..Gary Dretzka
..Noah Forrest
..Leonard Klady
..R.J. Matson
..David Poland
..Douglas Pratt
..Ray Pride
..Michael Wilmington

Don’t Argue with Leo …
He knows where every penny goes  

About $180 million worth of movie tickets were sold last weekend in what we call the domestic marketplace (U.S. and Canada). Or, to put it in slightly different terms, roughly 10% of the population went to the movies between Friday and Sunday.

And to continue along, 1 in 25 domestics were filling up seats in darkened multiplex auditoriums on Saturday, May 31.

The point of all this scrutiny is that business was atypically strong, roughly 50% better than the same period in 2002. It got me thinking about the so-called elasticity of movie going and my own dark suspicion that there’s some artificial ceiling to how many people can be lured into cinemas.

The dilemma of balancing the two perspectives is in somehow truing up data and incorporating gut observation. It was Disraeli or George Arliss who said, “there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” And chronicler Evan Esar called statistics “the only science that enables different experts using the same figures to draw different conclusions.” So, wade in with caution, and beware of fins gliding on the surface.

As opposed to any other leisure time activity, going to the movies is measured by the number of occasions a person goes annually. Domestically, it works out to a little more than five times a year on average per person. The Motion Picture Association of America classifies people that see at least one film a month as “avids” and it also identifies a percentage of the population that simply never goes to the movies (I believe it’s 8% but can’t find the appropriate document).

Today, it’s almost impossible to generate more than a $200 million weekend or draw out more than 35 million patrons.

At the most recent ShoWest in March, National Association of Theater Owners president John Fithian announced that ticket sales in 2002 were higher than in any year going back to 1959. I’m not going to do the precise math, but I know that in the passage of 43 years, admission prices have increased 10 fold. I also know that the population base has not expanded at remotely that rate. Basically, that five times a year average hasn’t changed noticeably since 1967.

In the halcyon years of movie going that encompassed most of the 1930s and ‘40s, roughly 50% of the population went to the movies every week of the year. It’s a staggering figure that, when adjusted for population growth, translates to about seven times as many admissions than are currently generated annually. The nation was rife with avids.

The common consensus about what eroded the movie going bug can be summed up in one word: television. There’s no question of the impact of the boob tube and it’s probably not coincidental that in 1967, when the penetration of color TV sets in homes hit 33%, movie attendance fell by 50%.

However, there were other significant factors then and now that have reduced the habit.

One argument that’s often cited about the radical drop is that one has more options in leisure time activities. If we look at “then” and “now,” there are two basic areas that should be examined: the option to stay home or go out and, assuming the latter, where to go?

Rolling back the clock 60 years, you could stay home and enjoy what was on the big box - the radio. There were popular comedy and variety shows, dramas, all manner of music programs and the latest, breaking war coverage. Today, one can stay home and watch another box and see popular sitcoms, dramas, reality and specialty programs or watch recent or classic movies on video and DVD. Many more people now see any given film release on tape or cable rather than on the big screen.

However, should one decide to escape the confines of the home, there are concerts, professional sports, theater, galleries, comedy clubs and such. With slight modifications, all those options also existed back in the ‘30s and ‘40s. In other words, there have always been alternative choices to going to the movies. What has changed is this: whereas roughly half the population lived in big cities or their environs up to 1950, today that percentage has risen to 80%. It simply means that the majority of North Americans have a wealth of things they can do for play. They have a spectrum of activities few exercise to the fullest.

Of far greater significance and impact on the audience were changes in the industry and the movies that began in the late 1960s. While two recent documentaries - A Decade Under the Influence and Easy Riders, Raging Bulls - explore the films and filmmakers of that era, neither comes to grips with how a different sensibility actually reduced the number of people who went to movie theaters.

It’s important to remember that up to that time, Hollywood had been making family films for four decades. With very rare exception, you could pack up the entire family and go to dish night and not be embarrassed or confused by depictions of sexuality, violence or the use of profanity. That began to crumble in the 1960s with independent films such as The Pawnbroker causing a stir when it briefly exposed a breast. The atmosphere of rebellion also coincided with a studio system that was hemorrhaging money to an extent that placed them perilously close to bankruptcy. The majors were making Camelot and Hello, Dolly! while the now defunct Avco Embassy was grossing $100 million with The Graduate.

Suddenly, scads of films were being made not for all, but for a segment of the audience. The MPAA, to keep the peace, instituted a rating system that advised parents on the content and suitability of a film to minors. The screen experienced an explosion of talent and ideas and alienated half the country that was now afraid to step inside the cinema and view the graphic violence of Sam Peckinpah, pervasive nudity or Jack Nicholson swearing like a sailor whether he was cast as one or not.

With the advent of G, PG, R and X-rated movies, the die was cast to target specific audiences. Since the 1950s a new, moneyed consumer group had sprung up called teenagers, but it wasn’t until the 1970s that the majors realized movies could be made for them. Teenagers wanted out of the house and were not the most discerning audience. Tentpole pictures are specifically geared to them with the top end of boundary line set at 25 years old.

MPAA president Jack Valenti always notes when attendance figures jump for “over 40s.” And they do from time to time. However, one has to keep in perspective that they only constitute 10% to 15% of the audience. In other words, whereas those people between the ages of 16 and 24 going to the movies in a disproportionately high ratio to their percentage of the population, people 40 years and plus go disproportionately less. And there’s a very good reason for it. The people who give the green light have abandoned them.

Returning to what prompted me to explore the current movie going landscape, it seems to me inarguable that there are limits to contemporary film going. The prospect of infinite elasticity cannot be realized until movies are made with appeal to all and every segment of the population.

A Brief Word About Leo

Long before there was Di Caprio, there was The Harder They Fall, the gritty 1956 meller about corruption in the fight game that starred Humphrey Bogart (his last film) and Rod Steiger. Toward the end of the picture, Bogart decides to pull his dim-witted pugilist out of the game and goes to promoter Steiger to settle out. Steiger turns to his bookkeeper Leo (Nehemiah Persoff) for an account balance and the rest should be viewed rather than related.

Screenwriter Budd Schulberg may have been taking on the fight racket, but the parallels with profit participation in today’s film system will not go unnoticed.

 

- by Leonard Klady