Tired of Streaming? Home-Grown 'Free Blockbuster' Libraries Are Trying to Offer Alternatives

In 2019 Los Angeles film/TV producer Brian Morrison painted Blockbuster's logo onto an old newspaper box — and then filled it up with used DVDs. 'The Free Blockbuster movement slowly gained traction,' reports the New York Times — aided at times by social media — 'and eventually more than 200 other community boxes had opened from Louisiana to Canada and even Britain.'

Though it's not clear how many are still operational, a 37-year-old California opened a free 'Blockbuster' library outside her home earlier this year, according to the article, 'and stocks it with season-specific films, subversive books and free candy.'

'We are social animals; we want to go out into the world and engage with each other,' said Brian Morrison, who keeps a lending library outside his home. He often refills it with DVDs and VHS tapes of TV series, horror movies and, on occasion, signed independent films, and said that it had encouraged interaction with his neighbors.

Andrew Kevin Walker, a Los Angeles-based screenwriter, said he had visited secondhand stores especially to seek out films to leave in the boxes, including two sealed James Bond box sets and a copy of 'Cobra,' a 1986 film written by Sylvester Stallone. 'It's an opportunity for people to really share their love of cinema, whether it be their favorite guilty pleasure or their favorite movie of all time,' he said.

Viewers with streaming fatigue say they are tired of chasing content that moves around an ever-expanding array of platforms or even disappears altogether, and some long for the physical media that was dominant until streaming took over. 'I think it's great that folks are doing this, keeping the spirit of DVDs alive, circulating film[s] in and exchanging them,' said Joe Pichirallo, a film producer and professor at New York University...

Alfonso Castillo, who co-founded a Free Blockbuster on Long Island, N.Y., with his son, said the lending library sees regular turnover with people both taking and dropping off movies, including older people. 'My sense is that for them, it's less of this cool novelty sort of ironic thing and more like, finally, there's a place to get DVDs again,' he said.
Award-winning filmmaker Ava DuVernay misses the commentary tracks on DVDs (along with director's cuts).

But more importantly, they told the Times that when it comes to art, 'nothing beats holding it in your hand... It is a part of the experience of consuming and experiencing art.'

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