Strike, they’re out?

Updated on October 10, 2007 By Ken Begg 21 Comments

Unless it’s resolved, the upcoming possible strikes of all *three* of Hollywood’s big unions (actors, directors, writers) could possibly cripple the movie and TV industries for a spell. 

I wonder, though, if they are shooting themselves in the foot.  Despite huge profits on some projects, the movies and (increasingly) broadcast scripted television are not particularly healthy from a financial standpoint.  If the ‘talent’ gets what they want, the industry will be even less profitable, as backend monies get eaten up both on projects that end up in the red, and the ones in the black that make up for the former.

The studios and talent are busy grinding out projects now, hoping to have a ton of stuff in the can before early next summer, when the strike or strikes would commence.  However, this will inevitably lead to shoddier work overall as projects are hurried, although for one or two it might actually be better, as scripts are shot before they can be “studioed” to death.  Hell, maybe we’ll even get an actual, Jabootu-level bad movie released.  I haven’t seen one of those since, oh, Battlefield Earth.

However, between possibly bad product in the pipeline, and diminishing stock should the strike(s) linger on, what if audiences just, you know, get out of the habit of going to see movies or watching TV?  There are so many different entertainment options now, that the industries may really be  killing the golden goose here.  A long-term lose of even 10% of their already shrinking audiences could really screw them over.  And, frankly, it would be hard to say they don’t deserve it.   Who knows, the death of the entertainment dinosaurs may be inevitable, anyway.

In the meantime, I’d like to see theaters turn a single multiplex screen or two to showing old movies.  Hell, you can bet I’d rather pay nine bucks to see the original The Taking of Pelham One Two Three in a theater than for the proposed Denzel Washington remake version.  Or how about a double or triple Marx Brothers bill?

I might be in the minority in my high level of interest in this sort of thing.  However, re-releasing old movies, assuming you can build up any sort of audience for them at all, is basically printing free money.  That is why you are starting to see things like Disney re-releasing the 3D Nightmare Before Christmas every year at Halloween.  If you can break down the “Why do I want to see an old movie in a theater?” mindset, and things like this indicate it is crumbling just a little, then who knows, we may soon have cheap local theaters that do nothing but screen old movies, probably through broadcast HD. 

 Indeed, this sort of thing is happening in a very small way, and maybe it a Hollywood strike will help it take hold.  Check out fathomevents.com, a firm that digitally broadcasts old movies on a select evening to (currently) 300 theaters in the US and Canada.  Not only are they packing old films (although the current offering of Halloween 4 & 5 I wouldn’t see on a bet), but look, they will be telecasting to theaters the two-part Menagerie episode of the original Star Trek show, in HD.  Frankly, I’d love to see more of this sort of thing.

I don’t think Hollywood yet understands that they need us more than we need them.  They may be learning this lesson the hard way, however, and sooner than anybody thought.

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  • Ericb

    The music industry is also changing. At this point all the big labels can think of doing to slow the slide is to fiddle with copyright laws and sue random people for illegally downloading music. That’s hardly a long term solution. Meanwhile small, independent labels are thriving in a way that they havn’t in years and are trying to find new ways to use technology to their advantage. In 20 years the industry will have totally tranformed into a new way of distributing and making a profit on music. How it’s going to end up I don’t know but the old ways of the big labels will be gone for good.

  • Hasimir Fenring

    we may soon have cheap local theaters that do nothing but screen old movies, probably through broadcast HD.

    I live for the day when all new films are released only on DVD and then only the good ones are later shown on the big screen for us cinema-philes to enjoy in their full splendour.

  • Ericb

    That’s interesting. Watching movies in theaters will become like a cultish subcultural thing, like indie rock.

  • There definitely needs to be some kind of change in the way theatrical entertainment is presented, because the cost/fun differential has shifted thus that I rarely see anything on the big screen anymore. I still want to see movies, but I don’t feel like putting up with the expense for the privilege of sitting in an uncomfortable seat surrounded by jaw-jacking idiots for two hours.

    Anyway, as far as the Halloween thing goes: I’d be all over that double feature if it wasn’t smack in the middle of the week. Some of us have to get up early the next day. Sigh. Stupid adulthood.

  • A long time ago I argued for a chain of theaters for adults, with stricter rules. This is starting to happen, as evidenced by this set of rules for a new theater up here:

    “Children under the age of 14 must always be accompanied by a responsible adult with whom they must sit in the auditoriums. Children (and adults) must be well behaved and not disruptive to our feature presentation or they may be asked to leave the auditorium and wait in the lobby. That means cell phones too. We cannot give cash refunds on tickets.”

    I suspect they do the latter not to make a few extra bucks, but to discourage disruptive patrons from returning. If you not only get kicked out of the theater but don’t get your money back, you’ll either learn to behave or elect to go elsewhere.

  • Eric — I think that’s exactly right. All media seems to trending this way, what with the price of distribution falling. Imagine being able to rent a high tech screening room for an evening for, say, $50 an hour, and then being able to watch anything on HD. You and ten or fifteen others with similar interests (say, silent movie buffs) could form a group and block out a theater room for about what a normal ticket could cost.

    I’m not sure that’s how things will go, especially with more people putting home theater equipment in their homes. But it’s possible.

  • Terrahawk

    Interesting, basically it would be a mini-plex. One of the apartment complexes for the university here in town has a mini theater for residents to use. It has about 20 seats in it. A similar setup with X-number of screens could work. You have all sorts of potential. You could even rent them for business purposes. You could customize the viewing experience for the group. Things like sound level could be determined as well as closed-captioning. Concessions or catering, take your pick.

  • Jack Spencer

    I Know Who Killed Me wasn’t Jabootu-level?

