The Online Reflector

By Manny Casillas
Staff Writer

In November 2007, Thanksgiving week to be exact, I was at the posh Landmark Keystone Art Theatre here in Indianapolis ready to see the new Todd Haynes film, “I’m Not There.” Of course before a movie starts there is a pre-show of ads, trailers and sometimes, even music videos.

One of the trailers I saw that particular night was for the upcoming film at the time, “Grace Is Gone,” starring John Cusack. I had been reading some good buzz on the film before that, and the trailer cemented my interest.

It’s now April 2008, and “Grace Is Gone” never hit theatres, at least not here in Indianapolis. Indianapolis audiences will have to wait until the film is released on DVD before they can see it.

This is not the first nor possibly the last time something like this has happened. As long as movies are released throughout the year, Indianapolis is considered part of a “fly-over” state that holds smaller cities. Many independent films will either play in limited release (often as limited as a week), weeks or even months after their initial premiere in New York and Los Angeles, or will fail to come here at all. Why is that?

The first problem is audience response. While big-budget blockbuster hopefuls open on thousands of screens at once, smaller, low-key films open first in the major cities, such as New York, Los Angeles and sometimes Chicago. Depending on how they are received there, the films then open in other cities.

The problem is that no one knows just what will be a hit with moviegoers and what will not. Despite the star power of Nicole Kidman, her film “Margot at the Wedding” barely made a dent in theatres, critical acclaim notwithstanding. Meanwhile, “Juno” was originally released in only one or two theatres in Indianapolis and went on to play simultaneously in nearly every major chain in the city even months after its release.

Audiences’ tastes are vastly unpredictable, which I will concede since mine are too. Still, even if Francis Ford Coppola’s latest, “Youth Without Youth,” was not a hit with the New York crowd, I still would have liked to make my own judgment, and I suspect many in the city feel the same way.

Then there’s profit distribution. Originally, the longer a theatre held a film, the more money the theatre made.

Today, the studios take a larger profit from each movie released, regardless of how long it plays and how much money it has made.

Theatres cannot often afford to keep a particular film around for very long if it isn’t being seen much. As a result, many small films do not get a chance to build an audience because it is measured by how well the film does on its opening weekend.

Indianapolis gets the short end of the stick, or sometimes doesn’t get it at all. While the Keystone Theatre at the Fashion Mall may still be going steady, things get much more difficult for people like Ron Keedy, owner of the local Key Cinema on Keystone Avenue here on the Southside.

Then there is the problem of cutbacks in the publishing industry with many local and national publications letting go of film critics. If there’s no one to write about a particular film in the paper, no one will know about it, and the film will go unseen.

More films are being released each year than ever before, yet audiences are going less and less.
Price and services factor in, but my guess is that choice has become toxic, especially during the early part of the new year when studios already have put out their award contenders and have awful leftovers to give us.

Sure, things were slightly better last year because many of the big award movies (“Atonement” and “No Country For Old Men”) managed to get released in Indianapolis before the new year, which was possibly a first. But still, movies like “Grace Is Gone” never saw the light of day here.

As much as I enjoy surveying the summer movies, I want more meat on my plate, and that’s where the smaller, independent films come in—the ones that make me think and ponder new possibilities and open me up to something new.

Not all of them turn out to be good, but we here in Indianapolis can’t even make that call for ourselves. As much as I revere New York City, I don’t want it making my movie-going decisions for me anymore.