I rarely get these, but this message on the Tempe DVD YouTube account this morning just proves how such services have only served to train assholes to think that all content should be free.

“Your shit belongs on youtube, not for sale at the ridiculous price of 19.99.”

He’s referring to the trailers posted there, and I guess feels that the movies should be offered for free as well. Has this guy ever heard of Bittorrent? LOL

While driving through my old stomping grounds in Springfield Township, Ohio today to meet my father for our usual mid-week lunch at our favorite Chinese place, I was aghast to see that the last of my old Ohio offices had finally been torn down.

This wasn’t just any old office — it was the one where most of the production of my first feature film, THE DEAD NEXT DOOR, was staged, circa 1986-1987. I couldn’t resist stopping to grab a quick photo of the now-empty lot on my iPhone today, similar to an old shot of the back entrance to the building from that era, which you can see side by side above — and that got some old memories coming back.

But let’s start at the beginning: My first office was actually the basement of an empty house my grandmother owned in Ellet, a suburb of Akron, Ohio. It overlooked Interstate 76 and was the site of more than one minor accident because the driveway was practically on top of the street. Most of the prep work for THE DEAD NEXT DOOR was done at that location, where I spent many long nights writing and rewriting the script on an old Brother electronic typewriter (ah, those were the days!).

We even did our casting in that office, using the garage (?!) as our little stage. Because winter was fast approaching, the project wound up being delayed into the spring. By now the film had expanded beyond my original intentions, with literally thousands of Northeast Ohio residents signing up to play zombie extras or cult members thanks to a tsunami of local press which included newspapers, radio and television.

For that reason, I started looking for a new office with a little more space, which is when I stumbled across 1203 Canton Road in Springfield Township around February, 1986. As you can see from the left-hand side photo of the rear of the building taken that same year, the building was an old military bunker-style Quonset hut design. The top floor was a video store (ironically), but we were able to rent the basement for cheap and that became the new Amsco Studios (the precursor of Tempe Entertainment).

Since the basement was just one wide-open room, my old school chum we lovingly referred to as “Spud” was drafted into putting up some threadbare drywall walls so we could at least have a few small offices, a meeting room and some storage for props & wardrobe. It wasn’t much, but we called it home.

Holding a DEAD NEXT DOOR production meeting, circa 1986.

By a stroke of fate, sometime that spring, the video store above us closed up shop and we were able to secure rental of the entire building. This was a godsend, because the high, rounded ceiling and big open space once occupied by the video store meant that we had just enough room to actually build a single set — complete with lights mounted above and a backdrop. It was suddenly like a real Hollywood production! There were also a few more rooms toward the back of the top floor, which we put to use for our burgeoning collection of props & wardrobe as well as eventually a space for the 3/4″ editing system the movie was cut on.

Our faux soundstage, which production designer Jon Killough (with some help from a host of others) did a smashing job of constructing, actually became three sets in one (or technically, four, if you count the same one twice).

The main use was for the inside of the farmhouse bedroom at the beginning of the film where Scotty Spiegel meets his maker. I had the crazy idea to use a zombie puppet head on a real person’s body, which necessitated us cutting a hole in the wall for that person’s real head to stick out of — no way we could pull that off on location. After we wrapped the farmhouse bedroom set, Jon reworked it as the inside of Dr. Bow’s shed laboratory, then again as the cult member’s security room and armory.

Unfortunately, the first couple weeks of footage wound up being largely ruined by an exposure problem with our Super-8mm camera, so the original farmhouse bedroom set had to be recreated yet again! But it was truly a blessing in disguise, since we had a little more money the second time around and could afford to wallpaper and decorate it more appropriately. (If you have the Anchor Bay DVD of the film, you can see some of the original set in the extras — the room with the stark white walls, which was a serious “bad” on my part to have in the first place. You’ll also see the front entrance to this office during the “Hands Across America” footage.)

In the upstairs of the old office, working on DEAD NEXT DOOR editing.

