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.