Listen. Can you feel it? It’s as if a million movie theater owners cried out in terror, and then, suddenly, silence. Welcome to week 20 of the never-ending box office slump.
Mindless panic is in full swing because movie theater revenue is down 7 percent from last year. After a series of movies that merely did well — “Revenge of the Sith” ($366 million), “Hitch” ($179 million), “Madagascar” ($172 million), “Batman Begins” ($154 million) — Spielberg’s “War of the Worlds” clinched the slump by having only the second-biggest opening on a Fourth of July weekend, ever.
Clearly the industry is doomed. People just aren’t going out to the movies the way they used to way back in 2004.
And why should they? Would you want to pay a lot of money to eat overpriced food in a smelly, sticky room filled with loud, obnoxious people that are keeping you from hearing the poorly-made movie you’re supposedly there to enjoy, or would you rather pay even more money and do the same thing in a theater?
But theaters can still offer a unique and deeply satisfying experience that simply can’t be had at home — an escape from your parents and/or kids for 2 hours — and in the interests of keeping that experience alive I’d like to offer some suggestions to get some butts back in the seats without resorting to any unreasonable, irrational methods such as lowering prices or permanently banning Martin Lawrence.
First, encourage ushers to enforce the “Please, no loud talking” rule. With Tasers.
Then think three words: Adults Only Night. Keep the crying kids out of just one showing and I’ll be there with bells on. Quiet bells.
If that’s not feasible, at least stick jacks in the armrests so I can plug in my headphones (or buy some from you) and tune out the rest of the idiots.
Get rid of the memberships that award points for ticket purchases and start awarding points based on personal behavior. If you’re quiet during the movie, you get discounts toward more movies. Eventually natural selection will produce a pleasant evening for everybody. And if not, hey, Tasers.
Give away popcorn for free, with handfuls of free butter and salt. Then raise Coke prices to $20 a sip.
Try offering different types of quiet snacks, like pasta or Entenmann’s, just as a change of pace. Or allow people to bring in outside food, but only if they bring enough for everybody.
Rent out theaters to anyone with a video out hookup. I think people would pay to play Battlefield 2 on a 70-foot screen, and watching someone else play Sims 2 for a couple hours would probably be better than any given Tim Allen movie.
You could even start an Amateur Night and let any would-be Kevin Smith or Robert Rodriquez haul in his Mac and fire it up. Couldn’t be any worse than “Bewitched.”
Why not offer season passes? Let me pay $50 to see all the movies I want all summer. I’ll buy some snacks and pay your rent, just let me get in cheap. You can even require that for every three action movies I see I have to watch something with subtitles.
I would say lose the ads and the endless trailers but since they serve as my lateness buffer I say leave ’em in. It’s not like I ever see them.
Add movie controls to each seat like Fast Forward and Pause that require a majority of patrons to use before they activate. If everyone thinks the love scene drags, why suffer through it? Call it the Audience’s Cut version.
How about Pop-Up Video-style footnotes that offer behind-the scenes tidbits during the movie? “This popular action star was shot at and later divorced by his wife because of this scene right … here!”
And, just as an experiment, how about making a few movies that aren’t bad remakes, mindless star vehicles, transplanted TV shows, two-hour Saturday Night Live sketches that weren’t funny in their original five-minute format, sequels, sequels to sequels, prequels to sequels, or anything rewritten endlessly by shifting teams of screenwriters to meet the non-entertaining requirements of the legal and ad departments?
Movie theater owners, you think about that. Meanwhile I have to go update my Netflix queue.