Motography (Apr-Dec 1911)

December, 1911. MOTOGRAPHY 279 On the Outside Looking In By the Goat Man THE promoter has never made a success of the motion picture business. He is a wise man, the promoter. He dares not tackle a game of which he knows so little. And yet how alluring the field ! A motion picture camera — a perfectly good one can be picked up in film centers for a comparatively small sum. I have seen them offered all the way from $250 up. Your dollar is as good as any other dollar when it comes to buying sensitized film stock. A motion picture camera operates with a small crank instead of a button or lever. The development of exposed film requires different apparatus, but the same chemicals and essentials obtain that are employed by the professional or amateur photographer. Instead of printing the negative upon paper, the printing is done on positive stock, but the machines employed by the present film makers can be had in the open market. It is all very simple. Then there is such a big, enthusiastic picture theater clientele. Why, there ought to be millions and millions of dollars available for the promoter with a little scheme like that ! Ever talk to a picture fan who has a bank roll? You never saw one in your life who wouldn't volunteer to take a "flyer" at the game. He is there with the easy money for an easy game. # * * It is fun to talk to him. You lead him on and on, elaborating on the lack of skill it requires to take a snap-shot and showing that the motion picture is possible by buying a camera that will automatically take sixteen pictures a second while you turn the crank. You will be careful to refer to men like Selig or Spoor or Rock, who have amassed fortunes over night by grabbing opportunity by the fetlock or some other convenient place, and by that time your man is ready to hand you his roll and tell you to go to it. I have sung this song to many of my friends and it never fails to bring the same result. The hypnotist never produced a larger variety of expressions from his best subject than motion pictures will bring from the man who has to work for his. It is more than strange that the promoter cannot get away with the picture game. * * * You may be looking for the exception to the rule thing, about now, but you wont find it. The outside promoter has never had a look-in, in this film game. A. M. Kennedy has had a flight or two as a promoter, but you will remember that Kennedy was on the inside looking out before he started. Kennedy seems to have discovered S. S. Hutchinson, an outsider, but that same discovery put Hutchinson inside and he's been going a hot pace ever since. Pat Powers struggled through the handicap of ready money until he had about reached his goal when a fire wiped him out. The record he had made was the excuse for capital to come to his rescue. He was an insider! The outsider is always on the outside. I know a motion picture scheme that received recognition from one of the substantial old oond and investment houses. It was lugged into this house by a man who enjoyed a big annual rental from an exhibitor. It had all the allurements of a promoting possibility. It was laid out with proper garnishment and presented by a respectable and valuable customer of the brokers. For a time it looked like the promoter had arrived. A prospectus was issued and a million dollars was subscribed before the ink was dry on the printed matter. Through a disinterested banking house, the brokers invited an audience with some insiders. The thing had been so easy, that suspicion was aroused. The result of the conference saved a lot of prospective investors the certain loss that would have followed. You remember J. J. Murdock's attempt to worm his way from the outside to the inside. Nobody will ever know what it cost Mr. Murdock, but everybody knows how far he missed getting in. And there was C. Lang Cobb, Jr., who fitted up a lovely suite of offices in New York and fussed around like a magnate for a little while. They were outsiders ! * * * Here's another story that has never been printed, possibly because it happened out west where most of the film activities are confined to making pictures instead of promoting new m. p. companies. The patent office at Washington allowed the claims of Victor L. Duhem on a dingus presumed to take nature's colors with a motion picture camera. Duhem is a bad name for a promoter, but the possessor of a name cannot be held responsible for it, unless one be a woman. Duhem promptly set about to incorporate a million dollar company, resorting to the laws of Arizona for help. He named his concern the American Vimograph Company and established headquarters at 1005 Market street, San Francisco. His literature was for the public. It would revolutionize film making, renting and exhibiting and it would surely pay the investor 100 per cent or more a year. The prospectus offers the investor two hundred thousand dollars worth of stock at par. The shares are a dollar each. Two hundred and fifty thousand shares are to be locked up for a rainy day, or to enlarge the manufacturing facilities. Five hundred and fifty thousand isn't mentioned at all, which leads to the inference that Duhem's little invention has some value in the eyes of its creator. The offices occupy three handsome rooms, fitted up with ten mahogany desks and a like number of chairs of the same material, rugs and other paraphernalia, including two new and one old typewriter, or at least it looked like an old one to me when I saw it. The company has a unique advantage in that it owns a printing plant and can turn out its own stuff with neatness and dispatch. Vic. Duhem will never be much of a factor in the film game. He is an outsider. He was pinched, once upon a time, for filching a J. and J. reel and duping it and when one does that and has it proved on him, he's in Dutch with the gang. I speak respectfully of the insiders when I refer to them as the "gang." My hat is off and I am humiliatingly humble when I bow low to the fine coterie of men who control this making of m. p. film. No shrewder lot ever wormed themselves to the top of a tremendous industry. I will reserve examples of this shrewdness for a future time,