The Reeler

Bubble represented a recurring subject in the panel discussion, often stifling the more relevant issue of how studios plan to address Web downloads as an avenue of distribution. The troublesome subject of piracy barely came up at all, despite Navin's joke that he was grateful to not have to wear a flak jacket in Garfield's presence. "Distribution of film online is coming sooner than you think," he said. "It's not far off. Feature-length films will be distributed online as well. Certainly, from a user experience, we think the independent community is going to lead the way I terms of creating a lot of (opportunities) for consumers online, and the majors aren't far behind. I think they're seeing what happened to the music industry and the influence of Napster and other mechanisms, and they don’t want to suffer that same thing."

Soderbergh also called attention to immense up-front fees for A-list talent, going so far as to propose a salary cap for productions and their actors. The evening's most jagged debate occurred when the filmmaker condemned a deteriorating theatrical experience polluted by commercials, which he said studios make necessary based on splits that send up to 95 percent of ticket revenues back to distributors.

"Our attitude is, look, " Soderbergh said. "If the whole Bubble release at least got some discussion going on the part of the theater owners about how to make the theater experience more special and more unique, then that alone is worth doing it for. Because I don't know about you, but I'll go to a movie here in Manhattan... more often than not, not a great experience. Just not a great experience."

"Just to be clear--" Garfield said.

"You've had a good experience?" Soderbergh interrupted, tongue only somewhat in cheek.

"I'm not going to try to be defensive," Garfield said. "The studio heads aren't all walking around in the dark bumping into each other saying what are we going to do now. I think people are actually, seriously sitting down and studying the situation and trying to figure out solutions. And one of the things that's clear to us is that we're not going to reach solutions by throwing stones at each other. I think both Steve and Todd have overstated the influence of the studios over the exhibitors."

"Oh, really?" Soderbergh said. "No, honestly."

"Because the antitrust laws prevent us from going into the exhibiton business," Garfield said, provoking a mild groan from the Tribeca crowd. "That's been the case since the 1940s."

"What's the percentage of profits that they provide?" Soderbergh asked. "It's gotta be 90-something."

Dean smiled. "Right."

"So they're generating the movies that generate the kind of profits that the exhibitors need," Soderbergh said.

"Yeah, but the studios don't limit the exhibitors from getting into all sort of ancillary revenues," Garfield said. "There is no limit placed on theaters selling all sorts of stuff beyond popcorn and juice."

Wagner leapt in. "Not to pick on you, but--"

"Let me finish, Todd--"

"The exhibitors, if they have that kind of influence, wouldn't they not have done things like the 90-10 split and the 95-5 splits?" Wagner asked.

"Frankly, if I wasn't in the room..." Garfield replied. "One of the things we've learned from the Internet and from panels is that you shouldn't take everything people say at face value. I wasn't in the room. That could very well be fact-based fiction. I don't know. What I do know is that we are working aggressively to deepen our relationship with the exhibitors to get to the bottom of exactly what's going on with the cultural shifts in our country. What do people want to experience when they go to a movie? What's the value they place on the theatrical experience? How are the new media platforms changing how people view the movie and the moviegoing experience? Dan Glickman at ShoWest talked about the research that we're doing, and in conducting that research, and before we started our research, we reached out to NATO (the National Association of Theater Owners, the exhibitors' trade organization) about ways that we could work together and develop a research methodology that would get us some answers. ...

"I don't think people are in denial about the fact that producing movies is getting more and more expensive," Garfield continued. "In fact, over the last three years, those costs have been declining, and the studios are working aggressively to try to bring them into control."

In the end, Wagner agreed that the distribution game is a two-way street. But he added his perception that exhibitors "feel like they have been stepped on for a long time" and that an industry consensus needed to be reached sooner than later. Mostly, he said, 2929's experiments shifted cinema's emphasis back to the cinemagoer.

"There was never a discussion about how to focus on the customer," he said. "Instead it all came down to closing windows. That's really unfortunate, I think, because it's an opportunity to rethink about the customer, and regardless of where windows end up, right? They've gone from six months to four months over the last ten years--your crystal ball is as good as mine about where it ends up. Its an opportunity to me in the fact that we're in a different place now, and now they can rethink how they want to do the industry."