Independent Exhibitors Film Bulletin (1963)

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Tke Vieuf frw OutAtfe by ROLAND PENDARIS When Should the Show Start? In the New York City newspapers, as in those of other cities, they publish timetables for the movie theatres. I happened to be reading a couple of the schedules when I noticed something that surprised me. The more I think about it, the more it seems to deserve some rather pointed comment. The timetables are divided into several regional headings, beginning with the Broadway and mid-town first-runs. Then there are listings for the neighborhood houses. In virtually every instance, the starting times are given only for the main attraction. The short subject on Broadway and the second-half of the double feature in the subsequent runs are not mentioned in the charts. When I looked at the Broadway timetable, I noticed that practically every show could be seen from the beginning if you entered between 7:30 and 8:50. There were a couple of exceptions, where a film happened to be extra long, but the 7:30 to 8:50 starting time has obviously maintained itself as the Broadway standard. When you get to the neighborhood houses, however, you can often kiss that standard starting time goodbye. For example, I found a batch of houses where the feature went on at 6:40 and then again at 10 P.M. Of the first 23 theatres listed in the neighborhood show roster of the journal American, for example, only eight had the feature going on in the 7:30 to 8:50 span. The others started mostly before 7 PM and then at 10 PM or later. Maybe this has proved to be smart showmanship, but I rather doubt it. I don't know too many people who are going to race through dinner to get to a movie theatre before 7:30 or hang around waiting for the 10 o'clock show; and I know an awful lot of people who hate to come in at the middle of the feature. ■< ► Moviegoing in New York — and many other towns, as well, I'm sure — seems to become harder all the time, on a neighborhood basis. If these schedules that I have cited are deliberate, I would be very interested to learn what reasoning prompted the policy of "start them too early or too late." Are the theatre managers convinced that New Yorkers have become a legion of late late showgoers outside their homes as well as when watching on their television sets at home? Are they filling the house twice a night this way? Or is it something that has just become inevitable because of long pictures and double features? I would like to stand outside a few of the neighborhood theatres to determine the favorite moviegoing hour of their patrons. I have done this with my own favorite theatre, but it proves nothing because this theatre has always aimed at the 7:30 to 8:15 starting time for its main feature. Maybe that is why this same period is the peak time for ticket buyers. It is hard to believe, under any normal circumstances, that the show which begins after 10 PM comes even close to peak attendance during the week (and the timetables I have mentioned were all for a Wednesday.) Nor can I believe that a 6:50 PM starting time overloads the boxoffice. If the theatre gets two half full houses, instead of one full house at 8:30 PM, I still don't think it's worth either the extra hours of work for the theatre people or the chance of antagonizing other prospective customers. ► No doubt many people from smaller towns will wonder what all my shouting is about. Many is the evening I spent beginning i about 7: 1 5 or so at the town movie in New England, with one picture as the attraction. But in my time, those early starts also meant early closings, because the theatre only had one evening performance. Its whole timetable was adjusted to an early-tobed-early-to-rise community's normal schedule. What bothers me is that I don't think the New York neighborhood theatres' schedules as noted above are normal for New Yorkers — and I suspect that the same unfortunate situation exists in other cities of these United States. There was a time when there was a strong call in New York for a "revolutionary" 9 PM starting time for the feature attraction. If 9 PM was revolutionary, what in the name of intermission is the proper adjective to apply to a 6:50 PM starting time or the 10:10 PM last show which seems to be fairly commonplace? Cynics delight in countering criticism of the theatre business by saying, "If the picture's good, they'll come to see it no matter where or when; if the picture's bad nothing will help you." If this were true, theatre people could relax; but the fact is that good management brings in more money for both the good picture and the bad one. I think that a good picture with a good starting time will do better than the very same picture with an odd-ball schedule. Nor can the length of pictures be cited as the reason for the eccentric starting times. One of the theatres on the timetables in New York had a double bill which ran three hours and fifteen minutes, starting at 7:15 or 10:30 PM; a Broadway first-run house had a three-hour single feature program which it started at 7:40 and 10:40 PM, and another first-run situation with a 2-hour and 50-minute bill had its last two shows beginning at 6:05 and the infinitely more sensible hour of 8:55 PM. Another element of the time schedules which I find difficult to understand is why so many double bills approach the four hour mark. It seems to me that four hours is a bit much. Yet several sub-runs ran to this length. They can have it. Perhaps the length of the double bill is less of a factor than the components. I know some theatre managers who spend a good deal of their time juggling schedules so that the good picture will be on during heavy traffic (customer traffic, that is) hours and the turkey will be a glorified stage wait. On the other hand, presumably the double bill of "David and Lisa" and "Operation Bikini" will draw from two separate sets of patrons, and the combination of "Toys in the Attic" and "Amazons of Rome" is similarly ambidextrous. "The List of Adrian Messenger" and "The Nutty Professor" make for another anomalous team. I could go on. The bills I have cited, incidentally, are all from the same day's New York listings. ► When I come home from a hard day at the office and suggest to my wife that we go to the movies, she checks two things. The first is whether there is a film we want to see that is conveniently available. The second — as you may have gathered from my phrase "conveniently available" — is what time the movie starts. And many is the theatre we have passed up because the starting time was too early or too late. We hate to come in to the middle of the picture. Maybe we are not typical. I suspect we are. During the war, every language guide book that the Army put out contained, a one of its key sentences, the appropriate translation for th question, "What times does the movie start?" It was a pertinen question to ask in 1943 and I think it is pertinent today. We tal about a performer's timing; maybe we should give a littl thought to a performance's timing too. Page 4 Film BULLETIN September 16, 1963