The Brother From Another Planet

It's been well over a year since I've browsed the aisles of my local video store. I have to admit -- I miss the place. I yearn for the New Release section, the box art you can hold in your hands, the face to face chatting with other renters and store clerks. The thrill-less duty of returning a rental in person is an ache I can live without, especially when you know the rental is three days late and you never found the time to watch it. But returning a video in person is always an excuse to rent another -- then another, and another. 

Fridays nights were always movie night when I grew up. We would load up in the mini-van and head to one of three locally owned video stores in town. More times than not we hit up OK VIDEO. The other two stores, DISCOUNT VIDEO and POP-N-GO VIDEO, were run by honest people, but neither possessed the creative rental strategy of OK VIDEO. Their strategy, in a roundabout way, worked fairly similar to that of NETFLIX -- the more you rent, the cheaper the price it gets. We would rent, at a minimum, five titles on Friday night, many of which we'd seen countless times. MONTY PYTHON, FOOTLOOSE, POLTERGEIST, THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP, RED DAWN, CHEECH AND CHONG, R-rated, Pg-13, Disney, John Carpenter -- our VCR knew no boundaries.  Yet every Friday night there were select films that I would study the box art of, and every Friday night I would put the box back. These were films that were way too sexy, or scared the hell out of me. Most notably, there was Mrs. Robinson seductively pulling at her stockinged raised leg as Dustin Hoffman's Ben Braddock looks on with shirt half-way unbuttoned, his hands in pant pockets, feet bare. "Mrs. Robinson, are you trying to seduce me?" 

Then there was THE BROTHER FROM ANOTHER PLANET. As simple as box art gets -- title of the film at the top of the box, and a nondescript still from the film at the bottom. It was that nondescript image though that totally creeped me out! A freaky dude in a red shirt clutching a spray-painted wall -- he appeared to be out of breath from running, and to me, it was obvious there was no where else for him to run. He had reached the end of the line. 

This act of picking up THE BROTHER FROM ANOTHER PLANET and then setting it back down lasted until just a few weeks ago. Even when the film came in the mail from NETFLIX, I was scared as hell. The director of the film, John Sayles, is an honest guy, as honest as the owners of DISCOUNT VIDEO and POP-N-GO VIDEO. He's an unsung hero of American independent filmmaking -- his one breakout film was 1996's LONESTAR -- though he's been on the scene for three decades. Like Werner Herzog, John Sayles rarely makes the same film twice -- yet unlike Herzog, he's quite centric to the American landscape. He's explored the world of a West Virginia mining community, the wilderness of Alaska, the states of New Jersey and Florida -- all of which, in their own way, seem to be on the outer boundaries. THE BROTHER FROM ANOTHER PLANET takes place in New York City during the early 80s. I'm looking forward to finally watching it - if anything, to take me back to the aisles of the local video store.