Fungus, films and the future of Hollywood

Through the 1990s, when films still belonged mainly to theaT tres and the internet remained a distant idea, entertainment arrived at home in black rectangular plastic cases called video cassettes.

- BY NAVIN J. ANTONY

If you frequented a cassette store, you understood that the two most important parts of these objects were the transparent windows through which you could see the magnetic tape inside, and the label area where the movie title would be printed or scribbled. Printed labels meant original prints the most sought after, and a little pricier to rent. Scribbled ones were often illegal copies, but cheaper.

In either case, before renting a cassette, one check mattered most: holding it up and looking through the windows for white or grey patches that hinted fungus on the tape.

Fungus was bad news. It could damage both the cassette and the player. Rent enough cassettes, and you became an expert at detection.

Even tapes that looked clean on the outside could betray mould once you lifted the protective flap and looked inside.

One day in the summer of 1997, I held up a cassette not in suspicion, but in admiration. It was a printed-label copy of Mel Gibson's Braveheart, newly arrived in the store. Few things in life-other than the smell of fresh bread or a new paperback-matched the feeling of inspecting a fresh cassette: the crisp cardboard sleeve, the soft scrape as you slid the tape out, the cool plastic, the chemical smell of tape. I had the privilege of being the first person to rent the eagerly awaited cassette.

Braveheart told the story of William Wallace, a kilt-wearing knight who fought the English to free Scotland. Gibson was then a huge star, thanks to the Mad Max and Lethal Weapon films, and Braveheart had already become his biggest success, winning five Oscars including Best Picture and Best Director. It had run in theatres well into 1996 before cassettes reached Indian stores the following year.