Boxoffice-September.1989

i9m
business magazine of the motion picture industry^/
jB*;iwP^-.
Weathering "Black Rain"
Producers Stanley R. Jaffe and
Sherry Lansing on Culture Clashes,
Audience Testing, and Boom Times
New Line Stands Tail
An Eclectic Slate of Films
Is This Veteran Independent's
Formula for Success
Computers in Exhibition:
An Exhaustive Survey of
The State of the Art

CHRISTIE XENOUTE BULBS

EDITOR AND ASSOCIATE
PUBLISHER
Harley W, Lond
MANAGING EDITOR
Tom Matthews
ASSOCIATE EDITOR
David Kipen
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS
John Allen
Bruce Austin
David H. Chadderdon
Tony Francis
Jim Kozak
Karen Kreps
Lesa Saw^ahata
Kristi Turnquist
Mori Wax
PRODUCTION ASSISTANT
Mary Bermudez
CORRESPONDENTS
(Atlanta) Stewart Hamell, (Baltimore) Kate Savage, (Boston) Guy
Livingston, (Charlotte) Charles Leonard, (Chicago) Frances Clow,
(Cincinnati) Tony Rutherford, (Cleveland) Elaine Fned, (Dallas)
MableGuinan, (Florida) LoisBaumoel, (Honolulu) Tats Yoshiyama,
(Indianapolis) GeneGladson, (Milwaukee) Wally Meyer, (Minneapolis/St
Paul) Jack Kelvie, (Ptiiladelphia) Maurie Orodenker, (Raleigh)
Raymond Lower/, (San Antonio) William R Bums, (San Francisco)
Nancy Foley, (Toledo) Anna Kline, (Washington D C ) Elias Savada
CANADA- (Calgary) Maxine McBean, (Edmonton) Linda Kupecek,
(Montreal) Jim C Diorio,
(Toronto) Doug Payne
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OFFICES
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The business magazine of the motion picture industry
SEPTEMBER, 1989 VOL. 125, NO. 9
The bnghtesi flashes m the world of thoui;ht are incomplete
nnttl they have been proved to have their counterparts m the world of fact.
^John Tyndall ("Scientific Materialism")
FEATURES
10 Cover Story: Weathering Black Rain
Cultures clashed as an American film crev*/ tried to make a
Hollywood movie in Japan.
12 Industry Profile: Playing the Numbers
Entertainment Data collects the figures vi^hich make the industry
run.
14 Distributor Profile: New Line's Hard-Line Formula
The veteran indie is still standing tall as its competition withers
and dies.
MODERN THEATRE
18 Computers in Exhibition
A roundup of the latest hardware and software for the exhibition
industry.
28 National Cinema Networlc's Cinema Billboards
29 Short Takes
New technologies help the sensory impaired enjoy movie-going;
Interactive phone lines merchandise films; Computer database
mailing list; Nightsounds audio tape for commuters.
31 Showmandiser
REVIEWS — Following page 37
Casualties of War; Batman; Lethal Weapon 2; sex, lies and videotape;
Licence to Kill; Great Balls of Fire; The Karate Kid III; A Taxing
Woman's Return; The Four Adventures of Reinette and Mirabella; A
Flame in tvly Heart.
DEPARTMENTS
Opening Credits 4
Hollywood Report 6
Trailers 8
National News 32
Eastern News 33
Midwest News 34
Southern News 34
Western News 35
Canadian News 36
International News
Circulation Inquiries:
BOXOFFICE Data Center
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Chicago, IL 60605
(312) 922-9326
^

1 ommcrce
—
OPENING CREDITS
THE
Buying Fever - Part II
CONSEQUENCES OF the recent conglomeration fever
that has stricken the motion picture industry (at both the
distribution and exhibition ends) do not necessarily auger
well for this industry. As we mentioned in last month's
Opi-ning Credits, the loss of such production and distribution
entities as New World, Atlantic, Spectrafilm and Vestron can
only mean less available product for American screens.
