Does Hollywood understand the (supposedly narrow) suburban mindset?

Cafe Society
1

Why is it that the more sophisticated, art(s)y, or challenging movies rarely make their way out to the American suburbs, but movies like “Rocky Balboa,” “Night at the Museum” and “Eragon” get saturation coverage?

I’m not necessarily talking about small, independent, art house movies. But try finding “The Queen” or “Idiotocracy” or a good two dozen other movies in 2006. If you want to see these, you typically have to head to a big city–and then do some more hunting.

Why does this say about Hollywood–and about the people of suburbia? Does Hollywood think suburbanites don’t have the mental ability or interest of big city-dwellers? What I have read, however, is that these limited-distribution movies just don’t do well in the burbs. Why is that?

2

I don’t know what you mean by “big city” because those films played (are playing, in the case of “The Queen”) within walking distance of my house and I live in the suburbs of Knoxville, TN, population 300,000±.

3

Well, assuming that the originator is correct, it’s probably about money. They put films that they think they know that are going to cash in and put them where the people with the disposable incomes live.

Yeah, that’s one clunky sentence.

4

And if an artsy movie isn’t expected to garner a huge audience, it would make sense to show it in densely-populated areas.

5

The suburban theaters are more liekly to be owned by a big chain, which wants to show big blockbusters and oscar bait, with crappy teen flicks in between. They have a fairly stable system, and they don’t want to get bogged down looking for interesting films that have an unpredictable potential and no specific market segment.

6

AND people don’t want what they say they want. I know, I know, we like to think we know what we’d buy, but we don’t.

I managed a video store for years. That big one, with the chains everywhere. For years, computers and Corporate decided what we got and what we pulled off our shelves and sent to other stores for redistribution. Then suddenly we got a budget to order our own movies. The idea was that we’d still get the basic inventory from corporate, but that we’d get about $500 a month to order “items of local interest”.

I was filled with the glee. I finally got to order a decent selection of independent, arty and foreign films that were subtitled instead of dubbed. Y’know, the things my cinephile customers and I had been commiserating for years were so hard to find. After 6 months, I had spent around $3000 of corporate money on a very respectable section I was rather proud of.

That never rented.

Seriously, my turnaround on the things was dismal. Worse than the rest of the library titles. All these film connoisseurs begging me for the latest Hal Hartley flick walked right by it to rent Navy Seals, I swear to gods.

The Powers That Be finally realized that people don’t want what they ask for and scrapped the store manager discretion fund.

Same with theater distribution. You and your six friends may say you’re going to see every art flick in the theater, but you won’t. No, really, you won’t. You wouldn’t rent them from me, and you won’t go to the theater either. Or if you do, it won’t be enough to pay for itself. Theater owners want large groups of people to buy lots of pop and popcorn. Depressingly few of them are into it as some sort of support the arts venture.

7

[QUOTE=WhyNot]
AND people don’t want what they say they want. I know, I know, we like to think we know what we’d buy, but we don’t.
[/QUOTE]

This reminds me of an article I read where a writer looked at the Netflix queues for several users. She noted how the quality films, well regarded by critics and appealing to a small base of people, would be in each queue. As soon as it got into the top ten, though, it would br replaced and start its slow climb again.

8

[QUOTE=saoirse]
This reminds me of an article I read where a writer looked at the Netflix queues for several users. She noted how the quality films, well regarded by critics and appealing to a small base of people, would be in each queue. As soon as it got into the top ten, though, it would br replaced and start its slow climb again.
[/QUOTE]

Oh, yeah, entirely true. My boyfriend and I are real film lovers but we’re starting to acquire a sludge of Good Feeelms on the bottom of the queue.

9

[QUOTE=Zsofia]
Oh, yeah, entirely true. My boyfriend and I are real film lovers but we’re starting to acquire a sludge of Good Feeelms on the bottom of the queue.
[/QUOTE]

It would be perfect if this film was one of them.

10

[QUOTE=Carnac the Magnificent!]
Why does this say about Hollywood–and about the people of suburbia? Does Hollywood think suburbanites don’t have the mental ability or interest of big city-dwellers? What I have read, however, is that these limited-distribution movies just don’t do well in the burbs. Why is that?
[/QUOTE]

“Hollywood” doesn’t control distribution and showings of movies: the big theater chains do. If you don’t like the offerings at your local multiplexes, why not talk to the managers there? They have some discretion over what to show, even if it’s only in their smallest theater.