For all intents and purposes, I basically lived at that office — I’d go back to my parents’ house to sleep, but every waking moment beyond that was spent at that office, which we occupied from early 1986 until sometime the following year, when I found another ramshackle storefront available for about the same money just up the street. So when I saw that office torn down today, it was kind of a somber moment for me. A flood of memories came back, both good and bad, from the bygone, carefree days of making THE DEAD NEXT DOOR. Heck, I’m not even ashamed to confess that my girlfriend (later wife, still later ex-wife) and I even blossomed and later “consummated” our relationship at that office — but you don’t need any more sordid details on that subject.

It’s sort of ironic — all four of the offices that I had in Ohio have now been razed, as I realized this morning! The city bought my grandmother’s house where the first office was located and tore it down many years ago to widen the street. My third office in Springfield Township (where we did reshoots and completed most of the post work on DEAD NEXT DOOR) was torn down as well and remains an empty lot to this day. Even my fourth office in Mogadore, Ohio (1989-1990) was torn down to make way for a Hungry Howie’s Pizza and a Subway. (I finished ROBOT NINJA there and shot a chunk of SKINNED ALIVE as well.) The Quonset hut office was the last man standing, and that is now gone as well.

Of course, given the fact that all of these buildings were lucky to be standing even at the time we were occupying them back in the late ’80s, it’s a wonder that none of them had fallen down much earlier…

I’ve had a number of folks randomly drop me a line wondering what became of the last work-for-hire feature that I directed, DEADLY STINGERS (which I not-so-affectionately refer to as DEADLY STINKERS). Much to my surprise, in recent weeks I’ve gotten word that the movie is actually playing on television in the United Kingdom after sitting on a shelf for nearly 7 years (?!).

As a result of it finally getting airplay, it’s all over the torrent sites now, just waiting for anyone who really wants to see it to download it. (Or, if you just want a guilt-free taste of the movie, you can check out the original promo trailer.) But remember, if you’re not in the U.K., Google is your friend.

P.S.: I have no idea who did the artwork above but I thought it was kind of cool for something thrown together for a torrent site. Kudos!

Update 12/30/09: Turns out I have to eat a little crow on part of this post: Only hours after writing this, Netflix coughed up a purchase order for TAINTLIGHT at long last, so thanks to everyone who put it in their queue it should be available to rent there shortly after the New Year. Still no word one way or another re: COCKHAMMER, though…

Hard to believe, but in just a couple of days, 2009 will be a distant memory. Seems like only yesterday that I was writing a blog about how much 2008 sucked and how I was looking forward to what 2009 would bring. And bring it did!

2009 kicked off with a bang — and no, I don’t mean the January 21 inauguration of President Barack Obama that everyone was so enamored by. (Speaking of things that seem like a distant memory now, and considering his flaccid track record of actual accomplishments so far…)

For my wife and I, the year officially started with a bang little more than a week later with the birth of our son, Benjamin Robert Bookwalter, on January 29. I think the morning of January 28 was the worst snowstorm of the season, and here we were, making our way to the hospital for what would eventually be another 18 hours of waiting before the little guy finally showed up at 3:30 am on the 29th.

As I write this, Benji is officially 11 months old now, and it goes without saying that his presence has made for the best year of our lives. He’s already on his feet and walking, terrorizing our dog & cat, clearing my shelves of DVDs and even fighting me for the universal remote control. He even made his first trip overseas back in September with Mommy to visit his extended family in Ukraine, passport and all.

While I fear for his future as any parent does (particularly because of the overall economic and world situation today), I am really looking forward to watching him grow up and hopefully influencing him to be the great dude we hope he will be. I’ve had a lot of experience with babies over the years, but mostly the adult kind — you know, the immature folks who make everything you try to accomplish a pain in the ass. I’m thinking this experience will be a lot more rewarding.

It seems like every year, the movie biz gets a little further away from me. A decade ago, I would have fretted and stressed about this situation, but today I have more than made my peace with it — especially when it was my choice to step away from it in the first place. I haven’t made a new movie since I wrapped the ill-fated DEADLY STINGERS in early 2003, which marks the longest stretch (almost 7 years now!) without directing a movie since 2000, when it took me 4 years to get from POLYMORPH to WITCHOUSE 2: BLOOD COVEN.

