An SOS for Scarecrow Video
One of the world's largest publicly accessible video collections needs your help
UPDATE 3/25/25 Save Our Scarecrow become Sustain Our Scarecrow, and Scarecrow has hired a new development director. Details here.
UPDATE 1/22/25 Scarecrow Video has hired a new Executive Director! Full press release is here.
UPDATE 11/4/24 Scarecrow has completed its first stage of fundraising and has signed a new 2-year lease! The second stage will be hiring executive leadership. Thanks to everyone who donated or visited the store (revenue is up 60%, wtf?!), and hopefully we’ll be able to complete stage two just as we completed stage one (overall, the campaign is a little over 1/3 of the way there). The full update (posted on October 4) is here.
When I decided to move to Seattle back in October of 2009, one of the things that helped convince me was the existence of the Cinerama, now known as SIFF Cinema Downtown (though it should be noted that technically it’s in Belltown), as it’s one of the few remaining theaters in the world that can show Cinerama movies. The other was Scarecrow Video.
My first place in Seattle was only a few minutes walk from Scarecrow, but I didn’t visit it right away. When I did, I remember walking in a daze on the first floor and checking out the foreign section, where movies are categorized by country. I found countries I didn’t know existed, let alone made movies. And that was just the first floor - there’s a whole second floor categorized by genre.
Back when I first visited it, Scarecrow was still a for-profit business, but streaming was banging on its door, and in 2014, it transitioned to a nonprofit entity in order to save its collection from liquidation and the business from closing.
10 years later, and that possibility has appeared again.
I joined its staff right after things began reopening in the fall of 2021 and have been there since as the Special Events Coordinator. So, I have a personal stake in this as well as a wish to preserve the past, since I certainly won’t be working full time hours (or at all) if the collection goes into hibernation. Streaming isn’t a viable alternative to film preservation, even if it’s a convenient way to watch movies.
One thing that I think confuses people is referring to Scarecrow as a “video store.” While it started life as one, it was always more unique and more extensive than your average video store. Video stores keep the newer and more popular titles available while cycling the rest out. Scarecrow keeps everything forever, unless it’s released on a more viable format (e.g. VHS to DVD) AND all of the special features are ported over, too. That’s how it came to have over 148,000 titles in its collection, including a Criterion laserdisc of King Kong - the movie can be found on DVD and Blu-ray, but the commentary tracks on the laserdisc have not been included on later releases. Much more accurate to call Scarecrow an archive - a living video archive of physical media.
These extras will never appear on streaming, and most movies and TV shows won’t, either (or with the wrong music playing over the opening credits due to rights issues - looking at you, The Wonder Years and Dawson’s Creek!). Some titles will never make the jump from VHS to DVD. And as more people embrace streaming, there’s less incentive for studios to release physical copies of their movies, which means that we might have the same situation that occurred with silent films, where a whopping 90% of them are lost.
And it’s not just movies that are archived. TV shows, concerts, documentaries, and tutorials are also hidden in the stacks. I once rented a VHS tape about how to defeat NES games put out by Game Players magazine - a magazine that no longer exists.
In short, Scarecrow Video isn’t a misguided attempt to recreate the past, or one that only caters to the tiny niche of physical media champions (which appears to be growing, btw), but a preserver of video history, and one that’s accessible to anyone who can afford a $5 rental1. It even has titles that aren’t listed in the Library of Congress or USC.
To preserve that history and keep it viable for the future, it’ll need to hire an Executive Director and a Development Director. That should help improve the fundraising reach of this nonprofit so that it isn’t struggling each year for funds. And Scarecrow isn’t the only Seattle nonprofit struggling: Northwest Film Forum and Richard Hugo House are both dealing with financial issues.
Because Scarecrow is hoping to lay a foundation for the future, it’s asking for a hefty 1.8 million dollars. And while everyone of means can do their part by donating or renting or buying from Scarecrow, the best way to help is to spread the word and hope that an angel donor heeds that call. Losing Scarecrow wouldn’t just be a loss for the city of Seattle; it’d be a loss for the world. Where else can you find a curated selection of movies? Where else can you rent a laserdisc player and watch the original Star Wars Trilogy? Where else is there a section devoted to Japanese literature on video? Or media based on video games? Or operas adaptations, both filmed and staged? Or movie and video adaptations of the plays of Eugene O’Neill (without which I wouldn’t have been able to write these posts)?
You can donate and find out more at https://www.scarecrowvideo.org/sos
A selection of articles about the campaign:
The Stranger (mentioned briefly)
More articles and features about Scarecrow Video can be found on its press page.
And finally, I wrote a piece about Scarecrow Video’s founder here.
The majority of titles are $4.50 before tax, though some are cheaper, a few are free, and longer runtimes (for series) can cost up to $11.