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Every Fall and Spring we calendar book a series of 11 or so films. The Blockbuster relief comes right on top of back to school/end of summer/bye-bye tourists and starts Sept. 8th. We'll show the pics doubled on some and exclusive on others. We play late on the release so we know if the films are popular or not. And it innoculates my fanatic art film fans to know that they'll be taken care of eventually. WE do play art/independent/etc. all year long but it's mostly a back and fill operation though we do pick up the occasional first run if the buzz is big.

Anyway... we promote, ,mail, special e-mails, etc... the heck out of this thing, we have prize drawings every Weds night which is sort of the off "in night" to hang with the cognescenti.

This year we'll play: in this order Up At The Villa, Bosa Nova, Jesus's Son, Croupier, Chuck N Buck, Virgin Suicides, Sunshine, Saving Grace, Cecil B. Demented, Tao of Steve, Five Senses.

Around Jan 15th we'll do the Tundra Dwellers Art Festival.

We time these mini series to coincide with down booking by the distribs in general. the two slow periods are post summer and post Christmas.

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Mike Hurley
www.bigscreenbiz.com

oh boy, Chuck and Buck. Went to see it a few weeks ago. Brought back alot of childhood memories. Cute film.

We lost Chuck & Buck to the competition and they did $300 last weekend. Score!

Last week we opened Saving Grace and Girl on the Bridge. This week the gosses went up about 10%. Score!

We opened Saving Grace along with the large, rather nice, 16-plex in the next town. We out-grossed them by a little bit. Score!

[This message has been edited by Large (edited August 26, 2000).]

It's great that you can schedule so far ahead, Mike. Myself and the two closest art houses (45 min north and south of me) are having a helluva time getting concrete dates. i have stopped putting out my hardcopy flyer because stuff gets pulled and people get annoyed. I'm directing everyone to my websight so i can change dates ASAP. So far, so good -- but I wish we could count on getting dates in advance . . . .

Scheduling far ahead? Not really. It's more like scheduling really, really ... late. The two very established art houses near here are The Bayview Street Cinema in Camden, Maine and Railroad Square Cinemas of Waterville, Maine who are also Shadow Distribution and they occasionally make a film distribution deal. During the last year they too have stopped listing films by date and have a general blurb... photo... on the films they "expect" and "hope" to play. This is a real tough adjustment for them and the customers who are in love with their fridge calanders! But the new rules of movies don't work anymore. Time was when no picture would do really big business. Today? You could be cornered into letting a picture go that's drawing and grossing well for one that's a dog! Theatres need the flexibility and to be able to move or stay when confronted with opportunity or change. Being locked into the calender is hard when you're talking about booking 3 months in advance for the later dates. But in our case we use the experience of the first run art theatres to help us choose what to play. We play after the heat of the moment so the dates are easy to get at that point because the art houses don't even want these pics anymore when I'm playing them! My biggest danger is picking a flic that went video before I played it! But even then the type of customer we get wants to see it big.

For instance: High Fidelity I just watched at home on video (can I never get enough!) and I wanted to play the sucker just to see the record store BIG!

Good movies? They're out there and they're coming soon to a theatre near you!

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Mike Hurley
www.bigscreenbiz.com