The Movie Pushers
Behind the scenes at the Dallas Film Exchange: What they like is what we get.
A FEW YEARS AGO A movie I had been waiting quite a while to see finally arrived at a theater in Houston. The day it was to open I had to leave town and wasn't able to make it back for two weeks. I opened the paper and was greatly relieved to discover that my movie was now entering its "THIRD SMASH WEEK." That night, a Friday, convinced there was going to be trouble getting tickets, I goaded a friend into limiting her dinner to a single harried bite of cheese, then careened, my car nearly out of control, to the theater. We were the first people to buy tickets, and we waited for 35 minutes, ears assaulted all the while by chintzy muzak, while the night's nine other patrons drifted in one by one. I was wrong about the movie, too, as my friend pointed out through tightly clenched, cheese-encrusted teeth.
Unfortunately, that's not the end of the story. A month or so later she wanted to go to a particular movie. I had driven by the theater the night before and seen a line from the box office to the Gulf of Mexico. "Don't worry," I told her. "Remember that dud that was here for three weeks? This one's going to be playing for years." A few days later, not even pretending to eat this time, I burned through most of the tread on my tires getting to the theater only to discover that her film had been replaced by a minor opus starring Fabian, an actor, she informed me through those same clenched teeth, who was not among her favorites.
A while later she had the good sense to go start a movie-less life on a homestead in Alaska, and left me wondering, among other things, what perverse logic made movie theaters and distributors do the things they do. Not long ago, I tried to find out.
SID PAGE IS TALKING A lot without saying much. As he talks, he smiles. If you think it's easy to smile while you talk, try it. Sid Page can do it effortlessly. After 25 years in the movie business, he's had plenty of practice. Right now he works in Dallas for National General Theaters.
Sid is tall, sleek, about 50. Though friendly, he's not particularly warm; though smiling, not especially jovial. Except for his silver hair, he resembles Milton Berle right down to his slightly protruding front teeth. A large diamond ring sparkles on his left hand. He has settled in behind his desk after assuring me that he is ready to tell me anything I want to know.
How do movies get distributed? "Well, now that," Sid says, "is a very complicated business." There was a time, he explains, when it was simpler. In the good old days, when there was just a handful of important studios, the studios owned their own theaters and played their films there. The studios also had all the big stars under contract and sent them whistle-stopping around the country to plug their films. One company could handle everything from production to promotion to distribution. But anti-trust litigation, rebellion of the stars and changes in public taste changed all that.
"Today there aren't any rules," Sid says. "You name it, that's the way it's done. It's all negotiation, confrontation, and friendship."
Friendship? "Yes." Smile.
What if two different theaters want to show the same film? "That," Sid says, positively beaming, "is a highly technical question. Very hard to explain." He pauses for a moment. "Let me put it this way. If a doctor told you in medical language what was wrong with you, do you think you could understand him?"
Couldn't the doctor explain it in understandable language? "You mean layman's terms? I guess so. When two theaters want to show the same film. .." Sid ponders for a moment, staring down at his desk, then looks up with an air of self-satisfaction. "In that case, we do the best we can!"
While leaving, I wished that we hadn't wasted each other's time; but I came to discover that in his own carefully unilluminating way, Sid was pretty much telling the truth. People in the movie industry, particularly in the distribution and exhibition end of it, are, if not always friendly, at least clannish. And distributing movies to the theaters in Texas is a complicated process, although the bare mechanics of it are simpler than Sid would have us believe.
In Texas nearly every movie plays where and when it plays as a result of decisions made in Dallas. Every major film distributor and many not so major are there, as well as film bookers, or buyers, who among them represent nearly all the movie theaters in the state. Together the distributors and bookers participate in what is known as a film exchange, a loose organization— really just a set of procedures—for agents of movie distributors and exhibitors to hash through their business. The Dallas exchange is responsible for booking movies throughout Texas and in parts of neighboring states.