I continue to get e-mail or messages on Facebook/MySpace from kind folks who dig the old flicks and inquire when I’ll be making another movie. I have always appreciated the support, but the fact is, that day may never come. I chalk it up to a “perfect storm” of events which include getting burned out producing flicks for Full Moon, growing tired of dealing with the bullshit that goes along with making movies (trust me, it’s really not worth it at this level of the biz), and mostly just the desire to finally settle down with a sane woman and start a family. I’ve made less money from actually directing movies than I have from producing, post work or distribution — take note of that, newcomers!

That’s not to say that I’ll never make another movie — I’ve executive produced a few in recent years to keep the Tempe DVD label going, so I’m not completely out of the game (yet). It’s sort of ironic that all the great technology I always hoped would come finally arrived, just in time for me to lose interest in using it! There’s nothing special about making these little movies anymore, since everyone is doing it. But despite all the great technology, for the most part the heart seems to have gone out of no-budget moviemaking. After cranking out so much stuff in the first couple years of this decade, I just decided to step back and focus on life and leave the rest of the nonsense to others.

It’s also ironic that I worked so hard years ago to set up Tempe DVD as a way to distribute my own product, only to totally lose interest in feeding that engine with new product somewhere along the way. After a miserable 2008, this year Tempe only released 3 of movies on our labels — PLATOON OF THE DEAD on Tempe DVD (which I also financed), THE BRASS RING on Fat Cat DVD (an acquisition) and Chris Seaver’s TAINTLIGHT on Splatter Rampage. The rest of our distribution came from consignment deals with other producers, where Tempe picks up finished goods and sells them to our accounts. It worked out well for me since I didn’t have to foot the bill to manufacture product, and it worked out for most of the producers since they turned idle product into quick cash.

PLATOON OF THE DEAD was actually supposed to debut in 2008 (it was shot in late 2007!), but post-production problems dragged things on, and I ultimately held off doing anything with it since the year seemed to be going so lousy anyway. It finally debuted in June of this year and went on to be one of the most profitable releases I’ve had in years — so I guess that’s the way things were supposed to work out. Strangely, it also was one of the most reviled: The YouTube and Netflix user comments are almost universally negative! I don’t think I’ve ever released a movie that did so well financially, yet was so hated by viewers. Go figure. (And sure enough, as I write this, another nasty comment from a YouTube viewer just arrived. Good thing I signed up for Google AdSense, so I actually get paid a few sheckles for them having commented on it…)

Largely thanks to PLATOON OF THE DEAD and the consignment deals with other producers, 2009 was a much better year overall for my DVD biz. Tempe didn’t make any kind of crazy record profit, but compared with the last few years, this year was a winner indeed.

Of course, that will likely be changing in 2010, since it appears we’ve lost some support from once-reliable vendors like Netflix, who have thus far passed on our last two releases (TAINTLIGHT and another consignment title, Hack Movies’ COCKHAMMER). Netflix has historically made it worthwhile to release some of these little movies, so you may see even fewer releases (both from Tempe and others) in 2010 as a result of their policy changes.

I wrote another blog on that subject which you can read here, but the short version is, Netflix is going to start cherry-picking which titles they stock, rather than taking a few copies of everything that’s released. If you’re a fan of no-budget cinema, it’s in your best interest to send a nice e-mail to Netflix voicing your displeasure at this disturbing trend — Tempe isn’t the only label that will be affected by this, and soon Netflix will likely resemble Redbox, Blockbuster and other outlets that only stock studio releases. The days of the “endless virtual catalog” may indeed be over.

Speaking of over, I think we’re starting to see the beginning of the end of the DVD biz as we know it anyway. The Hollywood studios can’t even seem to maintain their iron-fisted hold on the business — as they do battle with new rental outlets like Redbox, their old allies like Blockbuster are starting to drop like flies. Piracy is rampant thanks to the ease of downloading over high-speed connections. Blu-ray is not making up for the blood being lost on the DVD side. More viewers are turning to streaming options. The optical disc will likely be around for awhile — but probably as a “burn on demand” collectible item rather than the mass-produced packaged product we see today.

Oh, the horror!

