Joe Amodei: From a Philly Video Store to Super Size Me

Who takes a chance on a film nobody else will touch?

Joe Amodei was fixing sewing machines for a living when the first video store opened in the Philadelphia area. Within a week he was working there, because you could take home as many movies as you wanted. That one store became 15, and Joe became the buyer. Forty years in film distribution followed: Turner Home Entertainment, PolyGram, and USA Home Entertainment, where he learned the independent film business releasing films like Traffic, Being John Malkovich and Gosford Park. Then came a company of his own, and one of its first big films was Super Size Me, the documentary in which Morgan Spurlock eats nothing but McDonald's for 30 days. As Joe tells it, the studios didn't want to hurt their Happy Meal deals, and everyone else thought McDonald's would sue. His company, then Hart Sharp Video, took it for home video anyway; Samuel Goldwyn Films and Roadside Attractions released it in theaters. Nobody sued, and the film was nominated for Best Documentary.

In Episode 128, Jason Rugg hosts, filling in for Josh Lindsay, with Christian Taylor and Jeff Kurtenacker, the composer of The Girl Who Wore Freedom. It's Joe's first visit to Documentary First. Christian explains how they met: at the Julien Dubuque International Film Festival, Donna Reed's daughter, Mary Owen, told her Joe was "one of the good guys." Joe tells the truth he says filmmakers least want to hear. "The film business is mostly bad news," he says, and when a buyer passes, it usually has nothing to do with whether the film is good. It's the budget, or the buyer already has a film like it. His company is pitched 20 or 25 movies a week and buys maybe one or two. His rule for delivering that news is simple: "You gotta sleep at night."

Then the films that stayed with him. Joe remembers Netflix calling for a group of titles to stream, and his answer: "No one is ever going to stop going to video stores." He talks about Restrepo, the Oscar-nominated film about American soldiers in Afghanistan's Korengal Valley, and its co-director Tim Hetherington, who was killed in Libya a year after the film came out. Christian shares why Restrepo matters to her family: her son, who fought in Afghanistan, told her, "Watch Restrepo, because that's the closest thing I've ever seen." Joe also tells how he almost passed on We Are Columbine, directed by Laura Farber, who hid under a cafeteria table during the shooting. He hung up the phone, walked downstairs, and saw the Parkland shooting on CNN. He called back and said, "We need to release this movie." Jeff asks which genres sell, and Jason asks where the business is headed. Joe's answer is a defense of the movie theater: "Inside that darkened room, there's nothing like it."

Full disclosure: since 2022, Joe's company, Virgil Films, has distributed Christian's film The Girl Who Wore Freedom, and it now sponsors Documentary First. This 2021 episode has no sponsor read.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• How a job at Philadelphia's first video store turned into a career in film distribution
• Why the studios passed on Super Size Me, and why Joe's company took it for home video
• What Joe told Netflix when it first asked for movies to stream
• Why Joe says the film business is "mostly bad news," and why he tells filmmakers anyway
• Why a buyer's "no" usually isn't about whether your film is good
• Why soldiers say Restrepo shows Afghanistan as it was
• Why Joe almost passed on We Are Columbine, and what changed his mind
• Which genres sell best, and where documentaries rank
• Why Joe believes the movie theater will survive streaming

CHAPTERS

0:00 Meet Joe Amodei

6:22 The First Video Store

10:21 Nobody Wanted Super Size Me

15:06 An Honest Distributor

18:26 Films for Returning Soldiers

21:45 Restrepo and Tim Hetherington

27:51 We Are Columbine

31:39 Genres, Theaters and Streaming

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

What does a film distributor do?

On Documentary First, Joe Amodei of Virgil Films describes the job as buying films, then trying to sell them to streaming companies and putting them up on every transactional site where people rent and buy movies. His company also develops films and series with filmmakers and pitches them to Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, Apple and Disney+, hoping those companies will pay to make them. He has done it since the VHS era.

Why do distributors pass on good films?

Joe Amodei says that when nobody wants a film, filmmakers assume buyers didn't like it, but most of the time that has nothing to do with it. It has everything to do with budgets, and with whether the buyer already has films with a similar story. He points to war documentaries: after a dozen films about soldiers coming home, buyers told him each new one felt like the same thing.

Which film genres sell best?

According to Joe Amodei, genre films sell best, action first, and a recognizable cast helps. Horror still works. Romantic comedies sit near the bottom, and documentaries sit even below romantic comedies. He adds that streamers like Netflix have separate divisions for each genre, so a distributor with films in several genres needs several meetings.

How did Super Size Me get to home video?

Joe Amodei says nobody wanted Super Size Me: the studios didn't want to hurt their Happy Meal deals with McDonald's, and other buyers expected McDonald's to sue. Samuel Goldwyn Films and Roadside Attractions released it in theaters, and Joe's company, then Hart Sharp Video, released it on home video. McDonald's never sued, and the film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

LISTEN AND FOLLOW

Listen and subscribe wherever you get podcasts: https://pod.fo/e/4a8052

Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@documentaryfirst

SUPPORT THE SHOW

Join our community on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/DocumentaryFirst

CONNECT WITH DOCUMENTARY FIRST

All platforms: https://linktr.ee/doc1st

Christian Taylor on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meetchristiantaylor

ABOUT THE GUEST

Joe Amodei

Founder of Virgil Films and Entertainment; director of Cold War in Philly

Joe Amodei has worked in film distribution for more than 40 years, starting in home video retail in Philadelphia. In 2000 he became president of USA Home Entertainment (Traffic, Being John Malkovich, Gosford Park), and he went on to create Virgil Films and Entertainment, whose releases include Super Size Me, Restrepo, Forks Over Knives and Glen Campbell: I'll Be Me. He won a 2020 New York Emmy for The Real Bedford Falls: It's a Wonderful Life. In 2026 he released his first film as a director, Cold War in Philly: Flyers vs Russia 1976.

Virgil Films: https://virgilfilms.com

Cold War in Philly: https://coldwarinphilly.com

Virgil Films on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/virgilfilms

Virgil Films on X: https://x.com/VirgilFilms

Virgil Films on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/VirgilFilms

ABOUT VIRGIL FILMS

Virgil Films and Entertainment is an independent distributor of documentaries and independent features. It releases only a few films a month so it can work each one with its filmmaker.

ABOUT DOCUMENTARY FIRST

Documentary First is a weekly podcast about the people behind documentaries and how the work changed them. Host Christian Taylor, director of the award-winning The Girl Who Wore Freedom, talks with filmmakers from Ken Burns to first-time directors. Listen Notes ranks the show in the top 5% of all podcasts worldwide.

THE DISTRIBUTION SERIES

• Episode 194, five film business tips: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRVSc0YRizE
• Episode 198, Cannes part one, the film market: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mUqEAz87js
• Episode 199, Cannes part two, why documentaries are hard to sell: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiJfjJIuMY0
• Episode 216, getting distributed part one, who can you trust: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tLfror_514
• Episode 218, getting distributed part two, distribution expenses: