httpss://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXQuto1fMp4
Following an offer the store couldn’t refuse, a truckload of bizarre Russell Crowe memorabilia has landed in its new Anchorage, Alaska home: a Blockbuster store.
Store manager Kevin Daymude said the staff of the Blockbuster video store, which claimed the goods, is now working to unpack and properly display the odd items sent by John Oliver and HBO. The items, notably including a jockstrap worn by Russell Crowe, were promised in a segment on HBO’s “Last Week Tonight,” hosted by Oliver.
In that segment, Oliver cited KTUU’s reporting on the closure of multiple Alaska Blockbuster locations, leaving just one store open in Anchorage.
Oliver then said the show bid on, and won, multiple items from Crowe’s celebrity auction titled “The Art of Divorce.” In addition to the jockstrap from Cinderella Man, which Oliver and his show bought for $7,000, the show also bought a robe and shorts from the same film, a set of chairs that Crowe and Denzel Washington used during their time on American Gangster, the vest Crowe wore in the film Les Miserables and a hood Crowe wore in Robin Hood.
All of those items were then pledged to Anchorage’s last Blockbuster by Oliver.
On May 2, Daymude and his staff worked on securing the auction items for display in the front of the store.
The items will be held in locked display cases at the front of the store behind satin ropes.
The morning after the episode premiered, Daymude and his staff were inundated by phone calls, asking if they were going to take Oliver up on his offer.
Now Daymude hopes the strange artifacts, from one of Hollywood’s weirdest celebrity divorce auctions, will help bring business to the Anchorage Blockbuster.