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Odd Obsession is anything but modest, however if you had a movie collection like owner Brian Chankin your slogan would be "My movies are better than yours" too.
Located at the corner of North and Clybourn, Odd Obsession rents hard-to-find and movies on DVD and video. The store's collections ranges from independent and unreleased films to foreign classics and as Chankin says, "things you thought you'd never see and probably shouldn't." The University of New Mexico grad claims French New Wave director Jean-Luc Godard, Hitchcock (of course) and Nashville director Robert Altman on his short list of favorite directors. Yet, Chankin doesn't even have an estimate on when he began his own personal collection of rare, out-of-print and unreleased movies.
At age 25, Chankin opened Odd Obsession Movies with his own collection of 1,000 rare films. The store opened in August 2004 in a basement location across the street from the Steppenwolf Theatre. The store is now up to about 5,000 titles, and Chankin has plans to move to a bigger place once he fills up the current location.
In an interview with the Chicago Tribune, Chankin said he uses his coantacts in foreign countries to collect hard-to-find films. One of his personal foreign favorites is Oh! Mikey, a Japanese reality television show about an American family living in Japan. The catch: The show is performed entirely by blond-hair and blue-eyed Americanized mannequins.
Chankin believes he safe from major chains like Blockbuster because of his eclectic and cult collection - thus making his customer base quite diverse from the corporate chains.
Odd Obsession specializes in rare-form cinema. The store has its claim on foreign, camp, French New Wave, Italian Horror, Troma, Criterion, Exploitation, Film Noir, and many other little-known film genres.
Movie recommendations are given by using a "process of elimination." Chankin asks his customers what country or film genre they are interested in viewing. From there, he goes through his extensive database of titles and describes them to the person.
Chankin's personal approach to selecting rentals also reaches into his customer service philosophy.
"I'm just really nice to people," Chankin said.
He knows all of his more than 600 customers by name, and if someone hasn't finished a movie by the time it's due back, he says he tells them, "Keep it another three days on me."
While you browse through his rare collection there is always one of his movies being shown on the plasma TV mounted to the wall, and two cats roaming around the store. There is a comfortable seating area available for you to hang out, and all the racks are on wheels to make more room.
But Chankin's approach to film is not only unique, it's thorough. On the store's Web site (oddobsession.com), you can browse through the entire store catalog. Whether you search by genre or title or director, it's all there.
With 600 customers and growing, Chankin's approach is obviously more than simply a work in progress. While the small basement location continues to grow, and the stacks of films continue to overflow from the book-shelved walls, Brian Chankin knows he must be doing something right. And that maybe, just maybe, his obsessions weren't all that odd after all.
Note: Odd Obsession (1659 N. Halsted) is open Tuesday through Friday from 1pm - 11pm, Saturday 1pm - midnight, and Sunday from 1pm to 10pm. For more information, call them at (312) 573-9910 or by e-mail at brian@oddobsession.com.
(Leslie Carol Boehms contributed to this article)
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