On a more upbeat note, I expanded my so-called journalistic endeavors this year. In addition to freelance writing for DV Magazine the last 2 years, in November I started blogging for MacLife.com. It’s a particularly passionate gig for me — getting paid to report on all things Apple is like a dream come true! The fact that it’s a steadier (and more reliable) gig than the DVD business is a big plus as well, but for now I haven’t given up on Tempe Video, and I’ll continue to face those challenges head-on.

All in all, 2009 wound up being a pretty good year for me personally, especially considering the economic turmoil many have faced. Last year was my own personal economic turmoil, so I can relate and feel your pain! But the old adage holds true: Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

I’m now cautiously optimistic about 2010… how about you?

Yeah, yeah… I know I haven’t been blogging much here lately. Freelance work has been consuming most of my time when I’m not with family (or trying to claw out an existence with the DVD biz), and this month I started blogging for MacLife.com, the web portal for Mac|Life magazine.

I realize it’s not of much interest for the folks who follow my movie work, but those who know me are well aware that the Mac (and most everything Apple) has been a longtime passion of mine, so it’s quite a thrill to be getting paid to write about the stuff for a change. You can get a list of only my posts by clicking here.

Fear not, I’ll keep posting nonsense here about the movie biz, too…

Update 12/30/09: Thanks to everyone who added TAINTLIGHT to your queues, we finally received a buy on the title from Netflix yesterday so the title should be available from them shortly after the first of the year. You guys are my heroes!

So tomorrow (Tuesday, Nov. 17) is the street date for Tempe’s Splatter Rampage release TAINTLIGHT. It’s the latest horror parody from MULVA: ZOMBIE ASS KICKER! creator Chris Seaver, and as you can tell from the artwork above, it’s a parody of the book/film TWILIGHT. If you buy your DVDs, it’s available now at Tempevideo.com, Amazon.com, DeepDiscount.com and all the usual suspects.

If you choose to rent, then unfortunately your options are now quite limited. Here’s why.

Almost immediately upon announcing TAINTLIGHT, I got a screener request from the folks at Netflix. This almost never happens, since historically they just buy a small quantity of every release and, if demand warrants, they reorder as necessary. So I was a little alarmed at their screener request, since I have offered screeners in the past and was roundly ignored. (I don’t blame them, they are buying hundreds of new movies every week, so it’s impossible to watch them all.) I presumed that their interest in TAINTLIGHT was based on the cover being such a close parody of TWILIGHT, and maybe they just wanted to see what the flick was like in case it warranted a larger (or smaller?) buy.

Turns out, the TAINTLIGHT release basically corresponded with a new policy now in effect at Netflix: they’re no longer buying every title. This news wouldn’t have been so shocking in the current economy, except for the fact that they had just reported a record profit for the quarter and a record number of new subscribers, which means they are flush with cash and eager viewers.

So why choose now to start cherry-picking which titles get in? It smacks of a Blockbusterian thing to do — except in Big Blue’s case, they have limited shelf space and there’s no doubt that their customers are mostly looking for the latest & greatest Hollywood… er… “blockbusters.” Netflix has always been the “anti-Blockbuster,” the place where film buffs could discover new gems, little movies from obscure labels like Tempe that Hollywood has mostly ignored. But with this new policy change, it’s looking like Netflix will fall into line with the rest of the video retail world and start limiting your choices.

That’s a disappointing turn of events, for at least two reasons.

It goes without saying that it’s going to affect my company’s bottom line moving into 2010, since Tempe counts on Netflix to buy at least a few copies of every title. They’re one of the few vendors we have who don’t return product and who pay on time without fail, and their buy helps justify the existence of some titles that might otherwise never see the light of day. While I have already cut back significantly in the last couple years on how many titles Tempe releases, moving forward it seems I’ll have to reduce that number even more (assuming I can stay in business in the first place) and hope that the titles I do choose to release are deemed “worthy” of a Netflix buy.

The other reason this is disappointing is that I’ve been a longtime fan of Netflix, and not just because they helped keep food on my family’s table. Even when I lived in Los Angeles, it was just the most convenient way to get movies, and to be able to choose almost anything from their infinite shelves, rather than being limited to Hollywood’s “finest” at Blockbuster or Hollywood Video (or now, Redbox).

