Paul Dean’s office wall

1. Box of Moonlight (1996)

2. Endless Summer (1966)

3. Ghost World (2001)

4. Harold and Maude (1971)

5. Let’s Get Lost (1988)

6. Monterey Pop (1968)

7. Morocco (1930)

8. Mr. Hulot’s Holiday (1953)

9. Slaughterhouse-Five (1972)

10. Superstar: The Life and Times of Andy Warhol (1990)

Before LSU graphic design professor Paul Dean moved his massive collection of VHS tapes to his on-campus office, he shed the collection of absolutely every nonessential movie. Yep, all the way down to 1,274 tapes. The videos are housed in 52 red plastic egg crates that line the lower half of an entire wall of his eclectic office. They run the gamut from a TV-taped version of Andrei Codrescu’s travelogue Road Scholar to a dusty copy of sci-fi trip Fantastic Planet, a B-movie Dean first saw as a kid in Raleigh, N.C.

Holding on to VHS in the DVD era has taught the 48-year-old a few things. He’s a wizard with the tracking dial and has figured out how to wiggle a rubber eraser into a VCR to remedy most tape malfunctions. Who needs TiVo? Turner Classic Movies and a VCR do Dean just fine.

“I get a lot of satisfaction out of introducing someone to a great movie,” he says. “It’s a lot like teaching.”