Old Fashion Movie Theater
Black Market or Clear Cut Incompetence
By: Frank Paul Gambino
A Gentleman as me a question today as I returned from the Movies, he said; “if a person goes to the movies you mean to tell me they can go and see another movie without paying to see the second feature?” Actually this did not cross my mind as a serious consideration, but he opened my eyes to a bigger problem. I mean the movie theaters sell $4.00 sodas and $9.00 Franks, but refuse to hire a doorman to check the ticket stubs at the door of each featured film.
I asked the man who sold me a $4.00 bottle of Coke, which was a typical 20 oz soda, “is it true that the movie theater makes its money off of concessions and Hollywood make all the money from the movie?” and he said yes. And then I said “is that why you are selling me a $4.00 soda?” Fellow me here!
OK you can see all the movies you want to see for the price of one ticket, you only have to show your ticket stub at the front gate and they have a monopoly on the concessions but they do not even check your bags entering the theater.
This knocks out the idea that the movie theaters are corrupt and is out to keep people inside the theaters as long as they can just to sell concessions, because you can bring your own brown bag.
Meanwhile the industry claims the high ticket prices is due to the black market, but the biggest black market is the movie theater itself, because they actually handout 12 tickets for the price of 1 as long as you use them on the same day. You can purchase a ticket to see “Notorious” and go to see “Underworld” after you watch Notorious on the same ticket. This is no secret because the word is out that often black movies are sold short because they sell a ticket for one movie knowing you are going to see another movie. So who is the culprit, the theater or Hollywood? It would seem to be the theater but do they have an interest in the ticket sales or the concessions?
You have copyrights verse property rights. Hollywood holds the copyrights but the theater holds the property rights and it is a dilemma because the property holder is not taking the appropriate steps to protect the copyright holder’s product being the movie for several reasons and can we blame them? So the question is the movie prices so high because of the black market or simply a systemic case of incompetence? I mean the property holder is concerned about the real estate and the sales of concessions and not how many tickets are sold but how many people patronize the theater daily. For all they care you can sneak in as long as you purchase popcorn.
What is my concern? I plan to put out what I think will be a blockbuster called the Apostle a crossroad scripture-gospel-crime as lived by Paul Castellano; I think it will be a powerful story. However it is now clear to me that we have a broking system. My flick will probably be starring Michael Jackson and Janet Jackson will be a part of the supporting cast and though the movie focuses on them a lot they will not play themselves. I can see now that my solution to this dilemma will be to rent the sections of the theaters I will be viewed in insure it and hire our own security and make the critics come to theater to rate the film there will be no critic copies to leak to the black market. Because it is obvious it is not in the best interest of the owners of the theaters to control the traffic in numbers but only in property damage prevention meaning as little conflict as possible even if it means looking the other way as people sneak from show to show.
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