Cinema’s Suicide

“The idea behind each one was, we took a film that we liked and made the title stupider. And then made a new film to reflect the new stupid title. It’s a formula that only produces horrible films, but for some reason we keep using it.”

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (2015)

 

My, that’s some funny-looking popcorn. Still, thanks to renjith krishnan on freedigitalphotos.net, it is at least clear enough, with the barest of glances, that this is a post about cinema.

My theory goes thus: cinemas, plural, are killing cinema, singular. Allow me to elaborate.

In my home city of Peterborough (which has, incidentally, a population of nearly two hundred thousand), there is only one cinema (as in, a building specifically intended to fulfil the chief purpose of screening films, not counting theatres, churches,¹ and other venues that may occasionally do so). It’s on the edge of town in an industrial park, so the only transport options are to drive there – and then work one’s way across the vast concrete prairie of the cark park in order to reach the entrance – to brave the perils of the surrounding roads on foot, or to track down the lengthy alternative route that leads through a gap in a hedge into another stretch of (apparently disused and completely pointless) car park peripheral to the cinema’s own. Having finally arrived, one is then confronted with the extortionate (and complicated) array of ticket prices, with general admission at peak times costing £9.90, and the various discounts available for off-peak, children, students, seniors and so on never reducing the price past £7 – unless one signs up for a special discount card, which pushes it down to £6.25 on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Sunday evenings. To view a film in 3D costs £2 more, with a further £1.50 required for 3D glasses, and the option of upgrading to a fancier seat for £1.80. One is then presented with a selection of similarly ludicrously overpriced snacks and drinks, so that it’s really very easy to end up spending some twenty pounds a head in one trip.²

Now, so that this doesn’t turn into some kind of personal pity party, I shall now allow you, O Similarly Extorted Reader, a moment to recount your own grudges against the cinemas you have experienced yourself. (It seems to me that most people who enjoy going to the cinema do hold some such grudges, many of them concerning pricing; the cinema I described above isn’t necessarily the most expensive chain around,³ though the monopoly it holds in the city does allow it to inflate prices beyond what they are elsewhere.⁴) Ready? Go.

…

Finished? Good. It’s a pain, isn’t it? But I think this conversation represents more than us engaging in a spot of British grumbling about personal inconvenience; it highlights a genuine problem in the cinema industry, namely a restriction of access to cinema-going.

Because going to see a film is so expensive, only those with significant disposable income are able to do so with any kind of frequency. (Similarly, on the transport front – which I appreciate is not as ubiquitous an issue as the overpricing, but, equally, I feel can’t be singularly peculiar to Peterborough – it becomes difficult and possibly even dangerous for those without easy access to a vehicle, perhaps due to income or to age, to go to the cinema, again ruling it out as a possibility for regular trips.) Everybody else is forced to be highly selective about which films he or she is prepared to hand over the cash to see. As a result, there is a gravitation towards films that might be called ‘reliable’: the big-budget summer blockbuster that will at least have plenty of explosions in it, even if the plot is somewhat lacking; the latest sequel, prequel, spin-off, or side-project of a well-known franchise; the multi-part adaptation of a bestselling book or series of books. An unorthodox premise will only suffice if supported by a stellar cast, or perhaps the previous huge success of the director or studio involved. Since cinemas are where films are released first, they are where one goes to see a film one hasn’t seen yet; therefore, to purchase a cinema ticket is to take a risk. Raised prices demand the placing of a larger bet; in compensation, our preference for short odds increases.

And so the blockbusters and the franchises and the celebrated stars rake in the millions, and that which is more obscure, or unusual, or low-budget, is pushed to the sidelines: if it is shown in a mainstream cinema at all, few of us are likely to go and see it, because it represents too risky a bet for our hard-earned cash. I’m not directing my criticism at us the customers though, but at the cinema owners who set the prices.

 

I mean, think of all the other things you could buy with nine quid odd. That’s nine loaves of good bread. Or three bottles of Barry M nail varnish. Or one-thirtieth of an Xbox One. Endless possibilities.

It’s not as if it’s unfeasible to offer tickets at cheaper prices. My university Campus Cinema Society, for instance, charges £2 for members of the society (membership costs £15 for the year), or £3.50 for members, meaning I can see four films at Campus Cinema for about as much as it would cost me to see one at the cinema in Peterborough.⁵ Admittedly, this facility fails to meet the criteria for being a ‘proper’ cinema that I outlined above, since it operates out of a Music & Drama room used for multiple purposes at various times; still, that doesn’t mean I don’t have a ‘proper’ cinema case-study to offer. When my younger sister visited me at university earlier this academic year, we took a trip to the nearby seaside town of Exmouth and, since the weather rather precluded typical beach-type activities, took a couple of hours’ refuge in the cinema (which, I would also like to mention, is sensibly placed, on the main town square).⁶ My sister, having done a little maths, subsequently lamented that the cost of the train to Exmouth, plus that of her cinema ticket, plus that of a Tango Iceblast, altogether came to less than one general-admission ticket to the cinema in Peterborough.

