Tuesday, 6 March 2001

NO SHOW 2K+1: As I head to ShoWest tomorrow for two events and an overnight stay at the Hard Rock Hotel, I have watched various outlets rather varied reportage of the event, which is in a lull, to say the least. Of course, the entire industry is in a lull, so why blame The Sunshine Group for a serious downward turn in the fortunes of an event that I have for 8 years seen as the a key moment in every year's assessment of the studio product to come. With four or five majors giving lunches or dinners, year in and year out, and in addition to those meals, a look at the distribution reel for the next year or so, you could feel the growing strength or weakness of product in the anticipation of the people who ultimately get to decide whether, and for how long, and in what conditions it is going to play in a theater near you. Theater owners aren't as separate from "real people" as, say, the Academy voters, who live in a rather exclusive club. At ShoWest, a reporter got a sampling from literally thousands of people from across this country and across the globe.

This year, there is one – count it – one sit-down meal and distribution reel at ShoWest. It is Warner Bros.' And it would be my guess that the show runners had to make a pretty generous deal with the studio – which as you must know, since you are here at davidpoland.com and not at roughcut.com, is in the middle of sever belt tightening by parent AOL/Time-Warner.

Outside of that, there are three screenings. One from MGM (Heartbreakers), one from Miramax (Spy Kids) and one from DreamWorks (an in-progress screening of Shrek). Only Miramax is paying for any food and they're doing their now-traditional buffet, which is much cheaper even though the food is a lot better. There is also recent word that Miramax may have a reel, but as they showed last year, as a company, they choose to promote selected titles and not their entire slate. (Last year's buffet featured giant posters from at least 5 films that were not on their reel, including Committed and Blow Dry.) And as of this date, at least this member of the press has NOT been invited to see Spy Kids, which opens in just a few weeks? Why? Your guess.

A number of media outlets are cutting back on the size of their traditional phalanx of reporters covering the event. Others are passing altogether. At least one foreign journalist that I know of had to pass on the entire event because of the late-in-coming approval of his press credentials.

There were three stories about the start of the event in today's news, from Reuters, Variety and The Hollywood Reporter (though for legal reasons, not necessarily in that order). The Hollywood Reporter is a ShoWest event sponsor, so they have reason to be positive… and they were. Well, as positive as possible. They didn’t avoid the reality… that the exhibition business is in the toilet right now and that's all anyone can talk about… they did spin a little by mentioning United Artists Theater Co. coming out of Chapter 11 last week without mentioning, directly, that the move was directly related to Philip Anschutz investing at bargain basement prices. Anschutz' plans for the future of exhibition is a seminar they should schedule, since it is at least as important to the industry's future as any digital cinema discussion. He might BE the digital cinema discussion.

Reuters was a step tougher, though they misrepresented Disney as a participant in ShoWest. They will NOT be screening Pearl Harbor there. But Reuters was on the mark with its analysis that "the major subject in hallways and hotel suites, however, will center on the industry consolidation that has seen at least 10 large exhibition chains in Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and investors like Denver-based billionaire Philip Anschutz look to snap them up for pennies on the dollar." Bingo. However, they let NATO president John Fithian get away with excusing the industry's overbuild, claiming "I don't think we overbuilt because the new properties were necessary. The problem was that we weren't closing our older properties fast enough." Well, the reason they weren't closing old properties fast enough was that they were so focused on competing amongst themselves, exhibitors didn't bother to pay attention to the fact that they had leases for these old theaters. What Chapter 11 has allowed is not just getting out of leases for old, less-valuable theaters within blocks of new mega-plexes, but the dumping of relatively new theaters with leases that constrained profitability, like the 900 N Michigan theaters in Chicago.

Variety's only direct relationship with ShoWest is sponsorship of a panel called "The Big Opening: The State of Motion Picture Marketing." (Have you ever noticed that every Variety event tends to have the word "big" involved?) Anyway, I have an internal memo from Variety that suggest that Bill Clinton was going to appear, his fee paid by Trojan, but… just kidding. The panel is actually quite excellent, featuring marketing presidents from Warner Bros., Miramax, Paramount, Disney and New Line.

Variety's headline was the toughest ("TREMORS SHAKE SHOWEST"), but perhaps the most accurate. Again, "With nearly a dozen companies in bankruptcy reorganization and others considering such moves, many exhibs will soon be run by new owners with new ideas about how to do business," writes Carl Diorio. He also gets to the heart of the digital matter, which is that the only news coming from ShoWest this year will be Boeing, Technicolor and Qualcomm not only showing technology, but proposing serious, specific methods of getting the equipment into theaters without creating the oft mentioned $125,000 cost to theater owners. As source close to the situation tells me that Boeing is particularly motivated, since they have already made their huge investment in transmission technology and need to have somewhere to use what they have created.

Overall the festival manager, Robert Sunshine, reports just a 10%-13% drop in attendance this year, off from earlier reports of almost double those numbers. Perspective is the better part of valor.

PAGE TWO: FIRING DAN, STOOGES DELUXE & OSCAR ROTD