Summer's (almost) over

Lynn and I always watch for the one evening, at some point in the summer, when we come out of the theatre after the show and feel "fall" in the air for the first time. That day came this past week -- I think it was Monday night, we walked out and there was this autumn-like "nip" in the air that hadn't been there until then. I'm starting to feel it in the morning now, too. It won't be long till we're all griping about the cold.

Autumn is a slow time for the movie biz. That's the season when the "Oscar hopefuls" come out. Sometimes we play some of these, but often we don't, for one very simple reason: With few exceptions, they're not popular movies. Sometimes an Oscar hopeful catches on with the general public and we wind up playing it -- and some years, we get to play most or all of the Best Picture nominees. But more often, we play just a few of the nominated films -- last year we played two of the Best Pictures.

There are a few other reasons why a nominated film might not play here. Want to read them? (If not, skip the rest of this post.) Okay, if you're still with us, here are the factors we consider:

1. Is it available to us? Quite often, nominated films are made by small companies with low budgets, and there are only a few hundred prints available. (As opposed to a blockbuster, where there might be 5,000 prints or more.) Naturally the big city theatres grab the prints, and hang onto them until they've wrung every last dollar out of the movie, which leads us to #2:

2. Can we get it when people still want to see it? If a movie is more than a couple of months old, people tend to forget about it and/or decide to wait for the video. Assuming the movie is still new enough to draw a crowd, we move to reason #3:

3. Would it work for our audience? There are many people in Rosebud County who like more sophisticated, challenging films; unfortunately, there are not enough of them who will actually go out of the house to attend such a movie when it's in town. (Even though everyone complains about how boring it is to live here, it's amazing how busy everyone seems to be all the time.) Time and time again, we've brought in an edgy, adult-type film only to have it play to audiences of 6 or 8 people every night -- not enough to pay the popcorn kids, let alone the rest of the bills, so it's back to Batman or whatever. But every year, we try a few experiments to see if that vast untapped audience is out there somewhere. Right now, we're playing the new Kevin Costner film, "Swing Vote" -- not exactly a challenging or edgy film, but a good one for the adult crowd. Tonight we had 22 people for it.

As always, we love to get requests for movies that might otherwise slip under our radar. If there's a certain film that you really want to see, feel free to ask us about it. And tell your friends to ask too. If we get enough requests, it may lead to a movie playing here that otherwise might not. Please keep one thing in mind when making requests, though: If you ask us to bring in a movie and we do bring it in, make sure you come and support that film with your ticket money. And ask your friends to do the same. That way, maybe that vast untapped audience that likes the edgy, sophisticated films will grow, and more of those films you want to see will appear on our screen.

What's next?

Whenever we have a great movie, lots of people ask us what's coming up next. This is great for us because it lets us know that people enjoyed their movie experience and look forward to another one.

This time we're not sure exactly what's coming next because we don't know for sure how long Batman will be with us. He's booked through the 31st for sure, but depending on the size of the crowds, we may keep the Bat flying a third week. If we do, it's possible but not definite that we'll play another movie along with The Dark Knight. Watch our website for details.

Here's a short list of guesses as to movies we'll be playing in the month of August. All of it subject to change, of course.

• Hancock
• The Incredible Hulk (maybe)
• Mamma Mia
• Get Smart
• Hellboy II

Again, watch our website (which is updated every Thursday night and sometimes even more often) for our best estimates on when these and other movies will play.

The Dark Knight is filling quite a few seats...

Seems like every cinema in the country is selling out shows for The Dark Knight, the new Batman movie with Christian Bale and Heath Ledger. But the Roxy has had seats available for every show. What gives?

Well, we've had just a tad bit of competition, namely the Rosebud-Treasure County Fair, which draws just about everyone in the county and beyond. They ramped up the action this year, with not one but TWO big concerts - Sawyer Brown, and Charley Pride. And of course the demolition derby on Sunday is always good for softening the crowds at the ol' movie palace.