When a new movie comes along, and come along new movies invariably do, the producer contracts with a distributor whose first decision is whether or not to distribute in Texas at all. Well, it may not be the first decision he has to make; nevertheless, everyone has to make a decision about Texas sooner or later and film distributors are no exception.
If the movie is a Western, rest assured that it will play, and play, in Texas. Even a Western that has already bombed on the East and West coasts can arouse considerable interest in theater owners here. It may be that New Yorkers can't recognize a good Western even when it bites the dust in front of them; or it may be that Texans are drawn to Western movies as ghosts are drawn to places they once lived. In any event Westerns have consistently done well here, and no distributor needs to be told to take advantage of the situation.
A distributor may decide not to try to sell a film here if the film has done very poorly in other markets or if the film is foreign made. No matter how highly acclaimed critically or financially successful elsewhere, or both, foreign movies are rarely profitable to show in Texas (with the important exception of Spanish language films from Mexico). Both distributors and exhibitors have learned to shy away from foreign films entirely or to book them only in certain theaters, for example one near a university.
But other than the proclivity toward Westerns and the antipathy toward imports, Texas audiences, at least in the urban areas, tend to have pretty much the same taste as audiences anywhere else in America. Consequently, the national distributor wanting to place his film in Texas markets will contact, through his representative in Dallas, the bookers representing the various theater owners and ask for bids. The bookers, if they want the film for one or more of their theaters, will offer a bid containing some combination of percentage split, front money, and guaranteed playing time. They can also offer additional frills like special promotion or a showing in an especially popular or prestigious theater.
The distributor, after consulting with his home office, generally either in Los Angeles or New York, sells the film to the theater whose booker has made the most attractive offer. A man could say it's that simple, but that same man would probably say poker is simple—all you have to know is two pair beats a pair, trips beat two pair, a straight beats…
For the Dallas film exchange is something like a poker game, a game in which the distributor holds most of the chips. His primary advantage is that a theater owner must have a film to show every day he wants to open, and there aren't enough films made to satisfy that demand. Sometimes a theater owner has to keep playing a movie which has turned out to be a dog just because he couldn't get another film to replace it. That's when the "Held Over By Popular Demand" ads start appearing in the newspaper; but the demand, in this case, is not from the public but from other theaters which have demanded the popular films first. Other times the reverse happens. The owner books a film for a week only to discover that he has to turn people away night after night. At the end of the week he may have to let the film go since it has been booked for the next week by another theater .
Some of this confusion might be avoided if the theater's booking agents always knew what they were bidding on. Most of the time they must decide how much they are willing to pay for a film, how much front money they will put up, how long a run they will guarantee, without having seen the film. It is not at all unusual for them to be required to bid on a film that has not been completed or on one not even cast.
To do this kind of bidding the bidder has to rely on reports from trade publications, on past successes or failures of the producer, director, and stars if they have been chosen, and on his knowledge of the source of the movie if it happens to be based on, say, a bestseller. Still, it's rather like betting in stud poker on rumors about your opponents' up cards. It's true that the broker may cancel his bid anytime within 48 hours after he has had a chance to see the film, but that means he's going to have to find another one to replace it, which may not be all that easy to do.
The bookers' biggest problem though, when all is said and done, is gauging the public taste. Last year about 275 pictures were released in the United States; but only 71, or roughly one movie in four, netted a million dollars or more. Allan Dillon, who books for United Artists Theater Circuit from the Dallas exchange, says that of those 71 movies, some may not do particularly well in Texas as a whole or may do well in some places and not in others.
"Take The Poseidon Adventure for example," says Dillon of a movie that across the country is making money hand over fist, "We sent it out to some of our theaters and they wanted to know 'How come you're sending us this movie about an upsidedown ship?'"
Dillon believes that, generally speaking, audiences in Texas' urban areas have tastes closer to those of the West coast than the East, only "we're about four years behind."
FACEBOOK
RSS
TUMBLR
TM
Read Later