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Author Topic: There was no free admission show for Christmas this year Frank Cox Film God Posts: 2234 From: Melville Saskatchewan Canada Registered: Apr 2011 posted 12-14-2018 03:50 PM                        Most years I have a free admission show before Christmas that's sponsored by one of the local businesses. One of my regular customers phoned me this afternoon and asked why I didn't have a free admission show this year. I said that it's part of Santa Claus Day and this year the Santa committee had decided to hold their Santa Day on the same weekend as I was playing The Grinch so I couldn't do it. He asked how much it costs to sponsor a free admission show like that so I told him. He then said that he wants a free admission show for the whole community this year so he can bring his grandchildren to it and he will pay for it all himself as long as he can remain anonymous. Well, okey dokey then. I'm now checking to see if the movie that he wants will be available on the day that he decided on. Who'da thought someone would come up with something like that? He also told me how important the theatre and going to movies is to him now since his wife died a few years ago and he started coming almost every week. (Except if I'm playing a scary movie. He doesn't like scary movies.) Gosh, I hadn't realized that it was so meaningful.  |  IP: Logged Harold Hallikainen Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 906 From: Denver, CO, USA Registered: Aug 2009 posted 12-14-2018 04:43 PM                        I THINK Christmas is a pretty big movie day. I'm going with a group of 20 others to see "On the Basis of Sex" that day. Harold  |  IP: Logged Frank Cox Film God Posts: 2234 From: Melville Saskatchewan Canada Registered: Apr 2011 posted 12-14-2018 04:52 PM                        Movies here on Christmas Day are a waste of time. I usually close on December 24 and 25 so I can paint my auditorium floor. I have occasionally had to play a movie on those days when the movie company insisted on it, but there's never more than three or four people in the audience on either of those days, regardless of how big the movie is otherwise. I guess people have other things to do those two days. And I get an opportunity to paint the floor...  |  IP: Logged Mike Blakesley Film God Posts: 12767 From: Forsyth, Montana Registered: Jun 99 posted 12-14-2018 05:59 PM                        We are closed on 100% of Christmas Eves. I don't give a crap what the studio says, that's just not an option for us. (None have ever objected, not even Disney.) But we always have a pretty decent crowd on Christmas Day. Back in my 'party years,' we were closed New Year's Eve, too, but the year the original Toy Story came out we decided to play it that night, on the premise that people could drop of their kids while they went to a party or two. We had a really nice crowd that night so we've been open every New Year's Eve since. We used to ALWAYS have at least one free matinee every year before Christmas, until matinees of old movies became sort of a losing proposition due to home video. When that happened we started using the movie we were playing if it was suitable, or bringing in a PG-film we had missed during the year. Then the movies started getting so expensive that "free" was no longer an option, so we started doing discounts, sometimes sponsored. The prices vary depending on how much money the sponsor wants to kick in. This year we're doing "all kids get to see The Grinch free" the 16th, and a regular-priced show of Mary Poppins returns the next week. Plus we're running an all-seats-$5 show of "It's A Wonderful Life" to benefit the local hospital tomorrow.  |  IP: Logged Frank Cox Film God Posts: 2234 From: Melville Saskatchewan Canada Registered: Apr 2011 posted 12-14-2018 06:11 PM                        I just charge a flat fee for "free shows" and anyone who wants to pay that fee can have a movie. Usually it's one of the local businesses around here that pays for the free Christmas show. It's a "special movie", though; not my regularly scheduled movie. Do you have to pay anyone for It's a Wonderful Life since it's public domain movie? (For that matter, what about Night of the Living Dead, since it's also public domain?) And are they available as DCP's anywhere?  |  IP: Logged Steve Moore Expert Film Handler Posts: 211 From: Leeds, West Yorks, UK Registered: Apr 2008 posted 12-14-2018 06:55 PM                     Here, in the UK, we have played Wonderful life on Christmas Eve in the morning to a full house, 466 seats, in my 106 year old single screen cinema for the last 7 or 8 years. Yes it's through distributor Park Circus on DCP (we played from dvd before we went real digital on a large data projector.) We also show a "normall" film on Christmas eve afternoon (this year Mary Poppins returns.) but close for the evening showing. We always close on Christmas day and Boxing day.  |  IP: Logged Leo Enticknap Film God Posts: 7474 From: Loma Linda, CA Registered: Jul 2000 posted 12-14-2018 07:03 PM                        If you can find an original 1940s print of It's a Wonderful Life, then it's public domain and you can have at it. However, most of the versions in circulation today are restorations or remasterings, with all rights reserved in that component, even if the original footage has lapsed into the public domain or was never covered by copyright in the first place. The cynic in me would point out that it's no coincidence that the most enduringly popular classic oldies (Lawrence of Arabia, The Red Shoes, you name 'em) seem to be the subject of a major restoration every decade or so, even though they are already preserved in far better condition than 99.9% of our surviving cinema heritage. The reason is to keep them perpetually in copyright. Last year I received a cease and desist letter from a major record company, regarding a video of my two-year old son playing I put on YouTube (scarily, as a private video, unsearchable, uploaded to YT simply as a convenient way for relatives to see it - but the record company still found it), to which I had added a soundtrack of a jazz record published in the UK in 1926. I responded, pointing out that the soundtrack was of a digital capture of an original release copy of the 78 that I owned (I included a photo of the record), and citing the relevant sections of the UK Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act and the Berne Convention to point out that copyright in this record had expired, and that in fact, I owned the copyright to the version on the video, because I did the capture and remastering (which, like a movie restoration, is itself is a standalone piece of intellectual property). I never heard from them again, and YT accepted my challenge to the request to take the video down. I suspect that 99.9% of the people they bully like that just roll over, but I wasn't going to.  |  IP: Logged Martin Brooks Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 900 From: Forest Hills, NY, USA Registered: May 2002 posted 12-16-2018 11:44 AM                        "Jewish Christmas" means going to a movie and a Chinese restaurant on December 25th. And even aside from that, I think the theaters are pretty busy on Christmas in NYC, although I don't have access to actual stats from prior years.  |  IP: Logged Leo Enticknap Film God Posts: 7474 From: Loma Linda, CA Registered: Jul 2000 posted 12-16-2018 11:58 AM                        I guess that in areas with a concentrated non-Christian population (even within countries that do officially recognize Christmas as a public holiday), the atmosphere is very different. Thanks to a canceled flight, I was once stuck in Shanghai on Christmas Day. It was just another regular working weekday in the city. There were some Christmas decorations up in some places (in the same way that a few British stores now do Black Friday promotions, despite the fact that very few Britons, I suspect, know where that tradition comes from), but they were clearly for the benefit of westerners there rather than the indigenous population.  |  IP: Logged Mike Blakesley Film God Posts: 12767 From: Forsyth, Montana Registered: Jun 99 posted 12-16-2018 08:48 PM                        quote: Frank Cox Do you have to pay anyone for It's a Wonderful Life since it's public domain movie? We had to pay Paramount Repertory for it. It is available on DCP but we already had a Blu-Ray of it so I played my converted version, rather than having to mess with a KDM and pay $50 to ship it in and out. I think it was about $100 cheaper to provide our own copy. It looked really really good. One guy asked me "Are you playing the colorized version by any chance?" I said no, we're playing the black-and-white, like God intended. He said "Yes!!"  |  IP: Logged Frank Cox Film God Posts: 2234 From: Melville Saskatchewan Canada Registered: Apr 2011 posted 12-17-2018 02:45 PM                        "A Gift to the Community from Someone who wishes to remain Anonymous." Gosh, that line has really got the town buzzing. It seems to have become a game to try to figure out who the anonymous person is. My answer when anyone asks is "Classified". That aspect of it seems to be adding even more interest to this thing among the people around here. Of course, FREE MOVIE always gets everyone's attention anyway. It ranks right up there with Free Beer, I suppose.  |  IP: Logged Mike Blakesley Film God Posts: 12767 From: Forsyth, Montana Registered: Jun 99 posted 12-17-2018 08:36 PM                        That's for sure. We had about 3 times as many kids to the "free kids" matinee of "The Grinch" than we had to the regularly-priced matinee the week before...and that was before we had even advertised the free-for-kids show. We were completely full. We also had a guy who came in and wanted to pay for some kids tickets but wanted to be anonymous and didn't want to specify who would get the tickets. He gave us $60 and then another $50 the next week. So we're sprinkling those tickets out among random kids over the next few weeks.  |  IP: Logged Dave Bird Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 777 From: Perth, Ontario, Canada Registered: Jun 2000 posted 12-20-2018 08:13 AM                        They pulled back the green velvet curtain and it was FRANK all along!  |  IP: Logged Louis Bornwasser Film God Posts: 4441 From: prospect ky usa Registered: Mar 2005 posted 12-22-2018 07:29 PM                        A semi-local cinema to me once interlocked all screens to play one film for a free matinee on 35mm. The Cinema did not have an empty seat and built a lot of good will for the cinema. The point is that there may well be a good number of people who normally can't afford to go,but show up for the free film. You never know who you are helping or why.  |  IP: Logged Monte L Fullmer Film God Posts: 8367 From: Nampa, Idaho, USA Registered: Nov 2004 posted 12-26-2018 06:05 PM                     On this: Last week I had a senior citizen actually scold me on why we don't let senior citizens for free .. at all times.. He told me that they've put their time in to society and deserve restitution of sorts. I replied back that I'll bring this up to the company brass. Dumbest thing I've ever heard.  |  IP: Logged

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