The Film Daily (1923)

YHE onday, August 20, 1923 '2&H DAILY »'€3 Why the Shootin'? (Continued from Page 1) he exhibitor, he need never report ) any but the tax man. If his mildollar picture loses money, that is wise the producer's funeral to ch the exhibitor shouldn't be exted to take the trouble to send ,-ers. Exhibitors would give the ;h to Douglas Fairbanks, Mary kford, Harold Lloyd, or Douglas cLean — four producers whose ures are piling up profits for exitors — if ever asked to chip in to er a loss on some production, ther profit nor loss by a producer irests the exhibitor except as a :ter for gossip. lor should the rising cost of protion be ascribed to the clamor of ibitors who are only trying to in>ret what they think is the box:e demand. They may be silly ut it, but they pay the price for "fillum" when it has the names y want and that's why the proers go to the expense to get them le stars, I mean, rive the exhibitor the stars and story that he likes and he will the picture or he won't. The ducers can't make him sell it, and le lays down on a good picture t might "pack 'em in" with a litextra work and showmanship, the ducer suffers without any chance a come-back. He would suffer the more if the picture were playon a percentage contract. And e it from one who has sold "the ols" in both cities and tanks, the lermost thought back in the head the successful exhibitors in select their "fillums" is to pick the ones t promise to "sell themselves." io where does the producer get when percentage contracts bene the fashion? With flat rentals need gamble only on his story. th percentage contracts he must re the gamble which every exitor is forced under flat rentals to e on weather conditions, holdosts, earthquakes and even deaths I national calamities. In the irse of a ' year exhibitors can be tty hard hit with such things. verse weather alone probably costs libitors several million dollars ry year in gross takings, knocking 1 out of profits often that he :ded to recoup some previous loss. Veil then, when percentage concts become the rage, it is going be the result of united pressure m exhibitors — and they are bound see the good of it soon as they over from their foolish fears — I not the result of a desire on the t of producers. After all the exitor is the only dictator in the film iiness. The producer is entirely his mercy and always will be. Vhat happens when the exhibitor dects business and fails to sell n a good picture which he thinks 1 sell itself with a few posters on house front — a picture which aner exhibitor advertised properly 1 played to a nice profit ? Other 'duct with the same star suffers 1 the picture itself gets a black ! wherever his poor business is ird about. He may even write to favorite trade paper about it. It I been done. He is especially sore if he paid a flat rental, but with a percentage contract the producer must go fifty-fifty on his mistakes. At this point the exhibitor who did make good, and knew how to sell the picture which he bought as he believes at a bargain rental, steps up and yells as if it were gospel truth: "What about me? Am I to be penalized and made to cough up a share of my profits by changing to a percentage contract? What did the producer do to help me secure the increased gross which that pin head in Ipswich didn't know how to go after? Not on your life." Let's see about that. Suppose it had stormed cats and chipmunks, or the biggest Mason in town had his funeral parade, or the fireman's ball or any one of many things that could happen had killed business that day, where is the exhibitor's insurance against standing the whole loss himself excepting with a percentage contract? If he did get the business, he did it with a picture that offered the opportunity if he would only do his part — and which he is in honor bound to do when the producer turns out for him such pictures — so who is better entitled to a share of his profit as an equitable price for the use of the picture? Exhibitors shouldn't get the notion that the)' own the picture, simply because they are permitted to play it. Whatever boxoffice value it may have or he may obtain from it, lies in the picture itself and self-defense, the first law of nature, should cause him to extract them. The producer must gamble that he will do it and provides him with all the assistance that skilled men can devise to help him get results. In any event a percentage contract will be the result only of what he is perfectly satisfied is fair and what the distributor is also satisfied is a fair contract. In a flat rental contract, it is not a question of fairness, but will he sometimes pay the price demanded if forced to do so by competition. Now comes the ticklish question of how are percentage contracts going to be equitable if no general authority or equity board doesn't fix the percentage? As said at the start, no one will ever be given the right to inquire into the expenditures or the profits, either of the exhibitor or the producer. Dismiss that from your mind without further palaver. The selling price of a picture is based on only one fact: its income value tested by the box-office. What it cost the producer and what profits the theater may make or the producer may make doesn't figure. The gross at the boxfince is the only thing that counts. It is up to the exhibitor to keep his expenses on a level that will leave a profit from his proper share of that gross business and it is up to the producer to get bis money back and a profit on each and every picture from his share of the gross box-office sales, what ever that may be. And it is up to the salesman and the exhibitor to figure out what