I’m not very good at New Year resolutions, that’s why I gave up smoking approximately 56 days 13 hours 21 minutes and 43 seconds ago. Although I have to admit they still look pretty creamy and delicious to me.

So to pretend I’m going to strain every sinew to bring you the absolute best in film entertainment in 2012 would be a false resolution. I’m going to strain every sinew to bring you the filmed entertainment I think the largest number of people want to see. Because let’s face it sometimes you want to see the most appalling crap in stunningly large numbers. Who am I to judge?

OK, so sometimes I’m going to try and show something less commercial but with merit in the hope you want to see it. See, no good at resolutions.

I tried a few of those “merit” films last year and fell flat on my face, but I’m going to keep trying now and again. Please don’t try and stop me, it’s my cinema I can do what I want.

Besides I showed commercial films that fell flat on their face. If we’re going down in flames, I might as well feel smug and superior about it.

This constant feeling of living in the future, trying to second guess what all the fuss is going to be about in a few months time can cause independent cinema owners to be unstable.

I really shouldn’t be left to make these decisions. I confidently predicted Betamax would win the video war and was one of the first in line to buy a BSB Squarial. It’s amazing this cinema’s still open really.

So what are my plans for 2012 I hear you not asking? Apart from staring out of my office window and playing Tetris that is.

Film wise it’s going to be pretty strong I think. Anyone in the business will know how rare it is for an exhibitor to be so upbeat. Make the most of it, it probably won’t last.

Obviously The Iron Lady is a good start as are War Horse and The Artist. The Muppets are back and I predict big things for that, Woman in Black, Best Marigold Hotel and even Salmon Fishing in the Yemen look like strong titles for us.

The new Aardman claymation film Pirates in an Adventure with Scientists is going to be humongous at Easter.

Then the arse will drop out of it all for a bit as all the distributors run a mile from the Olympics, the football and the Queen’s jubilee.

Summer, Dark Knight, Men in Black etc. Nice. October is the new Bond, even nicer and then into The Hobbit for Christmas. Marvelous.

So at the moment I’m fairly confident. A dangerous state of affairs clearly, and we can all read this back together next year laughing at my naïve optimism.

We shall also continue to bring live opera, ballet, theatre and all that as well as some as yet unknown events.

I’m going to persevere with the live comedy, some nights have been more popular than others, but it’s certainly a success entertainment wise. We’ve had some really great evenings and everyone has a fab time that comes along.

It’s what I’m going to do with the building is the big question. Time for a bit of a refurb I think, whilst it’s all mostly in good nick perhaps the time has come to improve some of the facilities.

The kiosk definitely needs looking at, something a bit more sexy and sophisticated. Like me.

We aren’t making the most of our bar offering, people are still surprised we offer wine and beer etc. I also acknowledge the choice is not great, will certainly look at that.

So, an improved foyer by the end of the year hopefully.

A few other things I can’t spill the beans on just yet are in the pipeline too.

If you read the blog and come to us regularly I look forward to seeing you in 2012. If you don’t, then get your arse down here.

Kevin

It’s over already. Hardly seems anytime at all since I was positively wetting myself at the prospect of The Kings Speech starting on Jan 7th. Now I’m hopeful but managing to hold it in for The Iron Lady a whole year later. Not that I don’t think IL isn’t going to be successful, I just don’t think we’ll hit the heights we hit with KS.  Few films do.

2011 has been a big improvement for us on 2010, actually if I’m honest it was an improvement on 2009 as well.

Why’s that then? Two reasons basically, better films, or at least films better suited to The Picture House and live transmissions of opera, ballet and theatre.

In 2010 we were utterly bereft of anything approaching a posh film, as a result we took a great big hit on the number of admissions. 2011 is 10% up which is a huge jump.

2011 was as it should be, lots of ordinary films with the odd monster thrown in. Exactly how I like it. We hit a few rocky periods of course but that’s normal.

Jan and Feb are usually good, stuffed as they are with awards titles. In fact too many normally, if we could spread them out a bit more we’d all win, distribs and exhibitors alike.  I understand the awards buzz thing, but it becomes self defeating in such a crowded market.

So we had King’s Speech, Brighton Rock, True Grit, Never Let Me Go and Black Swan which all did great business, competing with the February half term mainstream pictures, Tangled and Gnomeo & Juliet.

March to May we seemed to hit a bit of a wall and couldn’t get anything going. Easter was not very good at all. Rio and Hop both disappointing, Chalet Girl didn’t get out of the starting block, and Oranges and Sunshine also tanked. Which surprised me  as I thought it would do alright.

It all started to pick up with Thor. Not huge, but it had a bit of life. Then the Pirates of The Caribbean showed up and we were off again.

The big surprises in June were Bridesmaids and Senna. Very strong for us and both of them not normally films we would expect to do well with. A bonus too as June here is normally appalling.

July to Sept was groovy, Harry Potter said his farewells and Inbetweeners, another “not us” title went bonkers. Super 8 and Cowboys & Aliens were huge disappointments though. Tinker Tailor was massive and Jane Eyre nice and solid.

Thought we would do better with Melancholia than we did. Why? Come on, I want to know.

Oct to Dec it was great. Midnight in Paris surprised everyone but me. Johnny English  and more Twilight.  Although I expected better things of My Week With Marilyn and Hugo.

That is, of course, a rather cursory run through the year. It doesn’t take in the amazing success of the Met Opera and NT Live, where we’ve had some wonderful evenings. Sometimes having to use two screens such has been the demand.

We played a total of 93 films. How many did you see?

So here is the top ten grossing film of 2011 at The Picture House Uckfield:

1. The King’s Speech
20,000 of you made this our highest grossing film of all time. My children still have to stand and salute if it’s mentioned in the house.

2. Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows Pt 2
Farewell then Harry Potter. Our bank account is going to miss you terribly.

3. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
Not in UK top 10. Proving my patrons have much better taste than the rest of the country.

4. Inbetweeners
Quite a shock this made it so high.

5. Bridesmaids
See 4.

6. Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
But Why?