And as others have said, it may also depend on where you live. The Queen is being show locally at two theaters: the art house theater and a suburban shopping center theater. Most movies of that sort have a suburban showing around here. You don’t say where you live, but you shouldn’t judge all cities by your local experience. (And I’ll bet that if you give your location, someone will find that The Queen has already played there in a suburban theater.)

Then there are the sheer financial aspects. Running a suburban multiplex is expensive. City art houses typically have much smaller overhead. The Queen has made $28 million since its wide release on November 17, terrific for a small film, but peanuts compared to its competition on that weekend: Happy Feet, Casino Royale, Borat, Santa Clause 3, Saw III, and The Departed among them. Most small films make less over their total lives than those pictures make in the first Saturday. The audiences for those films are tiny. (Idiocracy made a total of $444,093 in five weeks. What sane manager would want such a bomb in their theaters?)

11

[QUOTE=WhyNot]
AND people don’t want what they say they want. I know, I know, we like to think we know what we’d buy, but we don’t. […] The Powers That Be finally realized that people don’t want what they ask for
[/QUOTE]
This is dangerously close to saying that large corporations know better about an individual’s tastes than the individual himself. And where will that lead to, I wonder.

12

[QUOTE=WhyNot]
AND people don’t want what they say they want. I know, I know, we like to think we know what we’d buy, but we don’t.

I managed a video store for years. That big one, with the chains everywhere. For years, computers and Corporate decided what we got and what we pulled off our shelves and sent to other stores for redistribution. Then suddenly we got a budget to order our own movies. The idea was that we’d still get the basic inventory from corporate, but that we’d get about $500 a month to order “items of local interest”.

I was filled with the glee. I finally got to order a decent selection of independent, arty and foreign films that were subtitled instead of dubbed. Y’know, the things my cinephile customers and I had been commiserating for years were so hard to find. After 6 months, I had spent around $3000 of corporate money on a very respectable section I was rather proud of.

That never rented.

Seriously, my turnaround on the things was dismal. Worse than the rest of the library titles. All these film connoisseurs begging me for the latest Hal Hartley flick walked right by it to rent Navy Seals, I swear to gods.

The Powers That Be finally realized that people don’t want what they ask for and scrapped the store manager discretion fund.

Same with theater distribution. You and your six friends may say you’re going to see every art flick in the theater, but you won’t. No, really, you won’t. You wouldn’t rent them from me, and you won’t go to the theater either. Or if you do, it won’t be enough to pay for itself. Theater owners want large groups of people to buy lots of pop and popcorn. Depressingly few of them are into it as some sort of support the arts venture.
[/QUOTE]

Your experience squares with my observations. My use of the term “Hollywood” is generic (and perhaps inaccurate), but my overarching observation/question stands. And while I used “The Queen” as an example, I haven’t seen it yet, as it hasn’t reached the countryside where I live, so it might not be a suitable example.

I suppose my view is that America’s suburbs are far from the monolithic enclaves that the media portrays and some of these people as college students were very interested in ideas, whether in books, classroom discussion, or over a pint or two.
I’ve got to believe that these same people living in the burbs today are interested in more challenging, thought-provoking films, but finding these flicks in suburban cinemas isn’t easy.

13

[QUOTE=Beware of Doug]
This is dangerously close to saying that large corporations know better about an individual’s tastes than the individual himself. And where will that lead to, I wonder.
[/QUOTE]

It might be that corporations know a great deal about a population’s tastes. Knowledge of any outliers (or any particular preferences) isn’t too important if your objective is maximum box office receipts.

14

As a counterexample to WhyNot and Carnac’s experience, my time in Salt Lake City yielded a very different experience.

I know, SLC is a big city by some standards, but it definitely feels suburban rather than big-city-ish, and its population is about as standard whitebread middle American as you can get. But Koyaanisqatsi ran for months at the big major cinema here, before it drifted off to become an arthouse staple. amadeus ran for many months, moving from cinema to cinema. weird European releases like Posession ran in the major theaters, not in art houses. Ran and other Kurasawa had a pretty good run downtown. That’s ignoring the arthouse fare, that kept one and later another small theater going.

Even now, out in the suburbs, more than one video store has a “Cult” section. I’ll ask how good the turnover is there the next time I’m in.

Because the sad fact is that there really aren’t any venues for small-market stuff outside videoastores and things like Netflix. Even in places like Boston, most of the arthouse cinemas are gone.

