the VHS (which will be very, very, very cheap). If you want shelves, we’ll sell you the shelves! If you’ve been looking for a Humphrey, WE’LL SELL YOU HUMPHREY! Always had your eye on our lifesize Gremlin? HE’S YOURS FOR A PRICE. So, a HUGE DVD and comic shop sale. I figure if we sell even two thirds of our stuff, we can pay off all of our debts. So, please forward the word onto every one you know in Oxford or the surrounding areas (London is an easy bus ride away). Email them, Tweet this, Myspace it, Text it, whatever you have to do – anyone you know who likes films or comics, it’ll all be very cheap and very awesome!!!

Thank you so much for your support over the last nine years. It’s been brilliant.

Happy endings are bullshit. Here’s to an ending that makes us think.

Jon VS