Lower My Risk

William Grosso @ July 25, 2006

I love reading Jason Calcanis’s Weblog. I don’t know him, and don’t care much about Netscape. But his weblog is thought provoking. Today, he has a pointer to an interesting post by Mark Cuban. In a nutshell: if you help Mark figure out how to lower the cost of marketing movies, Mark’ll give you a job implementing the idea.

Since I don’t particularly want to work in the movie industry, I figured I’d just post my answer here: lower my risk.

Some background: There are a lot of movie theatres near me. And, generally speaking, when we go to a movie, we go out to dinner and then to a movie. It’s part of having a night out, not exclusively going to a movie. But, nonetheless, the movie is a big part of the evening and if it’s not a good movie, that colors the evening.

“Good” is, of course, a personal term. I’m not suggesting that the answer is as simple as “make better movies” (though that’d be nice). We all have movies we like, and we all have opinions about what makes for a good movie.

But I go to the movies a lot less these days. Because, by and large, most moveies suck and I’ve lost the ability to predict, in advance, which ones will suck for me. From the fact that most reviewers seem to be genial souls, unable and unwilling to offend anyone, to the fact that today’s Hollywood seems to specialize in things that are either trite ripoffs of bad television shows or should be, to the fact that the trailers are deliberately deceptive and often unrelated to the film in question (Check out this fake trailer of the shining if you’re not sure what I mean by that last one), going to the movies has become a guessing game.

Even if you avoid the obvious crud, it’s still impossible. Who knows if Apocalypto will be good or bad? Not me. As a friend of mine put it after seeing a poster, “Hmmm. that’s a risk.”
And that means an evening at the movies often has the following pattern:

1. Good dinner.
2. Walk to theatre.
3. Go into movie.
4. See 20 minutes of commercials (”trailers”) most of which don’t interest me and most of which don’t tell me anything about the movie they’re advertising.
5. It’s Fandango ad time!
6. Movie starts.
7. 15 minutes later, realize it’s not a good movie.
8. 15 minutes later, realize it’s a bad movie.

But what do you do then? You either walk out and feel like a chump (you go to the theatre, you pay them good money, and they give you crap in return), or you stick it out and hope the film gets better. In the latter case, since movies rarely get better, you eventually wind up wondering what the hell you’re doing wasting your life in a darkened theatre.

Or, as is the case with an increasing number of people I know, you avoid the feeling entirely by going to the movies less.

So, if Mark really wants me back in the movie theatres, it’s simple: lower my risk of feeling like a chump. Cause, right now, it’s way too high. And that means the movie industry has to work really hard to convince me to go to that theatre (and that’s the marketing cost).
In random order, here are some ideas:

1. Make sure the director has a weblog that communicates with me. Seriously. Kevin Smith’s weblog is an amazing asset for the movie.
2. Stop showing Fandango ads. All they do is waste minutes of my life and increase the cost of the evening. They DO NOT add value.
3. Make longer trailers available and have a trailer review board whose sole job is to rate the trailer on accuracy. Make the review board a paid position and staff it with credible people (”I, Roger Ebert, personally think that this trailer accurately reflects the movie”).
4. Advertise the correct time. Right now, the movie starts between 10 and 20 minutes after the scheduled time (depending on how many trailers and how long they are). Let me skip the trailers if I want to. Don’t force me to attend your commercials in order to see the film I paid to see.
5. Have a separate theatre that does nothing but show trailers. Make it free and let me go and watch a bunch of trailers in a movie theatre if I want to. Betcha still make a bunch of money on the nachos and soda (and, while we’re on the subject of food. Serve good food. Wouldn’t it be nice if when someone bought food from the concession stand, we all went ‘Hmmm. Interesting choice’ instead of ‘Wow. He’s going for the microwaved velveeta on stale chips. Brave man.’)
6. Let me walk out after 15 minutes and give me my money back if I do. It’s not really the money, it’s the admission by the theatre that the movie sucked and the willingness of the theatre chain to take part of the blame.
7. Another variation on money back. How about I pay for the ticket, then I get to see the first 15 minutes at home (streaming video). If I like it, I say “Yes” and get a ticket to a showing sometime in the next three days. If not, I get to choose another film.
8. (admittedly a software perspective). Go easy on the self-righteousness and DRM. Whenever I see a hollywood type waxing poetic about defending the “creative process” from “piracy”, I get just a little more tired of films.

How’s that. 8 ways to increase the chances I’ll go to another movie before Clerks III comes out. Many of which are relatively cheap and many of which have other benefits too.

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