7. Gnomeo & Juliet
I think the British thing worked here.

8. Johnny English Reborn
You came. You seemed to laugh.

9. Jane Eyre
Frocks? Judi Dench? How could it fail?

10. Tangled
Would have made it much higher had evening show insanity not overtaken the situation.

The Wooden Spoon: Lowest take for a new film in one week was Larry Crowne. Oh Tom, where did it all go wrong?

Looking forward I’m pretty confident things should roll on into next year. The immediate future looks fab. Iron Lady, War Horse, The Artist and The Muppets. A big summer with Dark Knight Rises and possibly Men in Black. A Bond in October and The Hobbit at Christmas. So in theory I should still be around to bug you this time next year.

My Turn for a bit..

Now I’m going to give you my films of the year, forgive me the self indulgence, but what’s all this for if not the occasional moment of blogish onanism?

Inevitably all film lovers enjoy showing off with their film lists, but I haven’t seen every film released in 2011 so how can I possibly say these are the best films? I can’t. There could well be better ones out there I haven’t seen.

There are a few that have made most other lists, like Tree of Life or Melancholia, that for whatever I reason I can’t say I enjoyed.  That doesn’t mean I judge them bad films.

There are some I am ashamed to say I have not seen. In the end it’s all horribly subjective, but for what it’s worth, here, and I stress, in no particular order are the films I’ve most enjoyed this year.

I know some of them we didn’t show. Sorry! Some are not released until next year, but I’ve seen them this year. Let the showing off commence..

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (UK Dir: Thomas Alfredson)
Thomas Alfredson follows the brilliant Let The right One In with this utterly compelling waft of cold war chill.
With an almost Kubrick like detached eye he recreates the beige London of the 1970’s where self important men play games with peoples lives.

We Need To Talk About Kevin (UK/US Dir: Lynne Ramsay)
Dazzling and exhausting to watch. Asks more questions than it can possibly answer and Swinton is as usual mesmerising.

Drive (US Dir: Nicholas Winding Refn)
Sometimes too cool for it’s own good but utterly irresistible. Some may find the violence unacceptable.

A Seperation (Iran Dir: Asghar Farhadi)
A window into another world. Subtle and unsettling, it’s grip tightening as it goes on.

The Descendants (US Dir: Alexander Payne)
Maybe too middle aged and maudlin for anyone under 30, but Alexander Payne turns in another heartfelt exploration of ageing and learning.

The Artist (France Dir: Michel Hazanavicius)
Delightful, light and airy, a real slice of pure entertainment.

Animal Kingdom (Australia Dir: David Michod)
I know it’s all been done before, but this so good. Jacki Weaver as the family matriarch is without doubt the scariest thing I saw on screen in 2011.

Midnight In Paris (US Dir: Woody Allen)
Hugely entertaining Woody Allen, a sort of Inception meets Goodnight Sweetheart for smart arses.

Rise of the Planet of The Apes (US Dir: Rupert Wyatt)
I don’t care, I enjoyed it, a lot. Hopefully the painful memory of the Tim Burton apes has now been erased.

The Skin I Live In (Spain Dir: Pedro Almodovar)
Not Almodovar’s greatest achievement, but even so contains more ideas and originality than most film makers could dream of coming up with.

Tyrannosaur (UK Dir Paddy Consodine)
Really wanted to dislike this, more poxy working class suffering voyeurism. Damn you Consodine, it’s superb. Olivia Coleman is amazing.

Pina (Germany Dir: Wim Wenders)
So enjoyable and I know nothing of modern dance. A 3D film that works for a change as a 3D film. Spellbinding.

LATE ENTRY!

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (US Dir: David Fincher)
I’m not trying to flog it to you, honest. Very much better than the Swedish version, Fincher proves he is the best American director of mainstream films working.
Brilliant stuff.

All in all a rather good vintage. We continue to branch out, this year we also started our live on stage comedy evening which has done really well. Some big names have come down, and we have some bigger ones lined up for 2012.

Of course none of it would be possible without the support of our lovely patrons. It truly is appreciated. I know I can get a bit grumpy sometimes, but I mean well and we are all trying hard to bring you the best cinema experience we can.

Don’t forget you can reach me with your ideas and comments anytime at enquiry@picturehouseuckfield.com or contribute to this blog, which I love when you do.

So thanks again, and here’s to a great 2012.

The annoying bit after the credits…
(Which I really wish they wouldn’t do. Some of us just want to go home, we’ve been here all day.).
OK, here are ALL the films we played in 2010. I expect you to have seen all of them. Apart from The Three Musketeers. I wouldn’t subject anyone to that.

King’s Speech
127 Hours
La Fancuilla (Met Opera)
Fela (NT Live)
Little Fockers
Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader
Gulliver’s Travels
Harry Potter & Deathly Hallows Pt 1
Giselle (Bolshoi)
Black Swan
Tangled
King Lear (NT Live)
Brighton Rock
Caligula (Paris Ballet)
Gnomeo & Juliet
Never Let Me Go
Nixon in China (Met Opera)
Yogi Bear
True Grit
Iphigeni en Tauride (Met Opera)
Don Quixote (Bolshoi)
The Tempest
Tangled
Frankenstein (NT Live)
Fair Game
Chalet Girl
Lucia di Lammermoor (Met Opera)
Rango
You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger
The Eagle
Coppelia (ROH)
Submarine
Oranges & Sunshine
Source Code
Le Comte Ory (Met Opera)
Red Riding Hood
Little White Lies
Winne the Pooh
Capriccio (Met Opera)
Il Trovatore (Met Opera)
Thor
Arthur
Rio
Hop
Water for Elephants
Jamie Cullum Live
Desire
Thor
Something Borrowed
Flamenco Live!
Berlin Philharmonic 3D
Die Walkurie (Met Opera)
Pirates of the Caribbean 4
Hanna
TT3D
Pina
Cave of Forgotten Dreams
Hangover 2
Coppelia (Bolshoi)
Kung Fu Panda 2
Senna
Green Lantern
Donor Unknown
Die Meistersinger (Glyndebourne)
Cherry Orchard (NT Live)
Transformers 3D
Green Lantern
Life in a Day
Larry Crowne
Island
Potiche
Enfants du Paradis (Paris Ballet)
Apocalypse Now!
Deathly Hallows Pt 2
Cars 2
Don Giovani (Glyndebourne)
Super 8
Sarah’s Key
Horrid Henry
Bridesmaids
Cowboys & Aliens
Inbetweeners
Spy Kids 4D
Turn of the Screw (Glyndebourne)
Glee 3D
One Day
Skin I Live In
Rise of the Planet Apes
The Smurfs
Jane Eyre
One Man Two Guvnors (NT Live)
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
I Don’t Know How She Does It
Mr Popper’s Penguins
Arrietty
Phantom Live
The Kitchen (NT Live)
Melancholia
Johnny English Reborn
Midnight in Paris
Esmeralda (Met Opera)
Anna Bolena (Met Opera)
We Need To Talk About Kevin
Dolphin Tale
Lion King 3D
Lang Lang Live
Don Giovani (Met Opera)
Anonymous
The Help
Siegfried (Met Opera)
Leonardo Live
Ides of March
Wuthering Heights
Sleeping Beauty (Bolshoi)
Satyagraha (Met Opera)
Deep Blue Sea
Collaborators (NT Live)
Arthur Christmas
Adventures of Tintin
Rodelinda (Met Opera)
My Week With Marilyn
Hugo
Happy Feet
Breaking Dawn
Deep Blue Sea
Faust (Met Opera)
Sleeping Beauty (ROH)
Puss in Boots
Sherlock Holmes Game of Shadows
Alvin Chipwrecked
Nutcracker (Bolshoi)
New Years Eve
Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