  • Interesting that you say that, Jack. Site designer and contributor Chris Magyar somehow ended up seeing it when it was in theaters, and instantly wrote me to lay dibs on it. So expect a review once that’s on DVD.

  • Danny

    For my money, the future(TM) of movies is probably digital distribution and home theater. Small, rentable theaters are a pretty cool idea, but I don’t know if there’s enough of a market.

    I think we’ll soon see something like Comcast’s “On Demand” feature, where your cable comes included with the ability to watch at any time a small selection of movies/TV shows. This kind of thing will inevitably expand over the next few years.

    Conservatively speaking, I imagine in five years time, you and your friends will go to the house of the guy with the biggest TV, and select whatever movie you want to watch from a Pay-Per-View (either per-film or as a monthly fee) that lets you watch any one of several thousand movies at any time.

    iTunes and similar services are letting you do this on your computer, with quickly-improving services and selections. For this to jump to cable TV is a pretty obvious step, and one that won’t require much (any?) new technology.

  • colagirl

    In the meantime, I’d like to see theaters turn a single multiplex screen or two to showing old movies.

    Not much to add there except that I personally think that’s a great idea. I hardly ever watch movies in theaters anymore (the last movie that got me out of the house was “Ratatouille”) but I would certainly much rather go out to the theater to watch a reasonably-priced showing of, say, “Adam’s Rib” than the latest cookie-cutter romantic comedy starring whichever pretty-boy and girl are Hollywood’s current hot couple. Maybe they could precede it with a couple shorts as well, or possibly even old newsreels.

  • “Hell, maybe we’ll even get an actual, Jabootu-level bad movie released. I haven’t seen one of those since, oh, Battlefield Earth.”

    I KNOW WHO KILLED ME
    DRAGON WARS
    REDLINE

    That’s three this year alone.

    I got more traffic due to my I KNOW WHO KILLED ME Foyeurism than anything I’ve ever written. It’s one for the ages: http://www.foywonder.com/current_columns/foy_0807.html

  • sardu

    I have a home theater with a 720P front projector and a 120″ screen that smokes any theater in town for consistent quality presentation. It cost about two grand to put together with 7.1 sound, less than my chump friends spent on their stupid plasma sets, and by next year you will be able to put something together with twice the resolution for the same money. In two weeks 2001: a space odyssey will come out on HD-DVD and I will sit back and see the best quality projection of it since I saw it Cinerama at the Warner in Pittsburgh back in 1972.

    Who needs commercial theaters?? *g*

  • I agree with everyone about home theaters, but you still can’t really replicate the gestalt of sitting in a room with hundreds of strangers and all reacting to a film. Still, that sort of thing may turn into a specialty market as people get more used to staying home for their entertainment.

    I know some bad movies still come out, but these newer ones, they just don’t grab me. I’m still big (believe me), it’s the badness that gotten small.

    I know a lot of people consider Uwe Boll the second coming of Ed Wood, but…meh. (I will concede, given Chris and Foywonder’s enthusiasm, that I Know Who Killed Me may have The Wrong Stuff. If so, I should maybe have been slower to cede it to Chris. Damn you, Magyar!!!!)

  • sardu

    Who needs the gestalt of 100 people all talking on their cell phones, kicking the seats and generally being the jerks they are these days?? I’d rather have a few friends over that behave, we can talk back to the movie without bothering anyone and when a bathroom break is needed we hit “pause”.

    Not that I don’t agree with you deep down of course- to experience a movie like Star Wars (the REAL one!) in a theater with 500 people is an experience I’m glad I had… but audiences today are animals.

  • Ericb

    I read Foy’s review of I know Who Killed Me and, WTF, “non-religious identical twin stigmata?” That’s got to be the most IITS moment in the history of IITS.

  • Chris Magyar

    I am salivating for the DVD release of I Think I Know Who Killed That Person Who Looks Like Me. I personally think, given the timing of its release, it’s even more of a train-wreck than Battlefield Earth.

  • Chris, I think you’ll like the sequel even better: I Still Know Who Killed Me.

  • Ericb

    or maybe:

    “I thought I knew who killed me but I was wrong, now I know who REALLY killed me.”

  • Brad

    Funny that you mention theaters showing older movies. I have imagined that if I won a million bucks in the lottery, I’d open up a decent theater in my hometown (one one cinema within fifty miles from here, and it’s crap). Make sure the theater was clean and the image and sound were good.

    And I’d reserve one screen for older movies, or find some obscure gem to put on. It’d probably lose money (not a big audience for The Passion of Joan of Arc, unfortunately), but if the profits from the other theaters made up for it, I’d be happy. Let’s see…. One week showing for each. I like Pelham 123. How about Citizen Kane, Bringing Up Baby, Joan of Arc, the ORIGINAL The Vanishing, White Heat, the ORIGINAL The Haunting for Halloween week…. (Whlle Brad continues with his pipe dream, we now return you to your regular program.)

  • Brad — Wow, I’ve had that fantasy since I was in my teens. There finally came a time when I sort of gave it up, because the repertory film market more or less died out following the home video age. A comparative handful of classic films were still available, but less rented films, as the market dried up, were allowed to fall out of circulation as the prints wore out (since ordering up a new print represented a sizable financial investment).

    Back when I was high school, there were two theaters in the area (one in Evanston, one in Chicago) that showed different double bills of old movies every day of the week. You’d get these 90 day schedules, and have 180 movies to choose from; 360 movies for the two theaters! Every three months! It was a beautiful thing.

    Now, I think, with digital projection (which will annoy a segment of the purist crowd, of course), you have a vast library of films available again. So maybe the revival theater idea will regain popularity.