I guess in hindsight, I should have seen this coming. Netflix’s streaming division essentially hung us out to dry in mid-2008, when they started investing all of their money into a deal with Starz and other studios, in an effort to bring Hollywood’s “finest” to you via the Internet. Hey, I can’t blame them… I watch a lot of that stuff too, and streaming makes it even easier than waiting for it in the mail. Tempe had its foot in the door with Netflix streaming well before the majors, and when the service launched in early 2007, we had a pretty nice year as a result. But, as I’ve learned time and time again, the minute the majors finally board the gravy train, the little guy will get hung out to dry. When the streaming buys stopped in 2008, it contributed to that year being one of the worst we’ve ever had. (Not totally blamed on Netflix, it was just a bad year for Tempe — and most everyone else in DVD — all around.)

2009 has thus far been much better, and just prior to learning of the new policy change on the DVD side, we actually got our foot back in the door with the streaming division thanks to PLATOON OF THE DEAD, which wound up being something of a minor hit for us this year. So I was looking forward to keeping the good vibrations echoing into TAINTLIGHT, which seemed like kind of a no-brainer for them to buy given what it was. But you can probably guess how this story ends, since the street date arrives tomorrow and there’s no TAINTLIGHT to be had at Netflix, either on DVD or streaming. (The streaming division tends to base their buys on the DVD side, so you won’t see one without the other.)

Although, that’s not entirely true. TAINTLIGHT is, in fact, listed on their site, but the “Add” button has now been replaced by a “Save” button, and the availability date has been changed from November 17 to “Unknown.” It seems the buyers have decided to wait for some magical “queue metric” number to arrive before they’ll order even a few copies of the movie, so with any luck you might see it from them on DVD before year’s end. Or, maybe never… who knows?

This is a double-edged sword for Tempe. Our other sales for TAINTLIGHT haven’t been huge, but they’ve been decent enough considering the movie’s modest budget, and reorders are coming in, which is always a good thing. That means that people are slowly discovering the title, and maybe buying it out of curiosity instead of renting it (since that option has largely been taken away from them). I’ve always held the theory anyway that by selling to Netflix, some chucklehead out there is getting the disc, ripping it, returning it and posting it as a torrent file for all of his loser friends to share, all without any money leaving his pocket… mostly because all of our new release seem to wind up as torrents within a few days of street date. At least if those jokers have to actually buy a copy, it might slow the tide of illegal downloads of the movie for a change, which has become a disturbing trend in recent years.

Anyway, in the words of SPINAL TAP’s Marti DiBergi, “Enough of my yakkin’.”

If you happen to be a Chris Seaver or Tempe fan, head over to Netflix and throw TAINTLIGHT in your queue. If enough people do this, it might help encourage them to buy and make it available to the cheaper SOBs among you. And even if you’re not a fan of us, you might consider doing it anyway (you can always remove it later!), because Netflix appears to be on the path to limit your viewing choices, and that’s a disturbing trend that’s not good for anyone…

Apple surprised everyone last week by unleashing their latest 10.6 version of Mac OS X (aka Snow Leopard) a bit early. It was expected in September, but the August 28 release date was welcomed by us “early adopters” who have gotten tired of reading about how slick it is on blogs. Show me the white cat, already!

And a slick beast it is. Of course, on the surface it’s a minor update offering very little in the way of new features… at least to casual users who might not appreciate the small nuances.

During my two weeks with the Palm Pre, the one thing I missed the most was how it notified me of new e-mail on all of my accounts via push. Any time an e-mail arrived in my inbox — regardless of which account it was — the Pre would light up and show me a short preview of the e-mail. If it was junk mail, I could avoid having to open up my mail just to be disappointed (same goes for random e-mails from friends or colleagues that aren’t time-sensitive).

On the iPhone, even with OS 3.0, there are only two options for push e-mail: MobileMe (which I have, and use for personal e-mail) or an Exchange account. But even with those, I’m still not getting the same experience from the Pre — I still have to actually unlock the phone and go into Mail (which kills the battery faster) instead of the iPhone displaying a preview notification.

That is, until I found the PushMail app.

Simon Patarin’s PushMail is the model of simplicity — there’s only one screen (below) with an option to either login to the service or register. (It’s so simple that iTunes displays the size of the app to be “0.0 MB”!)