Despite what one may feel about the quality of those companies'
products, their disappearance from the scene means that
theatre-owners will now have to rely more and more on the
major studios for theatrical product. In this summer of booming
boxofRcc, this may appear to be an attractive option. But
uh.ii about next year, when fewer films reach the market?
W'hrrc will independent theatre-owners turn when they find
thai they have difficulty competing with their larger siblings
(the top 10 North American theatre circuits own almost onehalf
of the nation's screens, giving them unprecedented buying
clout)? Certainly not to the independent distributors, who
have typically filled empty screens with money-making,
though not blockbuster, films. There simply won't be as much
independent product available: there has already been a drop
in the number of independently distributed films in 1989;
according to trade paper Daily Variety, U.S. -made independent
films "are down 25 percent compared to each of the past
two years."
Equally disturbing is the consolidation of production 'distribution
with exhibition. Although the recent studio screenbuying
binge has abated, the entry of four major studios ( Paramount,
Columbia, Warner Bros, and Universal) into exhibition
now means that almost 20 percent of America's screens are
owned, in part, by those people who make and distribute films.
The studios claim that these circuits are not given any favoritism
when it comes to playing the parent company's product,
and that may be true. But clout is clout, and the studios have
not had a great track record when it comes to dealing with
exhibition. For example, witness the recent demands by some
studios for a portion of ancillary theatre revenues, such as
screen advertising; the demand that discount ticketing be discontinued;
the raising of percentages on sub-run product; the
lack of inic support for low-grossing theatres.
As the major corporations take over more of the motion
picture industry, there will be less room for the independents
(Paramount, Columbia, Warner Bros., Universal and 20th Century
Fox, of course, are all gigantic corporate conglomerates
which also control TV and cable stations, home video labels,
book publishing and record companies).
What is at stake here, more than just the ownership of
pieces of property or product, is the control of the means of
distribution of the information and entertainment that America
and other coimtries have come to relv upon. In a recent
article in The Nation (April 12, 1989) titled "The Lords of the
Clobal Village," Ben H. Bagdikian, a noted press critic and
retired dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at U.C.
Berkeley, took a lengthy look at the consequences of placing
such control in the hands of a few corporations. "A handful of
mammoth private organizations have begun to dominate tinworld's
mass media. Most of them confidently announce lli.it
bv the 1990s they — five to ten corporate giants |includin,t;
Time Warner Inc
,
Bertelsmann AG, News Corporation Ltd,
which includes 20th Century Fox, Hachette SA, Capital Cities/
ABC, Paramount, GE/NBC) — will control most of the worid's
important newspapers, magazines, books, broadcast stations,
movies, recordings and vidcocassettes. Moreover, these planetary
corporations plan to gather under its control every step in
the information proc(^ss, from creation of 'the product' to all
the various means by which modern technology delivers
media messages lo the public. 'The product' is news, information,
ideas, entertainment and popular culture..." This control
is insidious, Bagdikian goes on to say, because these corporations
"exert a homogenizing power over ideas, culture and
that affects populations larger than any in history,"
a power that shapes "the information on which so many
people depend to make decisions about everything from
whom to vote for to what to eat." This 'power,' Bagdikian
states, prefers products that are "commercially safe, generic,
|and| all-purpose."
We are thus facing an era in which fewer hands control
more of what we see, hear and read, a future in which theie
may well be less of a diversity in entertainment and cultural
options for the American (and international) public. Is it possible
to forestall this seemingly inevitable future? Bagdikian's
solution goes right to the heart of the free enterprise system.
According to Bagdikian, the mass communication/entertainment
industries today are being undermined by a lack of
free enterprise. "No small group of organizations is wise
enough or unselfish enough to provide most of the news, information,
scholarship, literature and entertainment for a whole
society, let alone most of the world. That can come only from
a large number of organizations in a field not dominated by a
few, with a variety of newcomers free to enter and compete
whenever and wherever existing media fail to reflect the realities
and aspirations of people's lives." For Bagdikian, one
answer is new legislation aimed at "insuring adiversity of
choice in the media |by setting] limits on how many media
outlets one person or one megacorporation could control."
