What they don't seem to grasp is that the ONLY reason the public purchases pay-per-view, video rentals, DVDs, VHS tape is because the THEATRICAL play generated excitement in the public. If a film is rejected by the public at the Box Office, then forget about it making millions in the video market. There are no lines at Blockbusters to rent a box office flop.

What the young turks at in Hollywood don't seem to understand is that there was a reason the bigger films started off as Roadshow releases, playing, as Bill pointed out, for upwards of two years in the roadshow theatres. As well as the obvious economic advantage of being able to charge higher ticket prices, it built up anticipation on the part of the public to see the film. I remember a marketing logo that one of the companies, can;t remember which, used on the bottom of all their ads: "MOVIES....everyone should have one to look forward to." It was a very effective marketing system.

After the roadshow run was over, it went to the first run "flagship" theatres in Key Cities (the roadshow houses still playing it in most cases). The engagements in first run houses would vary, but it was not uncommon to see a big release still playing in the first run theatres for months. After that it went into general release playing the neighborhood theatres, and even there, there was a tier of the "first" of the general run theatres and then the sub-run or underbelly as they were sometimes called, which got a title perhaps a few weeks to a few months after the general release, but after the distribs ad campaign was over. Sometimes titles could be booked into the older subrun or rep houses years afterward, until that is, the distrib decided to "pull it from service." Then no one could book it. Is it because the distrib didn't want to make any more money on? No....because they wanted to withdraw it from the public so it could be re-released again, starting the whole cycle over again. I believe GONE WITH THE WIND was released every 7 years, always to great effect, until that is, it succumbed to video overexposure.

There really is no reason why the industry cannot look at that model of an extended pattern of release times and recognize how much excitement it could engender in the paying public, even today. It would naturally have to be adjusted for today's market, but extending release play times may actually increase, not lessen, the public's desire to see a title in the theatre and even later on video.

Of course you have to have enough theatres that the public perceive as "roadshow quality" and then enough that are "flagship quality" in order to generate this kind of excitement. And you have to get rid of the corporate mindset that says, unless a film makes a trillion dollars on the first weekend, it's a failure.

The tag line for the Cinerama Dome was
"Where Movie Going is an Event"

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What the young turks at in Hollywood don't seem to understand is that there was a reason the bigger films started off as Roadshow releases, playing, as Bill pointed out, for upwards of two years in the roadshow theatres.

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It's a different day and age now. Could "Stars Wars Episode II", "Spider-man", or "Titanic" have made more money if released through a long roadshow cycle? I don't think so. A lot more money is spent today on marketing pictures just for that big opening weekend to create an event. No studio is willing to risk its investment, no matter how good they think their product may be, on just "word-of-mouth" and reserved seats. No studio is wanting a slow revenue stream, either, to pay off their huge investment. In "the old days", they may not have had the choice.

Unfortunately, the film musical genre is also dead, save "Moulin Rouge!".

Disney seems to be the one studio that see the value of its cinematic history. As for the rest of the conglomerates, there is not enough continuity in the heads of the companies any more for them to see value in anything that isn't going to rake in money for them in the short term.

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Frank

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There uses to be this great 70mm logo -- a very wide rectangle with the words 70mm and lines extending from the center. It was put in the display ads and you immediately recognized which theatres had the 70mm prints.

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Like one of these? NOTE CREDIT AT BOTTOM OF THIS POST

Then there's the one that's never appeared in print but would be a sight to behold if it ever did:

During the "golden age" of 70mm blowups, the first place I would always go in Friday's LA Times was the movie listings. I always looked forward to seeing a new movie display ad with an enclosed box at the top listing the theaters showing the movie in 70mm and having one of these logos (usually the first one).

NOTE: These low-res images were re-sized (reduced) from hi-res files originally created by Bobby Henderson. Lines in the top image are actually supposed to be solid. The quality of Bobby's original artwork is much better than you see here.

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I heard that CABARET was mixed in Dolby A stereo but somehow the encoding wasn't calibrated correctly and they just went with mono optical tracks.

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