Once you register, you set up your e-mail accounts to also forward to yourusername@dopushmail.com. When you do, PushMail will use the push notification service in OS 3.0 to throw up on-screen notifications (such as the one at the top of the page) as each e-mail arrives. You can choose to either ignore it, or unlock the phone and fetch your mail. The app doesn’t actually push the e-mail to your phone, it just alerts you as each e-mail arrives — for e-mail addicts like me, this is a godsend, and I’ve already noticed my battery life has improved as a result. (Apple should, at the very least, build this into the iPhone OS so it works with regular push e-mail, too.)

In my experience over the last month or so, PushMail has yet to fail me. The notifications arrive immediately, even moments before they’re pushed to my desktop Mail.app via IMAP-IDLE! It works beautifully with my Dreamhost-hosted Tempevideo.com addresses as well as Gmail. (Sadly, AOL does not allow e-mail forwarding, so my rarely-used address there doesn’t throw up notifications, but that’s not the fault of PushMail.)

Prior to finding PushMail, I tried another method, which was using a free trial of the Mail2Web.com Mobile Email service (first 60 days free, $4.95 per month thereafter). This allows you to forward your e-mail to their Exchange servers, then you can set up the iPhone to receive it via push. It was great to notify me of new e-mail, but then I had the problem of having the same address getting e-mail in two different places. And it still didn’t throw up notifications as new e-mails arrived, which was the whole point.

Best of all, PushMail is currently a mere $2.99 (it was actually $4.99 when I bought it, but even that price is well worth it)! There are no subscription fees, that’s the lifetime price of admission. Once you register, the app itself is essentially useless, so I moved it out of sight to the last page of my apps since it “just works” without further need of opening it unless you need to change your registration for some reason. It’s easily the best, most useful purchase I’ve made since the App Store opened. If you’re an e-mail junkie, definitely give it a look!

(Oh, and AOL users: There is another method to get push notifications using Prowl, an iPhone app that takes your desktop Growl notifications and pushes them to the phone. Of course, the bummer of that method is it requires your desktop computer to be running — which means, no notifications when it’s off or sleeping. But it’s a handy app to have as well if you’re a heavy Growl user.)

OK, with all due respect to those who knew & loved this DJ AM guy when he was alive… am I alone in scratching my head and thinking, “Who the fahrvergnügen is that guy, anyway?!” And he’s just one of an increasingly-long list of “celebrities” that make me feel old every time I log onto MySpace and see their dubious list of “Celebrity Updates” such as the one I screen-snapped this morning (above).

Seriously, man… in my day, deejays were goofy guys like Dr. Johnny Fever of WKRP IN CINCINNATI fame who could barely hold down a job as they jumped from radio station to radio station all across this great land of ours. The most “celebrity” these guys got was the occasional live remote at a local car dealership or shopping mall!

These days, we have to contend with hearing about DJs who aren’t even on the friggin’ radio! I mean, seriously… would anyone have ever heard of Samantha Ronson if she hadn’t started dating Lindsay Lohan? I guess she must be good at spinning some “def jams” in some trendy nightspots that I’d rather be dead than step inside of, but does that really make her a “celebrity”…?

And let’s go back to DJ AM for a moment. I think the first time I heard that joker’s “name” was after that fateful plane crash last year where he and another pseudo-celeb-I’ve-never-heard-of, Travis Barker, both survived. I scratched my head trying to figure out why either of those guys warranted an Associated Press news story when I hadn’t heard of either one of them! (Again, no offense to friends, family and fans… I assume they must have some.)

Now to be fair to these “celebs”, I’m not the hippest guy in the room. I was in my heyday back in the ’80s, listening to all that cutting-edge new wave music when the rest of my school was crooning Journey songs. But at least my bands were frequently on the radio — acts like Madness or Naked Eyes or Wall of Voodoo actually got airplay and plenty of MTV face time. People had actually heard of those bands, or at least knew them by the songs. (And people are still listening to that stuff even now.) I remember thinking that good music died in the ’90s, but the reality is, there was still an awful lot of good stuff in that decade (as my iTunes library reminds me). The real death of the music industry started around the year 2000, and almost 10 years later, it’s only gotten worse.

