Gregg Turkington in 2014 demonstrating a portion of his collection to Ayaka Ohwaki and Tom Cruise Heidecker Jr.[1]

On Cinema guest Gregg Turkington was well-renown for his enormous collection of movies. He considered the collection “worth its weight in gold,”^[2] and it was a point of pride of his status as a movie buff. Turkington had a large number of shelves, built around the dimensions of VHS tapes, on which to store his movies.^[3] After an unfortunate incident during the filming of Decker: Port of Call: Hawaii, it was eventually replaced by the Victorville Film Archives.

Before the start of the On Cinema podcast, Turkington had an extensive collection of movies, on both VHS and DVD, stored within his apartment. He felt that he had worked his “whole life” to create the collection,^[4] though he only truly began collecting around 1999.^[5] In April 2012, Turkington estimated he had over 1,000 VHS tapes, and stated that making the switch entirely to DVD would be foolish as many older movies were only available on VHS.^[6] He primarily used resources such as eBay, flea markets, and thrift stores to stock his collection.^[4]

Turkington would often loan films to friends, though he would be annoyed if people would return un-rewound tapes to him.^[6] Loaned tapes were expected to be returned within a week.^[7] Turkington knew a VHS repairman from Canoga Park who would respool VHS tapes from broken cases into blank tape cases, and steam off the tape's label to re-apply to the new case. Turkington had a number of tapes repaired this way, and offered his services to John Aprea.^[4] He was very protective of his collection, asking Tim Heidecker to “please respect it” after Heidecker spilled ice onto a crate of Turkington's tapes.^[4] In case of disaster, Turkington had multiple copies of movies in his collection, including sealed copies of Oscar winners.^[4]

Over the summer of 2012, Turkington purchased 500 tapes from an estate sale for $250 to add to his collection.^[8]

In early 2013, the collection had an Oscar display, of which many films showcased as Oscar Video Classics formed the “backbone.” These tapes were thrown up on by Heidecker after he had had too much champagne during the filming of the 1st Annual On Cinema Oscar Special. Turkington stated that these tapes were backup copies, and while the tapes themselves were intact, the collectible covers were ruined, and still needed replacement.^[4] Also during the filming, copies of The Godfather: Part II and Remember the Titans were dropped and destroyed.

In August 2013, Turkington noticed that a copy of Airheads was stolen from his collection and featured as a Popcorn Classic by Ayaka Ohwaki.^[7] The tape was damaged due to the removal of the red security tape, though Turkington was quickly able to get a replacement copy for $4. Heidecker, feeling responsible for the loss of the tape, offered to reimburse Turkington.^[9]

By February 2014, Turkington estimated that he had one of the largest collections in California.^[5] He had begun to record newer movies, not being released on VHS, to blank tapes to be stored with the rest of his collection.^[10]

In April 2012, the collection was organized alphabetically by genre.^[6]

By July 2013, Gregg had developed a new internal coding system to keep track of his vast collection of tapes and prevent theft.^[11] He also had printouts of each tape's location in his collection.^[7]