The Movie Pushers
Behind the scenes at the Dallas Film Exchange: What they like is what we get.
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Even farther behind must be the audiences that patronize the theaters booked by Forrest White of the Ind-ex Booking Service. He deals with drive-ins located in such exotic movie markets as Coleman, Mineral Wells, Muleshoe, and Brenham. Mr. White has been in this business since 1937. He's a thin, white-haired, reedy-voiced old gentleman who likes to smoke cigars as thick as a man's wrist. He is prone to burst into high-pitched laughter that seems to take control of him making his eyes water, and coming to an end gradually as it runs out of inertia, like an automobile coasting to a stop.
His business has its special problems. "I can't book movies with too much sex," he says lighting another cigar. "My customers tell me 'Send G pictures.' So I send a G picture and they lose money. Then I book another G, and they lose money again. Then they call me. 'Forrest, why don't you send me an R?'"
"I can't send black pictures out there either," he says. "Nothing like Shaft or Superfly. The owners don't want a majority of blacks coming to their theater. And I can't have too much violence. If I book some horror features, I have to wait three or four weeks to book more or there'll be complaints."
Forrest White's is not a good business for a young man to enter. "Used to be we could play movies in small towns when it came our turn. Now they sell 'em to TV before we have a chance to bid." He lights another cigar, the smoke rising and hanging in clouds near the ceiling. "The young kids, when they want to see a movie, just hop in their car and drive to the city. When a good movie does come along, the distributors want such a big cut that we can't play it. Just one of my theaters got The Godfather and they had to raise admission to make it." He shrugs, puffs on his cigar. "The distributors milk the small towns dry."
The distributors would answer that they are simply trying to do their job, which is making the most money possible from every film. If there's more profit in a TV sale than in selling to drive-ins, and there usually is, then TV it's going to be.
Making the most money from a movie in a particular market may be simply showing the movie in the theater that has bid the most money, doing some promotion, and letting the chips flow in. But it seldom works like that. In spite of whatever advantages the distributor may have, there are hazards he must consider as he makes his plays. He must decide how to offer the picture to the bookers: as an exclusive showing in only one or two theaters in an area, or as a multiple showing in the ten or so different theaters that make the best bids. It's a crucial decision. The interest in certain films, The Last Tango in Paris for example, might quickly dissipate if people opened their morning newspaper and discovered that the film was playing in neighborhood theaters all over town. Yet even a low budget horror movie, or perhaps especially a low budget horror movie, can do quite well with multiple bookings and energetic promotion. In this case, the number of houses showing the film tends to increase interest both at the breakfast table and the box office.
Deciding which bid to accept can require some subtle considerations. Lloyd Edwards, who has worked in Dallas for 20th Century Fox over 20 years, says he "accepts the best money offer which will maintain the status the film deserves." But status goes deeper than matching an expensive film with an expensive theater. "I put Sounder into a small, intimate theater," Edwards explains, "because it's a subtle, quiet film. It would have gotten lost in a larger house."
What happens if no one bids on a film? "Then," Edwards says, "I have to go peddling. I look up my friends." Remember friendship?
That friendship, though it certainly exists, can't extend too far. Because of anti-trust laws and court decisions made during the late forties, motion picture distributors are prevented from owning their own theaters. The bidding system was established so that each theater could have a fair chance to show the movies that are produced. Also gone with the wind are the days of block booking, when a distributor offered movies in blocks of ten or twelve. In order to get the two or three good movies in the package, the theater had to agree to show them all. The dross were often cheap imports which didn't draw and had, in those days, the additional danger of bringing on a bust.
Nevertheless, independently owned theater chains have risen to fill the vacuum left by the courts' decisions. In Texas there are about 1000 movie theaters but only 350 or so individual owners. The Republic Circuit, owned by Gordon McLendon, operates theaters with close to 40 separate screens. In Texas cities there are still some owners of just one or two theaters, but their days appear to be numbered.