15

[QUOTE=Beware of Doug]
This is dangerously close to saying that large corporations know better about an individual’s tastes than the individual himself. And where will that lead to, I wonder.
[/QUOTE]

Exactly where we are today, I suppose.

I think you’re looking at the question the wrong way around. It’s not a matter of where the customers are, but where the best place to locate the theater is.

In most metro areas, the local art house is sufficient to take care of the needs of the total population of those who are interested in small independent films. It makes sense for the art house to be in the center, therefore, convenient to everybody.

No one suburban multiplex is conveniently located for the entire market. No one suburban multiplex can afford to give over several screens to independent films to match the art house and its loyal audience. For certain films, it may make sense to offer an alternative location to the central art house, but this would be subject to both the manager’s sense of the audience and the film itself. Remember, the total gross of most of these films is so small that it cannot support two locations in one metro area. In fact, most suburban theaters would defer to the art house because of the hue and cry that would result if they put it out of business.

In general, the best business model is for the central art house to handle the bulk of foreign and independent films, with an occasional breakout film to play in one or two suburban cineplexes. This is not an indictment of the suburban audience, merely a sensible strategy for a product with a tiny market.

16

[QUOTE=Beware of Doug]
This is dangerously close to saying that large corporations know better about an individual’s tastes than the individual himself. And where will that lead to, I wonder.
[/QUOTE]

Not tastes, but buying habits. As a store manager, I have no interest in what people like. I need to stock what they will buy. The two, surprisingly enough, are not the same.

Where will it lead? In a vacuum, it would lead to great boringness. In the real world, it will lead to new ways in which people consume movies, which means new technologies, which I think we’re already seeing.

[QUOTE=Carnac the Magnificent!]

It might be that corporations know a great deal about a population’s tastes. Knowledge of any outliers (or any particular preferences) isn’t too important if your objective is maximum box office receipts.

[/QUOTE]

I think a lot of it has to do with the speed and calculating power of the computer, and the much, much larger sample from which to draw statistical data than I had as a store manager.

Face it, I was a young (20’s) woman of a certain appeal to the sort of people I bear all kinds of affection for who played a lot of RPGs and went to art films in the City. They were the ones who talked to me, who I remembered, who I paid attention to. Meantime, they also *overstated *their interest in renting those titles…probably to have a topic of conversation with the cute 20something manager with the big rack. The other 98% of my customers were sort of a blur. When faced with a row of titles which appealed to me, I remembered those 2% and made poor purchasing decisions based on a infinitesimally small minority of customers. Simple selection bias.

I’m very very glad that things like Netflix, HD radio, MySpace and even the Evil Firesharing have come about. Technology is making choices easier for those of us who want to find the hidden surprises, without a brick and mortar retailer failing because of poor sales. If 100,000 of us in 1,000 cities want to see a movie, we can share a dozen copies - and 1,000 theaters don’t have to lose money stocking it. While I don’t have numbers, I suspect there are more artists making more kinds of music than there were 20 years ago, even though there’s less variety on commercial radio. As video streaming and on-demand video becomes even cheaper to produce, I think we’ll see the same of movies.

17

[QUOTE=Carnac the Magnificent!]
Why is it that the more sophisticated, art(s)y, or challenging movies rarely make their way out to the American suburbs, but movies like “Rocky Balboa,” “Night at the Museum” and “Eragon” get saturation coverage?
[/QUOTE]
I don’t think it’s any more complicated than that, if you have a film that has a limited appeal, one that, say, only 2% of the moviegoing public would be equipped to appreciate or would think they would enjoy enough to spend money and an evening on it, you have to show it in a densely-populated enough area that 2% of the moviegoing public still represents a significant number of people.

18

Then the art houses, which in my city usually belong either to Landmark or Laemmle Cinemas, happen to be in the urban areas already. They specialize in showing indie, art, or revival shows, which may skew towards the single and/or the kidless, who live in those neighborhoods. So it tends to be a self perpetuating phenomenon.

19

[QUOTE=Carnac the Magnificent!]
I’ve got to believe that these same people living in the burbs today are interested in more challenging, thought-provoking films
[/QUOTE]

I doubt that they are. People want to be entertained, they don’t want to be challenged. Cinephiles may want it, but those are an infinitessimally small percentage of movie-goers.

The masses want superficial stimulation only. And I count myself in that crowd.

20

Not to be a downer, but most art-house movies, well, suck.

Yeah, yeah, I know it’s heresy, but frankly, I’ll take a bad movie intended to be entertainment than a bad movie by a man on a mission.