This is topic Anybody else getting screwed on Slumdog? in forum Ground Level at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.


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Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 03-18-2009, 01:55 PM:
 
We had "Slumdog Millionaire" booked for next week. We made our booking many moons ago, BEFORE the film hit the big time at the Oscars.

We called up the distributor (Criterion) just today to confirm the booking. The guy hemmed and hawed around and made vague statements like "I can't guarantee..." Finally, when the boss pinned him down, he admitted that he didn't have a print of the movie to let out and that he wasn't going to get one. We are now on our own and we only have one week to book a replacement.

Let me make it clear: We understand that we are a non-theatrical booking. We know that there are often changes and cancellations, especially when a movie hits it big like "Slumdog" has. That's the way the ball bounces.

What the problem is that this guy made the booking, full-well knowing that he was unlikely to get the film. He didn't tell us anything. And to top it all off, he was going to just sit there and let us be on the hook for a movie that he was never intending to send out in the first place. If we hadn't called him, he would have been content to say and do nothing.

We have had continual problems with this particular place.
They have been slow on the draw on more than one occasion. We constantly have to call him and chase down prints and tracking information on prints. On several occasions, he would have left us on the hook for prints that he sent out late or would not have been sent out at all if we hadn't called and pestered him.

Again, we know that studios are basically greedy and they won't release prints to non-theatrical until they think they have wrung all they can from the product. As much as that peeves us off, that is not our main complaint.

But we have ads placed in newspapers. We have printed fliers and full color brochures printed and mailed out. We have tickets sold. We have spent quite a lot of money promoting and preparing, months in advance, for a movie that we believed would be played.

I know there are others getting screwed on this print. We have had phone calls with others who have been screwed by the same company. Anybody else have a story to tell?
 

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Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 03-18-2009, 02:41 PM:
 
Well, they screwed us for about 7% film rent percentage than the norm for a movie this old (especially when it's almost to video). On top of that we got a print that is scratched badly.

So you can certainly have our print if you want to pay the overnite freight to get it there, but it's really not good enough to put on a screen. I've been ashamed of it every single show but we had no way out of using it.
 

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Posted by Martin McCaffery (Member # 37) on 03-18-2009, 02:44 PM:
 
You have a non-theatrical showing AND you have ads in the paper?? As far as I know that's a no-no. You should be booking directly from the studio, not Criterion.

And getting screwed directly by the studio, which is probably cheaper
 

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Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 03-18-2009, 03:36 PM:
 

quote: Martin McCaffery

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You have a non-theatrical showing AND you have ads in the paper?? As far as I know that's a no-no.

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The distributors all know we are open to the public. We are not breaking any rules. We pay the guarantee plus a share of the ticket sales just like other theaters.

We have been doing this for nearly 15 years. This is the first distributor who has given us problems.

Criterion is the official distributor for Fox Searchlight. We are not supposed to go through Fox directly. On one occasion, we had to bypass NY Films (?) in order to get a print from Sony Pictures and we caught hell for it.

Do you think we can bypass Criterion? Might this situation give us cause to do so without catching heat?

It's probably too late to get Slumdog but it might be useful in the future.
 

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Posted by Jonathan M. Crist (Member # 413) on 03-18-2009, 04:21 PM:
 
If your venue (i) is open to the general public or allows the general public to attend, (ii)advertises to the general public in the local newspaper(s) and (iii) charges admission upon which you pay a percentage of ticket sales, it is hard to understand how you can be classified as a non theatrical venue.

You would probably better off in theatrical category.
 

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Posted by Justin Hamaker (Member # 2165) on 03-18-2009, 06:09 PM:
 
I'm thinking the same thing as Jonathan. Even if it's a non-traditional location, it still sounds like a theatre to me.

Is there a reason why you can't sign up with a film booker that books for one of the various independent theatres?
 

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Posted by Martin McCaffery (Member # 37) on 03-18-2009, 06:19 PM:
 
Randy, what the others just said.

