The comedic mini-series based on an iconic VHS store in Turlock is through its first leg of filming, and the production team is inviting the community to watch and provide feedback.
The doors of the Turlock Community Theater at 1547 Canal Drive will be open for a free public screening of the first episode of “VHS Forever! Hollywood” at 4 p.m. Sunday.
The show is based on Turlock’s first video store, the Video Box, located on Geer Road from 1981-1991. It portrays odd interactions that a group of video shop owners encounter on a daily basis, with many scenes based on true stories from the career of producer and former shop owner Richard Sargis, a native of Ceres and graduate of Turlock High School.
Seating will be limited to the first 1,000 arrivals, with no advanced reservations available. Attendees will be asked to grab a screening questionnaire on a table as they enter the theater and fill it out following the viewing to provide feedback to the cast and crew, who will also be present.
Like Sargis, most cast and crew members are from the area. Casting was first done in June of 2024, and all of the filming has been done over the past eight months in and around Turlock and Hilmar, predominantly at Hilmar Video and Cellular, which sold VHS tapes and DVDs back in the day. Recent scenes were shot at Latif’s at Pedretti.
One of the few non-locals is executive producer Scotty Schwartz, better known as Flick from the 1983 classic “A Christmas Story.” Flick was the character who infamously licked the frozen light pole.
The viewing, which will also feature outtakes, is anticipated to be 1 hour, 15 minutes long. The team hopes to strike a television or streaming deal with a major distributor. Clips shown at the screening will soon be going out to production and distribution studios such as Amazon MGM Studios, Netflix and YouTube.
Sargis, a longtime resident of Turlock, was inspired to create the series after seeing a post by Tedd Turner in the “Memories of Growing up in Turlock” Facebook group back in 2022. The post featured a photo of youngsters hanging out at the Video Box, which is believed to be the first VHS shop of its kind in Stanislaus County.
“It was a true hangout spot,” Sargis told the Turlock Journal in June. “In the 80s, those were the places to be. We had social things like the video store to go to. And in places like that, there are always those odd or ridiculous encounters. For us, we had all kinds of those encounters at the front counter. To put it lightly, we had some interesting customers and characters. Most of them were just a lot of fun… If we could try to recreate or exaggerate some of those, that would be hilarious.”