No animals were harmed in the making of this post.

This time of year the world is awash with lists. Everybody wants to tell you what the best films of the year were, I was reading the one in Sight and Sound this week. Man, there’s some showing off in there. In essence pages of critics trying to out do each other in finding the most obscure top five films they possibly can.

So here’s a weird set of lists that I guarantee no one else in the world can come up with.

It’s Christmas, in case you hadn’t noticed, and it’s a tricky time for exhibitors. Before Christmas it’s difficult to get you interested and after Christmas you all want to come so I have to make sure I’ve got the right film on.

We can discuss how successful or otherwise I’ve been this year at a later date. What I thought you might like is a trip through the time tunnel to visit Christmases gone by. I’ve found it a fascinating exercise and a perfect snapshot of how dramatically things have changed in the last 40 years.

It may be a little dry in places, but let’s put it in reverse and get this blog up to 88 miles per hour….

15 Years Ago
1996

Dec 13th: 101 Dalmatians/First Wives Club
Dec 20th: 101 Dalmatians/Matilda
Dec 27th: 101 Dalmatians/Matilda
Jan 3rd: 101 Dalmatians/Evita

Box office wise not a bad christmas at all by the look of it. We only had two screens back then, so I seem to have plumped for the obvious (and probably only) choices, Disney’s horrible live action 101 Dalmatians, the rather better Roald Dahl adaptation Matilda and Evita, Alan Parker’s big ass screen version of the hit show.

101 Dalmatians was the winner by some margin remaining strong throughout the holiday period and beyond. In fact it didn’t come off until February, playing weekends until Fly Away Home took over the matinée reign on Feb 7th.

For some reason Matilda came off after just two weeks. What happened there? I bet there was a barney involved somewhere along the line given how well it had done Dec 27th week.

Presumably Entertainment insisted on all shows for Evita and because Dalmatians was too strong to take off, it had to go.

Maybe Columbia wouldn’t reduce shows on Matilda? For the life of me I can’t remember. Seems a bit bonkers though. There was certainly a lot less flexibility regarding coupling films up back then.

Personally I can’t say anything sticks in my mind from Christmas 1996, my children were all small. My brain was probably soup.

25 Years Ago
1986

Dec 12th: Top Gun/Howard The Duck
Dec 19th: Basil The Great Mouse Detective/Howard The Duck
Dec 26th: Basil The Great Mouse Detective/Top Gun
Jan 2nd: Basil The Great Mouse Detective/Labyrinth

Oh Wow! I remember this one. Everything really went tits up. Two really big flops, and my old man booked them both. To be fair a new Disney cartoon feature was still considered a must book.

Basil was the second in a string of flops that started with Black Cauldron in 1985 and wouldn’t be stopped until The Little Mermaid reinvigorated the studio in 1989, and it was Christmas when families go to the cinema. So we can let that one go. But Howard the Duck? Really?

Labyrinth had been released on November 28th and he obviously made the decision to play off date, to get George Lucas’ infamous duck based turkey in. This is a perfect example of how booking cinemas back then was still ruled by fear and politics. I can only think keeping UIP sweet was part of the problem.

It was one of the few times I went to an advance screening with my dad, and I managed to cause a bit of a fuss. We trooped in to see Howard the Duck and it was awful beyond anyone’s expectations. There were about 20 of us at the start of show, but the screening room door opened regularly as another exhibitor could stand it no more and leave.

By the end there was just me at the front and an old school character, Bill Jones, fast asleep in the back row. In fact he snored loudly all through the last half an hour. I crept out not wanting to wake him and in the lobby of the screening room was Barry Norman. Then at the peak of his Film programme powers, he asked me how it was? So I told him.

Apparently this was the wrong thing to do. The balloon well and truly went up as the crowned heads of United International Pictures tried to find out who had told Barry Norman that Howard The Duck was beyond awful. I’m not sure they ever found out it was me.

So given that experience, which honestly is very rare. Why go ahead and book it anyway? We’ll never know. And boy did it die, admissions for the first week; Fri 5 people Sat 31 Sun 25 Mon 10 Tues 7 Wed 6 Thurs 0. That’s 84 people in a week. The second week 39 people show up.

Fortunately Labyrinth pulled things round a bit on Jan 2nd. 1547 admissions for the week. Basil never really got going 515 admissions and 719.

A Christmas best forgotten.

35 Years Ago
1976

Only one screen back then remember, and films changed on Sundays.

One weird Christmas.

