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

Thursday night, M. Night Shyamalan went before a sympathetic audience of exhibitors at ShowEast to decry the current industry practice of shrinking theatrical windows to exploit the perceived demands of stay-at-home audiences. Although he could be accused of preaching to the choir, Shyamalan’s call for “zero tolerance” deserves to be heard and debated by studio executives and guild members, as well as NATO members.

As reported in the Hollywood Reporter and several other publications, the writer-director of the blockbuster hits The Sixth Sense and Signs challenged attendees to tell distributors, “If you're going to release a movie in another medium, then you're not going to get into our theaters,” because, “at the end of the day, (exhibitors) hold all the cards."

Only the most Pollyannish of ShowEast attendees would agree that theater owners remain in a strong enough position to make such a boast. In this cut-throat game of high-stakes poker, exhibiters may have been dealt an Ace-Jack or pair of 10s, but they’re certainly not in any position to go all-in against pocket-Aces. Those days are long gone.

If exhibitors still held all the cards, the majors would trip over themselves to underwrite the kind of star-studded banquets that made ShowEast and ShoWest so entertaining in years past. Today’s sponsors tend to come from the hardware end of the business -- DLP Cinema, Dolby Laboratories and Eastman Kodak, among them -- leaving a handful of studios to pick up the lesser tab for special screenings, receptions and parties.

Until studios and exhibitors come to some sort of mutually beneficial agreement on digital distribution and projection, most of the Aces are likely to remain in the deck, of no real benefit to either side. Audiences continue to rake in the pots, merely by calling most every bluff Hollywood presents to them.

In the last three weeks, for example, it would have been difficult for anyone with a television to avoid some sort of marketing gambit associated with The Weather Man and Jarhead.

The Nicolas Cage vehicle opened to $4.22 million, a figure $2 million shy of the second weekend of Dreamer. Anyone want to hazard a guess as to this weekend’s take on Jarhead … or, from an exhibitor’s point of view, how many popcorn bags will go unfilled?

Would the studios have fared better if they were allowed to feed The Weather Man directly to home video, cable and video-on-demand outlets, day-and-date with the theatrical release? Probably not, if middlemen were allowed to charge anywhere near what it costs for a single ticket to the local multiplex, or, for that matter, pay-per-view airings of Porn Star Blind Date ($14.95), TNA Wrestling: Bound for Glory ($29.95) or even a double-feature of The Ring Two and Ringu ($4.99).

Consumers aren’t as likely to divvy up the same $10 for a one-time PPV screening of The Weather Man, as they would for a comparable experience in a modern theater. Most understand the costs involved with running a multiplex, and appreciate such amenities as stadium seating, comfortable chairs, clean restrooms and a spacious lobby. They also know that home-delivery of the same products would save the studios millions of dollars, none of which are likely to be factored into the cost of a product.

Some have suggested that prices will be kept artificially high to compensate for losses due to piracy here and abroad. This premise, of course, is nonsense. Even if true, however, why should American movie lovers – most of whom wouldn’t know where to find a pirated DVD, even if they wanted one – be expected to compensate for losses accrued on college campuses and overseas?

(If the MPAA is so adamant about the sanctity of copyrighted product, why isn’t anyone targeting dealers in Chinatown, Koreatown and hundreds of Indian groceries, where bootlegs of homeland titles are readily available? Oh, that’s someone else’s problem.)

It’s far too easy to fall back on the popular bromide, “Make better movies and audiences will beat a path to your door.”

That theory may hold for Hollywood movies in the international marketplace -- where “better” too often means “bigger” – but American viewers finally appear to have grown weary of illogically cast stars, car crashes and non-stop action. Knowing that foreign revenues can buoy sagging stock prices, though, the studios aren’t likely to wean themselves from the teat of gratuitous violence and time-release pyrotechnics. No better example of this discrepancy exists than last summer’s The Island, which owes only $36 million of its total box-office take of $160 million to U.S. ticket buyers.

Shyamalan’s quest, however noble, probably will turn out to be quixotic.

The Sixth Sense, which opened in August 1999, enjoyed an almost 10-month theatrical run in the U.S., garnering nearly $300 million. It entered the VHS marketplace in July 2000, and the DVD stores in January 2002.

Before arriving on DVD, in January 2003, Signs spent nearly five months in theaters, on its way to a $228 million domestic gross. Last August, The Village opened to decidedly less favorable reviews and about $114 million in three months, and, likewise, was sent out in DVD five months later.

Five months appears to be the far end of most DVD windows, these days. Warners’ summer hit, Batman Begins, took only four months to go DVD, as will Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Sony’s Stealth and Universal’s The Skeleton Key arrive next week, after barely three months in the marketplace.

The windows for movies deemed even less worthy of a full marketing campaign can be as short as two weeks, qualifying them for virtual-straight-to-video status.

But, then, who, besides pesky filmmakers, could blame the studios for rushing their products into DVD? They are, after all, the financial gift that keeps on giving.

Popular catalogue titles, such as The Wizard of Oz, can be sent out repeatedly in new packages and editions, simply by adding a new featurette, interview or souvenir. Only the sharpest of eyes can discern a difference between some boxed sets. Universal’s new The Brat Pack Collection and earlier High School Reunion Collection represent re-packaging the same three John Hughes movies, marking the third DVD incarnation for Weird Science, and the fourth for The Breakfast Club and Sixteen Candles.

