During the holiday weekend, I happened to pass by the Quad cinema on 13th Street about 3 or 4 times, once to actually buy a ticket and see something.
What struck me immediately was that no matter when I happened to be walking by—Friday evening, Saturday afternoon, Sunday afternoon, etc.—there was a line winding its way out onto the sidewalk, the likes of which I haven't seen at this movie theatre since my own film played there in 1999.
And the same was not true at the multiplexes down the street.
None of the Hollywood fare seemed to be drawing much of a crowd to speak of, yet the Quad, like the Little Engine That Could, was chug-chug-chugging away.
What did these Quadlings have in common, you ask? Grey hair.
Yup. And there, I think, may lie the key to what's happening to small distributors like Zeitgeist and Strand and new kid on the block, Cinevolve. As Hollywood fails to offer up anything adult, the adults are turning to the adult distributors.
But what about Bucket List and Something's Gotta Give, you ask?
I said "adult." Yes, of course, Hollywood can read demographics better than almost any American industry but attempting to shoehorn tired teenage story lines into senior clothing just doesn't seem to cut it. Older moviegoers don't slavishly flock to any film that has grey-haired actors in it, just as Gay men no longer flock to see anything in which two men kiss.
What moviegoers over 40 crave is intelligent stimulating entertainment. And as long as the corporate conference rooms of Los Angeles fail to manufacture anything of the sort, the small kids on the block will be able to take advantage of the current climate to hit a few base runs.
And that's good news for everyone involved: the audience, the movie theatre owners, these upstart shoestring distributors who depend on word of mouth for their survival and, of course, filmmakers who refuse to compromise their vision in pursuit of some elusive formula. And in the end, you might call me a foolish dreamer, but I'm convinced that even Hollywood stands to gain from this because if the studios stop and pay attention, they just might learn something.
Stranger things have happened.
