Ash Cook and Video Store•Age Want You to Watch More Movies
Once upon a time, there was a video store on every block. Inside, underneath harsh fluorescent lights, were thousands of movies available to borrow. There was a thrill to being trusted by your friends and family to wander the aisles and pick out what everyone would watch for movie night. In the years since, the video store has turned digital, through streaming or rental services on TV filled to the gills with options. Unlike other new physical media companies that have been created in recent years, Video Store•Age, founded by Ash Cook [Hoyle], wants to blend the analog feel of these video stores with the accessibility modern technology affords.
For almost a decade, Cook worked as a features programmer at the Sundance Film Festival, and now serves as the Festival Director of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival. Part of his role as a programmer is to watch upwards of ten feature films a day when in the thick of the program planning. More than that, Cook sees the role of programmer as a champion to filmmakers in helping to get their voices in front of a large crowd. With the creation of Video Store•Age, he’s been able to slow down his film intake and focus on supporting these artists.
“Working at a place like Sundance, it’s at the top of the field. When you’re programming at a festival like that, you’re watching at a volume that is superhuman. Eight to ten feature films a day, seven days a week. With Video Store•Age, that kind of volume is, mercifully, no longer part of my experience. Video Store•Age is much more about films and finding their audience than about presenting them in a very specific context in competition at a high-level festival with a market attached to it.”
Photo credit: Myles Pettengill
Maybe the film lover’s equivalent of “we should start a band” is “we should start a distribution label.” Video Store•Age is the brainchild of Cook with Aidan Dick serving as the company’s COO. The company describes itself as “DVDs conjugated in the present tense” and prides itself on curating a collection of films that is unique with a uniting viewpoint. The creation of Video Store•Age was not something that happened overnight.
“I’ve been spending a long time thinking about how I can use this career to be part of forming what’s next in the independent landscape, knowing that Sundance is obviously a beacon and a stalwart of that part of the industry, but is functionally different from what it was at the start. Forty years ago, it was a very radical interruptive force, and now it’s part of the system it was meant to interrupt in a wonderful, important, vital, exciting way.”
“I was just thinking, okay, I’ve got a Vimeo link to every movie that’s been made for years and years. These movies rock and many of them, films I had supported through festival programming, finance, and elsewhere, were underseen. I was having these conversations about movies I liked, and eventually your friends reach a point where they’re like, dude, shut the fuck up. If I can’t watch this movie, please stop talking to me about it.”
“It started as a pet project. I’ll just throw a few events in LA for those few films I’ve always loved and lost the fight over getting into a really competitive program. As I started having conversations with those filmmakers, the momentum started becoming really clear. Even in the cases where those films had distributors attached, they were interested in doing this as well.”
Thus, Video Store•Age was born. Unlike other modern distributors, Cook and his team aren’t in the business of DVDs or Blu-rays, but rather patent pending-encrypted USBs. This decision goes back to Cook’s desire to blend the accessibility of technology with the tangibility of analog.
“We’re seeing a resurgence of visible media. Renaissance even. People are buying vinyl at unbelievable rates and they can’t even play them. It’s not even about the utility, it’s about the object. I think everybody can understand that a tactile cultural token is exciting, especially when so much has gone. If you’re a person who supports independent film, it’s your responsibility to think about where the ease of streaming comes from, and from whom is that value extracted?”
“It’s great to pay $15 a month to have access to a zillion movies, but if each one used to be worth this amount of money for me to have, and I’m not paying that anymore, who’s getting paid? The answer is the platforms. I think we all have spent a few years being like a kid in a candy shop because we had so much access. Now, we all have cavities and we’ve got a stomachache. There’s no curatorial point of view from these platforms. It’s just about gluttony.”
“The reintroduction of a little bit of friction, I think, is exciting to take it back to a place that feels intentional, feels driven by choice. We’re offering a curatorial point of view that makes some degree of sense. You have that special feeling where you plug it in, it’s not a streaming platform. Even the independent ones are great, but they don’t feel different from the user experience perspective. This is different. You have to plug it in, sit down, and figure out how to use it.”
