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PACI FI C SUN | FE BR UARY 23-MA RC H 1 , 2022 | PAC I FI CSUN.COM
DVDs Are
Flat Circles
Bedrock Music and Video closes
BY DAEDALUS HOWELL
S
INCE THE LATE
’80s, San Rafael's
Bedrock Music and
Video is very likely
the place where a generation
of Marinites bought their first
CDs, rented their “Thursday
Rental Specials” and
otherwise browsed away an
afternoon on the Miracle Mile
before decamping to Caffé
Nuvo. And now it’s closing
for good.
It’s another end to an era that
already ended a long time ago
before entertainment companies
began chanting “merrily, merrily,
merrily, film is but a stream.” To
those last video-rental stores
that dot the nation like a fading
constellation of supernovas, it’s
not “Neflix and chill” so much as
“Netflix and kill.”
Streaming killed
the video store
Streaming has long been the
obvious nail in the coffin for video
stores, and what stores remain
have become mausoleums for the
dead medium known as the Digital
Video Disc. Which is a shame
for a variety of reasons. Back in
the ’80s when I was an aspiring
auteur—seeing is believing: rent
Pill Head, my 2019 paean to arty
cinema, on Amazon—repertory
houses like Petaluma’s erstwhile
Plaza Theater were the only way
to steep in the films of French
New Wave, American indies
and forgotten and/or forbidden
classics. When those dimmed their
lights for the last time it was up to
video stores to fill the void, which
they did with aplomb, especially
during the “Golden Age” of DVDs,
when outfits like the Criterion
Collection began curating art
house-worthy collections of
must-see flicks. These films were
often accompanied by “extras,”
like directors’ commentaries and
“making of” documentaries, that
were tantamount to master classes
in the art of cinema. For some of us,
video stores were film school.
Bedrock of Ages
This is not a history of the store.
I wasn’t even a customer until
recently, and even then it was as
an admitted culture vulture taking
rueful pecks at the unicorn as it lay
CLOSED Bedrock Music and Video has operated in Marin for 34 years.
dying. Yes, I scavenged its treasures,
but out of respect for the movies, the
medium and the doleful merchant At the behest of a kind I was with Kary when I finally
behind the counter. employee, I was pointed in the discovered Bedrock. We randomly
According to the store’s website, direction of the store’s founder, or visited it while trying to fill a
founder Barry Baum launched at least one of their survivors, to recent Marin afternoon. Naturally,
Bedrock in 1988 as a rebuttal to the get a more comprehensive history we gravitated towards the artier
big-box chain stores of the era. By from someone who might count section of the store. There were
the ’90s, it had reached what we as a primary source, but an email
might call High Fidelity status,
the usual suspects—including the
went unanswered. Suffice it to say, aforementioned French New Wave.
meaning that it became a haven for I gleaned a few facts visiting the I was acquainted with most of the
discerning music consumers, a la
store on multiple occasions such auteurs through college classes that
the store featured in Nick Hornby’s
as A) Everything is on sale, often fixated on Francoise Truffaut and
novel and the Stephen Frears film of
with huge discounts and B) the especially Jean-Luc Godard and their
the same name.
store will likely close permanently evolutionary jump from penning
Unfortunately, Baum died of
cancer in 1996, at which point his sometime in March 2022. All screeds at Cahiers Du Cinema to Jules
wife, Patti Baum, took the reins in, that means Bedrock lasted and Jim and Breathless, respectively.
of the store and expanded the approximately 34 years—a feat for Somehow, the film classes I took in
offerings to include in-store events. any small business, let alone one the ’90s omitted Agnés Varda and
Nine years later, Marin County transacting physical media in a her seminal works, Cleo 5 to 7 and her
non-profit Four Winds West, a digital world. first film—which predates her male
transitional program for at-risk Running a video store is difficult. cohort’s efforts by six years—La Pointe
young adults, took on the store as I did it once, as a performance-art Courte, which I had never seen. But
a means of “providing vocational piece with my partner, conceptual there it was, nestled on the Criterion
training and experience as a bridge artist Kary Hess. We recreated Collection rack at Bedrock.
