Paul Bickford
Northern News Services
Published Monday, January 21, 2008

HAY RIVER - Bruce Biggin is a movie buff. It is one of the reasons he loves being owner/manager of a video rental business in Hay River.

"It's not one of those jobs where you have to go to work," he said while sitting in the office at That Video Place. "It's one of those jobs where you want to go to work."

Bruce Biggin is owner/manager of That Video Place in Hay River. - Paul Bickford/NNSL photo

Biggin, who opened the store in September 2006, has been in the video rental business for about 15 years. He worked in two video stores in Edmonton and, after arriving in Hay River in 2002, managed The Video Stop until it closed in 2006.

Even before he began to work in the business, Biggin said he would watch six to eight movies on a weekend.

"I never get tired of movies," he said.

His favourite movie is the army comedy "Stripes," starring Bill Murray, he said. "I still laugh as hard as the first time I saw it."

Biggin, 50, said he has a lot of knowledge about movies.

"I'm one of those people that recall things, useless information from years ago like the names of movies and who was in it," he said.

The knowledge comes in handy to help him locate movies for customers. They may not know the name of a particular movie, but who starred in it.

It also allows him to give advice on whether a movie is worth watching.

Biggin said he doesn't read movie magazines, just synopses about films from distributors and what critics have to say.

However, some customers don't need much help, he said.

"A lot of people know what they want when they come in."

One of the things Biggin enjoys about the business is it allows him to meet a lot of people, he said.

"You get to meet everybody from the old to the young."

He said he has a core of customers and he knows what their movie preferences are - from westerns to mysteries to foreign films.

One of the toughest decisions he has to make is how many copies of a particular movie to order.

Biggin said he is not Blockbuster and has a limited budget to work with.

"I try to choose the movies by what they do at the box office," he said, explaining $125-million grossing films should be good renters and sellers.

"Things like Superman are no-brainers," he added.

For a popular movie, he orders 18 DVD copies - six to rent and 12 to sell.

However, the hits don't always perform as expected. For example, "The Bourne Ultimatum" rented well, but only one copy was sold.

Aside from the hits, he also tries to get in a good variety of films.

In all, Biggin estimated he has about 1,500 movies in the store and hundreds of different titles, plus video games.