Pharmacy Film School

How my first "real job" reinforced my love of cinema and my confidence

Glenn Close and John Malkovich in Dangerous Liaisons (1988)

Within days of getting my driver’s license upon turning sixteen, I was hired at my first in a series of low-level, but supposedly character building grunt work and retail bullshit jobs that were supposed to make a man out of me. Or was that how I got hair on my chest? 

These tedious career opportunities paid some insultingly low amount of money per hour, but I didn’t know any better at the time, and I could have done little to change it. Like every teenager I was dumb and happy. My ability to earn more money than I had any genuine need for in the end obscured what a steal I was even in my lazy, untrained form. 

Oh, wait, my research assistant and head of ADHD Management & Director of International studies informs me that the minimum wage in the state of Michigan between 1981 and 1997 was $3.35 an hour. 

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When I was first hired at a gig that was required to pay minimum wage, I am positive the entry level pay was minimum wage and not a penny more. There was little I could have done to change my station at that moment in life, and I had yet to receive my labor movement awakening as a gentle lad of sixteen. And again, at sixteen, I wouldn’t have followed through on anything other than negotiating for a longer lunch break. The worst part of these jobs for me was the drudgery. 

I’ll stipulate right at the outset that I was a below average employee as it applied to dusting my section, or keeping up on the bathroom checklist. But, damn if I wasn’t a charming little thing that was really good with the customers. My small talk skills were light years ahead of my contemporaries, and often sharper than my adult counterparts. I had a wide net of interests, and even as a teenager was endlessly curious, which made it natural for me to ask questions of almost everyone who came in the door. 

As a coping mechanism for low pay, pissy hours and days laden with suburban tedium, I tried to find places to work that had some interesting angles to them. The first of these was a two year stint at the Bath Pharmacy. My typical schedule was two or three afternoons/evenings after school and then a full day on Saturday each week. 

There was Muzak. It oozed an aroma that was some melange of moth balls, off brand Pine Sol, and the slightest wisp of the winter coat worn by a woman who has smoked approximately 3200 packs of Kent 100s since 1952. 

The atmosphere was dense, and eerily close. There was a vibe of operating in a fishbowl. It wasn’t that there were a ton of cameras or that the management was peering over our shoulders at any moment. It was as if the room had absorbed so much of the worry and the fatigue of so many patients coming to get their meds and praying for recovery. There was something in the air that smelt of a crushing sense of hope and fear.

The owner and his wife were nice enough folks. High school employees were an occupational hazard. They must have just figured that I was showing up on time, doing most of my work and not stealing anything. While I was far from perfect, I was better than many other options.

I stayed at the pharmacy gig for one very simple reason; they rented movies.

Not actual footage of the Bath Pharmacy, but close enough.

Bath, Michigan in the mid to late 1980’s was a sort of clueless, little hick town. It sat just four miles north of East Lansing, the home to Michigan State University and the cultural center of the region. But 1988, or 1998 for that matter, in the rest of the world might just as well have been 1978 in Bath, at least in terms of cultural curiosity and seeking out the unique and fascinating things in the universe. 

The cinematic offerings available in the late 80’s in a small town pharmacy were, in most cases, exactly what you’d expect. It was the typical run of family films, action flicks and romantic comedies that were churned out every Friday in my youth with a varying degree of excellence that spanned from the banal to the acceptable to the awful. Even though I was mostly helping people argue over whose turn it was to rent Three Men & A Baby, I still got to be around movies, even if only tangentially. 

There were occasions where someone would come in and perhaps select something interesting, or even better ask for a suggestion.

I’ll pause here to remind the younger folks in the crowd that there was a time when we did not have immediate access to 90% of the American film canon with a tiny computer in our pockets. Nor was there an entire internet community reviewing, suggesting and recommending films at an alarming rate. Get off my lawn!

One night, a couple in their 30s or 40s was in. I had seen them before in the store, and had talked with them previously a couple times. Despite the fact that I was just a goofy kid with loads of enthusiasm and opinions, but almost no experience, they seemed to take a shine to me.  They remarked that they hadn’t been able to find much they were interested in that they hadn’t already seen. They wondered if I might have some suggestions. 

Oh, I had suggestions! Technically what I had were opinions, but I was ready and willing to offer to them. The two films I was raving about at the time to anyone who would listen were Dangerous Liaisons and Heathers.

In retrospect, neither of these films has held up well, especially the latter film with its cringey and prophetic look at violence in high school culture. None of that mattered in the moment, I was recommending a period piece set in 18th century France, and a black comedy. In that small town pharmacy, I was the Gene Siskel of Bath, Michigan.

Roger Ebert (L) and Gene Sickle, and their weekly show At The Movies were a huge influence on me.

The following Friday evening they came in again and made a point to tell me how much they loved both movies. I was over the moon. In a glorified cow pasture where everything revolved around football and crop tables, someone was interested in the same weird stuff that I was. More than that, they took the advice of a teenager and were thrilled to have done so.

