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The Best Thing about the Film was the Ice-Cream Beforehand.

William Grosso @ June 1, 2008

Recently, I went to the local movie theater to see the latest Indiana Jones film with a friend. We wanted a well-crafted and somewhat mindless action film1 and Indiana Jones seemed like the right choice.

I hadn’t been to a movie theatre in 4 months, and I may never go to another first-run mass-market film. The experience was that bad.

Here’s what happened before the film:

  • We arrived an hour early to buy the tickets. The plan was to buy the tickets, then go for an ice-cream, then play a video game or two, then see the film. When we got there, the person selling the tickets cheerfully informed us that the next showing he had tickets for was in 4 hours.
  • We thought about it for a moment and decided to plump for Iron Man instead– it had very good reviews and was, more or less, in the same genre.
  • We went and had our ice-cream and played a couple of video games.
  • We arrived back 20 minutes before the film was supposed to start and went up to the usher to ask where theatre 10 was. He snarled at us and said we couldn’t go in. When I looked puzzled, he screamed that there were lines for all movies and that we should wait in the line because the theatre wasn’t ready yet.
  • We looked around and sure enough, over in the corner, there was a line with a “10″ in front of it.
  • We waited in line. I was a little surprised that the theatre was attempting to convert itself into an airport lobby, but I also thought to myself “Hmmmm. I guess it makes sense. They’re under some economic pressure and they’re attempting to maximize the use of their theatre. Fits with the fact that they don’t have any extra seats for Indiana Jones” As I looked around and noticed non-movie events2, it all fit together well and pointed to a business that was being run on tight margins.
  • We went in. And saw > 20 minutes of commercials. Including 2 for Coke, and a couple that made no sense whatsoever.

I was fairly annoyed at that point, primarily because there was no way to opt out of the commercials (if we arrived late, we wouldn’t have gotten tickets. If we just waited to go in, we would have gotten lousy seats). If I pay $10.50 and then have to wait in line to get a seat, spending 20 minutes showing me coke commercials is a bit over the top. And, also, to be honest: there was some residual anger at the usher who screamed at us3

None of this would have been fatal, of course, if the movie had been amazingly good.

The problem is that the theatre owners have, in order to maximize revenue-per-customer-per-customer-visit, taken away anything that doesn’t directly convert to revenue and are treating their customers entirely as mobile cash dispensers.

Which leaves the movie naked: if the movie isn’t great, even if it’s merely good, the sour taste from the individual small moments beforehand will remain4. And if the movie is bad, they’ll be magnified.

Since it’s impossible for a film to please everyone, this is a formula for shedding customers quickly.

And, of course, Iron Man was awful5.

Paying money to be herded and shown commercials to, and then having a really bad film, pretty much put paid to the idea of me attending first-run films.

On one had, I’m only one type of customer, and maybe not the right demographic for the movie industry6. On the other hand, the people who made Iron Man aren’t stupid. They made a bad film deliberately: they felt they had no choice but to swing for the fences7 and try to overwhelm the audience with special effects, regardless of whether anything else in the film worked on any level at all.

And that’s scary because it means that major portions of the film industry are already dying (or dead). Something I suspected after seeing Cloverfield (my last mainstream movie), but now am certain of.

  1. Ever have one of those days?↩
  2. For example, live broadcasts of the SF Opera↩
  3. It’s one of life’s little paradoxes: the less you get paid, and the less the job matters to you, the politer we expect you to be. Titans of industry, well-compensated and with jobs that are central to their self-image, are often feted for behavior we’d find unacceptable in a movie-theater usher.↩
  4. Even worse: everyone has to think the movie is great and they have to like it. Something like Citizen Kane, which is great but which very few people actually like, is just as bad in terms of the theater-going experience↩
  5. And if you were watching my Facebook feed, you would have found out in real time. Facebook on the iPhone works really well↩
  6. To quote my wife. “You’re very picky.”↩
  7. The best you can hope for if you swing for the fences with every decision is to be Dave Kingman. And he ain’t in the hall of fame.↩

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