A short piece in the Christian Science Monitor shows that it’s not just cultural managers who are under stress from all sides…movie theater owners are feeling the pinch, as well.
With razor-thin profit sharing deals with the major studios, mounting pressures to push blockbusters through their doors, and increasing competition for audience time, money, and attention, movie managers are also longing for days gone by:
”In the ’50s and ’60s, everybody went to the movies,” says [Michigan movie-chain owner Joseph] Chabot, adding that with all the competition from other entertainment sources, including ever more sophisticated home theaters, people are getting out of the moviegoing habit. ”We need to do more to develop the habitual moviegoer,” he says.
Perhaps a renewed emphasis on movie education in our public schools, a few economic impact studies, and a national tour of Citizen Kane would solve the problem. Perhaps not.
Howdy!
Here in Montreal we have a movie theatre called “$1 Cinema.” It’s going like gangbusters. For the more “au courant” Quebecois cinema regularly breaks all box office records. Your decline of the movie going public might just be a regional thing.
The film industry as a whole, much like the music industry, the IRAA, etc, hasn’t really jumped onto the new culture of the digital age. Film is a great art form, don’t get me wrong, but the rest of the world is spinning by with innovation.
I long for the day we can see full digital projections of these features. We have all the technology in the world to beam via satelite, any movie, anytime, to any theatre, yet we come to watch the same grainy film, complete with scratches, blip marks between scenes, and a projectionist waiting to splice it in case of breakage!
I long for the day when you can take a date to a movie, or a group of friends – swipe your movie card at the door, walk in, select your small theater, and choose your movie on demand. You love The Breakfast Club? You search for it, and it’s beamed on demand for you, projected digitally. You and your date can do a Molly Ringwald marathon if you like, on a 15foot screen that you could never fit in your home, with full surround digital sound. Or better yet..A major studio release that’s also fed via satelite for your own party in your den with all your friends watching your HDTV screen! (But that gets into more of the restricted ‘home private use’ copyright laws..I won’t get into that now)
Maybe an extreme futuristic vision..but I don’t see a lot of innovation happening in the cinematic arts’ delivery method. You still pay way too much for soda and candy. You still have to locate the theater that’s playing your movie.
The feature film is a great art form, without a doubt! But maybe it’s packaged and restrained a bit more than it should be in the new “Digital Age”.
By the way.. your blog is great!
-Scott Schumacher
Northfield, MN