Wednesday, 14 January 1998

RAISE THE TITANIC

Lots of e-mail over my ongoing questioning of Titanic's box office reporting. It is mostly made up of people who are ticked off at me. Like this one from Lars: "If you headed over to you local multiplex showing Titanic, maybe then you would finally "get" it. I saw Titanic Saturday at a local theater, and all of Saturday was sold out at 3pm. The same with other theaters in my area. So stop hinting about your Titanic box-office conspiracy (which you have done now for the last three weeks) and actually go out to talk to theater managers showing Titanic, and they will tell you. It's a phenomenon."

Similar sentiments form Dimitri, who offers, "I respect you, but I think you're out of touch with the audience's wavelength on this one. It's like on week two, where you started insinuating a Scream 2 miscalculation would come to play, which never happened. And now that you've gone on record as having disliked it in the end, you seem to have a personal investment in seeing it fail or otherwise have something stink up a genuine phenomenon."

Gilbert, however, thinks I'm being a little too kind: "I totally agree with your point about Titanic's box office numbers. It just seems impossible!! (Last weekend) there was hard rain in L.A and a snow storm in N.Y and don't even talk about the "holiday factor." Those figures are hard to believe."

My response? This is no vendetta. I do like this movie. I just don't love it. My issues with the box office figures are historical. The Lost World's $90 million opening weekend is nothing compared to Titanic's record four consecutive weeks over $20 million, headed (at its current rate) to at least six consecutive weeks, despite many less showings each weekend than any comparable box office smash. In each of its four weekends, the film has added a new quirk to box office history. First, it went up in its second week. In week three, it made at least $8 million every weekday. This week, it experienced no Friday drop-off, despite having half the day's shows during business hours in a non-holiday week. Next week, who knows? I can't imagine any more surprises. So, this should be the end of my Titanic rant as you know it. Thanks for the letters and keep them coming, for better or for worse.

So, are you riled up too? I won't know if you don't e-mail me!