to employment in the community at a video store in an apartment We bought the DVD for two
large.” The organization shuttered stairwell for a single evening—Arts bucks, even though at that moment
two years ago, but the store Editor Charlie Swanson even wrote we didn’t own a DVD player. Why
persisted—until now. about it. would we? The aughts-era promise

of “convergence” happened nearly a
decade ago. Now we subscribe to a
half-dozen streaming services, from
the obligatory Netflix and Disney+ to
specialty streamers such as Shudder
and an ever-rotating ensemble of
week-long “Free Trials.” Yet, I bought
a new DVD player via Amazon Prime
which, ironically, is also where I often
stream shows.
The most compelling argument
for the conservation of DVDs is
the fact that the versions of some
films available solely via streaming
are not their best versions. Case in
point, Amadeus, Milos Forman’s
masterpiece about the one-sided
rivalry between Salieri and Mozart.
The only version available to
stream is the “Director’s Cut,”
which, bless Forman’s dearly
departed soul, is larded with
useless scenes that bloat the film
and cloud the narrative tension
of the original theatrical release.
Fortunately, that cut is available
on DVD—a copy of which I seized
SALE Everything at Bedrock Music and Video is deeply discounted through its last days in March.
upon at Bedrock and gladly paid
two bucks to own. This isn’t the
only film that didn’t leap the digital
divide in its best form—in fact,
some films failed to make the leap
at all. Alan Rudolph’s tale of an
expat American in 1920s Paris,
The Moderns, for example, can’t be
streamed anywhere. I now own it
on disc.
Zombie media
I have a theory that media that is
round and disk-shaped will always
return. It’s primary shape, a circle,
speaks to the cyclical nature of tastes
and life in general. To alien eyes,
stores like Bedrock might appear
to peddle mere circles contained in
squares. To weirdos like me, they
are a reminder of Nietzsche’s adage,
“Time is a flat circle.”
Those who don’t believe me or
Friedrich might pause to consider that
analog media, like vinyl records and
even VHS tapes, are having a moment
again. I suppose this technically
makes formerly dead media “zombie
media.” Digital content stored on
physical media like CDs and DVDs,
however, have yet to become fetish
objects. One reason could be the
alleged erosion of their data after a
decade or so. Also, they’re too young
a medium, relatively speaking, to
inspire the nostalgic cache that, say,
casettes tapes have recently acquired.
CDs and DVDs are essentially twins
and, thanks to the overly aggressive
marketing efforts of AOL in the
’90s, their ubiquity made them as
disposable as the very drink coasters
they often became.
Also, at least with CDs, there is the
sound-quality debate. Speaking of
which, to anyone who ever wants to
put me to sleep, just explain digital
sampling rates versus unconsciously
“felt” frequencies to me. None of this
is relevant when it comes to DVDs,
however, not least of which because
the picture quality—especially for Blu
Rays—is allegedly superior, or at least
comparable, to streaming services.
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Photos by Lukas Hess
PAC I FI C SUN | FE BR UA RY 23-MA R C H 1 , 2022 | PACI FI CSUN.COM
All of this is moot to me. My TV
is 4K, but my eyesight is less than
“standard definition.” I can’t read
the American Graffiti DVD box I
just bought from Bedrock without
squinting and holding it at arm’s
length—and that’s with glasses on.
Will that diminish my enjoyment of
the movie? No. Do I know that parts
of the film were shot in San Rafael,
literally blocks from Bedrock Music
and Video? Yes. Time is a flat circle.
So are the Star Wars Blu Rays whose
“extras” discs were lost a long time
ago in a video store far, far away.
Interestingly, George Lucas once
opined to this very newspaper that
“People are learning their mythology
from TV, which makes them very
confused because it has no point of
view, no sense of morality.”
And all these years later, I’m
loading one of his myths into an
antiquated technology, like Princess
Leia inserting the plans to the Death
Star into R2-D2, so I can watch it on
my TV.