Corresponding to the block bookings of yesterday are the multi-cinemas, theaters with more than one screen under the same roof, which are becoming the rule rather than the exception. Not only can the multi-cinema owner show several films for roughly the same overhead it would cost him to show one, but he can match, say, an R movie with a Disney. Parents shove the kids into the Disney while the big folks go watch the R. Or maybe it works vice versa. An otherwise mediocre draw, when matched with a popular film, may do quite well in a multi-cinema. The overflow, not able to get into the popular film, spills into the second film muttering, "Well, as long as we're here already…" The multi-cinema in Dallas which showed The Poseidon Adventure did quite well running Pete 'n Tillie to an audience of castaways from the good ship Poseidon.
The multi-cinemas, successful as they are, have not solved all the problems of theater owners, particularly those with one theater or just a few theaters in a single city. They have a hard time getting a break from the distributors since the distributors, by dealing with a chain, can (according to Hal Cheetham, a Dallas advertising executive with long experience in the movie industry) arrange numerous bookings by one meeting and one contract rather than by dealing with individual owner after individual owner. Since a chain may be paying a different rate for a movie in different towns, it is running on the inside track when bidding against other theaters in the town. Nor do the chains like anyone meddling in their business. No one at McLendon's Republic would talk to a reporter and Interstate's Conrad Brady positively snarled when contacted by telephone.
But both the chains and the independents suffer from the contractual agreements demanded by distributors. For a potentially top drawing film the theater may have to contract for a 90-10 split as well as advancing a sizeable cash guarantee. (Guess who gets the 90 per cent.) Charles Paine, president of Tercar Theaters which owns several theaters in Houston, including the Windsor, tells this story: "To get Mary, Queen of Scots I put up a $55,000 guarantee and I didn't take in nearly that much at the box office. Now when the next money maker came along the distributor didn't come to me and say, 'Charlie, boy, I know you took a bath on that last one so I'm going to give you a break on this one.'"
Sometimes, instead of a percentage split, the distributor will want what is known as a "four walled" deal. The distributor in effect rents the theater for whatever the owner will agree to, leaving the owner whatever he may make from concessions and keeping 100 per cent of the box office receipts. Frequently these are the terms under which hunting movies like African Safari are shown. But major distributors are starting to consider the four walled deal for showing major films. The Last Tango in Paris may be shown in Texas under such an arrangement. Paine complains that the four walled deal prevents the owner from making back his losses when a successful film arrives. He says that the distributors play off one theater against another so that the amount of rent the theater receives, even for an important film, can be astonishingly low.
The economics of film booking are such that modern theaters could not survive without the income from their concessions. Drive-ins have already expanded their once dilapidated concession stands into what are really restaurants, and indoor theaters may be following suit quickly enough. Since more than 70 per cent of Texas moviegoers are under 25, theaters are really, at least when profits are considered, running a snack shop for the young crowd.
Movie houses and their representative organization, The National Association of Theater Owners ( they answer the phone "NATO!") have been looking for many years for a new gimmick that will get people out of their homes and through the turnstiles. Of particular interest to NATO are the dinner theaters which have been a great success throughout Texas. Movie people feel they're going to have to find something to compete with a threat they have known was coming since the early fifties: cable television.
"Even back then, we knew we could not put it off forever," says Kyle Rorex, NATO's executive director in Texas; "but we decided to stall it as long as we could." Not much help has come from the rest of the industry. "The studios," Rorex adds dismally, "sold us out long ago."
It's not surprising that they did. Movie patronage is declining while preparing films for national distribution is becoming constantly more expensive. A single print of a movie can cost as much as $3000. To supply theaters across the country 100 or even more prints are necessary. With cable TV, the studio needs only one print, one ad campaign, and no distributors to reach an immense audience that doesn't need to leave its easy chair.
If theaters haven't found something new by the time cable TV becomes a national pastime, many owners will have to close and the players in the elaborate poker game of film distribution and exhibition will have to throw in their hands and cash in whatever chips they've got left.
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