In a pre-convention interview, Shyamalan declared: "I'm going to stop making movies if they end the cinema experience. If there's a last film that's released only theatrically, it'll have my name on it. This is life or death to me.

"If you tell audiences there's no difference between a theatrical experience and a DVD, then that's it, game's over, and that whole art form is going to go away slowly. Movies will end up being this esoteric art form, where only singular people will put films out in a small group of theaters."

Shyamalan probably won’t have to plan his metaphoric funeral any time soon, though. It’s only a matter of time before the trickle of digitally equipped theaters becomes a stream, and, perhaps, a river. The economic imbalance will shift even further in the direction of distributors, who can, then, use the savings in prints and delivery for ever-more-wasteful marketing campaigns.

To maximize the impact of those pre-release advertising dollars, windows inevitably will shrink … if not to day-and-date, then, maybe two or three weeks … maybe a long weekend. Shyamalan will get his theatrical release, exhibitors will get their opening weekend and everyone else in the revenue stream will divide what’s left of the pie.

But, what of the independent, foreign and documentary films left undefended by Shyamalan and most of the NATO rank-and-file? Festival-quality films remain an endangered species, in any economic environment.

For many independents, survival very well could require adapting the new model advanced by such companies as 2929 Entertainment and Rainbow Media Holdings, which have begun to experiment with simultaneous releases on multiple platforms. Indeed, Steven Soderbergh has agreed to make six films for 2929 Entertainment, which already has provided a very limited day-and-day release for Enron: the Smartest Guys in the Room and The War Within. Add 2929’s symbiotic relationship with Landmark Theaters to the mix, and you have what some would consider to be a viable option.

If a day-and-date, multi-platform release is the only way an aspiring filmmaker is likely to get wide exposure for his creation – without spending $20 million on TV ads, or four-walling – then, it becomes an easy choice. In fact, it’s a godsend.

Prey, though, that Robert Iger’s alliance with the iPod fails to find traction. If Disney can get away with re-purposing Desperate Housewives on micro-screens, no one’s products are safe.

Big “if,” though. Apart from music videos, weather reports, sports highlights and porn, podcasting won’t save any studio executive’s bottom line, just yet. Sony’s battery-powered, free-bandwidth Watchman continues to be a far more economical alternative for watching TV on the run.

Why, though, did Shyamalan’s complaint draw as much attention in both the trade and consumer press as it did? Probably because no one in either sector doubts for a second a studio executive’s willingness to embrace the future at the expense of the present. Shyamalan’s argument sounded like the voice of reason, by comparison.

In the days of yore, when moguls roamed the Earth, things were simpler. The buck didn’t stop on Wall Street, and the inmates were rarely handed the kings to the kingdom, for a test drive.

The same thing happened in Las Vegas, after the rackets guys gave way to Wall Street interests, in the wake of Howard Hughes’ demise. Suddenly, each department of a hotel-casino complex became a “profit center,” and middle-managers were required to justify their existences on a quarterly basis. Comps, the life blood of Las Vegas, were rationed like gasoline and nylon stockings in World War II.

The city soon turned stale and lifeless, redundant in an arena where the nearest slot machine usually required no more than an hour’s drive or flight.

It took Steve Wynn’s vision of Las Vegas as an entertainment mecca – where glitz, gambling and spectacle co-existed in harmony – to reverse the city’s skid. Fifteen years later, Las Vegas is the most unique destination on the planet, providing something for virtually everyone who passes through the gates of McCarron Airport … even the Mennonite farmers who come to town for the agri-business conventions.

Profit centers still exist, but customers no longer are taken for granted. They can, and do, demand value for their dollars. Comps are more readily available today, than at any time in the last 30 years.

Fiefdoms are as prevalent in Hollywood today as they were in Europe, during the middle ages. No day seems to pass when the photo of another new vice president of digital somethingorother – or president of interplanetary sales and marketing – isn’t given prominent display in Variety or the Reporter.

To justify their jobs and titles, these geniuses come up with some of the most hare-brained schemes imaginable to exploit studio products via the alternative media and new technology, some of which doesn’t actually work. After a few weeks, these same bureaucrats fall back on such tried-and-true strategies as, “maintain a low profile,” “cover your ass” and, “when in doubt, invest in a comic-book franchise.”

Every so often, a movie like March of the Penguins or My Big Fat Greek Wedding comes along to prove all the wiseguys wrong. The kinds of crowd-pleasers that offer something decidedly different, build ticket sales on buzz, and stick around long enough to put smiles on the faces of exhibitors. No one was in any hurry to put those babies on the DVD shelves.

If March or Penguins had arrived at a later date in history, both might have been released day-and-date in a dozen different formats and platforms. Their life spans would be measured in days, instead of months.

And, who would know what profits were being thrown in the dumpster?

By then, USA Today and the trades will have come up with some dandy new chart, lumping receipts from all the various platforms into one colorful package. Not to be outdone, newspapers naturally will follow suit, relying on studio spin-meisters to put a happy face on disappointing returns.

No one will really know what to make of the raw numbers, but, then, no one really knows what they mean now. It’s the pursuit of instant gratification that fuels Hollywood’s engine, and only suckers fret about running out of gas while the car’s still running.

November 2, 2005
- Gary Dretzka

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