Congress's fogginess on whether or not to bail out the exhibition business (Photo By Bill ... [+]
CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty ImagesAmerica’s most influential film directors sent America’s top lawmakers a fact-filled letter overflowing with powerful sentiment, urging Congress to use funds left over from the CARES Act to either bail out or at least temporarily save the country’s giant community of small to medium-sized theaters.
In a document signed by James Cameron, Christopher Nolan, Martin Scorsese and Clint Eastwood (among dozens of others), the case was clearly and powerfully made that in the absence of Congressional dollars, fully 69% of America’s theaters will shutter.
Like any business, the “store-front” closure is simply the first and most obvious casualty.
Where the real pain and suffering becomes exponentially worse is in the unemployment that will inevitably follow once these theaters go dark: over 150,000 jobs will be lost.
Let’s not forget that many of our favorite ticket clerks, concessions staff and theater cleaners are also members of the community of disabled workers who won’t easily find employment elsewhere.
Closing these movie houses will serve an especially vicious and lasting blow to folks who often are least equipped to face such devastation.
The movie exhibition business has been the hardest hit sector in the long, creative-content freight train that begins with the idea and ends with distribution.
Many think that the industry is going through a necessary but painful Darwinian “survival of the fittest moment”, where certain sectors of the entertainment experience must be re-imagined or potentially eliminated.
Other parts of the entertainment industry have seen huge losses - - theme parks, hotels, cruise lines, film and TV production - - but the most vivid “brick and mortar business” that touches virtually every suburb, town, big city and metropolis, is the American Movie Theater.
The larger movie chains - - AMC, Regal, Cinemark - - have bank relationships, credit facilities and bankruptcy protections (and some are subsidiaries of giant off-shore concerns like Wanda’s ownership of AMC) that many of the smaller independents don’t qualify for or worse, can’t leverage, in the face of a pandemic that refuses to provide what any self-respecting CPA or MBA would require for a loan: a reliable timeline for its disappearance.
In Europe and Asia, early theater re-openings led to those same cinemas having to close down again, after surges of the virus, or a possible new mutation, forced old safety measures to be reinstated.
Many states and municipalities across America have opened their movie houses, but the country’s two largest markets - - New York City and Los Angeles - - remain closed.
Even in the regions where theaters are open, social distancing, restricted seating and audience trepidation, have led to record low attendance.
In other times of crisis - - the Great Depression, 9/11, the Great Recession - - the entertainment industry has largely been unaffected and in fact, has even thrived as Americans have always sought to escape their troubles with a big bag of popcorn and some blockbuster, cinematic entertainment.
Not since the last pandemic - - the Spanish Flu of 1918/1919 - - has the American Movie Theater experience been so disrupted. At that time, early studios snapped up distressed “mom and pop” movie theaters and chains, eager to control the movie houses that would exhibit the early studios’ cinematic fare.
For many decades, during what many called “The Golden Age of Hollywood” studios controlled where their movies were seen and for how long.
Over time, this apparently monopolistic grip had to be broken and the government stepped in, using laws once created to break up “big oil” to boost competition while eliminating the old-time studio/exhibition-controlled system.
In recent months, the Sherman Anti-Trust Act that forbade studios from owning theater chains was struck down, allowing major entertainment concerns to once again own the theaters where their movies could be seen.
Thus, in theory, Hollywood itself could conceivably intervene and find ways to help out the very movie chains they’re crying must be saved.
Nevertheless, despite their legal right to do so, not a single studio has stepped up to either bail out, acquire or possibly partner with rival studios to keep your local cineplex from going under.
Those who’ve worked in Hollywood abide by a simple fact: never, ever invest in the entertainment business.
If you must invest in entertainment, it’s imperative to use “O.P.M.” - - other people’s money.
So it shouldn’t surprise anyone that despite how sincere and heartfelt their letter is, it’s obvious that the world’s best filmmakers are also its savviest - - they know that O.P.M., in this case Congress, must invest in cinema because smart folks, especially Hollywood folks, never invest in Hollywood itself, no matter how desperate or deserving the opportunity.
October 01, 2020 at 07:05AM
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Will Congress Save Cinema? Hollywood’s Top Filmmakers Issue Stark Warning - Forbes
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