Breaking Even
The movies: one of the American family past times. Home to incredible stories, action-packed thrill rides, Oscar nominees and popcorn with extra butter, the Athena Cinema sits on Court Street with an aesthetic that matches the brick road and reaches back almost to the turn of the twentieth century. Its bright signs project the names of independent and international films, works that lend culture and experience to four rooms in a building in Athens, Ohio. But where there is weak demand for such values, the university makes room for other options: if students don’t want to see movies, maybe we could use a daycare or another parking lot.
Whether they were serious considerations or not, these were two alternatives proposed by a Business School committee to the struggling operation that is the Athena Cinema. Owned by the College of Fine Arts and managed by Ruth Bradley and Chris Iacofano, the self-proclaimed “jewel of uptown Athens” has held an uncertain position on Court Street for nearly 10 years. After closing in 2001 to reopen the next year under third-party management, ownership was transferred to the College of Fine Arts in 2008. Now the university-owned cinema works to satisfy varied student tastes and to secure a broader audience.
In its opening weekend, “Avatar” made a total of $242 million worldwide. “A Single Man,” which played at the Athena, grossed $216,000. So how does a theater unable and unwilling to host blockbusters compete? It doesn’t.
“We’re in this to break even,” says Bradley. This mission to “break even” was echoed by both Chris and Steve Ross, Director of the School of Film. The Athena has no intent to compete directly with commercial theaters like The Athena Grand; even if the desire existed, the Athena lacks the ability due to booking rights and industry motives. The theatre functions more as a community resource instead.
“That’s fine for us because we’re part of the university, and we’re not here to make money,” Bradley says, explaining that “[The Athena is] here to offer a wide diversity of experiences for students.”
One such experience is the film festival, which the cinema hosts with its own funding. Bradley is one of the committee members that view each Athens Film Festival submission. This year, the committee viewed more than 1,100 submissions. The weeklong event is a major one for the cinema, drawing crowds from around the country and entries from around the globe. Guest filmmakers have included Steve Buscemi and Ned Beatty, but Chris says they try to bring as many foreign and local filmmakers as possible.
“I imagine there’s at least 50 or 60 countries [that submit entries],” says Chris. He has been coming to the Athena for 13 years and has managed it since ownership was transferred to the university. He describes the festival as a well-respected tradition, but questions whether such an event lands permanent customers within the student body.
“What we like to say is, if we get you in the lobby, we gotcha,” says Bradley. “We gotcha, because we’re friendly and we’re happy and we make great popcorn, and we’re showing great movies.” If this is true, events like the film festival or Cinematheque may be just the ticket to securing an audience.
Cinematheque, an Arts for Ohio project, offers film and discussion events year-round. The idea is to enforce the kinds of culture and exposure that the cinema represents. Plus, it’s free. This offers professors and students the opportunity to expand on what is taught in class with authentic cultural glimpses and good films. But there are still many students wary of entering the lobby in the first place. The question no one can be completely sure of is whether it is a problem of taste (Are enough students interested in independent films?) or habit (Should I buy two beers, or a ticket to the Athena?). Of course, non-attendees can always fall back on the starving college student scenario. Some people simply cannot afford the movies. This can be hard to believe, especially considering the Athena’s “Four Dollar Tuesdays,” but after weighing the risks of an oddball art film against the benefits of a typical night at the bars, many students withhold their investment.
For those students who do have the money and the taste for the Athena’s films, the theater is a rare privilege to view off-the-mainstream items they would rarely see otherwise. Dan Duesler, a sophomore English Education major, says,“I like that it’s more of an artsy theater. You get more of the mainstream stuff at [the Athena Grand] that’s not too far away anyway.”
But the Athena is faced with more than simply broke and disinterested college students. Bradley, quoting the Ohio Arts Council, says there are three barriers to audience participation and attendance: physical, experiential and perceptual. Most students live within walking distance of the Athena, so there is no real physical barrier. And if Bradley is right about the popcorn, most students will not cite a bad experience as a reason to skip the theater. Athena management thus deals mostly with a range of perceptual barriers. Bradley’s impression of a student’s train of thought is likely accurate: “‘Oh, it’s too arty and I won’t understand it.’ Or, ‘You gotta kinda be really hip and wear black all the time and, you know, be a beatnik to get it.’” In these cases, the challenge lies in encouraging students to try a different brand of movie-going experience — one concerned less with cheap thrills and more with culture, experience and education.
It is the theater’s task, then, to provide accessibility to students of this mindset. Bradley noted that the cinema’s biggest business came with “gray area” titles—movies from certain distributors that sometimes go to multiplexes and sometimes land in art houses.
“What was the biggest movie in the last few years at the Athena? I said, bring back ‘Juno,’” says Ross. Movies like “Crazy Heart,” “Precious,” “Milk” and “The Wrestler” are in-betweens, part blockbuster and part independent film. On the other hand, these movies are often advertised more than a typical indie film and are therefore more easily identified by students. If this is the case, the Athena is automatically at a disadvantage, because such movies are rare.
“The Grand doesn’t really have to advertise much because the studios do all the advertising for them,” says Chris. Here, the challenge is to interest the audience and to prove to students that it does not take a televised trailer to make a movie good. Luckily, students are starting to catch on. Chris says that they are on track to match the three-year plan, which has a general projected timeline of suffering a deficit, breaking even, and then making up the deficit.
“If things just tanked here in the next year and a half and we left [the school] with a huge bill, I don’t know ultimately where that would fall to, but I’m pretty confident that’s not going to be the case here,” says Chris.
Ultimately, the theater works towards the goal of attracting students not by the titles of its films, but by its own credit. “Very slowly we’re beginning to see students come in on a more regular basis, because they’ve learned to trust us,” says Bradley. “They’ve learned to trust, like, ‘These are pretty cool films, and it’s worth my time and investment to come see.’”
Direct link: http://backdropmag.com/a-town/breaking-even/