So no offense to Shanna Moakler or Samantha Ronson or Ciara or Clifton Collins Jr. or DJ AM… I don’t know who any of you are and chances are, my life is A-OK all the same. I watch more movies than anyone else I know, I consume a fair amount of television and I read a ridiculous amount of news & information thanks to RSS feeds. I hear your names, I see your “Celebrity Updates” on MySpace, but I still don’t care. Go ahead, call me an “unhip” old man if you want. I can live with that.

And oh, by the way… hey, you kids! Get off my damn lawn!

It goes without saying that consumers are in love with Redbox, the Coinstar-owned company who in just a few short years has built up a formidable rental kiosk business against the likes of mail-order favorite Netflix. I mean, DVD rentals for a buck a night? What’s not to like? (Unless you like indie fare like Tempe… Redbox is for the big boys only.)

Somebody explain that to the bigwigs in Hollywood. First they succeeded in mostly squashing the 99¢ iTunes new release (that’ll be $1.29 now, thankyouverymuch), and now they’re trying to put the squeeze on the $1 DVD rental.

Universal Studios was the first of the majors to raise a stink, telling its wholesalers not to sell to Redbox until 30 days after everyone else has gotten its product. After getting product for its kiosks in less above-board ways in order to have it available on street date (including buying them straight off the shelves of Wal-Mart and other cheap outlets!), Redbox sued Universal in an effort to keep the good times rolling.

This week, they did the same with 20th Century Fox, who also announced they were neutering Redbox until 30 days after street date. And now Warner Bros. is joining the party, announcing a new initiative to sell directly to kiosk vendors but only allowing them to have new releases — wait for it — 28 days after street.

What the studios are really doing is punishing Redbox for having a successful business model. People are using those big red kiosks in this crappy economy, and why not? $1 per night is right out of the grand old ’80s, when mom ‘n pop video stores were plentiful. It’s an idea that worked 25-30 years ago, so why shouldn’t it work now?

Well, for one thing, $1 doesn’t go as far as it used to… if everyone is paying $1 to rent one of Hollywood’s finest instead of rushing to Best Buy or Wal-Mart to actually buy the DVD, you can start to see where the problem is (movies cost more now). But what the major studios fail to realize is that the DVD gold rush of the late ’90s and early ’00s is over. People aren’t collecting like they used to, especially since the majority of most-wanted movies have already come to DVD long ago (and likely in several different editions… I’m looking at you, Anchor Bay!).

I know I’m guilty of such depressed economics… I used to buy 10-15 discs a week back in 1998, and it was an exciting time to be a movie collector. Hell, I’d buy stuff I hadn’t seen before, just because it was so much fun! But I haven’t spent like that in a long time, mostly because my collection has grown to an unwieldy size, but also because I’ve grown older and I choose to spend my money elsewhere. (Especially true now that there’s a baby in the house!)

And let’s not forget, Hollywood has been on a real bum ride lately. The movies they’re releasing are, by and large, flat-out bad. And consumers know it, no matter how much the big boys are spending to market ‘em like it ain’t so. We’ll spend $1 to take a chance on something like STRANGE WILDERNESS, a movie so bad it took me several sittings before I finished it all (the wife made me turn it off after the first half, and about killed me for making her watch that much to begin with). Or BALLS OUT: GARY THE TENNIS COACH, which I still haven’t finished watching.

Thankfully, with a grandfathered Netflix subscription that nets me 4 movies at a time for only $18.99 per month and with the help of a great website called Inside Redbox for some free promo codes (I have yet to give Redbox even $1, cheap bastard that I am), I have access to way more movies than I’d ever want to watch. Unfortunately, so many of them are bad, I’ve started not to care.

Now that Hollywood is going to punish Redbox for its success by withholding their crappy movies until a month after street date, I’ll probably be watching even less of them. So, thank you, Hollywood! Way to make me even less interested in your crap. Meanwhile, I fear that the $1 rental will soon go the way of the 99¢ iTunes download, if the studios have their way.

Thankfully, the fall TV season is coming, and that will keep me busy with stuff that I actually give a damn about…