By LISA BRITTON

Of the Baker City Herald

Jeremy Brunner is a prime candidate for a trivia show on classic movies and television shows.

What sound begins andquot;The Andy Griffith Showandquot;? (Whistling.)

How did they make andquot;Diver Danandquot; look like it was shot underwater? (Footage was shot through a fish aquarium.)

How many episodes of andquot;The Best of Ozzie and Harrietandquot; were copyrighted? (None.)

Brunner, 33, began collecting classics as a hobby when he was 13.

andquot;I collected stuff I taped on TV and started trading with people,andquot; he says. andquot;Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, all that.andquot;

The 1988 Baker High School graduate started Nostalgia Family Video when he was 19.

Fifteen years later, after turning a hobby into a business, he owns 7,000 titles of classic comedy acts, beloved television shows and obscure horror films like andquot;Attack of the Giant Leeches.andquot;

Business started in parent’s basement

Brunner’s transition from hobby to business came when he shelled out $40 for a VHS tape of Abbott and Costello’s andquot;Hit the Iceandquot; episode.

andquot;I thought since I had a hobby, I’d start a business so I could get (movies) at wholesale for myself,andquot; Brunner says.

He established Nostalgia Family Video in 1989 working out of his parent’s basement buying movies wholesale and re-selling them by advertising in film collector’s magazines.

The gist of his business was this: He would buy movies at wholesale, copy them using two VCRs, then ship the duplicates to his customers.

The quality wasn’t the greatest, he says.

andquot;Then I found out about public domain,andquot; Brunner says.

It turned out that the films he bought at wholesale were copies themselves, reproductions of the originals that were no longer protected by copyright.

Thus, they were legally available to whomever had the desire to make a copy.

Brunner slowly built his business with this new knowledge, working with collectors who possessed the original reels of film for movies and television shows.

andquot;The collectors saved them all they’d dig through the garbage or knew someone at the studio,andquot; Brunner says.

The collectors, he says, take their passion quite seriously.

andquot;Collectors are strange. They sleep with their film. It’s in the bathroom it’s everywhere,andquot; he says. andquot;It’s their life. They know it forward and backward.andquot;

But his connections with these collectors allowed Brunner to produce higher-quality videos for his customers.

andquot;I was getting it directly from film. That’s the best quality you can get,andquot; he says.

Sometimes, when he buys an original film, he later swaps it for another one.

andquot;As soon as I got them on tape I’d trade it off to the collector. I’d use it to barter to get more stuff,andquot; Brunner says.

He has no formal training in the technology.

andquot;I just learned as I went along. A lot of trial and error,andquot; he says.

Collection includes 7,000 titles

The business after several moves now occupies a suite upstairs at Basche-Sage Place.

Two hundred VCRs sit ready to record.

His backroom boasts shelf after shelf of old movies and sit-coms ready to be copied and shipped off to customers all over the world who order through his Web site (www.nostalgiafamilyvideo.com).

He is one of 10 distributors of this type in the U.S., he says.

andquot;This was definitely not overnight. It took years,andquot; Brunner says.

His movie reserves recently skyrocketed when he bought out the Hollywood’s Attic collection from Woody Wise in Beverly Hills, one of the first classic movie distributors he ever worked with, Brunner says.

Hollywood’s Attic included 3,500 film titles, which boosted Brunner’s collection to 7,000 titles.

His objective is still to provide hard-to-find movies for his customers.

Most movies cost $14.99. Serials, which usually run about 15 chapters, are priced at $24.99.

andquot;Every week they’d show a different chapter. Every one had a cliffhanger,andquot; Brunner says.

His biggest buyers are distributors like Movies Unlimited, which produces a 900-page catalogue listing 60,000 movies for sale.

Movies Unlimited takes orders from their customers, then ships the requests to Brunner.

andquot;They’re my main customer. They buy thousands a week,andquot; he says.

Brunner sells the videos to these large-scale distributors at wholesale about a 55 percent discount.

But first they have to make the movies.

Once an order comes in, Brunner or employee Matt Hedgpeth retrieve the master tape, slip it into a main VCR and begin recording onto blank tapes.

They can make 119 duplicates at one time.

Generally, they don’t need near that many copies of one show.

andquot;We have a 1,000 movie (order) and sell one of these, two of those,andquot; Brunner says.

He still does most of his business by VHS tapes, even though these are a bit time-consuming to produce.

andquot;With the VHS, you play it in real-time and wait two hours for two-hour movies,andquot; Brunner says.

It’s much quicker to make DVDs with his current equipment it takes 15 minutes to create seven copies.

Does he have a favorite?

Brunner’s current collection bears little resemblance to his original hobby.

But now he rarely has the time to view the videos.

andquot;I don’t even sit there and watch them. I just make sure the VCR is running right,andquot; he says. andquot;Once I started this stuff, I got out of watching them.andquot;

But he does have a few favorites, he says, pointing to a poster for andquot;Wheeler and Woolsey,andquot; a comedy duo from the 1930s.

andquot;The main comedian ones those are my favorites,andquot; he says.