Chandler Levack resurrects the video store for coming-of-age film ‘I Like Movies’

TORONTO — Some part of filmmaker Chandler Levack is still wandering the aisles of her local Blockbuster Video.

More than a decade has passed since the company shut down in Canada, but the “I Like Movies” director vividly remembers working as a teenage clerk at the rental chain as if it was yesterday.

Whether it was talking to customers about movies or pushing the cart of DVD returns on the carpeted floor – those specific details rush back as she reflects on her debut feature, a coming-of-age comedy set inside the world of a video store in the early 2000s.

“I wanted to have all that again,” the 36-year-old from Burlington, Ont., confessed in an interview.

“First and foremost, I wanted everyone to remember how much they loved being in a video store and how sacred that experience was.”

Considering the positive reception to “I Like Movies,” it’s clear that Levack’s nostalgia for the pre-Netflix landscape resonates with other moviegoers.

After her feature premièred at the Toronto International Film Festival last September, it embarked on a successful run through other global festivals, winning the $10,000 RBC Emerging Artist Award at the Calgary International Film Festival and four awards from the Vancouver Film Critics Circle.

“I Like Movies” is now rolling out in parts of Canada, currently playing theatres in Toronto, Kitchener, Ont., and Calgary. It’ll expand Friday with new screens in Ontario cities Waterloo, Guelph and Kingston.

The film centres around a 17-year-old cinephile named Lawrence, played by Isaiah Lehtinen. He’s a lost puppy who dreams of attending NYU’s film school but is caught in his own selfish tendencies toward others.

Lawrence’s personal drama unwinds around the comedy and horror sections of Sequels, the video store where he works. He seeks guidance from an older female manager who’s grappling with her own stalled direction in life.

Levack, an occasional Globe and Mail film critic and music journalist, said one of the central questions of her film was Lawrence’s possible redemption or as she puts it: “Are film bros capable of change?”

“I Like Movies” wrestles with subtext around the role of men in film communities and how they are — or are not — held accountable for their bad behaviour. 

Levack supplants thesheen of John Hughes teen movies with inspiration from her own self-centred youth and flawed-male-lead comedies, including “High Fidelity,” “Rushmore” and “Greenberg.” 

“I was always reading myself into these male characters,” Levack said of how movies she grew up on influenced her own storytelling.

“There aren’t a lot of women telling stories of young men and looking at them from the perspective that women can see men.”

Levack imagines her future projects will continue to unpack her relationship with gender as a female filmmaker, a notion she cringes at even while accepting it’s probably true. 

“Can’t I just be a filmmaker?” she wonders aloud, before acknowledging a few minutes later that perhaps gender is important to the stories she tells, no matter the protagonist.

“As an 18-year-old woman working professionally as a music critic, I was in so many male-dominated spaces, so many weird mentorships or situations interviewing people,” she said.

“All the culture I consumed was made by men, so I’m still trying to figure out relationships between gender and power, my own sexuality and the way I want to write. I think that will be my forever topic.”

As Levack continues that search, it makes sense her first film unfolds mostly in a video store, the library of Hollywood knowledge that’s served as her guidebook.

Creating that authentic setting in “I Like Movies” became one of her obsessions with the production team. 

In the midst of the pandemic, they chased down as many resources as they could find, locating an abandoned former Blockbuster Video in northern Ontario where they convinced the landlord to part with the dusty shelves that still sat inside.

And they interviewed a former Blockbuster manager who gave them the idea of setting one scene during an overnight inventory shift. 

Levack added: “I didn’t want anyone to watch this and think: ‘That’s not what working in a video store is like.'”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 23, 2023.

David Friend, The Canadian Press