Quentin Tarantino And Roger Avary are going back to their South Bay roots. The duo, who first met and bonded while working together at the fabled Video Archives movie rental store in Manhattan Beach, California, are launching a podcast this summer based on the long-closed store’s collection of close to 8,000 VHS tapes and DVDs, which Tarantino now owns.
Tarantino and Avary, who won the Best Original Screenplay Oscar in 1995 for Pulp Fiction, said in a joint statement, “We never imagined that 30 years after we worked together behind the counter at Video Archives, we would be together again doing the exact same thing we did back then: talking passionately about movies on VHS.”
You can listen to an audio trailer below.
Tarantino and Avary promise to parse everything from “controversial James Bond films to surprising exploitation flicks” in order to “expose listeners to movies they didn’t know they’d love, give awards to their favorites, and of course, rate the quality of the video transfer.”
Gala Avary, Roger’s daughter, serves at the show’s announcer.
“Quentin and Roger have made such enduring marks on filmmaking,” said Scott Greenstein, Chief Content Officer at SiriusXM in a statement, “and it’s remarkable to think that it all goes back to a video rental store in Manhattan Beach. We’re so excited to be able to help them revisit this formative moment in their careers, and to bring their recommendations to new and larger audiences.”
The Video Archives Podcast will be available via Stitcher, which is owned by SiriusXM, with production support from Earwolf, Stitcher’s comedy podcast network. The show is produced by Josh Richmond and Gala Avary, and engineered by Devon Bryant, with executive producers Colin Anderson and Natalie Mooallem.