Sun Dec 12th – Wed Dec 15th Confessions of a Window Cleaner/House of Mortal Sin (Double Feature)
Thurs Dec 16th – Sat Dec 18th Confessions of a Pop Performer/Alvin Purple (Double Feature)

Sun Dec 19th Lust for a Vampire/Hard Ride (Double Feature)
Closed 20th – 26th Inclusive (!)
Mon Dec 27th – Sat Jan 1st  The Jungle Book/Diamonds on Wheels (Double Feature)

Sun Jan 2nd Wild Angels/ Return of Count Yorga (Double Feature)
Mon Jan 3rd – Sat Jan 8th The Slipper and the Rose

Where the hell do you start with a line up like that? This was in the days when you could still bring films back, although why he though the knackered out soft core Confessions movies still had life in them, God only knows. They didn’t. 229 admissions for the whole week. the most interesting thing about that week are the second features.

House of Mortal Sin was one of British horrormeister Peter Walker’s more bonkers films. Alvin Purple was a well-regarded (at the time) Australian comedy and a huge hit down under. It originally played as a second feature to Blazing Saddles in 1974.

Then to put you in a fully festive mood, a Hammer vampire movie and an old (even then) biker movie.

To give this booking some context, back then Sunday was the biggest day of the week. In fact Sunday quite often took more than the rest of the week put together, so it was really important to play to the audience, namely “The Herberts” as he called them. Young men between 17 and 25 basically, and they came most Sundays in varying numbers. Sometimes up to 600 of them for a crappy Hammer double bill. My dad was terrified of having two Sundays the same, even when a big film like Oliver came out, he point blankly refused to play it for two Sundays. Hence a 13 day booking.

So we had to have something that appealed to The Herberts, because it was a Sunday. We usually did all right with vampires and bikes I recall. 97 people showed up. Not bad, not great.

Then presumably because there were no films, he closed for a week! Beats me.

The Jungle Book reissue was as usual a steady hit. 1075 admissions in five days. Chances are there were no evening shows either that week. Diamonds on Wheels I remember being quite good fun. There were jewel thieves and lots of British character actors.

Then it was back to vampires and bikes again. Count Yorga Vampire wasn’t that good really, why they felt the need to have him return I’m not sure. At the time Robert Quarry just seemed a laughable old man to me. Having just looked him up, he was three years younger than I am now. Arse.

Wild Angels, of course, was the classic Roger Corman biker movie with Peter Fonda that predated Easy Rider. I always enjoyed that one, and we played it a lot. 112 people bought tickets.

All of the films so far have one thing in common. They were all old even then. Not one of them was released in 1976. In fact Wild Angels was released in 1966! By that token, we’d be playing the first Harry Potter movie next week.

So Jan 3rd was the first new film over the whole of Christmas. Even then notice how he wouldn’t play it on Sunday.

The Slipper and the Rose was a big success. A big budget British musical version of Cinderella with just about everybody in the British film industry involved. Directed by Bryan Forbes and starring Richard Chamberlain and a youthful Gemma Craven. Annette Crosbie was good as Fairy Godmother I remember. I don’t know, it’s years since I’ve seen it.

Anyway, Monday and Tuesday were good, then I imagine the kids went back to school. It went from 300 admissions a day down to 100. Should have played it Sunday.

Despite strong returns, it went back up Saturday, there was no such thing as a holdover in those days. Nope, off and on to the next film. If a film had legs you brought it back another time. (The next film was Black Emanuele, jeez.)

Given I was 14 years old and would have seen all of the above films, even the X certs I’m afraid, can you wonder I’ve grown up so twisted. Soft porn, vampires and a singing bear for Christmas. Great.

45 Years Ago
1966

Sun Dec 18th – Mon Dec 19th Cat Ballou/Fail Safe
Tues Dec 20th – Sat Dec 24th Wizard of Oz/Tomb Thumb

Tues Dec 27th – Sat 31st Dec Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines

Sun Jan 1st The Cracksman/City Under the Sea
Mon Jan 2nd Wed Jan 4th Peter Pan/Greyfriars Bobby
Thurs Jan 5th – Sat Jan 7th That Darn Cat/Born to sing

I didn’t think I was going to remember 1966 as I was only four years old, but I most definitely remember seeing the Wizard of Oz and Tomb Thumb double bill. It took money too, 703 admissions in 5 days. Given that Oz was made in 1939 it’s a bloody miracle. See, if only they hadn’t invented telly I could still be showing it.

Would you believe 233 people showed up for Cat Ballou and Fail Safe, that’s a double feature I would pay to see now. Flying Machines was good, 1711 over five days it took £311.15.0. Brilliant.

Didn’t hold over though did it?

The Disney mish mash week could have been worse. 1598 admissions over the week. Again all these films were really old even at the time. The Cracksman was a crappy Charlie Drake comedy from 1963. Who remembers Charlie Drake?

Thought so.

Live from London's glittering South Bank..

How are we still here? I mean God knows they’ve tried hard to kill us off over the years. Since the early silent days the demise of cinema has been confidently predicted as imminent.

I’m not sure where the threat came from in 1920, increasing sales of hoops and sticks possibly?

Telly was going to do for us, then home video and now presumably on demand “content” is the final nail in the somewhat nail ridden coffin.

I had a discussion about pay per view recently with a very good friend and film maker. This is the way forward apparently, there’s no time to go to the cinema, if a film is available on Apple TV then that’s a much better way to “consume” the film.

Presumably when combined with supermarket deliveries there will be no need to even get out of bed in a few years? Everything will come to you.

Coming from a film maker this struck me as very odd, because I’ve sat and watched films with them and pretty much everything goes on except watching the film. Looking at phones, playing with dogs, checking Facebook and so on.

As someone who’s made films, I really like the audience to give all my hard work their full attention for the short time they’re watching.  Naive I know, but I’m sure she feels the same way.

This has all been debated endlessly elsewhere of course. I mention it because somehow we find ourselves offering our own kind of pay per view scenario.

I’m talking about the wildly successful live transmissions of opera, ballet and theatre that we started last year. So anything you can do..

In the last year we have sold over 12000 tickets for live events. These include opera direct from The Met in New York, ballet live from Covent Garden and The Bolshoi in Moscow, transmissions from The National Theatre often have to be shown on two screens simultaneously they are so popular, in fact many of them would have sold out all three screens.

It’s not often in business, particularly in a mature one like cinema, a whole new line of revenue opens up but that’s exactly what “alternative content”, as it’s rather insipidly called, is.

We’re seeing people coming through the door that we wouldn’t see too often for movies turning up on a regular basis. Some of our lovely customers have bought tickets for every one of the Met operas, all eleven of them.

