BRUNSWICK

For 15 years, Bart & Greg’s

DVD Explosion has provided movie expertise and access to everything from the classic movies to rare independent and foreign films. However, as 2017 comes to a close, so does Bart & Greg’s.

“In a word, Netflix,” owner Bart D’Alauro said, explaining why he’s closing.

The store has steadily lost customers and money. Though November and December are usually the most profitable months, it wasn’t so this year.

“It was not really a decision,” D’Alauro said. “We can’t pay the rent anymore.”

He opened the rental store with Greg Morris in the Tontine Mall in 2002. They named it after one another reminiscent of Matt and Dave’s, the independently-owned video store in Brunswick the two had worked at together. Morris moved away in 2010 and is no longer involved in the business.

D’Alauro recalled how, in 2002, few people owned DVD players, as the technology was still coming into its own, and had not yet eclipsed the older VHS format.

“We had to talk people into it,” he said.

After the Movie Gallery closed around 2009, Bart and Greg’s saw its peak years. Now DVDs have taken the backseat to the content people have at their fingertips through companies that offer streaming media, video-on-demand online as well as DVD by mail.

“That’s why it’s a little ironic or appropriate that technology came back around and bit us in the butt,” he said.

Being in Brunswick gave him a loyal customer base, however.

“They’ve supported us and never even looked into the Netflix option because they wanted to support us,” D’Alauro said. “Brunswick has been a terrific town as far as that goes. A lot of people want to support local businesses and I think there is no way we would have lasted as long in any other town.”

With the store goes staff expertise. D’Alauro’s favorite game has been letting patrons give him an actor’s name or some little detail about the story line, “and I’ll tell you what the movie is.”

With 38,000 disks in store, D’Alauro said that the business has been his baby.

“I consider it my life’s work putting this collection together,” he said.

There are thousands and thousands of films in his collection that can’t be found any other way legally.

No longer renting, some DVDs have been marked for sale, but said he wants a good home for all the “good stuff.” The collection won’t remain whole but there are many groupings he won’t break up.

“In a two-hour movie, every single shot, every second, every piece of it is carefully thought out and there for a reason,” he said. “A movie can achieve perfection in a way that, whatever the greatest television show is, will never be able to achieve.”

Ian Mellott, a movie buff and Bart and Greg’s employee, said more money is being pumped into television and more actors and directors are working in television. Meanwhile, Hollywood is not putting out stuff people want to see.

“I can’t tell you how many times I get regular customers coming in here.… They come, they look at the new releases, they walk back and forth, and they leave with nothing,” Mellott said. “And you look at the box office numbers and they’re the worst they’ve been in almost 20 years.”

He worries we are losing the theatrical experience as the passion for movies dwindles.

“Movies used to be everything. Everyone was talking about the latest movie,” he said. “People do want originality and things they haven’t seen before.”

D’Alauro said he loves movies because they are literature, music and theater — all narrative mediums rolled into one. To watch a movie is overwhelming for him because there is so much there.

He opened the store so he could create a collection of every movie ever made, which he achieved to a degree.

“I feel like I accomplished what I set out to do and now that it doesn’t work as a business anymore, I’m not upset,” he said. “I’ve loved being able to share my passion with people.”

dmoore@timesrecord.com