I have a pact with the aforementioned sister that if either of us ever, in some bizarre turn of events, stumbles into ownership of a large amount of money, we are going to buy up the inconsistently-operational theatre that used to be Peterborough’s Odeon, and reinstate it as a cinema.⁷ We will show the blockbusters and the franchises and the celebrated stars, certainly, but also odd and obscure and indie films, and also old ones, and also foreign ones, and also shorts by local directors just getting off the ground. We will have special screenings as well; event cinema, and marathons designed as preparation for new releases, and films that have particularly impressive soundtracks accompanied by live orchestra.⁸ And we’ll have a café too. And none of it will be ludicrously overpriced.

That’s the dream, anyhow – to create a cinema where it’s not a case of everything except the actual viewing process itself being a grit-your-teeth kind of chore, so that it really matters that said actual viewing process is worth the price demanded. Rather, one will be able to wander casually in wondering what might be on today, hand over a couple of quid, and see a film that, yes, may turn out to be not to one’s taste at all, but, equally, may turn out to be a new favourite that it would nevertheless never otherwise have occurred to one to go and see. I say this with reference to my experience of Campus Cinema: among the films I saw on the off-chance last term were Man Up, which I thought was excellent (and romcoms aren’t usually my favourite either), Mr. Holmes, which I thought was extremely underwhelming (so much potential for exploration of the nature of truth and memory and the relationship between the self and a portrayed character, barely exploited at all), and Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, as quoted above, which I thought was emotionally traumatising, but sufficiently clever and interesting and profound that I’m still very glad I saw it. The film’s protagonist is always insisting that the films he makes with his friend Earl are terrible, but Rachel, the ‘dying girl’ of the title, really enjoys them. People enjoy different kinds of films, and cinema surely ought to reflect that breadth of interest, rather than consisting of a narrow core of ‘reliable’ films that we all like enough to consider them safe options, but that rarely capture our imaginations in especially groundbreaking ways. Still, if things continue in the direction they seem to be heading in, I feel we may watch the variety of films that are shown in cinemas be whittled down to very little more than blockbusters and franchises and celebrated stars, standing in a graveyard of creativity – and that’s something I’d really rather not have to watch if I can avoid it.

Footnotes

¹ Yep, there’s a church in my city that shows family films on a monthly basis, with free admission: http://www.orbchurch.co.uk/events/orb-cinema/. It’s pretty great. (And they offer lots of delicious and reasonably-priced snacks to munch while viewing.)

² Do feel free to check; this stuff is all on their website: http://www.showcasecinemas.co.uk/locations/peterborough. You’ll notice that the instructions for how to get there are aimed exclusively at car drivers.

³ Vue, http://www.myvue.com/ and Cineworld, http://www1.cineworld.co.uk/, both seem to me to be contenders for that title as well as Showcase, though it’s hard to tell when prices can vary quite significantly from branch to branch.

⁴ In Liverpool, for instance, general admission costs a mere £8.40: http://www.showcasecinemas.co.uk/locations/liverpool. Liverpool is, I have learned with a little Ecosia-ing, also home to numerous other cinemas, including Odeon, Cineworld, Vue, Picturehouse, Light Cinema, and Plaza Community Cinema, this last offering extremely competitive prices. Liverpool is, of course, quite a bit bigger than Peterborough, with a population of over 450,000, but even taking this into account, it has a significantly better cinema-to-population ratio.

⁵ Campus Cinema is open to everyone, not just students, and I think it’s really excellent: http://campuscinema.co.uk/index.php.

⁶ Note also that their instructions for how to get there include numerous options in terms of means of transport: http://exmouth.scottcinemas.co.uk/yourcinema.

⁷ Now called the Broadway, it suffered a fire a few years ago and, since then, seems to have changed hands multiple times. Some kind human has collected a wealth of information about it and various other former Peterborough theatres, http://www.arthurlloyd.co.uk/Peterborough/BroadwayTheatrePeterborough.htm. At the moment, a London theatre company are operating a run of shows there, http://thebroadwaypeterborough.co.uk/, but the last time they did so, they cleared off after a few months and left it vacant, bar the odd one-off performance, for the rest of the year. Nobody seems able to commit, you know?

⁸ My favourite orchestral scores include Pirates of the Caribbean, How To Train Your Dragon, Prince Caspian, Pacific Rim, and Pan, and I’m always pleased to receive recommendations.