When Does the Movie Start?
The major chains need to figure out their pre-shows.
Even though I mostly attend press screenings, I still sometimes go to a regular movie if I want to see something again or if a conflict prevented me from seeing it with the press. I understand that press screenings are a bit of a bubble where cell phone restrictions are slightly more enforced (it’s always a hoot when the security guy tells the crowd before the movie, “We threw several people in jail last week for using their phones.” Okay, bud). Still, I’ve tried to manage my way around rude patrons by going to midday screenings with lower attendance.
But what I still struggle with is the pre-show. For some, the pre-show is the stuff before the scheduled start time (e.g., Noovie), and that’s fine. But where I start to get a headache is the endless trailers. There are about 25-30 minutes of trailers before the movie starts. On the one hand, I understand cramming in so many: you have a captive audience and the theater wants to get their most likely customers—people who have shown up in a theater at this very moment—to return for an upcoming feature.
However, there is a level of attrition where the trailer is no longer effective. We paid to see a movie, and now we’re being treated to a solid half hour of ads followed by a few minutes of brand bumpers (I usually go to AMC Theaters, so after the trailers you get a genre mash-up ad for Coca-Cola followed by an abbreviated “We come to this place…” ad of Nicole Kidman wandering around an empty theater). You’ve shown up to a movie only to be treated to advertising, and it’s not even advertising unique to the theater. We’re a long way from movie theaters being the only place you can see a trailer.
I understand that some people like the experience of seeing the trailers, and I say more power to them. But there are also folks like me that, since we now have the advent of reserved seating (honestly, one of the best things the major chains have done in the last decade), just want to show up when the movie actually starts. I propose that the major chains1—AMC, Regal, and Cinemark—all list the trailer start time and the real movie start time for their customers. The ticket has already been purchased, and there’s no shortage of ways for people to learn about upcoming movies. Yes, the trailer is a valuable sales tool for upcoming movies, but it also detracts from the actual moviegoing experience. If your competition is people staying at home to watch movies and they can do it without a 30-minute ad block, you need to negotiate that number down.
It’s one thing to try and retain a customer, but the long block of trailers smacks of sweaty desperation; a business so enthralled that someone showed up that they can’t let them go and will work overtime to ensure a return engagement, not with service or comfort, but with advertising. But an “Oh, that looks good” is no guarantee of a return, especially when some trailers don’t include release dates. You’ve taken someone willing to leave the house for a movie, and once again subjected them to a lesser experience that will inevitably drive them closer to streaming. It’s great when a movie like Sinners is a massive success, but the movie didn’t hit $242 million domestic because a single Sinners trailer was one of ten during the trailer block.
I understand this is a dumb little problem, but I can’t tell you how many times I’ve walked into a movie theater amped to see a movie only to have my enthusiasm slowly siphoned away by trailer after trailer. I’ve tried to moderate this by showing up later than the posted start time, but it would be nice if I didn’t have to play a guessing game of “How many trailers before the movie?” The theaters know when the real movie starts, and it would be great if they shared that information with everyone who knows that if you want to see movie trailers, you can always go on YouTube.
Recommendations
I’m going to recommend three great 4Ks that are on sale today. The first is one of my all-time favorite movies, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. You don’t need to have seen the other two parts of Sergio Leone’s “Man with No Name” Trilogy to understand it, and I also feel like it’s the best of the three anyway. The epic western moves like lightning as three men (Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, Eli Wallach) race to find buried treasure during the Civil War. It’s a stunning film and a great introduction to spaghetti westerns if you’ve never seen one before. Right now it’s only $15.84 (60% off).
Next is The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, which is an amazing crime drama with an all-timer score from David Shire. The plot concerns four men who take a subway car hostage with ransom demands, and the transit cop (Walter Matthau) trying to stop them. I rewatched this one just last year, and it’s lost none of its electricity. You can pick it up for $14.92 (63% off).