Not to worry though -- actually it makes things a little better for us, because it tends to spread the movie crowds out a bit. We look for our Dark Knight numbers to improve this weekend, which will please the film's distributor. However, it could make things a little busier than is normal for the second week of a major film. To make sure you get the seat you want, we suggest you arrive at least 20 minutes before show time (which, by the way, is 7:00 every night this week).

WALL-E hits the Roxy's screen

It wouldn't be summer without some kind of a Disney movie.
Last year it was "Pirates of the Caribbean 3," and this
year it's the latest Pixar film, "WALL-E."

It's the story of a robot who is left behind to clean up
the earth after it becomes uninhabitable for humans (700
years in the future, that is). But WALL-E is no ordinary
robot -- he's got a personality, and that's where the plot
thickens.

The visuals in this movie are going to be absolutely great,
I think. This is one you really need to see on the big screen.

WALL-E will be playing for 2 weeks, June 27 - July 9.
Our doors will open approximately 40 minutes before the
first showtime. We're also having a matinee on Saturday
the 28th, at 2:00.

We will be open on the 4th of July, but we will only have
one show that night, at 7:00, so you'll still have plenty
of time to get to the fireworks.

We love NEW movies!

It happens anywhere from 6 to 12 times a year: The Roxy presents a brand new film, on its national opening day.

The first movie we had "on the break" was MISSION IMPOSSIBLE II, which came out in 2000. Of course we'd been wanting to play brand-new movies for years and were willing to pay the higher prices to play them; but it took a change in movie-company attitudes to make it happen.

By the late '90s, boxoffice results had become a huge Monday-morning water-cooler topic. Every studio was determined to wind up on top of the charts with the latest blockbuster. This led to an ever-increasing desire to break opening weekend records.

After years of requests from small theatres to make movies available faster, the film companies finally decided that if they put their films onto as many screens as possible on the opening weekend (including small ones), they'd increase their boxoffice sales. Seems like elementary math, but it only took them 105 years to come up with it.

So far this year, we've already had three films on the break: Nim's Island, The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, and Horton Hears a Who. Upcoming opening-day titles include Wall-E, The Dark Knight, Madagascar II and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. And probably a few surprises we don't know about yet!

By the way, you can tell if we hope to open a movie on the break by looking at its poster in our lobby. If the release date is showing on the poster, the movie will probably be here on that date. If the date is blanked out, it means we'll still probably play the film, but it'll be two or three weeks after the national release.

Indiana Jones is gone! (Almost)

OK, folks, just ONE more day to see Indiana Jones on the Roxy's big screen. After that he will be banished to the awful world of video forever. (Or until they make another one, which we're betting will happen.)

Indiana Jones is here! (Almost)

Well it's not QUITE on opening weekend, but Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull will be at the Roxy this Friday. The movie opened nationally on May 22, but the studio didn't make enough film prints to satisfy the demand, so we had to wait a while. But we're sure the wait will be worth it! We thank all our local moviegoers for their patience.

We keep reaching for more "firsts"

It's happened again...another "first" at the Roxy. Although this isn't one of our prouder moments.

This one is my fault. We usually change our marquee on Wednesday nights, because we're closed Thursdays...usually. This week, Dylan the marquee changer showed up right on schedule on Wednesday night and put "Iron Man," which starts Friday, on the marquee.

The problem? "The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian" didn't end Wednesday...it has one more night to run. I forgot to explain that fact to Dylan, and he changed the marquee a day early.

So mark the date -- May 29, 2008 -- for the first time ever, the Roxy will be playing a movie that's different from the one listed on the marquee.

A sign in the front window explains things, and we should be back to normal by Friday the 30th. We hope.

The upcoming schedule: (A guess)

OK, folks, here is what's coming up in the next few weeks. The usual advisory: Almost none of this is set in stone -- it's always SUBJECT TO CHANGE. With that in mind, here we go:

May 30 Iron Man

June 6 Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
June 20 What Happens In Vegas + You Don't Mess with the Zohan
June 27 Wall-E

July 11 The Incredible Hulk -or- Kung Fu Panda -or- The Happening
July 18 The Dark Knight

A little remodeling news

Next time you're at the movies, if you think of it, walk down to the stage and take a look. It looks like a simple fresh paint job, but it's really a lot more.