Are you a non-profit? Many, like us, start out using non-theatric services but eventually switch to theatric booking. Did you guys just get into the habit and not change? Or was management scared to death by the contracts the distributors make you sign giving them your first born and right nut?

It really sounds like you guys need to get a booker or book em yourself.

I book my own, but if you want some contacts, email me off list and I can get you a couple names.
 

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Posted by John Hawkinson (Member # 1135) on 03-18-2009, 09:53 PM:
 
Umm.

Generally speaking the studios are not willing to deal with colleges and universities as regular clients. They have contractual arrangements requiring that colleges and universities book indirectly through Swank and Criterion. It's not a simple matter of convincing the studio to treat you on second-run terms, or of simply reclassifying you. There are contractual terms.

(Additionally, when a movie is this close, first-run or second-run terms may imply minimum number of shows/day, and other things that Randy can't offer Fox.)

To address Randy more directly, we were in a similar boat, but we were more aggressive about confirming it right after the Oscars. I'm not sure if we called Criterion or if they called us, but we definitely knew the first week in March. On the other hand, our original date was 3/13, so we were probably a more urgent issue than you were.

Randy, note that there was a discussion here on F-T about the Slumdog's DVD date being moved to 3/31, and that was definitely an indicator that something was up.

You make it sound like Criterion ships around prints to you. Does that actually happen? For us, they just pass the order up to Fox who directs DFS to send us a print from the local depot.

--jhawk
 

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Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 03-18-2009, 11:15 PM:
 
You're right. Just based on the fact that we are on a college campus we are treated as non-theatrical.

On one occasion we actually booked a print through Sony Pictures Classics only to get a phone call from NY Films (or is it Swank?) complaining that we didn't go through them. If I remember correctly, we had to pay them their cut anyway.

Criterion mostly uses DFS but we actually have gotten prints directly from them and not through DFS. Dealing with Criterion on virtually any level always seems to be a hassle. We often have to call them to make sure prints are delivered on time. On more than one occasion, if we didn't call them the print would have not showed up on time. By contrast, Swank and NY Films have always been dependable. We book the film. The invoice is paid. Then the movie just shows up.

One time Criterion screwed us and we ended up getting a VHS tape with watermarks in the picture every five minutes.

I get the impression from the way they act that they just don't want to deal with 35mm film. It seems that they'd rather send you the video via UPS and be done with it.

I get the non-theatrical vs. second run/theatrical thing. We're not completely happy about that but we're willing to live with it if we have to. We have had discussions about breaking out of the non-theatrical mold but, like John said, it all boils down to money and playdates. The college doesn't seem to want to change things too much so, until they change their tune, we're probably stuck in this mold. We don't like it but it's either this or nothing.

I am just wondering whether there are places getting the shaft like this, elsewhere. If there are enough places do you think this would be cause for us to be allowed to bypass Criterion and book prints directly?
 

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Posted by John Hawkinson (Member # 1135) on 03-19-2009, 08:41 AM:
 
Well, I doubt it. If Criterion's customers are unhappy enough, Fox might do something, but chances are they would do what New Line did (leave Criterion for Swank) rather than what Universal did (do their own nontheatrical 35mm booking).

It is probably a good thing that there is at least some competition in the nontheatrical booking market, and I would feel uncomfortable with Swank being closer to a monopoly than they already are.

Also, if you did book directly through Fox, you'd probably be in a similar situation with regard to playdates, and you wouldn't have anything confirmed until two weeks beforehand. That is, those months-out confirmations from Swank and Criterion are just their "best guesses," and don't reflect real availability information. Sure, it would be better to know for sure and not be jerked around.

It will be interesting to see if SPC continues to do their own nontheatrical booking (as they are doing now, since New Yorker went under).

--jhawk
 

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Posted by Martin McCaffery (Member # 37) on 03-19-2009, 08:51 AM:
 
Randy: Did not realize you were a college. So you probably are stuck being a non-theatrical unless they spin off the theatre into a seperate entity. Not likely.

Of course, all of the advertising you talked about is really "promotion" (wink wink nudge nudge) which is totally allowed for non-theatrical situations.