How does all this relate to independent exhibition? Films
are not merely products to be bought and sold; they represent
a treasure house of cultural information for our society. Yet
with the recent shuttering of distribution and production outlets
and the loss of independent theatre screens, this cultural
heritage is falling into the hands of a very few.
There may be an inevitable juggernaut of conglomeration
rolling over exhibition, but there are still opportunities to forestall
the bleak future. The most powerful opportunity is a
joining of independent theatre owners in a grass roots inovement
to keep independent exhibition alive, to stand together
powerfully, using legislation or economic might, to help prevent
Bagdikian's dismal predictions. In place already, of
course, are the many regional exhibitor organizations around
the country, such as NATO of Califomia; also on hand is the
revitalized National Association of Theatre Owners. A bright
spot for independents is the recent appointment of Tim Warner
as head of NATO of Califomia and chairman of NATO
ShoWest. Warner has been a staunch supporter of independent
exhibition, and we hope that in his new position of power
he will continue to fight for the survival of grass roots exhibition.
Another good omen is the "new" team at NATO: president
William Kartozian and executive director Mary Ann
Grasso, who during their short tenure, have already made the
national organization more responsive and alert toward the
needs of the industry. Boxoffice strdngly supports Warner.
Kartozian, Grasso and others who endeavor to keep independent
exhibition truly independent. What they need now, of
course, is your voice and support, Harley W. Lond
In this Issue
THi.s ISSUE OF Boxoffice features several new additions
whii h will help us better serve the industry. First ami
toicmost is the inclusion of a new department, Entcrtnm
»u:ni Data liu: 's Const to Coast Boxoffice Siinuna)-y. These figures,
compiled for Boxoffice by EDI, track boxoffice grosses
in a new way. In addition to the familiar list of top ten national
grossers, these charts track the top ten limited release films as
well as the top ten releases (by screen average) for six important
national exchange areas: LA., N.Y., Dallas, San Francisco.
Chicago and Washington DC. The first set of charts appears
on page 43; for those unfamiliar with EDI, we'\c iirolilcil tincompany
on page 12. In addition, we've added irK .is( il.iics
(when available) to our Feature Charts, Tiatlns ,iiul Siu,,k /'i,
views departments, and we've expanded our R,thir l>i;^

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Response No. 3

HOLLYWOOD REPORT
Meryl Streep
"Postcards From the
Edge" A stellar cast has been
assembled for this adaptation
of actress Carrie Fisher's
loosely-autobiographical
novel. Meryl Streep, Shirley
MacLaine, Richard Dreyfuss,
Dennis Quaid, Gene Hackman
and most likely John
Cusack will all come together
in this black comedy about a
woman, raised in the film industry',
who copes with a drug
problem and her meddlesome
mother. Mike Nichols
("Working Girl") directs. The
film may come out under the
title "Hollywood and Vine."
A Columbia release.
"Presumed Innocent"
The incredibly popular rourtscreen,
with ll.irii.son Ford
( it\ starring as a atiniiicy implicated
in the murder of his
mistress. Bonnie Bedelia costars
as Ford's wife; Greta
Scacchi ("White Mischief")
plays the murder victim.
Alan Pakula, whose work
ranges from the brilliant
("All the President's Men")
to the benign ("See You In
the Morning"), directs. A
Warner Bros, release.
"Wait Until Spring, Bandini"
Writer-director Dominique
Deruddere ("Love is a
Dog from Hell") makes her
English-language debut with
this drama that stars Joe
Mantegna ("Things
Change"), Omella Muti, Faye
Dunaway and Burt Young.
Based on the novel by John
Fante, it is the story of an
Italian family trying to survive
a bitter winter in a
Rocky Mountain mining
town of the 1920s. Fred Roos
and Tom Luddy are two of
the three producers. An
Orion Classics release.
