VIVA VIDEO: THE LAST PICTURE SHOW
Alright, alright - when it aired as a midnight “psychotronic movie of the week” format on SYFY, it went by MIDNIGHT REWIND, but I’ll always put the moniker of the last standing video store in the Philadelphia region at the top of any old portfolio page, along with the visage of it’s fearless leader, the immortal Miguel Gomez.
For years, Miguel Gomez ran Philadelphia's last surviving video store — outlasting Blockbuster, surviving the streaming wars, closing only when the pandemic took what algorithms couldn't.
The store itself was almost beside the point. Miguel had spent decades doing something quietly extraordinary: building a congregation of film lovers from every imaginable walk of life, united by a shared devotion to the weird, the underseen, and the endlessly rewatchable.
That community didn't disappear when the doors closed. It just needed a new home.
The conceit wasn't nostalgia — it was Miguel himself. He's one of those rare human beings who can make you feel like you've been missing out on something your whole life, whether a specific film or just the experience of watching one with others who actually care. The customers who relied on his know-how were genuinely colorful, deeply opinionated, and surprisingly moving — each carrying a personal story about how a single recommendation could be life-changing.
Was so grateful to workshop this alongside Big Howl's Paul Triggiani and Kevin Kelly, whose enthusiasm helped shape what the show could actually be: scripted skits, fake commercials, an idealized version of the Viva Video as a brand — one that matched Miguel's outsized personality — a heightened space for weekly deep dives into a single film. Variety show structure, cult cinema soul.
The broader pitch was always about the moment we're living in. As streaming libraries balloon, a staggering number of films are quietly disappearing — unlicensed, unstreamed, lost to new audiences. Viva Video was a corrective: a show that could surface these films, celebrate them earnestly, and build the communal viewing culture that Film Twitter craves but rarely gets, with Miguel as a perfect host — not a critic, not an academic, but a true believer with a Letterboxd diary to back it up.
The right network gets a cinema authority. The audience gets a guide. And somewhere out there, Susan finally gets her close-up.
The broader pitch was always about the moment we're living in. As streaming libraries balloon, a staggering number of films are quietly disappearing — unlicensed, unstreamed, lost to new audiences. Viva Video was a corrective: a show that could surface these films, celebrate them earnestly, and build the communal viewing culture that Film Twitter craves but rarely gets. Miguel is a perfect host — not a critic, not an academic curator, but a true believer with the Letterboxd diary to back it up.
The right network gets a cinema authority. The audience gets a guide. And somewhere out there, Susan finally gets her close-up.