Independent Exhibitors Film Bulletin (1963)

Wht ttey'te Talking About □ □ □ In the Movie Business □ □ □ 'HARD-AS-N AILS'. Exhibitors are working up a head of steam against the "hard-as-nails" distribution head of the major film companies. Correspondence to this office charges the sales executive with adopting what one theatreman terms a "no profit for exhibition" policy on an important current release. The film in question has been an outstanding grosser, and while the terms were cosidered satisfactory for the high-grossing key houses, theatremen argue that subsequent runs cannot pay the same (60%) terms and come out with a profit on their more limited grosses. "I played a lot of this company's product in the past year", complains a small circuit operator, "and made no money with any of it. Now they finally have a blockbuster and set the terms so high that I can't make any money with that in most of my houses." From another exhibitor, the irate comment: "This fellow (the distribution executive) apparently is determined to be a 'hero' to his company by being hard-as-nails. I've seen other heads of distribution roll because they didn't use common sense in setting up terms. It just doesn't make sense to ask the same percentage from a house that grosses $1800 a week as they take from one that grosses $10,000." ALLIED ARTISTS IN RED. An unconfirmed, but apparently reliable, report from a Wall Street source advises us that Allied Artists will show a "substantial loss" for its fiscal year ended June 30. Our informant suggested that it might run in excess of $2 million. PROMOTION MERRY-GO-ROUND. There's a strong suspicion that the top advertising executive of another major distributor will take a walk before long. Reason: the familiar one of increasing encroachment on his job by other high echelon officials of the company. This is a pattern of recent years. Production and distribution executives, lacking in creative showmanship background or knowledge, fancy themselves experts in the field and intrude on the province of the promotion department. This has accounted for the rather rapid turnover in key ad executives throughout the industry in the past decade. GOLDMAN REPORT. Too late to be included in our recent survey of theatre business for the first six months of 1963, the following report from William Goldman, prominent eastern Pennsylvania circuit operator, contains some pertinent comments on exhibition's problems: "Our business circuitwise is running behind last year. The major factor holding down grosses is the shortage and quality of available products. There is a dearth of important film and a wealth of mediocrity. The few so-called blockbusters are being doled out only at peak attendance periods, including holiday or summer playing time and do well at the boxoffice. The films booked to fill the gaps are most disappointing and pull down the profit average. Newer pictures on prime TV time have helped further hold down theater attendance on mediocre attractions. Why should the public go out and pay to see second rate films when television offers better for free? A glaring example of TV competition recently took place here in Eastern Pennsylvania. Timed to coincide with the premiere of our industry's most costly production, the old Cecil B. DeMille Oleopatra' was aired on TV to cash in on the publicity and interest in this valuable property. This is surely 'dirty pool' and until the film companies see fit to place restrictions on dating TV showings of films when selling our stock-in-trade to TV, we will be continually plagued with this ridiculous and embarrassing practice. After all, the exhibitors provided the revenue source to pay for all these films in the first place. Surely, their welfare should be respected in the residual use of the films."