Sharp-eyed folks might remember that we had a "brick wall" trimming the stage for many years. This was done in about 1998 because the former stage trim (curtains matching the side walls) had gotten dirty and stained.

When we decided to remove the brick paneling from the lobby in February of this year, we decided to remove ALL of it, which meant the bricks in front of the stage had to go, too. Our contractor, Tom Ungefug, noticed that the original stucco stage front was still there under the bricks, and suggested just removing the bricks and letting the original stage show. The only thing required was to rebuild the front trim on the stage, which had been removed when the brick wall was constructed.

Well, replacing that trim was no ordinary job. First of all, the stage is curved, so that meant the trim would have to be built to match. The top rail in the front is actually composed of about eight 1x6 boards, trimmed down at the joints to match the curve of the stage floor. The top rail is supported by additional panels and trim pieces below. If you were to cut a cross section out of the rail assembly, you would find it consists of seven separate pieces of wood!

In the center of the stage, there used to be a large air intake for the now-defunct swamp cooler system. We decided to build a storage cabinet in that area for concession supplies. (Don't worry, we're not going to interrupt the movie going back and forth to that cabinet during shows!) As of this writing, the cabinet is all finished except for the doors, which should be installed next week.

We're not quite done with the remodeling yet... Here's a list of what's still to be done. Granted, this list is quite boring compared to what we've been doing, but it's all good. Over the next few weeks, we'll be:

• Fixing the front display window so the glass doesn't fall out, and putting new backing in there to replace the aging, sun-cracked current backing.
• Stopping up a lot of air leaks in the back of the building. (This will save us money on heat, and also make the theatre warmer during the winter.)
• Putting the various movie posters in the lobby into frames. (This is because the old system of attaching the posters to the wall doesn't work with our new textured walls.)
• Adding some additional lighting to the stage.

And for the final crowning touch that you won't be able to see, we'll be getting a new roof this summer, thanks to the big hailstorms from last summer.

Where have I been?!

OK, I'll be the first to admit that I have been a slacker, blog-wise. I haven't posted in quite a while. I could say that I've just been too darn busy -- well, that's really an accurate statement -- but I spend a good share of my day typing and the real truth is, it's just been hard to think of something worth blogging about lately.

Now that that's out of the way -- despite the recent cold, rainy weather, SUMMER has officially come to the Roxy. We're currently playing the new Narnia movie, and Iron Man will follow at the end of this month, and right after that...Indiana Jones's new adventure.

Some might be wondering, why aren't we playing Indiana Jones right now? Don't we usually jump on those new blockbusters the day they come out? Didn't I read on the Roxy website that Indy would be here on the 22nd of May, or was that a dream?

Well, we really were planning on playing the Indy movie on the 22nd, but a little thing called "print availability" spoiled that plan for us. In other words, there were not enough prints around to fill the demand, and while the Roxy definitely is one of the coolest theatres around, unfortunately it's not one of the biggest, therefore we have to take a place behind the larger city theatres sometimes.

Not to worry, though....Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull will be here just as soon as we can bring it in, probably by the first or second weekend in June.

This is the time of year when people start asking "When will you play (fill in an Oscar-nominated film title here)?"

This year is unusual because nearly all of the Oscar-nominated films are either low-budget, indie productions, or boxoffice flops. Sometimes both.

There are some exceptions. One of the Best Picture nominees, "Juno," is very popular and we do plan to play it -- hopefully sometime before the middle of March. Another popular nominee, "Atonement," is penciled in later this month (although it may get knocked off the schedule by "The Bucket List," which is not nominated but is a huge hit).

And we played two of the three Best Animated Feature nominees -- "Ratatouille" and "Surf's Up" -- last summer.

We have already played one of the Best Picture films -- "No Country For Old Men" played here in January of this year.

Beyond that, however, the nominee list is full of movies that the mainstream moviegoer might never have heard of.