As for the getting screwed. I remember it happening now and then back in my college days (late 70's) when the world was ruled by Films Inc, and there were more non-theatrical agencies. Quite frankly, it would happen frequently to commercial theatres also as those were the days before megaplexes and 1000 prints was an enormous run.

Just consider the screwing the continuation of a grand show business tradition;>
 

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Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 03-19-2009, 10:27 AM:
 
At this point in time Randy probably will not be able to change his status -- the fact that the college has established booking history with the non-theatrical vendors would make it very difficult to switch to theatrical only because whereas years ago the determining factor which defined whether or not you were theatrical or not was pretty much if you were booking 35mm prints, you went to the studios. Nowadays the non-theatrical vendors (Swank, Criterion, New Yorker Films -- if there are any more, I don't know of them), because the 16mm market has dried up for them, they hold on tenatiously to any exhibitor that falls under the catagories that they have defined in their contracts with the studios: colleges, univerities, museums and any other exhibitor that isn't running a commercial operation. Today non-theatrical is defined not by the film gauge you are using, but by your affiliation, and it's that definition that will force you to deal with the subdistribs and not the studios. If you are a college, by contract, Swank or Criterion can insist you book thru them EVEN WHEN THEY DON'T HAVE A PRINT! It's nonsense, of course, but it's the deal they eeked out for themselves with the studios and most orgs that fall under those arbitrary definitions don't have much of a choice.

We have gotten around it for decades because since day one (way back in 1984 when I started Brooklyn Center Cinema) even though our Performing Arts Center was physically on a college campus, we were lucky enough to be setup as a separate entity with our own acounts, our own stationery, our own professional staff. I was well aware of the theatrical/non-theatrical quagmire from my time at college so I was very careful to present our operation to the studios as an art house, having nothing to do with the college campus. Not a single piece of promotional material, nor the newpaper or radio ads, or even the checks with which we paid our overages mentioned Brooklyn College anywhere. Everything said Brooklyn Center Cinema. I established a rapport with the bookers of the studios, on a first name basis with many of them so booking titles was just a matter of picking up the phone and calling Warners or Columbia or whoever. As far as the studios were concerned, we were as theatrical as any other art and we played second run off the break and only had to occasionally deal with Swank when a student org from the college wanted to use our theatre to run a film. And back then most of the studios had "classics" departments for their older libraries, so it was much easier. Even now, off the break, studios have no problem booking for a three day weekend engagement (that was our usual run) or even for a single day -- many art houses would play different titles every day of the week, so studios were not adverse to that; they get their guarantee and in years past, art houses could actually make money with a single day run playing classic titles -- imagine that!

That said, today I think it would be more difficult to establish ones' self as a theatrical if you had any connection whatsoever to a college or museum because that's the non-theatricals' bread and butter and they will fight tooth and nail to stop you.
 

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Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 03-19-2009, 12:57 PM:
 
Its funny how even 20 years later, Swank is continuing to give good, prompt service with good prints and the other guys (back in my time it was Films Inc.) just sucked ass. I ran the college film program for 4 years and in all that time I am pretty sure I never had the need to reject a print from Swank.

Still that doesn't change the fact that with regards to Criterion, I have not heard one single good thing about them EVER. Pretty sad.
 

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Posted by John Hawkinson (Member # 1135) on 03-19-2009, 01:22 PM:
 
We reject prints from Swank all the time.

Most prints from Swank are regular studio prints.

A small handful "Swank prints" are warehoused by Technicolor and are preceded with "SWANK\" in their title. They are uniformly worse (because they are from a small pool sent to a group of customers that include people who don't know how to handle film).

It's almost not worth rejecting the SWANK\ prints, though, because there's rarely anything better.

And, of course, Swank's pricing is much worse than studio flat-rate repertory pricing, including Universal's.

--jhawk
 

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Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 03-19-2009, 02:23 PM:
 
You could always put in digital cinema!
 

