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CHAINS
WITHOUT BALLS
The Studio Controlled Movie Theatres Are Crumbling.
Here's Why:
by Lloyd Kaufman and Adam Jahnke
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These
days it seems like you can't get a blow job from a financial analyst
without having him moan ecstatic about the "globalized economy". However,
all industries are not created equal and over the past thirty years,
the communications industry has become globalized to its detriment.
Back
in the early days of cinema, movie studios controlled every aspect of
filmmaking: production, distribution, and exhibition. Studios owned
and operated theatres across the country, which is why you see so many
old theatres with names like Paramount and Fox. The studios programmed
the theatres with their own movies and dictated everything from how
long they'd play to what time they'd start. Then in 1948, the Supreme
Court called this practice the monopoly it so obviously was and the
studios were forced to unload their theatres. This freed the newly independent
theatre owners to book the movies they thought would make them the most
money, not just what the studio wanted to make the most money.
| Not
coincidentally, this new era of independent and family owned theatre
chains just happened to usher in a golden age of independent cinema.
In the 1960s and 70s, it was commonplace to go to your local theatre
and see great independent art. Movies by Cassavetes and Warhol,
documentaries like Salesman and Woodstock, and foreign films by
Godard and Antonioni all received major theatrical releases. Not
just in New York but also in midsize towns in the south and the
midwest. Even a 16mm piece of shit like The Battle of Love's Return,
which I directed in 1970 and is barely one step above a home movie,
played theatrically across the country (click here to order Battle
of Love's Return and, once you've ejected it from your VCR after
the first 15 minutes, try to imagine how pissed you'd be if you'd
actually left your house to see it). When Troma first started, theatres
weren't just willing to book our movies, they were eager to do so.
In our early years, Troma was able to make about 100 prints of a
movie. These prints moved around the country and we were able to
compete with the majors on a more-or-less equal footing. |
If only
the corporate bloodsuckers looked so good! |
Then,
in the mid-to-late 80s, all that started to change. Reagan, apparently
longing for the studio system that made him a semi-quasi-movie star,
ushered in an era of mergers, majority investments and shareholding
that all but eradicated that original decree. What Reagan softened up,
starstruck Hollywood wannabe Bill Clinton knocked down. We have returned
to the time when major studios dictate what movies will be seen where.
Today, not only do studios once again own outright theatres and theatre
chains, they can own network television. Loews Cineplex is the unholy
spawn of the merger of Loews Theatres (owned by Sony) and Cineplex Odeon
(owned by Universal). ABC is nothing more than a seven-days-a-week prime-time
infomercial for Disneyland. This situation can only get worse as the
Gore/Lieberman campaign continues whoring for Hollywood. Troma can produce
any number of examples that illustrate this rapid return to the studio
cartel's monopolizing ways. Back in 1980, Waitress!, one of the pre-Toxie
sex comedies that Michael Herz and I directed, played in 92 theatres
in New York City alone. Today, the universally acclaimed, and clearly
superior, Terror Firmer has fought tooth and nail to get just one cinema
in New York.
Over
the last several weeks, a number of these chains have filed for Chapter
11 bankruptcy. Mann, Carmike Cinemas, the third largest movie theatre
chain in America, and, most recently, Edwards Theatres have all been
bit in the ass by aggressive expansion that has failed to pay off. Unless
you make movies or popcorn for a living, you probably didn't hear about
this and, even if you did, you probably didn't care. After all, Edwards,
Carmike and Mann are all examples of those huge, devil-worshipping chains
I was just talking about that show nothing but the latest multi-million
dollar shit streams from the Slime Warner/Mickey Mauschwitz entertainment
cartel. You've probably never seen a Troma movie in a Carmike cinema.
That is, of course, unless you were there in the 70s or 80s, when it
was called Martin Theatres. As always, it's the public who ends up paying
for this bankruptcy. First, we all pay because genuinely artistic and
important films end up going unseen because the chains won't play them.
Then, after they go belly up, the shareholders that optimistically bought
stock in the company when they went public are left rectally hemorrhaging.
They've been fucked up the ass for months by a mismanaged corporate
whore and its Wall Street pimps who sold them the stock. These bankruptcies
are simply symptoms of what we've been saying all along and they are
not isolated incidents. United Artists Theatres now finds itself on
the brink of bankruptcy, as well. The New York Times has reported that
independent auditors have warned UA that the chain is unable to continue
paying its substantial debts. Discussing the Carmike bankruptcy, Michael
Florin, a financial analyst with Gerard Klauer Mattison and Co., put
it this way in an Associated Press article. "This is more to do with
the state of the industry than anything specific to Carmike," Florin
said. "The banks are looking at the industry and getting nervous."
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