"The Exorcist: 1990"
William Peter Blatty, who
wrote the novel on which the
original horror classic was
based, now provides the
screenplay and directs this
update on the Satanic saga.
George C. Scott plays a detective
trying to unravel a series
of grisly ritualistic murders
I'hc film also stars Syl-
\ia .Sidney, Brad Dourif and
Ed Flanders. A 20th Century
Fox release.
"Kurosawa's Dreams"
Serious film buffs are anxiously
awaiting this new release
from 79-year-old Akira
Kurosawa, universally
thought to be one of the
world's greatest living directors.
The movie is composed
of nine individual dream sequences,
one of which stars
director Martin Scorsese as
Vincent Van Gogh. The S12
million film is a negative
pickup for Warner Bros.,
which will release the film
early next year.
"Narrow Margin" Recent
Oscar nominees Gene Hackman
and Anne Archer star in
this suspense thriller about
an L.A. attorney (Hackman)
who travels to Canada to drag
home an eye witness to a
mob murder (Archer). The
gangsters give chase, and the
story ultiinately leads to an
exciting train trip across the
Canadian Rockies. James
Sikking, J.T. Walsh and M.
Emmett Walsh co-star, with
Peter Hyams ("The Presidio,"
"Running Scared") writing
and directing. A Columbia
"Gremlins 11" The hit
from the summer of '84
spawns a sequel, with director
Joe Dante, executive producers
Steven Spielberg,
Kathleen Kennedy and Frank
Marshall, and young stars
Phoebe Gates and Zach Galligan
returning. The story this
time focuses on a Donald
Trump-like character who
inadvertently unleashes the
vicious beasts when he
throws his weight around in
New York's Chinatown. John
Glover ("Scrooged," "The
Chocolate War") plays the
tycoon, with Robert Prosky,
Robert Picardo ("China
Beach") and horror veteran
Christopher Lee also starring.
A Warner Bros, release.
"The Boyfriend School"
In a classic example of truth
in titles, this is a comedy
about an institution which
teaches young men and women
how to find romance.
Shelley Long, Steve Guttenberg
and Jami Gertz star under
the direction of British
filmmaker Malcolm Mowbray
("A Private Function,"
"Out Cold"). A Hemdale release.
"Air America" This is one
of those projects that has
been around for years, with
an endless string of stars and
directors attached. Mel Gibson
has finally settled into
the lead role in this black
satire about the CIA's covert
airline operations during the
Vietnam war, with Robert
Downey Jr. also starring.
Richard Rush and John Eskow
provide the script (Rush,
who wrote and directed "The
Stuntman," fought long and
hard to direct the project
himself; Roger Spottiswoode
("Turner and Hooch") instead
gets those honors). A
Columbia release.
"Madhouse" Domestic
paranoia is the order of the
day in this wild comedy
about a suburban couple who
find themselves haunted by
friends who just won't leave.
John Larroquette ("Night
Court") and Kirstie Alley
("Cheers") star, with Tom
Ropelewski and Leslie Dixon
("Loverboy") providing the
script. Ropelewski also directs.
An Orion release.
"The Sheltering Sky" Director
Bernardo Bertolucci,
whose "The Last Emperor"
swept the 1988 Oscars, will
next adapt Paul Bowles' acclaimed
novel of the same
name. Rejoining Bertolucci
will be his "Last Emperor"
screenwriter, Mark Peploe,
and producer, Jeremy Thomas,
with John Malkovich and
Debra Winger set to star
(Bertolucci's first choices:
William Hurt and Melanie
Griffith). Dennis Quaid
rounds out the cast. The story
is set in 1948, and it is about
two American intellectuals
who vanish into the African
desert in an attempt to find
themselves, only to destroy
their relationship in the process.
Production is set to start
in North Africa in November.
Teri Garr
"Waiting for the Light"
Shirley MacLaine and Teri
Garr star in this low budget
effort set against the Cuban
Missile Crisis. MacLaine is an
ex-vaudevillian and Garr is
her husbandless niece, and
together they travel (along
with Garr's two children) to a
small town to start over. A
Trans World Entertainment
release.
