What It's Really All About

Every Monday, I get a briefing on the weekend box office and what specific theaters that I track did over the weekend. This often provokes a lot of thought and some discussion as I work my trapline trying to get perspective on the shifting fortunes of this business of exhibition. It is increasingly perplexing.? The news that recently hit was on the dialing down of the battle between streaming and theatrical.

?News hit that the Netflix funded sequel to KNIVES OUT is getting a one-week release in approximately 600 AMC, Regal, and Cinemark theaters in the U.S. The historic deal marks the first time all three major theater chains have agreed to show a big-budget Netflix movie, but to be fair in markets like Canada this has now been going on for a couple of years.

?KNIVES OUT is being released Thanksgiving and then Netflix puts it out a month later. The rumor mill is that NETFLIX paid over $400 million for the worldwide rights to this movie. Adam Aron, who has never met a press opportunity he didn’t love, weighed in, “This announcement of our first-ever agreement with Netflix is significant for AMC and for movie lovers around the world. As we have often said, we believe that both theatrical exhibitors and streamers can continue to co-exist successfully… thanks to the larger cultural resonance those movies can gain from a theatrical release, they will wind up playing to a wider audience when they also are viewed on streaming platforms.”

?I am now deeply concerned that theaters are going to be part of the streaming ecosystem and instead of the other way around. In this scenario most folks will wait 3 weeks to see the movie and in their short sightedness the three major circuits might be furthering the demise of movie going.

??I am beginning to see the emergence of differences between movie theaters and movie going.? I love movie going, wave after wave of experiences flood over me whenever I look back on the gift of the movie screen. I drive by an independent theater and I know these are vessels for a proud and sacred cinematic tradition. There is an awe that I have for these buildings since they have long transcended from being a ceiling, floor and walls and they became tabernacles for the American Dream.

?In my office, I have a date box from a long-lost drive-in. The box is separated into over 30 containers labeled coming soon, intermission, Wednesday show only, opening this Thursday and many more. Each of these tiny reels of film have been cut into movie after movie and are evidence that movie theaters at one time exhibited all the nuance of a craft. That box serves as a reminder to me daily and what movie going was truly all about. Projectionists were once skilled tradesmen who have spent more than a thousand hours before they could ply their craft in a downtown theater.?

?To sit in a projector booth, watch the smoke rise, hearing the carbon arc hit and seeing the projectionist execute a seamless changeover was a thing of beauty. It was elegant and it was an art. These men and women who practiced this craft were awe inducing. Sometimes the show in the booth was better than the show on the screen. When platters were adopted these practitioners of this form of cinematic art quickly departed the booth.? Movies began to be produced on polyester film, which in turn were produced on high-speed printers.? I was lucky to view Hitchcock’s “Rear Window” on an acetate print. The shot in which Grace Kelly makes her appearance?is nothing short of a revelation, bringing to you the luminous Miss Kelly and masterful photography.

?Today we have become digital sausage links in a world that demands quantity over quality, business over art, and process over entertainment and in the business of the movies, decision makers who have the attention span of a tsetse fly in heat. Change is inevitable in the world of movies, but the change being forced on this business is becoming unbearable.? The craft that once existed at the theater and at movie studios has been replaced by digital process, where art has been replaced by function. In many ways it is tragic.

?Theaters have been languishing, adrift in their messaging, puffy seat, big sound, big chairs, and big pictures. The issue is that they have sold aspects of the experience but not the whole experience. It is key that we all recognize this. No matter what DOLBY, THX, REAL D all say, movie going is and will always be about movies. The images that dance on the big screen and the story they tell. There is nothing more seductive, more compelling than seeing a well told story in a darkened auditorium surrounded by other people. That’s it, it won’t be any better, no matter what sound system you have, no matter how big the tv screens, that’s it. It is the pinnacle. Focus on the sound, you lose; focus on the wondrously puffy seats, you lose.

?It's about Charlie Chaplin as the little tramp eating his boots in Gold Rush, it’s about Humphrey Bogart and Adolph Menjou walking into a Moroccan night in Casablanca, it’s about Charlton Heston parting the Red Sea in The Ten Commandments, It's about Dustin Hoffman running to stop a wedding in The Graduate, it's about Sonny getting shot at the causeway in The Godfather, it's about Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford blowing up the Death Star in Star Wars, it’s about Rene Zellweger telling Tom Cruise you had me at hello in Jerry Maguire, It’s Anthony Quinn and Alan Bates dancing on a lonely beach in Zorba The Greek……it's all about that and how they make you feel.

?It's all about the movie and it's all about moviegoing. Anything else is BS.