At £23.00 a seat, this is remarkable, and I’d like to thank them all personally. If I had time to invite you all round for dinner I would.

All sounds wonderful doesn’t it? And it mostly is. If I had one gripe about The Met opera it would be that it comes to us on a Saturday evening. Knocking out at least two evening shows on the busiest day of the week.

There’s no pleasing some people is there?

It is, however, a potential sticking point. Film distributors aren’t too happy about losing two shows on a Saturday night from their mega expensive 3D dancing robot penguin movie.

Can’t say I blame them, but one opera show is often the top grosser over the entire weekend, beating nine shows of the aforementioned blockbuster.

So what am I to do? Play the opera is what I have to do, because all this extra revenue means I stand a much better chance of still being open when 3D dancing robot penguin movie 4 comes out.

Monday mornings can also be tricky, working out times when there’s an opera, a ballet and film society as well as four or five films to get in can be a real headache.

Particularly, as I’ve mentioned on this blog before, we’re not totally the masters of our domain. Distributors can make demands about running time that seem insane to the casual observer.

Why it seems a good idea to force shows on us that we all know no one will turn up for is still a mystery to me after 35 years in the business.

Flexibility of playing time is an example of how studios in particular are having to drag themselves, albeit kicking and screaming, into the brave new digital world.

In many cases the more flexibility we are afforded the longer a film will run. Only this week a studio would rather have taken a film off than drop one show a day at a time when absolutely no bugger was going to come , whilst it was still taking big money at other times. Insane, outdated, and ultimately bullying behaviour.

If I had one other concern about alternative content, it’s that I want to keep it for myself and other independents.

It seems multiplexes are waking up to this potential market and I’m petrified they are going to kill the goose the laid the golden egg with their rather indifferent attitude to picture and sound quality.

Fortunately I’m pretty sure the audiences for opera and the like are the ones who really don’t like going to multiplexes.

We can only hope.

Unforgivable amount of time between posts. Many excuses including travel, but primarily my attempt to give up smoking. I’ve been a smoker for over 30 years, so you can imagine it’s been a little stressy.  Writing sets up an overwhelming need for a cigarette, so I’ve been avoiding it.

The pangs are starting  to become manageable so I think I can now finish this post that I started two weeks ago!

Imagine, if you will, a time in the recent past..

Rather selfishly my cleaners went on holiday last week, and it was half term. I Couldn’t find cover for the whole week, which meant  I had to do the weekend myself.

I bet the bloody managing director of Odeon wasn’t doing the cleaning at the weekend, no, he was on the golf course, in a cart driven by high-class call girls stroking his gold-plated putter.

By coincidence I’d also had two or three email complaints about the “frightful mess” during the last house and even while writing this a somewhat mean-spirited comment came in asking why it’s always so dirty in the evening?

That’s nonsense of course. Right off the bat I object to the word dirty. After a very busy day it can be messy in there, but it’s not dirty.

The problem only arises during school holidays. When the day starts the place is pristine clean and tidy, then in come the punters.

Don’t get me wrong, I love punters. Punters are my livelihood, the problem is not all punters treat the cinema with the respect it deserves.

Discarding wrappers where they sit, spitting out their chewing gum on to the carpet, knocking over their coke and watching it dribble down the aisle.

It’s odd, it’s always been this way in cinemas, why? Is it because it’s dark the people lose their inhibitions? No one can see you littering the carpet, so it must be OK?

Presumably when you sit in your living room with a DVD you don’t simply discard your microwave popcorn wrapper on the floor and wait for someone else to pick it up?

I merely speculate.

So it’s quite frustrating when, admittedly a certain type of customer, complains about how disgusting it can be at the end of a day after 1000 people have been through the door. Trust me, it was lovely and tidy when we started twelve hours ago!

I try to explain we do the best we can in the time available. All the large cartons are removed between shows and we sweep as much popcorn out of the way as possible.

In the cinema business we have to make hay while the sun shines. If a film is busy, particularly during a rather short window like half term, we have to squeeze every last show out of the damn thing.

Were we to stop and completely clean the auditorium from top to bottom, we would have to allow one hour between shows. That would mean say three shows instead of five. Quite a significant loss of revenue.

Revenue that’s required to keep things going during the quiet times.

Maybe we could redesign the theatres better,make them easier to clean, take out the carpet, put in less cosy hard floors, I don’t know.

So there I am, the big boss, head man, top dog, grand fromage, on my hands and knees at midnight clearing up the mess all the time renewing my considerable respect for the full-time cleaners that look after the place normally.

And do you know what? A large amount of what I am peeling off the carpet or is getting stuck up the vacuum pipe we don’t even sell!

Come on, you can see how that would piss me off a little can’t you?

If you are going to bring stuff in, at least take your rubbish home with you. It seems only polite.

Some cinemas try to stop contraband goodies getting in, I made the decision some time ago that it was just too difficult to police and causes too much unpleasantness.

But don’t assume it means I approve. Would you take a bottle of wine into a pub? Some of you might I suppose, but that would make you arrogant dickheads and I know the readers of this blog are no such thing.

If you’re honest though, most of you think it’s OK to bring popcorn into a cinema and then leave the remnants on the floor for me to clear up, and then put up with the abuse from crotchety old people who assume I have spread it around the carpet simply to make their evening unpleasant.

So next time you want to save a few pence by bring in a bag of value sawdust instead of buying my popcorn, at least take the bag home with you.

My next project might be a short instructional film called “Popcorn and your mouth, strangers that should be friends”.

Sure fire winner.

What a glorious thing that would be, not having to pay for the film. I’d be typing this on my gold plated keyboard after having sent another flunky out for battered swan nuggets, just because I could.

Of course I’d soon be forced to show my old holiday slides as the films would eventually dry up. I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t pay to see snaps of me squeezed into a pair of Speedos on some Mediterranean beach. So yes, we pay for the films.

I think there should be an independent cinema owners lottery. Once a year we get a film for free, the title pulled out of a hat. It could actually make a genuine difference if a good one came up. Knowing my luck I’d get The Three Musketeers.

The question that usually follows is how do we pay? My first reaction is through the nose. but I would say that wouldn’t I?

