in a Short Attention Span Theatre
If you’re a regular reader of Rapid River Magazine’s movie section, then you know that when I write an article it’s usually a profile of some movie person, such as silent movie comedienne Mabel Normand (March 2014). Or, it’s to provide a historical overview on something film related (like June’s Godzilla Turns 60). This time around it’s something a little different.
I still plan to talk about a topic that’s movie related, just more personal. Writing reviews for a monthly publication as opposed to a weekly (like Mountain Xpress) can sometimes be an exercise in frustration. This is not the fault of the monthly publication. The problem is in the nature of contemporary movie distribution and how it has changed in the last several years.
I first began reviewing movies for SC Educational Radio in Charleston SC back in 1979. I was volunteering for the Charleston affiliate WSCI when I found out that they were looking for a local movie reviewer. After years of watching old movies on TV with my mother (who was quite the movie buff), having read several books, and armed with the knowledge from my Film 101 class in college, I was hired. That job lasted about a year.
Life intervened and I stopped reviewing films until 2001 when I began posting mini-reviews on amazon. 13 years and over 450 reviews later, I’m still at it. I began writing reviews with colleague Michelle Keenan for Rapid River Magazine back in 2008 and, after more than 250 reviews, I’m still at it here as well. Since I first started reviewing, the nature of movie distribution has changed dramatically.
Time was that a movie would come to your local multiplex and play for a minimum of two weeks and usually three or four, unless it became a monster hit, like Star Wars, and then it would play forever. That blockbuster aspect of certain films is still with us today. What has changed is that there is an increase in the number of films being released as well as an increase in the number of companies releasing them.
As a result of this, there is now a Decrease in the amount of time that they play in local theaters. There are also raised expectations of how a movie is expected to perform in order to stay in those theaters. If a major release doesn’t make at least $10 million in the first three days then it’s considered to have “tanked” and it will depart as quickly as it arrived.
It is this last item that impacts reviewers like Michelle and me. It used to be that movies were given time to find an audience or vice versa, but not anymore. An interesting or perhaps even a great little movie comes to town, but by the time we have written our reviews, the movie has moved on.
We are fortunate in having the Fine Arts Theater in downtown Asheville and The Carolina Cinema in South Asheville. Both of which strive to bring small, out-of-the-way films to our area. However, with people having so many viewing options these days and the cost of tickets being what they are, it’s hard to draw an audience for every little film. Neither the Fine Arts nor The Carolina have the financial resources to hang onto films if they don’t sell well straight out of the gate.
The silver lining is that, thanks to the availability of quick DVD releases and streaming services like Netflix, a title generally becomes available right after it leaves town, therefore rendering our reviews not completely obsolete.
Michelle and I love movies, and we enjoy writing about them. Our goal is to enlighten our readers about films, especially the ones they may not have heard much about, so our readers can decide what they want to see. To borrow a well known phrase from a well known network, “We report, you decide.”