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For two years after the Santa Monica store‘s closure, Megan Ellison’s Annapurna Pictures paid for storage of the collection and supported the foundation while new plans were put in place. “It’s really a miracle that we’re here.”īoth Tauber and Polinger acknowledge that the new beginning would not be possible without Maggie Mackay, executive director of the Vidiots Foundation since 2016 and main initiator of the reopening plan. “It has been such a transformation and such a huge endeavor, with so many obstacles along the way,” said Polinger.
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Besides a video store, the newly renovated complex at the Eagle Theatre in Eagle Rock includes a 271-seat movie theater, a beer and wine bar, and a smaller micro-cinema space that can also be used for community and educational programs. Tauber sat recently with Polinger in the comfy and inviting theater space of the revived Vidiots, which just reopened. Of course I hoped it would, but we were just way burnt out by the time we were closing down.” It was really hard to imagine this was really going to happen. “I know that was the plan from the beginning, but I think by the time we shut down, I was so worn out and exhausted from trying to keep the business going and all the negativity and struggle. “I didn’t really think it would,” said Tauber, reflecting on whether the store could bounce back after years of financial struggle with the rise of emerging streaming services.
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Opened in 1985, the beloved rental shop had a collection of more than 50,000 titles on various media formats that was put into storage, potentially never to be publicly available again. When the Santa Monica video store Vidiots, which had become a local cultural institution, closed in February 2017, founders Patty Polinger and Cathy Tauber had their doubts as to whether the store would ever rebound.
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