Christie Colcord’s Advice: Sleep Late and Watch Movies All Day
By Joan Gibson

Tired of your job and looking for a career change? Maybe you should try opening a video store in your neighborhood. That’s what Film Society member Christie Colcord did after fleeing the music industry in disillusionment several years ago. She and two partners were casting about for a business idea they could be passionate about. They turned to film and started Lost Weekend Video. "A video store has advantages," says Christie. "It’s easy to run, you can sleep late and you get to watch movies all day."

Before going into business, they each asked themselves: What movies would I have to have? Using those lists as a departure point, they established their inventory and created a store that essentially caters to people that share their taste. Lost Weekend prides itself on having tons of great movies. In addition to new releases there is a huge foreign film selection and an equally huge independent film section, a large BBC section with hard-to-find British films and even a section that has everything Werner Herzog’s ever done. There is also a section called New Directors featuring locals and cutting-edge new work. Indeed, the owners will often buy films directly from local neighborhood filmmakers who drop by the shop.

I asked Christie the old question, "What did you want to be when you grew up?" "I’ve always let my interests define my career," she replied. "The first thing I wanted to be was a crane operator or a submarine driver. After that I imagined myself in music or government, maybe a diplomat." For several years she ran an agency in Europe that booked American bands throughout the continent. That fulfilled a lifelong desire to work in the music business and exposed her to other cultures and languages. Christie has always loved foreign languages and has been inspired by the films she’s seen to learn new ones. She knows or has studied French, Russian, Chinese, Czech, German, Italian, Spanish and Hebrew and wants to learn Japanese and Arabic. Her theory is that by knowing a language from each of the major groups, she’ll be able to pick up enough to get by in any country she might travel to.

Christie attends most Bay Area film festivals as part of her job. For the San Francisco International, she takes the entire 15 days off from work and puts a lot of mileage on her CineVisa Festival pass. Her all-time record is 58 films at our festival. In addition to attending festivals, she goes to three movies a week. "There is almost nothing I won’t go see," she asserts. She looks for films that are challenging, but by definition there aren’t that many. She loves Werner Herzog, particularly his approach to documentaries, and Lars von Trier, who directed The Idiots. The Limey by Steven Soderberg and Funny Games, an Austrian film that screened at SFIFF 1998 were also mentioned as films that she appreciated for being different and challenging.

I tried hard to avoid asking the obvious question, but in the end, couldn’t resist: What are your top three films of all time? In this case three turned into four: Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, My Best Friend by Werner Herzog, Sonatine by Takeshi Kitano and The Kingdom by Lars von Trier.

So what does someone who watches movies for a living do on their day off? Go to a ballgame! Christie is a huge baseball fan and has season tickets to the Giants. What a life! She summed it up by saying, "This job is great. It offers flexibility, travel and baseball."