Put simply we pay a percentage of what we take. That percentage varies depending on the film, big titles cost more. Quite a lot more.

In days gone by, until fairly recently actually, films were paid for using an arcane sliding scale system. Cinemas would have what we doctors call a “break figure”, supposedly to reflect running costs. For round numbers sake let’s say that figure was £1000. The cinema pays 25% of the first £1000.  Then 75% of everything over that. Yep, 75%. There were a few other calculations too boring to go into here. This was on a per week basis.

Essentially the more you took the more you paid, hardly an incentive to put on more shows. As an independent we weren’t in a position to negotiate the posh break figures circuits had,  meaning some of the percentages we paid were toe curling.

Fortunately things have changed somewhat and some sanity has made its way into the system. We now pay flat percentages, far more preferable. These can range from 30% to 60%.

It also means putting on more shows doesn’t affect the percentage. Marvelous.

Before you go judging me for complaining about a business that makes between 70% and 40% gross profit, remember that payment is made to the distributor before any of our running costs are accounted for. It’s also worth remembering that our running costs remain the same however well or otherwise the film does.

It costs the same to open whether we have one or a thousand people through the door. A lot of weeks lose money, so we’re quite often playing catch up. Over fifty two weeks it works out, but it can get very hairy at times.

Spare me a thought next summer when you’re all watching the Olympics and the Euro football and waving your poxy Union Jacks at passing Queens, and I don’t mean at gay pride in Brighton.

And yes I know there’s popcorn as well. See previous post for that explanation.

As for keeping the films? In the olden 35mm days certainly not, prints are expensive and are moved around the country to other cinemas. Sometimes to other countries, where the release follows ours. Besides they don’t belong to us, they belong to the renter. The clue is in the name.

If we did nick them, where the hell would we put them? Film is bulky and stored in warehouses. I don’t have a warehouse set aside for illegally procured film prints.

Theoretically we could keep copies of digital films, but they’re no good without the digital key that allows them to play. A key will only allow the film to play over a set time, so all I’d have is gigabytes of data I can’t access.

Let me know if there are any less frequently asked questions you have a burning desire to know the answer to, preferably cinema related, and let’s see if we can’t make some interesting blog posts out of them.

The internet is awash with nerdy lists of favourite films, we really don’t need any more. However, as you can imagine I get asked this one a lot, so forgive me a rare moment of self indulgence and let me tell you.

At the very least it might save some time as I can point interrogators in the direction of this blog.

Of course, given the number of films I’ve seen  it’s impossible to pick an outright favourite, so I have a list in my head that I tend to wheel out when needed. I’m not suggesting for a moment my opinion is particularly important, but people seem curious. The list is not especially difficult and frankly if you’ve lived long enough you really should have seen most of them already.

I’m often surprised by how many of the films people haven’t seen, which means as the list progresses the questioner generally starts to have the look of someone wishing they’d never asked.

That’s not my fault is it? You asked, so I’m telling you.

So in no particular order:

Five Easy Pieces
USA 1970 Dir: Bob Rafelson
Made at the vanguard of that brief shining moment in the seventies when Hollywood gatekeepers let their guard down and allowed new talent to make intelligent , provocative cinema.
A rare American film that deals with class, featuring Jack Nicholson at his best, before he became too showy. All involved operating at the top of their game.

2001: A Space Odyssey
UK/USA 1968 Dir: Stanley Kubrick
2001 is an enormous film, taking man from ape to beyond human.  There’s a theory this film had it’s most profound impact on children simply because they weren’t fighting Kubrick’s refusal to make concessions to the audience and actually explain what was going on.  Much has been written but if you’re feeling hardcore, this analysis by the then 15 year old Margaret Stackhouse which Kubrick himself considered among the most intelligent remarks about his film is very much worth reading.

Apocalypse Now
USA 1979 Dir: Francis Ford Coppola
A film whose process of creation was as insane as the war it portrays. Produced on a scale both large and small that would be inconceivable in today’s Hollywood.

Magnolia
USA 1999 Dir: Paul Thomas Anderson
A precocious dazzling piece of showing off from Anderson. A film that fires on all cylinders from the start and becomes an utterly irresistible force. Inferior copies of its multi layered story lines now abound.

Hable con Ella (Talk to Her)
Spanish director Almodovar’s film is more controlled than those that came before. Full of longing and humanity.

The Producers
USA 1968 Dir: Mel Brooks
This just shades Blazing Saddles for sheer delightful absurdity. The opening exchange between Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder remains one of the funniest sequences ever filmed, driven by its own twisted internal logic the characters come to life brilliantly. Still has the power to make you marvel at it’s glorious lack of taste.

Performance
UK  1970 Dir: Donald Cammell Nicholas Roeg
Mind bending, free wheeling and completely bonkers. Somehow its meaning always feels just out of reach and each time you see it more of it’s layers are revealed. Only cinema could come up with something like this.

Annie Hall
USA  1977 Dir: Woody Allen
The perfect balance between funny Woody and intellectual Woody. It’s shifting narrative line is a joy and the comedy is still painfully true.

All About Eve
USA 1950 Dir: Joseph L Mankiewicz
We can only dream of seeing something this sharp and acidic today. A perfect script performed by a perfect cast.

All That Jazz
USA 1979 Dir: Bob Fosse
Probably narcissistic, but a thrilling  insight into Fosse’s mind. Plays like a self fulfilling prophecy.

Brazil
UK  1985 Dir: Terry Gilliam
For years it held the record for the lowest take in a week at Uckfield. Shame on you all. Gilliam’s imagination given free reign is a wonder to behold.

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
UK 1943 Dir: Michael Powell Emeric Pressburger
Towering film from a golden age of British cinema. Roger Livesey is brilliant as the eponymous Colonel, but Anton Walbrook steals the film from under him as the German whose world is turned upside down. A film about the whole of life.

The Sheltering Sky
UK/Italy 1990
Not everyone’s cup of tea I know, but it’s my list after all. Never tire of watching the marvelous Debra Winger and Vittorio Storaro’s breathtaking images. Characters adrift in an alien landscape.

Trois Couleurs: Bleu (Three Colours: Blue)
France 1993 Dir: Krzysztof Kieslowski
Heartbreaking and honest film about grief. Full of Kieslowski’s trademark moments that you may not notice the first time.