As mentioned, the catalog of available titles at the Bath Pharmacy was anything but adventurous. VHS tapes at the time were prohibitively expensive and the owners of the store needed to focus on profitable films. Furthermore, in these nascent days of home video, most titles were still unavailable if they had been made before the early 80’s unless they were big hits. This of course limited my ability to push the envelope of the Bath movie going public. 

Once I was truly bitten by the cinema bug, I began making forays into Lansing and a store called Video To Go. It was a massive storefront in a large shopping center north of Lansing’s downtown. While they featured multiple copies of the blockbusters of the moment, they also had a very impressive collection of classic, foreign, and independent films. Most importantly, they had a deal they called 5 for 5 for 5. 

Video To Go in the weeks before they closed for good in 2015. Photo by Dave Wasinger of the Lansing State Journal.

The concept was simple; as long as it was not a new release, you could rent any five films in the store for five days for five bucks. With this deal, I could take chances on films I might otherwise avoid. I devoured Kubrick, Hitchcock, Spielberg, westerns, war films, American indies and more. Video To Go and the $5 deal became the springboard through which I would first discover Kurosawa, Bergman, Fellini, and Truffaut. It was the most affordable film school in America.

One weekend while I was still living with my parents, I was likely 20 or so, I got the $5 deal and picked up some groceries on the way home. My folks and my sister had gone on vacation for several days on a road trip out east. I would be home for nearly a week with no one else around. Now, I had a load of food and a glut of movies to watch. 

While I do not remember what the other four titles were that weekend, I know that I watched The Godfather: The Complete Epic. This multi-volume set features a chronological re-edit of the first two Godfather films. The film begins with Vito as a boy in Sicily and winds its way to the very end of the second film with Michael sitting in the yard at the home in Lake Tahoe. It was more than six hours long. It qualified as just one of the five films. This was going to be an epic weekend.

Al Pacino alone at the table in Godfather II

I had seen the first Godfather once or twice and loved it, but I had never seen the second in full. Moreover, I was transfixed by the chronological storytelling and it immersed me so much further into the story of the first film. It is one of the most memorable and most enjoyable movie experiences of my life. It is perhaps the most revelatory home viewing experience I have ever had. 

My parents had long instilled a love of film in my sister and me. Our home was decorated with vintage film posters, headshots and lobby cards. My mother had - and still has - an entire library of film biographies and memoirs. Movies were always a religion in our home. I was a member of the faithful.

Now I had taken that passion for cinema and begun to find my own way with it. I did my own diving, made my own discoveries and fell in love with the movies all over again. Like any true faith, it was not real until I made it my own. 

The Bath Pharmacy is now closed. Even if they had managed to stay in business, the days of their home video section would be long gone. Like any mediocre high school job, I do not look back at the place with much fondness. However, I have come to realize that my time there was foundational in my love for, and my confidence in talking about film. Even as a kid, I knew what was good and what wasn’t. I might have needed a sharper eye and a better understanding of what films would matter down the road, but I knew when something was worth watching, and why.

Videos To Go shuttered its doors in 2015. However, I managed to make it over there for a going out of business sale where I picked up a handful of Criterion DVDs that are still in my collection. Even now, I occasionally still get to view a film from Video To Go.

My parents gave me the seed, the pharmacy helped it grow, and Video To Go saw it bloom. I’ve passed this love on to my own kids, and they now live in a world where they can watch the vast majority of recorded western film with an internet connection and a little cash. Still, I miss the finite stricture of five films, five days and five bucks. 

Instead of walking into an internet with endless choices, I would love to stroll back into Video To Go and wander the aisles. I could amble up and down the shelves and carefully turn over the titles to read descriptions and reviews. After a few minutes of searching, I would take my quintet of flicks to the counter and then watch each of those films over the next five days. No endless browsing and adding things to the list that will never be seen. Just five movies in five days with no other distractions or options. 

Instead, I am likely to paralyze myself with choice and will probably stop or pause the film I finally do watch for fear that I have chosen poorly or the experience isn’t going as I had hoped or expected. Constant choices mean better options, and often nothing seems better than what we might be missing.

The self taught film school is cheaper than ever today. YouTube and online courses allow young film lovers to take classes and learn the theory, history and critical thinking of cinema. Obscure and underappreciated films are easier than ever to access in a digital age. Still, it’s hard to tell if younger generations are as passionate about film as the generations that have come before; as passionate as I was in my younger days. I hope they are.

What I hope for is more accidental scholarship, like the road upon which I embarked. While my interest and attention to cinema has ebbed and flowed over the years, I remain an avid film lover. I am still discovering and exploring the world of movies and the movies of the world. No matter what the delivery system is, I hope that never goes away. And it all started in earnest at a dumpy little pharmacy in Bath, Michigan.

Cheers,
Matty C