Genevieve DeMars, a Smyrna children’s TV show producer and Sant’Anselmo’s sister-in-law, said she never questioned his ambition. “I went for functionality with a larger viewing screen,” he said, jokingly adding, “Doc Brown brought them from the future,” referencing the 1985 film “Back to the Future.” He likes to play 1980s MTV videos such as “Take on Me” or films like “Major League” on the screens when visitors come by to admire his work. While Sant’Anselmo’s replica store is like a fever dream of his childhood, he did allow for one blatant anachronism in his dream: modern flat-screen TVs mounted in a couple of the rooms rather than the more cumbersome cathode-ray tube TVs of yore. He even built out shelves that are actually hidden doors into other rooms. Movie posters (”Risky Business,” “Mac and Me“) and cardboard cutouts of “E.T.,” Chevy Chase, Richard Pryor and Paul Hogan of “Crocodile Dundee” fame accent the space. He installed a saloon double-door for a small “adult” section. He had a friend design a special Mondo Video logo of a girl on a Pee Wee Herman-style scooter with VHS tapes on the back.
He painstakingly created “distressed” brick walls going down the stairs and into the main room to evoke a Manhattan nook-style video store circa 1986. He tore up the basement carpets and spent weeks installing black-and-white tile flooring: “I love ‘50s diners and I think checkered floors are just more interesting and energetic than a blank floor.” Plus, he didn’t want it to resemble the more homogenized chain stores that came later. That was when the idea hit him to create his own video store.
A film historian friend Mike Malloy in early 2018 was shooting a “talking head” bit for a Blu-ray extra video of the film “ Syndicate Sadists” from 1975 and needed someone to play a video store clerk behind him. “As much as I like that ambiance, it didn’t feel quite right,” he said. RODNEY RODNEY RODNEY when he purchased the home with the spacious basement, initially thought of creating a Disney-like haunted mansion.
Anthony SantAnselmo's Woodstock basement features a room for sports-themed movies and other 1980s-era knick knacks.
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