Original-Cin Q&A: I Like Movies Director, Stars on Recreating the Video Store Experience
By Bonnie Laufer
Toronto writer-director Chandler Levack makes her feature film debut with I Like Movies, a dramedy based on her own experience working at a Blockbuster video store in the early 2000s.
It centers around Lawrence (Isaiah Lehtinen), a socially inept 17-year-old cinephile who gets a job at the fictional Sequels video store. Anxious about his future — and his desire to attend NYU’s Tisch School of Arts — Lawrence begins alienating the most important people in his life: his best friend (Percy Hynes White), and his single mother (Krista Bridges) while developing a complicated friendship with his older female manager (Romina D’Ugo).
Director Chandler Levack with actor Isaiah Lehtinen.
Our Bonnie Laufer caught up with Chandler Levack, Isaiah Lehtinen and Romina D’ugo to dig into their video-store connections and love for film.
Read our review of I Like Movies
ORIGINAL-CIN: Chandler, this film brought me back to when I was in high school and into university when I worked at a video store. What prompted you to take your own video-store experiences and turn them into a film?
CHANDLER LEVACK: I just really wanted to make a film that was in my own voice. I love comedies and I wanted to make something super-personal. I worked at Blockbuster in high school in Burlington, ON and was obsessed with cinema at the time. I wanted to make this portrait of my weird adolescence because I felt like I'd never really seen a high school movie that was based on my experience, which was mostly waiting in the parking lot of a Blockbuster for my mom to pick me up (laughs).
ORIGINAL-CIN: Isaiah, you really did a great job playing Lawrence who is not such a likable person. But I honestly felt for this guy. What was it like for you to get this script and find a connection to him?
ISAIAH LEHTINEN: I totally connected with Lawrence, even the very indulgent and narcissistic aspects of the character. I read the script and I thought, ‘Oh wow, I've never really seen a guy like this on film.’ I felt that Chandler was describing my own experiences with even the character arc of growing up from being a jaded bitter person to realizing there are other ways to live life. I liked every aspect of the film and it resonated with me. As soon as I got it, I needed to get this. No one else is going to do this material justice!
ORIGINAL-CIN: Romina, you play the manager of a small video store who takes her job pretty seriously. Have you ever worked in a video store?
ROMINA D’UGO: No but my big sister did so I benefited by getting the discount rentals. We were there every Friday and Saturday renting loads of movies, so I grew up in video stores in that sense. Chandler, having had her experience in a video store, kept in touch with the manager that she worked with at the time. She and I connected and she’s a very spunky, smart woman who gave me all the inside tips on how to cut corners where possible, how to be a good manager, and teamwork. She was my number one managerial inspiration.
ORIGINAL-CIN: We learn a lot about your character Alana. It must have been fun to peel away the layers and learn why she works there, who she is, and how she deals with her co her co-workers. I found that fascinating.
ROMINA D’UGO: Thank you, I agree. She is complicated, nuanced, and a neatly messy woman on the interior and I think Chandler did a brilliant job of revealing this about her slowly as the film progresses. I also think she's very relatable. She is an actor which was revealed early on and so many artists can relate to the ups and downs of that but just being a woman in the world, the complexities of that sometimes. She really touched my heart and she's never left.
ORIGINAL-CIN: Chandler can you discuss the challenges of recreating a video store and tracking down all those VHS videos?
CHANDLER LEVACK: That was a real odyssey. I feel lucky that I got to work with a brilliant production designer Claudia Dall’Orso and art director Todd Bolton. There's a reason nobody's making a Blockbuster coming-of-age movie every year. It's because you have to source an entire video store full of movies and there are highly specific props which don't exist anymore.
Our set deck was from an abandoned Blockbuster I heard about in northern Ontario. My executive producer Victoria Lean sent me a picture of someone standing in front of this giant Blockbuster, and I was like, ‘Oh my god, where's this?” It was in Owen Sound. So, I tracked down the property manager and he agreed to meet me in the store and when he opened up the store, it was like being in a time capsule. Everything was just completely left untouched. All the shelving and computers and TVs and a little card that you see in the movie, they're all from this real-life video store.
We also managed to make amazing deals with film distributors and independent filmmakers. My producer talked to Lionsgate and that's how we have a million copies of Rules of Attraction that I personally stocked on the back wall. This is such a love letter to movies. It was important to me to have that authentic Blockbuster look and feel.
ORIGINAL-CIN: Isaiah, what was it like when you walked in and saw this set for the first time? Your mind must have been exploding?
ISAIAH LEHTINEN: It’s been a very long time since I've seen a corporate video store chain. At first it took me aback. Then we had Blockbuster video store employee training day. We learned how to make memberships and we got to work on how you push the cart. Yes, there is a specific way to push the video cart (laughs). There's a lot of little nuances. It's not as easy as it looks.
Romina D’Ugo as Alana.
ORIGINAL-CIN: Romina, was there an immediate bond when you began working with Isaiah?
ROMINDA D’UGO: Isaiah is very special. I remember when I had my first audition tape and this was during COVID so it was on Zoom. I had a chemistry read with Isaiah. When I first read the script, I was imagining what this kid looked like, where are they going to find him and then Isaiah came up on my screen and I was like, ‘Wow, that's epic casting.’ I really fell in love with the language of the script. I fell in love with my character Alana and then at our first table read, all the cast and some crew got together, and we read through the script sort of as a family. I got to see Isaiah embody this person and our characters meeting in that way and that's when I fell in love with the future of the film.
ORIGINAL CIN: You guys just clicked?
ROMINA D’UGO: Definitely. He embodied Lawrence and I knew right away we were on the same page. We weren't spending hours calling each other or hanging out when we weren't on set, but the chemistry came because we showed up with such an intimate understanding of who Lawrence is, and I did the same with Alana.
ORIGINAL-CIN: If you were all working in a video store right now, what would be your go-to recommendation?
CHANDLER LEVACK: I just saw Tár, starring Cate Blanchett directed by Todd Field. It was brilliant, so I’d go with that.
ROMINA D’UGO: Stillwater with Matt Damon.
ISAIAH LEHTINEN: I watched Leaving Las Vegas last week and I really liked it so let’s go with the always amazing Nicolas Cage.
I Like Movies opens March 10 in Toronto (Bell Lightbox), Burlington, Hamilton, Vancouver and Montreal, March 11 in Winnipeg, and throughout the spring in other Canadian cities.