“The consensus that has been building across the independent film industry is that distribution is broken. I’ve been hearing that said in so many rooms and thinking, okay, what’s an idea of something that is fun to shake things up. The USB drive, to me, is so simple because you can plug it into your computer without worrying about having an extra device.”
Photo credit: Myles Pettengill
“Then, we have to take security seriously, making sure that there’s not a way for people to rip the movie off the drive. The encryption software basically means there’s a player mounted on the drive itself so you can’t manipulate the files, you can’t even access them. It’s pretty much as secure as a DVD, but it’s just much more usable. You’re not plugging in a million things.”
In the shop, you’ll find their Winter 2026 collection, featuring films like Heightened Scrutiny, The People’s Joker, and more. You can purchase the films individually or you can buy the entire Winter 2026 collection. Say you purchase The People’s Joker and want to come back for seconds after seeing how great Vera Drew’s epic DIY parody film is. Video Store•Age offers a discount to re-up your drive with more features.
“The drives have the advantage of being much more nimble than things like DVDs. It means we can be at the world premiere of Danny Is My Boyfriend with a copy of the film. That’s revolutionary. Never would you be able to have print media with you there in the old models with the VHS or the DVD. The nimbleness is a big part of why we’re excited by this model.”
“The idea that you can build a library on the drive keeps the cost in a reasonable place for the consumer. The drive itself is a value. Our designer did a great job. They’re gorgeous, they’re sexy, they’re cool. But also, the value is in the material, you know?”
“Our cadence is that we’re intending to release five features and five shorts on a quarterly basis. We’ll keep the design of the drives for each year and then redesign them because they’re collectible themselves. You can buy one drive that looks a certain way, get all the movies we’ve released in the year, and then buy your new one in the next turn of the cycle. We’re creating a scenario where our audience will have a higher degree of risk-taking in their taste.”
As a kick-off, Video Store•Age threw a screening of The People’s Joker with writer, director, and star Drew in attendance. For those unaware of the saga of The People’s Joker, it premiered at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival, but the next morning, all subsequent screenings at the festival were canceled. Its United States premiere was almost a full year later, at the 2023 Outfest, before its theatrical release in 2024.
Photo credit: Myles Pettengill
“We want films that have mythology around them. The People’s Joker always seemed indicative of the punk rock, DIY aesthetic feeling we have. When we reached out to Vera Drew, she was super, super game. We’re in such a beneficial position to be able to work with people who get it and believe our idea is powerful and potent.”
“These events are meant to be a reconstitution of the festival experience, but changing the orders of operations. The hope is to provide someone with a positive social experience. You’re going to a party and you’re going to meet other people who are interested in a film. For The People’s Joker event, we had a musical comedy act introduce the film, then we screened a piece of lost media that’s part of the mythology of the film. Then Vera did a live commentary where she played the movie muted and just talked for an hour and a half. What a gift that is.”
Video Store•Age has partnerships with Light Phone and Reflectacles, two companies that also deeply believe in intentional technology. Light Phone is a smart phone, but one that takes a lot of the bells and whistles out of the device. You can still make phone calls, get directions, listen to music, and text, but it’s all structured in a way that allows the user to be more present. Similarly, Reflectacles is a company that specializes in eyeglasses that gives the wearer privacy in biometric tracking scenarios while also looking really cool.
“By working together, we’ve been able to present ourselves in this constellation of businesses, products, and people who are trying to approach technology in ways that feel much more human than I think a lot of what’s out there on the market. Even though we all do different things, it’s the same principles that drive us. These big products that we’re trying to interrupt are powerful.”
“We’re part of the offering of options of how someone can lead a more intentional technological life. How they can lead a more independently-minded cinematic life. It’s a point of pride for us that we’re in the game of opening possibilities, creating channels, and providing an alternative.”
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