State of The Moxie #2 - October 2005
Written by Dan
I've been working so hard on the new Moxie website that I completely lost track of time. I bet you guys were getting worried, weren't you! No? Really? Not even a little? Whatever. Can I make it up to you by divulging more of our attendance stats? Yeah. That's what I thought. September is water under the bridge, so let's jump straight into October, shall we:
Week 3 - October 5 - 11
Movies: BROKEN FLOWERS, CINEMERGE FILM FESTIVAL, and SAVING FACE
We: 72 (75 goal) = -3
Th: 51 (75 goal) = -24
Fr: 85 (75 goal) = +10
Sa: 160 (100 goal) = +60
Su: 57 (100 goal) = -43
Mo: 25 (75 goal) = -50
Tu: 78 (75 goal) = +3
Week: 528 (575 goal)
This was BROKEN FLOWERS' first week at The Moxie. I remember being SO excited to have our first somewhat big movie with a big name actor. In fact, we held BROKEN FLOWERS in such high regards that we booked it for not one, but TWO solo weeks... a risky move for a 14 day old business. In retrospect, I now realize that our core audience wasn't nearly as developed as it should have been to support one movie on one screen for two whole weeks. The vast majority of our potential audience didn't even know we were open yet, and those that did were having a hard time finding us thanks to our incognito "no sign for us" appearance. Another factor working against us was BROKEN FLOWERS' ending. It wasn't one of those movies that you walk away from and say, "I have to get all my friends to come see this." It left a lot of people feeling cold and disjointed. SAVING FACE was our first experiment with a short run screening. We had one screening on Tuesday, October 11th, and another on Wednesday, October 12th. Both screenings went over BIG and brought in a lot of new faces to the theater... a bunch of which would wind up becoming regulars. Hot nude Asian lesbians seemed to be a winning combination.
Week 4 - October 12 - 18
Movies: BROKEN FLOWERS and SAVING FACE
We: 82 (75 goal) = +7
Th: 41 (75 goal) = -34
Fr: 81 (100 goal) = -19
Sa: 88 (125 goal) = -37
Su: 60 (100 goal) = -40
Mo: 28 (75 goal) = -47
Tu: 65 (75 goal) = -10
Week: 445 (625 goal)
During the second week of BROKEN FLOWERS, our booking error became more and more obvious. On Saturday, October 15th, we had our first "dark show," which means no one - not a single soul - showed up to see the movie. However, you have to take into consideration that this particular "dark show" was an 11:45 pm showing of BROKEN FLOWERS. Who in their right minds would want to see a movie like BROKEN FLOWERS at 11:45 pm on a Saturday? No one, obviously. And to think, these were the good ol' days when we thought getting 88 people on a Saturday was as low as we could possibly sink... ha ha ha! That kills me! Especially when you consider that I'm writing this post during the slowest Saturday of ALL TIME! If we ever do worse than we've done today... I don't know what. But I'm getting off track here - I'll get to December's dismal numbers in due time. As for this particular week, we walked away with two important lessons: 1) we wouldn't do another two week solo run unless the movie was frickin' HUGE and we were at LEAST three months old (*cough* BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN *cough*), and 2) no more late night weekend movies unless we had a special cult film, or the regular movie would be able to draw in at least a dozen college students.
Week 5 - October 19 - 25
Movies: GRIZZLY MAN and HAROLD AND MAUDE
We: 38 (75 goal) = -37
Th: 54 (75 goal) = -21
Fr: 101 (100 goal) = +1
Sa: 124 (125 goal) = -1
Su: 36 (100 goal) = -64
Mo: 20 (75 goal) = -55
Tu: 36 (75 goal) = -39
Week: 409 (625 goal)
GRIZZLY MAN, oh GRIZZLY MAN. What the crap, dude?! One of the most critically lauded documentaries of 2005, and suddenly NO ONE wants to go to the movies anymore. Nicole and I were at odds as to why we did so poorly with GRIZZLY MAN. She thinks it was because a lot of people thought the movie actually showed Timothy Treadwell getting eaten by bears, while I thought it was because we were having a bout of exceptionally beautiful weather (sunny and 70 for 20 days straight in late October), and the playoffs were in high gear, and the Cardinals were in the NLCS, and don't forget about Game 5! All of those factors added up to a shitty, shitty week. Thank grum for HAROLD AND MAUDE and its two near sell-out crowds. Without HAORLD ET MAUDE, we would've been sitting on the worst week EVER... until December. Man, I'm really building December up to look bad, aren't I? Good. Because it is.
Week 6 - October 26 - November 1
Movies: GRIZZLY MAN, THE ARISTOCRATS, and NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD
We: 72 (75 goal) = -3
Th: 75 (75 goal) = 0
Fr: 205 (100 goal) = +105
Sa: 141 (125 goal) = +16
Su: 108 (100 goal) = +8
Mo: 50 (75 goal) = -25
Tu: 42 (75 goal) = -33
Week: 693 (625 goal)
Two words: THE ARISTOCRATS! Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU! This movie single-handedly pulled us out of the gutter and put us on the map. We saw so many new faces... it was remarkable. The movie was viral. One person saw it, then they'd bring a friend and see it again, then that friend would bring another friend, and so on and so forth. It was a big surprise, to tell you the truth. We knew THE ARISTOCRATS would do good, but we had no idea how sick and depraved our audience truely was! As expected, GRIZZLY MAN continued to suck the hind teat, but NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD pulled out two huge shows and helped push us over the top for our first "above goal" week in Moxie history. Lessons learned this week: vulgar comedy packs the house. Noted. (hint: we've got another one coming in January)
And with that, I'm off! Stay tuned for the mighty month of November, and then prepare yourself for the unbelievably slow weeks of December. Seriously. December has been a real suck-egg mule.