The Ice Storm
US 1997 Dir: Ang Lee
Beautifully paced and ultimately very moving tale of desperate suburban lives. Sigourney Weaver stands out and Mychael Danna’s haunting score stays with you long after it finishes.

Harold and Maude
US 1971 Dir: Hal Ashby
Pretty much any Hal Ashby is fine by me, but I come back to this one most often. A film about life and death and great songs by Cat Stevens.

To be honest, I hated writing this list because I left so many out. Proving what a daft idea the notion of a favourite film is.

Mind you the list of bad films would be even longer.

What were we showing in October 1938 and did people tear themselves away from the wireless to come? We'll never know.

On the face of it it’s very simple, I tell you what films we’re showing and you buy tickets. Result, happiness. For films everyone wants to see it really is as simple as that.

We fret and worry about how best to market a film locally but the truth is, if it’s the right film people will come. There is very little I can do to significantly alter a movies box office fate.

While we were playing the appalling rom com Something Borrowed I could have spent hundreds of pounds on full colour spreads in the local paper or danced down the high street dressed as an elephant handing out leaflets,  it wouldn’t have made a sodding bit of difference. No one wanted to see it, full stop.

Conversely a single lineage ad in the local free sheet stating the new James Bond starts Friday would be more than enough. We’d still be packed.

I learnt many years ago you literally can’t give tickets away for a stinker. Trust me, I’ve tried. I also learnt some kind of weird jungle drums effect takes hold as soon as Judi Dench dons Victoria’s widow’s weeds. How do they know? How do they sniff them out?

Before half of Soho drowns itself in its own skinny latte, I’m not suggesting that a good marketing campaign can’t do wonders for the bottom line and there have been some masterful examples of making a little go a long way over the years. Obviously the live stuff requires local marketing, but for mainstream films were pretty impotent.

We rely almost entirely on the national campaign to generate the most crucial part of movie marketing, word of mouth.

The strongest local marketing tool we have these days is the website. For such a small place we do get a very large number of hits and online booking now accounts for over 50% of our ticket sales.

Which is where I run into trouble.

Because I do all of the online elements of The Picture House myself and because I can passionately hate a film as much as I love it, it’s really difficult sometimes not to let that come across.

For films I love it can obviously be a bonus. I like to think my opinion counts for something, although in truth it seems to make little difference. I virtually wet myself over Let The Right One In and almost said as much on the website.

No bugger turned up to watch it though.

In the end I want you to come and buy a ticket whatever I think of the film and I’m not the final arbiter on whether you may or may not enjoy it. If you liked Eat Pray Love, that’s your problem and you should probably seek help.

The worst ones are those you know are crap and you know no one is going to come and see. I can put up with tosh if it’s taking money, but trying to galvanise myself to set up web pages, write synopses, programme the computer, do the press, for a 24 carat turd like Extraordinary Measures is soul-destroying.

I really had my head up my backside when I booked that one.

My intention is not to mislead you, but I’m hardly going to put “avoid this like the plague” on the website am I? Perhaps I worry too much, the world is full of people selling you rubbish, to a large degree it’s up to you to weed it out.

People often say to me how good the films we always show are. Which makes me feel really guilty, because it’s not true. They just came for the good ones.

In my experience there are three important things we need to do. Firstly when people do decide there’s a film out there they want to see make the programme information readily available , on the web, in the press or front of house.

Make buying tickets as easy as humanly possible and most importantly make your cinema as good as you possibly can so that when making a decision where to see a film the punters choose you.

Then all I have to do is book the right film. Easy.

Lewes loses its cinema. Oh well... from Sussex Express.

The opening line of the L.P Hartley’s novel The Go Between has become as familiar as any motivational poster, “The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there.”

Appropriately one of the movies that kept turning up when I was a kid was Losey’s film of The Go Between. This was in the days when cinemas could bring back popular films endlessly.

We had a sort of rota that changed little over the fifteen years between 1964 and 1979. Titles would get added or fall away as they became rather too long in the tooth.

At various times the list included, Tom Jones, The Italian Job, Blazing Saddles, Freebie and the Bean, The Sound of Music, any James Bond, any Clint Eastwood, Ring of Bright Water, Born Free and quite a few others.

This was a time before video and when movies on television were old or not very good. It’s difficult to imagine now, but the whole country stopped for the first UK television screening of Jaws in 1981. I remember it very well, nobody turned up at all that evening and we all went home early.

Rather than see something new, millions of people stayed home to watch a six-year-old film, with commercial breaks and half the picture missing. Jaws is in ‘Scope, and in those bygone 4:3 TV days you only saw half the frame of a film shot in that format.

There was a fabulous moment of schadenfreude when our local station TVS lost sound for a full fifteen minutes at the start. That’ll learn ’em.

This all sounds rather wonderful and a world in which we have the films all to ourselves would obviously please cinema owners, but there were bigger problems in those days for independent cinemas and even for some circuit cinemas outside really major towns.

This was the heyday of the tyrannical sales manager, every distributor had one,  and they had a bunch of rules and “gentleman’s” agreements in place that kept a tight reign on who could show what film and when.

Foremost in this system of control was barring, a quite arcane set of rules that determined where a cinema sat in the pecking order.

It worked like a hierarchy, and Uckfield was quite a few branches down the tree. If your cinema was barred by another it meant you couldn’t play a film until the “barrer” had finished with it.

Around here, Brighton and Tunbridge Wells were the kingpins. Which put Uckfield in a kind of barring sandwich.

Brighton barred Lewes, which had an Odeon at the time. Lewes in turn barred Uckfield. It didn’t end there, Tunbridge Wells barred The Regent in Crowborough which barred Uckfield.

So that meant Uckfield couldn’t date a film until all of the above towns had finished with it. Oddly, Uckfield barred Edenbridge.

The big towns like Brighton also had to wait until the West End of London had finished their exclusive run. Sometimes that would be a few months.

There were also more cinemas in those towns, where there was a micro pecking order. Second and third run halls also had to play. The upshot of this was films that played in Uckfield were already rather knackered.

It was not unusual for it to take a year for film to arrive in Uckfield. Can you imagine? We’d just be getting around to The Social Network about now.