So why don't we just bring in these excellent movies and play them? Well, we'd love to, and sometimes we can, but we also have to consider all the variables.

• Is the film available to us at all? Sometimes, big city theatres snap up all the prints and we can't get one in a timely manner. If a film is too old, people stop wanting to see it. (This is a mystery, since the movie is still the same!)
  
• Is it the type of film that would do well for us? In a lot of cases, Oscar-nominated films have such limited appeal that they only do well in large cities. We play most movies for a full week, so every time we book a film, we're staking one fourth of our total business for a whole month on it. We need to play films that bring in enough business to pay the bills.
  
• Is the film coming to video soon? If so, there's no point in us playing it. Most movies are about four to six months old when they hit video. We play many movies on their national release dates, but when we have to wait on a film, we do our best to get it before it's over a month old. (Usually we're successful in that, but occasionally we're not.) Since many Oscar-nominees have been out for two or three months, their video release date can loom large. Generally, if the video release date has been announced for a film, we won't play it unless it's massively popular.

So there you have a list of the questions we have to answer when booking Oscar-nominated films. The booking process is interesting and complicated for all theaters, but especially so for small operations like ours where one screen has to fill all the needs of the local moviegoers. I hope this post has shed some light on the process we go through in deciding what to put on our screen.

Alvin and the remodeling

Well, turns out I was off on my Alvin/Chipmunks guess. But we will be playing it starting January 25. Watch the website for the show schedule - we haven't decided on a matinee time yet.

You might have noticed the destruction going on in the lobby area. We are removing the 1980s-era brick paneling and replacing it with textured drywall, which will restore the lobby to the way it looked when the concession stand was first built. We're also getting rid of the "dropped" ceiling over the concession counter and the paneling in the stairway -- so the original Roxy stucco work will be visible again. And finally, we're replacing the brick paneling in front of the stage with "something," we haven't decided what just yet.

You might be saying: What were we thinking all those years ago, with the paneling and the tile ceiling and all? Well, the stairway was originally paneled (with crappy looking wood paneling) to hide a big hole in the stucco. When we remodeled in 1981, we decided to replace that paneling with something better looking, and the brick paneling was chosen. Then later when we enlarged the concession area, we just used the brick paneling because it matched the other paneling and was easier, cheaper and faster. Then still later, we used more brick paneling in front of the stage because.... well, it was easy, cheap and fast.

We're also doing a number of other smaller behind-the-scenes fix-ups, such as:
1. Fixing air leaks in the back of the building
2. Putting in a new exit door at the foot of the auditorium
3. Fixing the east display window on the front of the building and refurbishing the display boards

The project is probably taking longer than it normally would, because we are still open while it's in progress, so that means everything has to be cleaned up, put back in place, etc. in time for each night's show. So we're grateful to our contractor, Tom Ungefug, for cooperating with our busy schedule and not throwing anything at us (yet).

And of course we're grateful to you, the moviegoers, who make it all possible. We'll have pictures on the website of the remodel soon.

One other thing: You might be thinking...WHAT ABOUT THE RESTROOMS? That plan hasn't been abandoned, just "put on the back burner" until the contractor and the building inspector can come up with something we can all live with without ruining our nostalgic lobby. Stay tuned.

Another year!?

Wow, it's 2008 already. I was still writing "06" occasionally on my checks. I don't like to make 8s as well as I do 7s, and my 9s often come out looking like scribbled 7s or backwards question marks, so I'm in for a couple of rough years.

We will be playing "I Am Legend" this Friday the 11th...yep, you read it here first. We will be driving to another theatre to pick up the print, which we do maybe three or four times a year. Unless the weather turns nasty, we should be good to go!

People keep asking when "Alvin and the Chipmunks" is coming. Wow, that one came out of left field and surprised a lot of people including me. I figured it for a quick sink and a fast trip to video-land. Turns out it's going to be the second biggest hit of the 2007 holiday season (after National Treasure: Book of Secrets). Who knew? At any rate, we hope to play it next week the 18th, but won't know until next Monday. Such is the nature of showbiz!