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Posted by John Hawkinson (Member # 1135) on 03-19-2009, 02:38 PM:
 
Hard to tell if you're joking about the Swank Digital Cinema Player that gives you NTSC-quality video, or actually for real joking about a DCI-compliant install, which would probably automatically promote you out of the nontheatrical market and into direct studio dealing. Either way, well, VPF all the way!

--jhawk
 

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Posted by Tom Doyle (Member # 1474) on 03-19-2009, 02:51 PM:
 
A theater I work at in Stamford, CT is ending a run of Slumdog Millionaire tonight. You could try to request info on it - it may not be moving on to another theater, it may just sit here until it gets picked up and returned to the depot in MA. (I'm not working there tonight, though, so I don't know for sure.) We've had it fourteen weeks or so, but it's in *excellent* condition with a light coating of filmguard.

Good luck!
 

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Posted by Ron Curran (Member # 3631) on 03-19-2009, 08:27 PM:
 
Hey Mike, did the Dolby Digital track on your dog print work?
First available Slumdog print to us is after dvd release. We are not expecting to be able to run it in digital with a print that used - and this distributor doesn't believe in dts either.
 

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Posted by John Koutsoumis (Member # 1855) on 03-19-2009, 08:54 PM:
 
Ron if you have good SR playback the film will sound terrific but the 6-track mix is a highlight of the film so yeah its a pain if the SR-D track has had it.
The error rate on our print shuffles between 3 & 5. Not bad for a 3 month run but we've had better and of course a lot worse.
 

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Posted by Bill Enos (Member # 440) on 03-19-2009, 09:03 PM:
 
They told us that they didn't have any prints and that they couldn't send it directly from another theatre to us. They said they could ship a print next week but that won't work because it opens on DVD the week following, we'll probably skip it.
 

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Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 03-19-2009, 09:39 PM:
 
Yeah, we have officially dumped it. We will not be playing it at all. Now we are going to play "Milk" instead.
(Big whoop! )

We virtually never have problems with Swank. If we book a print it just shows up. Period. We never have to make phone calls and chase down prints. We never have to worry if the rep will say one thing and do another. They've always been pretty solid.

On the occasion where there is a movie that might get some Oscar attention, the agent at Swank will come out and tell us that he can't guarantee that title until after a certain date. They may be weasels but at least they are honest about it.

We do get some beat up prints from them but it's not entirely their fault. It has more to do with the idiots handling the prints in the theaters than it has to do with anybody at Swank. Of course, they could charge theaters for damaged prints but we've talked that issue into the ground.

I agree with John. If you get a beat up print and try to order another, you are likely to get one that is just as bad. You really have to think twice before you pull the trigger.
 

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Posted by Steven J Hart (Member # 2340) on 03-19-2009, 10:49 PM:
 
We finally got a print this week. Pre-viewed it tonight and the print is in excellent condition. DTS track sounds fantastic but is way hot... played on "5". I like it loud, but couldn't take it on 7 - even 6 was way loud. BTW our B chain was just calibrated on Tuesday so don't think we've got a problem.
 

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Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 03-20-2009, 12:21 AM:
 
Ron C. - our sound played fine - mostly 4 and 5.

I agree that it was a loud mix. I usually play everything around 6.0 to 6.4, but I ran this at 5.4 and it was still plenty loud.
 

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Posted by John Hawkinson (Member # 1135) on 03-20-2009, 05:22 AM:
 
Randy, Milk did really well for us. I imagine it will for you as well. If you can, program David Karlsberg's excellent short Clay Pride with it (in 35mm).

It's not so much thinking twice before pulling the trigger. I mean, worst case the print is worse and some small effort is wasted. Though there have been cases where we've had to replace the replacement. I can't remember the last one of those...
(There's also pulling the trigger and having TES say "nope,
no more prints of that title").

I don't believe the problems with Slumdog bookings are about print availability, at least not generally speaking. It drops 312 theatres this week and 53 the week before.

Fox has been quite anal about not letting us nontheatrically book films that are playing in medium-distance second-run theatres from here (which can be quite frustrating since we have essentially zero customer overlap; they are certainly outside the competitive zone...)

