The story of Vidiots is really the revival of not one iconic movie spot, but two. Yes, the beloved Santa Monica video store has been reborn in Eagle Rock, but that rebirth included a massive makeover of the nearly 100-year-old Eagle Theater, which had been left derelict before Vidiots bought it in 2019.
These days, Vidiots is screening movies most nights in the theater while renting titles in its collection of 60,000 DVDs and Blu-ray discs on site. Not to mention selling swag, snacks and libations to the movie-going public.
Vidiots first opened on the corner of 3rd Street and Pico Boulevard in 1985, and it was an immediate fan favorite. You could find anything there, from popular hits to the classics, and titles that were just impossible to find elsewhere.
Longtime Vidiots devotee, actor and director Noah Segan, credits the founders, Patty Polinger and Cathy Tauber, with carefully curating its inventory and being creative with what they made available.
“From its earliest inception, they put so much care and effort into ensuring that they were stewards for queer and female and punk rock and outsider cinema,” Segan said, adding that Vidiots took advantage of the VHS format of the time, which could be dubbed and shared easily.
“You could have people donate bootlegs and student films and stuff that did not get traditional distribution,” Segan said.
“Vidiots was so famous, and it was on everybody's list of places to visit if you really want to be an Angeleno,” added Vidiots executive director Maggie Mackay. “I was blown away by it as a film lover and just a citizen of the city.”
Technology eventually surpassed the store, and it struggled. The VHS tapes that once helped Vidiots stay hip became obsolete and DVDs were dying as streaming services took off.
The shop still had a devoted following, and patrons worked hard, donating money to keep it afloat. But it became clear the business model was no longer sustainable and in 2017, the Santa Monica store closed.
It was during this time that Mackay joined the team. The founders were already hatching a new plan, trying to figure how they could reopen … somewhere … in Los Angeles, and brought in Mackay, a former film festival programmer who self-describes as “the crazy video store lady,” to help.
“The first time I met Patty and Cathy, we talked about access … about how important places like Vidiots are for children and for inspiring new generations,” Mackay recalled. “When I walked out, I knew there was absolutely no way I could walk away from it … even if I was jumping on with gusto to the deck of the Titanic.”
To try and stay afloat, Vidiots had switched to a nonprofit model in the mid-2010s. But to reopen in a new space, they’d need a new plan, and a lot of help.
“When I found out I had to write a business plan, let me tell you, it was not the best day of my life,” Mackay said. “I was like, 'I'm a film programmer. I don't know how to write business plans.' But I knew enough people who I could surround myself with who would get me where we needed to be.”
Mackay had some basic criteria when looking for a new home for Vidiots, and she had a sense that the northeast side of L.A. might be the best place to look, as it was known as a “movie theater desert.”
Still, it was a stroke of luck that led her to the Eagle Theatre.
In 2019, Mackay drove by a building in her neighborhood and noticed a “for lease” sign. The landlords turned out to be former Vidiots customers.
“That was luck,” said Mackay.
“When we found the movie theater was when everything kind of changed,” she added. “Because now we were bringing back two very important film hubs to the city of Los Angeles.”
The Eagle Theatre has been a fixture on the corner of Yosemite and Eagle Rock Boulevard since 1929. It opened as the Yosemite Theatre, and was dubbed the New Eagle Theatre in 1937.
Like many cinemas during the Depression, seeing a movie at the New Eagle came with games of chance, door prizes, and even dish nights — evenings where your movie ticket came with a dish, or plate, you could take home.
Decades later, in the 70s, the incentives to get people in the door of a movie theater looked a little different.
Vincent Miranda, the owner of the Pussycat Theater, a famous west coast adult film house chain, purchased the Eagle in the mid-70s.
But according to theater historian Ross Melnick, a group called STOP: Stamp Out Pornography, pledged to shut down the theater, sending daily groups of picketers.
The theater changed hands again not long after, and stopped showing adult films. It ran as a cinema until the beginning of the 21st century, becoming a church in the early 2000s and remaining as such until 2019.
When Vidiots decided to move forward on renovating the Eagle, they needed money. A lot of money. The pandemic hit four months after signing the lease, prolonging renovations. Mackay said Vidiots had already launched a campaign for capital that then “increased pretty exponentially because of all of the things that you can imagine.”
Donations came pouring in from founding members (that’s folks donating $5,000 or more) like Noah Segan, the Duplass Brothers and director Rian Johnson. There were also and corporate sponsors like MUBI, Alamo Drafthouse, and GKIDS, which meant Vidiots raised more than $2 million to reopen. Still, that monetary support didn’t relieve some of the pressure Mackay was feeling.
“I knew leading a project like this in a very male-centric industry, that if it wasn't perfect … I would always think, they don't think a girl can run a movie theater,” she said.
Mackay added that she surrounded herself with experts, and “almost in tears,” called up Jules McLean, the theater manager at the New Beverly Cinema. She said McLean’s recommendations became an invaluable resource in shaping the theater.
Vidiots has been up and running in its new location since last summer and by all accounts, movie fans are delighted with the space. The people keep coming and Vidiots will be one of the theaters hosting screenings as part of the new Los Angeles Festival of Movies this coming April.
In thinking about this project as she was building it, Mackay said, “I was very certain that people would come to the movies. I was pretty certain that they would come back to the video store. I did not anticipate that we would just be sellouts multiple times a week on the movie theater and that we would have, by now, rented over 30, 000 titles on DVD and Blu-ray.”
Over the course of the reopening process, Vidiots found some support in small grant organizations, and the Golden Globe Foundation and the National Association of Theater Operators. But they didn’t have the bandwidth — or the connections — to tap into resources at larger organizations.
That challenge is informing what Mackay called “the next phase” of Vidiots.
“The dream is that we can be a generator for places like this, and in every city, state, and town, there is someone like me who sees the gap, wants to fill it, and has the blind faith to do it,” Mackay said of the impact project Vidiots hopes to launch. “I would like to support those people, and I would like to give them whatever resources we have available.”
