Why Matthew Renoir Opened a Video Store in the Streaming Era

Paintings by Pierre-Auguste Renoir hang in every major museum in Southern California. The French master’s son, filmmaker Jean Renoir, was nominated for an Oscar in 1946. Believe it or not, there’s another Renoir working in Hollywood today, and he’s a trailblazer in his own way. Meet Matthew Renoir — the great-great-grandson of the Impressionist painter and the great-grandson of the filmmaker — who at the height of streaming opened a video rental store in Burbank called Be Kind Video.

When people find out about his family history, Renoir admits, “It’s a weird thing. Not that I’m not wanting to talk about it.” But their first question is always the same, he says: ” ‘Do you have any paintings?’ I always go, ‘Yeah, they’re in my car.’ ”

Matthew, 41, grew up on a farm in Stevinson, California — a town of about 300 people in the Central Valley. His father owned a plumbing business, his mother was a nurse. The closest movie theater was 25 minutes away. He was aware of his family’s legacy from a young age, he tells me, saying, “It’s not like my grandmother sat us down.” It was just a part of their lives. Matthew’s grandfather — Jean Renoir’s son — would take the family to France every few years, and sometimes they’d visit the painter’s home in Côte d’Azur, which has been preserved as a museum. On those trips, he met his cousin, French actress and César Award nominee Sophie Renoir, and they’re still tight; he recently attended her niece’s wedding.

As a kid, Matthew’s great-grandparents had a Renoir masterpiece called Jean as a Huntsman hanging in their house. In the painting, a young Jean Renoir is depicted holding a hunting rifle. If Matthew wants to revisit the piece, he has to go to LACMA. “Because of inheritance tax and all that crap,” he says, “it ended up being gifted” to the museum.

He continues: “My great-grandfather Jean and his brothers inherited so many paintings. When Jean was making films initially, he was funding them by selling paintings. He didn’t feel great about doing that.” (In 1990, Sotheby’s sold Renoir’s Bal du Moulin de la Galette for $78.1 million; in 2024, a lesser Renoir sold for $10.5 million.)

Like his great-grandfather, Matthew would gravitate toward cinema. After high school, he enrolled in community college before transferring to San Francisco State to pursue cinema studies. (Only one professor made the family connection.) Later, living in Los Angeles, he worked as a cinematographer on independent films, including a documentary about a Valley couple famous for their immersive Halloween installations. But Renoir was malleable. When the real estate market boomed early in the pandemic, he found a niche shooting drone footage for high-end brokers, which paid well but certainly wasn’t why he’d fallen in love with the camera.

Renoir wasn’t a careerist. Searching for his next act, he was reminded of a childhood dream of owning a video rental store. He recalled aimlessly roaming the aisles with his older brother, and while they rented a Rainbow Brite movie so often, the owner suggested they just buy the tape, there was a sense of discovery. “We didn’t have cable,” he says. “We probably didn’t even own a couple dozen tapes or whatever.” But the video store with “the posters, the mobiles, [advertising] the stuff coming out … We all had TVs that were like this big,” he says, mimicking a tiny five-inch screen. In his mind, it felt like Imax.

That’s the vibe he’s tried to capture at Be Kind Video, a 525-foot storefront that’s designed to feel like your best friend’s basement, with wood paneling from the ’80s and a vintage Nintendo plugged into a hulking TV. New releases rent for just four bucks. There’s even a lockbox outside for returns. (The late fee is $1.25 a day, and Blockbuster-style membership cards are in the works.)

Be Kind stocks more than 12,000 titles — on VHS, DVD and Blu-ray — and many are for sale. On the day I visited, 14-year-old Arabella from Toluca Lake was hunting for gifts for a friend’s birthday. Teenagers are into physical media? “It’s less modern,” Arabella explains, her mom likening it to vintage shopping. After browsing for 10 minutes, they left with a sweet haul of Happy Gilmore, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, The Lego Batman Movie and The Goonies.

Of streaming, Renoir sniffs, “I feel like you’re given options but no choice.” It’s a weird distinction, he admits, but it’s real to him. Netflix has something like 3,800 titles, he says, which sounds like a lot until you realize “they have nothing earlier than The Sting, which is 1973.” Some films — including “some David Lynch stuff” — aren’t available digitally at all. He’s not a snob either, pointing out that “Spice World doesn’t stream anywhere.”

Opening an analog video store long after the industry shifted to streaming may seem counterintuitive. Though there’s precedent: Matthew’s good friend owns a typewriter repair shop in the Arts District. On the eve of Be Kind’s three-year anniversary, he reveals he’s talking to his landlord about doubling his footprint.

Thankfully, he’s got a short commute. Renoir lives in a guest house in Studio City owned by the film historian Anthony Slide and his partner Robert Gitt, a noted film preservationist he’d met through a mutual friend, the late actor-producer Norman Lloyd, who died in 2021 at 106 and was likely the only person to have worked with both Alfred Hitchcock and Amy Schumer.

Gitt, who’d worked as a preservation officer at the UCLA Film & Television Archive for 20 years, not only knew Jean Renoir personally, he’d actually restored his 1945 film The Southerner, which landed the director his only Oscar nomination. Before Matthew moved in, Gitt says, he used to screen films on 16mm and 35mm in the guest house. (Renoir jokes about the absurdity of owning a video store and sleeping in a movie theater.)

When asked about now having a Renoir in his guest house, Gitt is thrilled. He doesn’t drive anymore, and his younger tenant recently took him and Slide to the Huntington Gardens. The tickets were under the name RENOIR, Gitt said, so he expected a hint of recognition from the box office agent. “Nobody said anything whatsoever,” Gitt says.

In a way, Renoir sees himself as part of the family business. “I still want to make films,” he says, adding he has done some producing, including on a 2019 film called The Ascent, which you can rent at Be Kind and (gulp) on Amazon. But what he loves most about cinema maybe is the community, which you can’t really get from your couch. Be Kind Video hosts lo-fi screenings in-house and Q&As with such guests as Dean Cundey, the cinematographer on the original Jurassic Park. This shop, Renoir says while looking at the retro carpet, “It’s a clubhouse.”

This story appeared in the Aug. 20 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.