MOVIE TICKETS

I ran movie theaters for many years. Boston was my bailiwick. I was a motion picture exhibitor. Exhibition is the bottom rug of the movie business and I was small “art house indie”, the bottom rung on the bottom rung.

If you stick around long enough at one gig and you start learning things.  Like how much money popcorn actually costs. Or, big surprise, summer movies are less weighty. Fall is the time for more serious, award hopeful films. Christmas is chuck full of  blockbusters and many of them are dancing for Oscar. The week starting Christmas Day is the busiest week of the year. After the holidays, business tapers off that’s why the Oscars are so strategically placed (to give the box office a boost.) After the Oscars, the distributors start dumping their dogs. A general rule of thumb, if a film debuts in April, it is because it wasn’t good enough to open any other time of the year.

As you learn the business, you learn when the busy times are and when slow times will raise their ugly heads. But one of the most important times for any exhibitor is the time to raise ticket prices.

Yes, Virginia, there is a time to raise ticket prices. Balancing out when to raise ticket prices versus possibly alienating your customers is a delicate decision. Most exhibitors, especially the sub-genre I belonged to, the independent art house operator, worry about that balance.  Yet when the bottom line needs attention, it is balance that favors increases over everything else. Most exhibitors know you don't raise ticket prices and concession prices at the same time. It is just a matter of timing.

And that timing, it is all about time of year. There are two distinct periods of the year when raising ticket prices is most advantageous, just as the summer blockbusters are opening and just when the Christmas blockbusters open. Demand to see these films are high and with that demand, there is less grumbling.

As an exhibitor, I preferred raising prices at Christmas. It appealed to my inner Grinch, but also the quality of films were better and if you're going to raise prices the product on the screen better be pretty darn good. I also felt that Christmas was a time when people were more generous and folks were less likely to grumble about the price.

As we have our run up to Christmas, you will see lots of new films opening. You may also see ticket prices increasing. I have no inside info on this, but I do know several theater chains are suffering and may be up for sale. You can expect those chains to jack the prices up. Nothing looks like a good deal as when revenues are picking up.

Anyway, as you head out to the movie house this holiday season expect a night out at the movies to cost more than it did last year. Hopefully the movies will be worth it.

Speaking of worthwhile new films, here are two indie film I am very high on. SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE, Danny Boyle's love story set on a game show and the slums of India. The other is THE WRESTLER. Mickey Rourke and Marisa Tomei act their brains out in this sure to be nominated for at eats two Oscars entry from Darren Aronovsky.

Both are worth the price of admission.

Garen has been sitting in the dark for more years than he cares to admit. He has been a film exhibitor, booking consultant and reviewer. You have seen him on NE Cable or CN8 or some other Boston station.  More likely you heard him pontificating about films on FrugalYankee.com, NPR, New Hampshire Public Radio, WTKK, WRKO or any number of other stations he's been on, but one thing is certain, he loves, and knows, film.