"Men At Work" Undaunted
by the savage beating
he took with the release
of "Wisdom," his
directorial
debut, actor Emilio Estevez is
back behind the camera for
this bizarre coinedy about
two garbage men who get
themselves into an incredible
and life-threatening mess.
Emilio also provides the
script and stars, along with
his brother, Charlie Sheen.
Leslie Hope ("Talk Radio").
Keith David, Dean Cameron
and Cameron Dye also star. A
Trans World Entertainment
release,
"White Hunter, Black
Heart" Undeterred by the
failure of "Pink Cadillac,"
Clint Eastwood has put on his
"serious" hat to
film this adaptation
of Peter Viertel's
1955 novel. Eastwood directs
and stars in this story that is a
fictional account of director
John Huston's experiences
while shooting "The African
Queen," and his obsession
with killing a bush elephant
in its natural environment.
Jeff Fahey ("Streel Legal")
also stars. The script is by
Viertel and James Bridges
("Bright Lights, Big City,"
"The China Syndrome"), and
it is currently in production
in the remote African village
of Kariba. A Warner Bros, release.
6 BOXOFKICT.

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REPORT PRINTER. The report/audit printer produces
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ADVANCED TICKET SALES. PX-I (and PX-II) allows the
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GENERAL LEDGER ENTRIES. The PX-I (and PX-II) has
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AMOUNT TENDERED. The PX-I (and PX-II) computes
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EXPANDABILITY. Up to two PX-I (or PX-II) units can be
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OPTIONS. Optional PX-I (and PX-II) items are the patron
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SETTING THE PACE INTO THE 21ST CENTURY

TRAILERS
September Releases
Framed
Tom Selleck stars in this drama about a
man falsely imprisoned in a brutal penitentiary.
Upon winning his release, he
sets out to clear his name and see that
justice is done. Peter Yates, who hasn't
done much interesting work since
"Breaking Away" (his recent films include
"Eleni," "Suspect" and "House on
Carroll Street"), directs, from a script by
Larry Brothers. The film was previously
known as "Hard Rain;" the title may
change yet again. A Buena Vista release.
Look WTio's Talking
Sea of Love
Al Pacino, unstoppable in the '70s and
unreliable in the '80s, returns from a selfimposed
exile to star in this thriller about
a New York cop investigating the serial
killings of men who respond to the same
sexually provocative personal ad. Ellen
Kirstie Alley stars in this comedy about
a young single mother who is on a quest to
Barkin ("The Big Easy") co-stars as the
most likely suspect, with whom Pacino
in John Goodman, the goodnatured
falls love, find a marriage-minded man. The gimmick
here is that her actions are commented
husband on "Roseanne," also
upon through voice-overs by her Harold Becker ("The Onion Field,"
stars,
infant son, with none other than Bruce "The Boost") directs; Richard Price ("The
Color of Money") provides the script, A
Universal release, (9/22)
Men Don't Leave
Writer-director Paul Brickman, who
vanished following the breakthrough success
of "Risky Business" in 1983, surfaces
with this comedy-drama about a woman
who tries to regain her footing after her
Ally Sheedy play the suddenly socially
conscious gals, with Treat Williams and
Don Michael Paul co-starring as the men
in their lives. The film is directed by Martin
Davidson ("Eddie and the Cruisers").
An Orion release.
The Big Picture
Kevin Bacon stars in this sharp-edged
look at the movie business, as seen
through the eyes of a young filmmaker
who wins a student film award and is suddenly
the toast of the town. His head
turned by fast money and beautiful women,
he abandons his girl and his best
friend until his success comes crashing
down around him. David McKean and
Emily Longstreth co-star, with Martin
Short turning in an extended cameo as an
oily agent. Christopher Guest (co-star and
co-writer of "This Is Spinal Tap") directs.
