Let Them Sit a While

Everyone's busy. I know my weekends are full. Why is it then that every movie studios feel that if people didn't come and see their movie the first or second weekend it plays that we're NEVER going to go see it? Why do they think we're going to drop EVERYTHING we're doing to go see the freakin' Da Vinci Code? I got my own mysteries to figure out this weekend, which can be solved easily with this code: do the dishes or my wife will yell at me. Quit assuming we go to the movies EVERY WEEKEND. We don't. In fact this weekend I'll be seeing the movie "Cutting the Grass or My Landlord Will Add $25 to My Rent."

Ron Howard's last film, Cinderella Man was an example of this. They released it in the summer amidst War of the Worlds (boo), Batman Begins (boo²), and Star Wars (boo x 10³). Did Cinderella Man look good? Yeah. We're people interested in seeing it? Yep. We're they so interested in seeing it that they were willing to go see it on the exact date you wanted them to? No. We were all at Myrtle Beach that weekend. We wanted to see it when we got back, but it was gone faster than the SV lunchroom snickerdoodles.

If you don't let the movie sit a while then if I go see it and I tell others about it, there's a good chance it won't be there when they follow up on my advice. Was there no lesson learned from My Big Fat Greek Wedding? Word of mouth takes time. Not every film is going to have an opening weekend record breaking spectacle like Star Wars or the first Spider-Man.

People spend years working on a film and you're only going to give it a week or two to work? Let the films sit a while. I may have been busy the weekend it came out.