Now the world was a different place then, people didn’t travel between towns in quite the cavalier fashion they do today and there was an element of captive audience about the local population. But that population was quite small.

It’s amazing we’re still here.

To add to the confusion there were also something called a concurrency.

Eastbourne’s status was concurrent with Brighton, which meant if Brighton decided to wait for a film, Eastbourne had to as well because they couldn’t play before.

All over the country this network of restricted practice spread out from London like a nasty weed. My dad was an expert on barring for some reason. His geographical knowledge of Britain was defined by it. Name any town and he could tell you which other towns barred the local cinema.  It kept him amused.

Incredibly a report published by the UK board of trade in August 1950 entitled Distribution and exhibition of cinematograph films decided  “… that more competition is needed, but that free competition is unrealistic. Monopoly situations should be investigated but exhibition monopolies should not necessarily be broken up. Barring is an acceptable practice, supervised by a joint trade committee.”

The practice of barring continued in one form or another until as late as 1983 when the Monopolies and Mergers commission finally grabbed the industry by the scruff of the neck and concluded that “overall there was a ‘complex monopoly’ created by the combined activities of these distributors and exhibitors, and in particular the ‘barring’ arrangements, whereby certain cinemas gain exclusive territorial rights to screening films. This latter practice caused delays in other exhibitors gaining access to films and the MMC recommended that the practice should cease.”

Hurrah!

In a strange twist of fate, one of the reasons we are still here, aside from a pig-headed tenacity, is precisely because those rules were strictly enforced.

If you’ve been paying attention you will have noticed we were not officially barred by Brighton or Tunbridge Wells. These were indirect bars, via Crowborough and Lewes.

When both Crowborough and Lewes lost their cinemas in the early seventies, voila, no bar on Uckfield.

Suddenly we were able to show films much closer to their London release dates and the opposition was much further away. Business shot up and here we are today, still trying to make sense of it all.

It’s an ill wind.

Our rather lovely NEC2000C in Box Three.

I’m a big fan of the good doctor and a regular listener to Wittertainment. We’re of a similar age and have similar formative cinema experiences. Sometimes we even sound alike, we both say “I say it here, it comes out there” a lot. Some of you may even know where that comes from.

As an independent cinema owner his current multiplex bashing crusade, with particular reference to the death of the cinema projectionist,  is obviously music to my ears.

Broadly I agree with everything he says, obviously I’m more than a tad biased, but I’ve rarely had a good experience at a multiplex in 20 years, however, I believe he’s wrong to blame the advent of digital projection.

The multiplex projectionist was an endangered species long before digital arrived.

Here is Dr Kermode’s recent online article from The Radio Times. And here is his piece to camera for Kermode Uncut on the BBC website.

I think it’s wrong to blame digital, multiplexes have simply swapped 35mm cock ups for digital cock ups. To suggest everything was fine with multiplex 35mm projection is erroneous.

Because multiplexes have always skimped on having properly trained technical staff, 35mm presentations often had problems, they were just different problems.

Out of focus was the most common in my experience, followed by an incorrectly framed picture and more often than not, simply not loud enough. Scratched prints would also come up from time to time.

If I went to a multiplex before digital my wife would sit patiently as I banged my head on the seat in front wailing: “Does no one look out the bloody porthole? That’s what it’s there for.”  or “When the feature goes on, check the bloody focus! It’s really as simple as turning a knob on the front of the projector!”

Digital has pretty much eliminated all the aforementioned problems, bar the volume level. You can’t get it out of focus, you can’t rack it incorrectly and you certainly can’t scratch it.

I was always taught to go into the theatre and check sound and picture for myself because you can’t always tell from the box. Something I do to this day. I’ve never seen it done in a ‘plex. Digital and automation makes that process easier so there is no excuse not to do it.

What you have is a set of other potential pitfalls. Digital file and server glitches or automation howlers ensuring the film is projected with the lights up on the wrong size screen.

The mistake is not having anyone technical on the building to sort any problems out, or more importantly noticing them in the first place. In that regard the good doctor is correct.

Now, let he who is without and all that, I’m not suggesting we haven’t had the odd glitch or two since going digital but because we have projectionists they are usually sorted pretty pronto. If it means anything it also really spoils our day.

We’re still learning of course, and in defence of the beleaguered multiplex popcorn monkey trying manfully to get the show back on it’s a steep learning curve.

I have over 30 years experience in a projection box, on 35mm I can keep a show going with duct tape and an elastic band, if the film breaks I can splice it back together. I once manually fed the whole of Schindler’s List through the projector to keep the show on-screen.  That movie is 3 hours long.

With digital if it really goes wrong the only thing I can do is turn it off and turn it on again. You know, like your crappy windows computer at home. Only my digital projectors were £50,000 each. Which pretty much puts me on a par with the popcorn monkey.

It’s a bit more complex than that of course. My tech department and I have leant a lot in the last year but digital can make you feel pretty impotent at times because there is so much to learn and so many more things that can go wrong. Film was mechanical so you can see with your own eyes what’s going on. A bunch of circuit boards is not so easy to interrogate.

So having said all of that, sacking your projectionists seems like stupidity. Worse, it reveals contempt for your audience. The reason we are here is to show you the film in the best way possible and we have a duty to make that priority number one.

This is where I urge the good doctor to continue his crusade, because I’m petrified this bottom line attitude is going to take us all down. I’m here to make a living like everybody and much of what I do is driven by the need to make a profit, but like most independents that are left I really do care passionately about what we do. We really are “fanatical about film”, it’s not just a corporate slogan.

People’s perception of cinemas overall is pretty crummy, which upsets me deeply. But I’m only one man, doing the best I can on a limited budget.

I was struck by what Mark Cousins said in the introduction to his brilliant Story of Film series on More 4 (which you really should be watching), it’s not box office that drives cinema, it’s  passion and innovation.

In the exhibition business if we don’t regain some of that passion were finished. There are too many other ways to see films, too many other things to do for cinemas to be purely popcorn dispensing stations. And actually if you make the presentation perfect more people will come and you will sell more popcorn.

Apologies if this all sounds a bit pompus. I know we’re not perfect. But, you know…

Not sure what you do about idiots on mobile phones though. Anyone?