that respective share should be on every picture sold. How they are going to do it does not concern me just now, but I'm dead sure it will be only on the gross income basis, because that is the only fair and equitable basis. Any exhibitor can easily figure his prospects from his past experience with big pictures, and soon decide how much his share must be to cover expenses. The salesman, on the other hand, will soon know the average gross from the same class of big pictures in every class of theaters and town, and can estimate the pictures drawing power before he starts to sell it. And the two must get together on percentage. No fixed percentage would ever be possible, because no two pictures have exactly the same value. No picture can have a fixed market value until it is tried on the public, and every exhibitor figures the best he can on his own theater and his own public. He must do that even when he pays flat rentals, but he can never be sure. He may pay a fancy price for the new picture by a star whose values increase with each picture. and then adverse weather or some act of God spoils everything. His only protection lies in a percentage contract. How then can his contract be equitable otherwise? And why should not the producer take his chances with the exhibitor? Today all flat rental prices, with a few exceptions, are set according to the estimated selling valuation placed on the picture before it is ever released, yet no general sales manager can say what is an equitable selling price for the film. He only thinks of what he wants to sell it for and the exhibitor pays as near that price as he can be induced to pay. The only time he will ever be permitted to have a voice in fixing the selling price of a picture will come when they are sold on percentage contracts. Think that over,. It is not easy to estimate in dollars and cents the evil of inequitable contracts— whether rental or percentage. There's many an old stage producer walking Broadway today looking for a job whose bankrupt condition is largely due to inequitable contracts in the theatrical business and that business has always been conducted on percentage contracts. The combined brains of both producers and theater managers refuse to play shows on any other basis because they found out after years of unsettled conditions and unfair results that percentage contracts were most equitable because both the manager and the producer had a voice in deciding the equitable percentage. The real reason is because it is the only equitable way to hold losses to the minimum. The producer is forced to share the loss when ever a loss comes through poor business. Exhibitors and producers both require something to force them to a more wholesome regard for the business in which they are engaged. Exhibitors who oppose percentage contracts probably think they can "outsmart" the opposition in buying their film and care little about equity or whether the producing end of the game is a success. They squawk against high rentals and high cost of production while the producer and the distributor who must sell the picture squawk against exhibitors for failure to properly exploit the product. The exhibitor probably wins the squawking championship because he imagines it helps him secure a cheaper rental, but he has never been known to offer constructive suggestions to the producer about what sort of pictures should be produced or not produced. He expects there will always be enough winning pictures to select, no matter how many producers go smash. In fact, there is little to indicate that he cares a tinker's cuss about the producer. If the exhibitor goes to smash the producer doesn't lose any sleep over it either, because he never has had any help from that direction save a rental price for his picture, and has entirely too much grounds for squawking about the poor effort put behind the selling of the picture to the public. If all three interests concerned — exhibitor, producer and distributor — really want to help the motion picture business, they should chip in and elect about five representatives each to a General Board of Supervision to which all complaints should be forwarded as to a grand jury, which Board of Supervisors should start a campaign of education to correct ths apparent evils that are uppermost in all three divisions of the business. Percentage contracts will probably be a long step in the right direction if they can be made equitable by mutual agreement and thus remove one large sized squawk. But the production end of the game will never be an entirely sound basis until producers and distributors learn that a bad film should be scrapped and the cost charged off against the next production the same as in the theatrical business, thus saving a million dollars' credit to the producer and the star, instead of attempting to get back the negative cost by letting the film go out to the exhibitor and the public who invariably take their revenge on the star's next several pictures. Percentage contracts may help to correct that evil. And the exhibitors' game will never be sound until better effort be made to exploit good product, until the exhibitor discards the idea that he can always out-smart the other fellow in buying and until he really learns more about what the public wants to see projected on the screen. MOTION Sales P1CTUR.&S DlSTRIBUriON lENRY KOLLMAN lTmiNiai.Sn»icfs NON-THCAIRK'AL SAift,, *>anov< ~ OBGANlZATtOM, Pt/BlKTr 67 West 44 '"St. New York City VANdfrbilt 465(> B A E R Publicity and Adternsinx fan Producers, Exchange*, Bxhtbiton anA ]ndniluali. Phone Bryant 6?6$ FRED E. BAER Advertising I otiv BlJg. , 1540 Broadway