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This topic comprises 2 pages: 1 2
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Topic: How do you deal with the resentment over what you don't play?
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Mike Blakesley
Film God
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Posts: 12767
From: Forsyth, Montana
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 02-17-2009 03:37 PM
It really is a huge guessing game. We listen a lot to what people ask about, but sometimes that backfires too. Last fall we had skipped over Beverly Hills Chihuahua because the schedule was just too full, but people kept asking about it so we finally brought it in when we had an opening....and then it flopped.
On the other hand, I was ready and willing to skip over Paul Blart based on the trailer. I thought it would be one of those quickie hits that would die off rapidly and make a fast trip to video, but now we are playing it and holding a second week....it'll probably be in our top five for the year!
But to answer the question -- we get a lot of "when are you going to get _____" questions, but not a lot of complaints over what we do play. (At least, not to our face!) I think people realize we do our best to play a good mix of various kinds of films.
We've played a lot of movies over the years where people were amazed that we played them, like some foreign-language films for example -- not exactly highly demanded fare in eastern Montana!
When we do bring in some highly-acclaimed, limited-appeal Oscar-nominated film, the people in the crowd see that there are only a few people in attendance and that makes them realize why we don't play more of those kinds of films.
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Tony L. Hernandez
Expert Film Handler
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Posts: 158
From: Windsor, CO, USA
Registered: Dec 2005
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posted 02-18-2009 02:58 AM
I loved Monte's final line about the "catch 22"...that pretty much sums it up. Only one of my theaters is a regular first run theater and it is a historic single screen that runs May-September. The film companies throw us one or two blockbusters a year but we don't always have first pick do to the fact that we are seasonal and there is a competing three-plex in town some 73-years our junior (and actually the owner is a really nice guy)that always seems to get first pick, even though our beautifully renovated single screen holds more than two of his screens combined. If we constantly get requests for a picture that is in its 2nd run, we usually try to bring it in for a matinee show, as was the case with Kung-Fu Panda which actually did quite well for us. I also like to go stand in the theater while my trailers are running to hear audience reactions. However you just can't please 'em all and the sooner you learn that, the less your feelings will get hurt (and trust me, that is easier said than done). I've found that you can run every picture Hollywood can pump out, on the break, and still someone will be pissed that you are not running "that Russian arthouse film that just came out". Or you can run a feature at the top and bottom of every hour and still someone will be agitated that you don't have a showing at 2:17pm. I also remember a couple of summers ago that we had played mostly films containing voilence and/or raunchy humor. This sparked a group of the town's Holyer-Than-Thou residents to bombard us with complaints via phone calls and personal visits to the theater. Well, they are are a part of our customer base so we figured we would try to make them happy. We ended up booking (I can't remember the title) a lovely, squeaky clean family picture with nice characters and a good-moral ending. Guess what? Not one of the complaining people came too see it and it was our worst grossing picture of the season! I had one guy get really nasty with me this summer over the fact that we were not running "Journey to the Center of the Earth" in 3D. I politely told him that if he wanted to buy me a $120k D-Cinema system, I would gladly show as many films as I could in 3-D. That shut him up pretty quick! ;-D
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Monte L Fullmer
Film God
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Posts: 8367
From: Nampa, Idaho, USA
Registered: Nov 2004
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posted 02-18-2009 03:50 AM
quote: Tony L. Hernandez ..we were not running "Journey to the Center of the Earth" in 3D...
.. And this could be a subheader in this thread topic: "...deal with the resentment over that you're not playing movies in Digital and/or 3D?"
With the massive growth in Digital and now with the 'fad' explosion of 3D, a lot of 2D plexes really gets the 'crap-on' by the customers, especially when they see your 9 plus buck per tix at the boxoffice and that feature in not shown in either or both, Digital and 3D ..and you're in an area that does have both formats, thus these patrons gets all miffed out, leaves your plex and drive across town or across the valley to spend the extra $2.50 just so they can see the 3D movie.
Sadly, with this new competition, you're attendance starts to take a toll there due to the fact that the patrons are after value entertainment (since the world "value" is now important with our economic situations that is among us..), and if you aint got the right "bells and whistles", by dang, they'll go find it - just to get their money's worth.
..It's all about value these days...
-Monte
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