--jhawk
 

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Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 03-20-2009, 05:28 PM:
 
I wasn't saying "Milk" isn't a good movie. It's just that we were getting all geared up for Slumdog. It's a big let-down.

We won't be able to book "Clay Pride." The playdate is Wednesday. We receive our print on Monday. It has to be built, screened and be ready to play no later than Monday evening.

The house is in use by the student musical followed by a dance recital then the Music Department's spring opera. I have to fight in order to get time in the house to work on the movie. Monday is the only time I could do it.
 

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Posted by Bill Enos (Member # 440) on 03-25-2009, 10:43 AM:
 
We've gotten dozens on emails inquiring when we are going to play Slumdog so it'll open Saturday. The VCU/UofR French Film Festival is this weekend and is completely sold out so it won't make much difference if Slumdog doesn't do well.
 

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Posted by James Kulaprathazhe (Member # 4782) on 03-26-2009, 07:53 PM:
 
We can book movies directly or we need a booker?
 

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Posted by Chris Iacofano (Member # 5074) on 04-04-2009, 02:32 PM:
 
Just to clarify, there is absolutely nothing wrong with advertising, or even charging, for a non-theatrical title. Doc Films in Chicago and Cornell Cinema are two well-known examples of non-theatrical venues that do, and have done this for decades, and there are dozens of others.

The reason that most colleges and nonprofits go this route (even those that screen every day) is that most theatrical studio licensing contracts require an individual, and not an institution, to be held financially responsible if someone destroys a print or doesn't pay up on the box office. It took months of wrangling with studios and the university here to get all of our MLAs accepted (with the exception of Sony, which absolutely wouldn't budge).

You can bet I was jumping with joy when I no longer had to deal with Swank and their horrible prints. Maybe I just had bad luck, but there were some titles that they shipped that should have been retired years ago.
 

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Posted by John Hawkinson (Member # 1135) on 04-04-2009, 05:00 PM:
 
Chris Iacofano said several things that seem very surprising to me.

"The reason that most colleges and nonprofits go this route (even those that screen every day) is that most theatrical studio licensing contracts require an individual, and not an institution, to be held financially responsible if someone destroys a print or doesn't pay up on the box office."

I can't believe this is right. Our limited conversations with studios have made it very clear that booking through Swank is a prerequisite because of university status, and it's always been their refusing to consider the status, never our refusing to execute a document. (It also seems prima facie implausible. Companies sign contracts all the time, and yes, an officer of the company must do so. But that can't be what you mean?)

"It took months of wrangling with studios and the university here to get all of our MLAs accepted (with the exception of Sony, which absolutely wouldn't budge)."

So you're saying that, e.g., you book Warner Brothers prints directly through WB as Cornell University rather than as an independent seperately-incorporated cinema in Ithaca, NY?

"Just to clarify, there is absolutely nothing wrong with advertising, or even charging, for a non-theatrical title. Doc Films in Chicago and Cornell Cinema are two well-known examples of non-theatrical venues that do, and have done this for decades, and there are dozens of others."

There's certainly nothing wrong with charging. My recollection is that either Swank's licensing agreement with their customers or the studios non-theatrical riders to their MLAs (one of the two; though honestly I'd have trouble digging up either) had explicit prohibitions on external advertising. Possibly an unenforced one. Have you seen either document(s)?

I can cheerfully report that this week was a good week in nontheatrical-booking land, where an SPC print (Rachel Getting Married) booked directly through Sony Pictures Classics (since New Yorker Films shut its doors) arrived, and also Slumdog Millionaire arrived on Wednesday 4/1 for a 4/11 playdate.

--jhawk
 

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Posted by Martin McCaffery (Member # 37) on 04-04-2009, 05:08 PM:
 
Re: advertising, from the Swank FAQ

quote:

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Are there any advertising restrictions?
These motion pictures are specifically licensed for non-theatrical showings only. Advertising through media such as public radio, public television or general public newspaper is strictly prohibited. Advertising must be used exclusively to inform members or staff of movie showings via on-premises bulletin boards or direct mail.

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