I spent the last week in Las Vegas, attending CinemaCon. This yearly convention is basically like any other industry conference - folks around the world converge on a hotel to network, enjoy parties featuring an open bar, and fill their suitcases with swag picked up from the trade show. The major difference, though, is that the attendees of this particular industry conference are all part of the world of film exhibition and that means excess reigns king.
The hotel is Caesar’s Palace, the open bars are sponsored by Sony Pictures, and the trade show features insanely expensive laser projection equipment with resolutions higher than the human eye can possibly detect.
This was my sixth time attending CinemaCon and these weekly trips are some of the most surreal experiences of my year. Every year, I assume this will be the last I’m allowed to go - that somebody will wise up and realize it’s not really that important for me to spend a week in Las Vegas at Hollywood’s version of a dog and pony show. Every year, though, when I’m asked if I’d like to attend CinemaCon again, I don’t hesitate to say “Yes!”
My favorite thing about CinemaCon are the studio presentations. Each of the major distributors in Hollywood put on a two-hour show in Caesar’s Colleseium, showcasing exclusive trailers and clips from their upcoming slate of films. I love watching the footage, of course, but I also love the absurdity of the excess on display. Major stars like Dwayne Johnson, Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, and Leonardo DiCaprio are flown in on private jets to Vegas to go on stage for five minutes and do a hard sell for why movie theaters should support their films. As if we weren’t already going to play their films…
Watching my favorite filmmakers and actors toss around terms like “product,” “diverse slate,” and “vertical marketing integration” is weird AF. Any pretense of thinking of these movies as individual pieces of art is slowly chipped away when speaker after speaker waxes poetic about market shares and year-over-year profit growth. CinemaCon is a reminder that it is always first and foremost show business.
All that said … it works. I do get excited. I fall back in love with the movies. When I was a kid, I used to love going to the theater and seeing the latest posters and trailers on display. As an adult, I am well aware of almost every movie currently in production - including, in some cases, detailed plot breakdowns. It’s a part of the job. CinemaCon brings me back to that feeling of being a kid and being shown something new and exciting headed down the road. I get caught up in the joy of discovery, of the promise that I might just be watching my next favorite movie in a few months’ time.
I have worked in the world of theatrical exhibition for over eleven years. During that time, I have fallen in and out of love with movies. I have written in the past about how I used to be addicted to movies - seeing them as a drug user would see his next fix. I was in love with the idea of watching movies more than I was in love with actually watching movies. I have also experienced times when I could barely work up the enthusiasm to see a single movie if I didn’t need to for work. Working at a movie theater can separate you from the promised unreality that comes with the act of watching movies. Watching a great movie should mean you forget you’re even watching a movie in the first place. To me, forgetting that there is a separation between you and what’s on-screen - even for a moment - is the sign of a cinematic masterpiece.
It’s hard to lose yourself in a film when you always have one ear out for what might go wrong - bad A/C, broken projectors, long ticket times on concessions, movie talkers, and cell phone users. I have frequently found myself paying less attention to the movie I’m watching than whether or not the folks I’m watching the movie with are having a good time. And don’t even get me started about watching movies at home. I’m glad some folks can do it but when I watch a movie at home I am constantly at war with a temptation to check Twitter, pause the movie to get a snack, or readjust my spot on the couch. At home, I am constantly breaking the illusion I look for in filmwatching.
CinemaCon helps remind me of that magic. I remember the moments where - on the most special of films - I find myself caught up in a story for two hours and forgetting that I’m watching that same story with hundreds of other people until - all of a sudden - I’m jostled back into reality by a communal gasp or laugh or cry.
Part of me believes I’ll work in movie exhibition for the rest of my life, another part of me realizes there’s a big chance I won’t. I don’t know what the world of movie exhibition will look like in a year, five years, or a decade. We could be in the final days of movie theaters as we know them or we could be in the earliest days of movie theaters as we will know them. In reality, it’s probably a bit of column A and column B. I do hope, though, that I never completely fall out of love with movie theaters. I hope that I get the chance more and more often to watch a movie and experience that joy of discovery. I hope that I continue to allow myself to be surprised and overwhelmed by what I’m seeing on screen. I hope I will forever lose myself in movies.
Movies rock. Theaters rock.