Finally, there’s a personal fave: Kingpin. I am fully aware of how juvenile and silly this movie is (“We don’t have a cow. We have a bull.”). I do not care. Woody Harrelson is at his comic best here, Bill Murray makes for a great antagonist, and the Farrelly Brothers know how to do a road trip comedy. But more than all of that, my pal Max Evry did the commentary track on this new 4K, so pick it up for him! You can pre-order it right now for only $22.49 (50% off).
Note: I earn a small percentage of sales made through my Amazon Associates links.
What I’m Watching
I’ve slowly been making my way through Spike Lee’s filmography in the lead-up to his new film, Highest 2 Lowest, a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low that recently premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. I think Lee is a fascinating filmmaker, not because he always hits it out of the park, but because the flaws and imperfections in his approach provide his movie with fantastic textures and ideas.
For example, I just watched He Got Game, which I hadn’t seen since it came out in 1998. Lee is an unabashed Knicks fan, and there’s a fascinating idea at the center of the movie about what it means for this American sport to be played at the college and professional level largely by men that America discards or exploits for economic gain. Despite having a great central performance from Denzel Washington, there’s also a lot of extraneous stuff that either distracts from the central conflict or feels redundant (there’s a whole montage of real NBA personalities singing the praises of the film’s fictional basketball phenom Jesus Shuttlesworth (Ray Allen), who we already know is a generational talent from the movie’s premise).
I’ll probably watch some more Lee movies before Highest 2 Lowest arrives in August, but it’s interesting to see what’s available and what isn’t. For example, both movies he released in 1996—Girl 6 and Get on the Bus—are not available on streaming, so it means I’ll need to take a trip down to Videodrome.
What I’m Reading
The 1990s movie that needed a $90,000 White House by Simon Brew [Film Stories] - I love pieces like this where you get into the creation of an iconic set. No one gets to film on location in the White House (or at least not right now; maybe if someone ponies up a big enough bribe), so they had to figure out how to recreate it for the lovely 1993 comedy Dave. That set then got loaned out to other productions, and it’s nice to think of the value of a physical creation rather than green screen assets that are as disposable as the films they typically accompany.
They Were Waiting for Trump All Along by Jamelle Bouie [The New York Times] - There’s a fiction circulating in Democratic circles that Trump is an anomaly for the Republican Party and that at some point, “The fever will break.” But as Bouie points out, there’s been a thread of authoritarianism running through the right wing for decades. When Trump and his people threaten to suspend habeas corpus, that’s not a red line for the party or its base; that’s an exciting promise. Democrats, rather than indulge in a fiction that may appease a focus group, should confront that reality.
Yes, the media’s Biden coverage was flawed. But its reporting on Trump was far worse by Margaret Sullivan [The Guardian] - I had to mention the plane thing a couple paragraphs ago because it’s such a perfect example of how Trump’s flagrant corruption sails by because he does it in the open. Democrats are scandalous because they behave like a normal political party. Watching the media move off the plane bribe to “Did Democrats cover up that Joe Biden was old?” is galling because A) Joe Biden is not currently President; and B) it was such a poor cover-up that he had to stop running for re-election. It’s a false equivalency that allows the media to pretend they’re even-handed and non-voters to check out because they believe both parties are equally corrupt. Sullivan notes that it’s not for the media to give Democrats a pass, but perhaps to finally hold Trump to account for the same transgressions (carelessness with government communication, being too physically and mentally unfit to do the job of President, etc.)
What I’m Hearing
I’ve now gone back a bit into You Must Remember This’ archives to listen to Karina Longworth’s season about Polly Platt. I hope that by the time You Must Remember This returns (which may be a while, as Longworth is starting a one-year program at the George Eastman Museum), I’ll be all caught up.
Indie theaters are off the hook because of their limited resources. Also, as someone who regularly attends indie theaters like the Plaza and the Tara, they typically top out their trailers at 10 minutes, which isn’t a big deal.