Another thing from the theatre point of view.
Many theatre offer a free refill on either drinks or popcorn. This seems generous at the time of purchase but most patrons don’t take them up on the offer. If you have an intermission, people take advantage of the offer and the theatre makes less profit.
But once again, that was just as true in the 1950s-1960s as it is today.
Theatres in the fifties and sixties had less competition in the entertainment biz, namely television and, in more recent times, video games and the internet.
Not really. The margin on the soft drinks and popcorn in theatres is so huge that even if they had to refill every drink and popcorn they sold the concession profit would only drop by 10% or so, plus still not everyone would take them up on it. Or they could just rescind the free refills.
Me, I never buy anything at the concession precisely because soft drinks run through me too quickly, and I don’t want to spend the last half of the movie trying to hold my bladder. I don’t imagine I’m the only one, either. I’d think concession sales would go up substantially with intermissions.
I certainly would have enjoyed any of the LOTR trilogy if they had employed intermissions.
I think that the song over the end of ROTK won the Oscar for Best Song because the voters associated it with the opportunity to go to the bathroom and relieve pressure on their bladders.
Every cloud has a silver lining.
Since my kidneys failed, I can drink and drink and drink and won’t have to go the bathroom within a paltry 3 hours.
However, I would have to probably do an extra dialysis exchange to get rid of the excess liquid…
Last movie I can remember with a real intermission was The Right Stuff.
Strange Brew had one, for about 2 seconds.
That one was probably up to the theaters. I saw it twice and neither had an itermission that I can remember.