A Columbia Pictures release in LA. and
New York only. (9/15)
The Lemon Sisters
Director Joyce Chopra, who gained
some unwanted attention when she was
unceremoniously removed from the production
of "Bright Lights, Big City," returns
with this bittersweet comedy about
three lady lounge singers who tr\' to start
up their own nightclub in Atlantic City.
Diane Keaton, Carol Kane and Kathn,'n
Grody star, along with Ruben Blades,
Aidan Quinn and Elliott Gould, A Miramax
release.
The Fabulous Baker Boys
Willis providing the off-screen schtick.
John Travolta also stars, along with Oscar-winner
Olympia Dukakis, George Segal
and Abe Vigoda. Amy Heckerling
("Fast Times at Ridgemont High") directs.
A Tri-Star release. (9/15)
Miami Blues
husband dies unexpectedly. Jessica
Lange stars. Brickman co-wrote the script
with Barbara Benedek, who also wrote the
upcoming "Immediate Family." The film
is loosely based on the 1982 French movie,
"La Vie Continue" A Wamer Bros,
release. (9/8)
The always unpredictable Jonathan
Dcmme ("Married to the Mob," "Something
Wild") co-produces this dark comedy
about a compulsive killer and his
Heart of Dixie
hooker girlfriend who steal a policeman's
badge and attempt to use it to go straight. Once again, the struggles of black
Alec Baldwin ("Great Balls of Fire") and people are seen through the eyes of
Jennifer Jason Leigh play the charming whites in this '60s drama about a trio of
couple, with Fred Ward playing the cop sorority girls who are thrown into the
hot on their trail. George Armitage writes
and directs. An Orion release.
heart of the Civil Rights movement in the
South. Phoebe Gates, Virginia Madsen and
Beau and Jeff Bridges, who have never
appeared in a film together, co-star in this
comedy aboiu a pair of sibling lounge singers
who attempt to boost their sagging
careers by bringing in a gorgeous lady
crooner, Michelle Pfeiffer completes the
triangle, and you can be fairly certain that
she will come between the two brothers.
Sydney Pollack ("Out of Africa") co-produces;
newcomer Steven Kloves writes
and directs. A 20th Century Fox release.
In Country
The impact of the Vietnam War on
those left behind is examined in this drama
from Norman Jewison ("Moonstruck,"
"A Soldier's Story"). Bruce Willis,
in his most challenging stretch yet, stars
as a troubled vet who must deal with his
own emotional scars, as well as with those
of a teenaged girl whose father is killed
overseas, Emily Lloyd ("Cookie") plays
the young giri, with Joan Allen, Kevin
8 BOXOFFICE

Anderson and Judith Ivey also starring. A
Warner Bros, release. (9/15)
Johnny Handsome
A gritty and unpredictable cast is featured
in this crime drama about the tense
relationship that is formed between a
scarred criminal and the doctor who is
forced to change his appearance. Mickey
Rourke is the crook and Forest Whitaker
("Bird") is the plastic surgeon, with Elizabeth
McGovem, Ellen Barkin, Morgan
Freeman and Lance Henriksen co-starring.
Walter Hill ("Red Heat," "48
Hours") directed the film in New Orleans.
A Tri-Star release. (9/29)
Street Legal
A cast featuring some of our most interesting
character actors, headed by Brian
Dennehy, stars in this political thriller
about an undercover cop who leads a
squad of suspended police officers on a
rule-bending mission with international
implications. Jeff Fahey, Joe Pantoliano
and Bill Paxton co-star under the direction
of John Mackenzie ("The Long Good
Friday"). An Orion release.
Also In September
"Welcome Home" Kris Kristofferson
stars in this drama about a Vietnam soldier,
long thought dead, who suddenly
returns home to find his life completely
changed. Franklin Schaffner ("Patton,"
"The Boys From Brazil") directs. A Columbia
release. (9/29)
"Blind Fury" Australian Philip Noyce,
who pumped up the intensity in last
spring's "Dead Calm," directs this actioner
about a blind martial arts expert who
takes on the mob in an attempt to reunite
a young boy with his father. Rutger Hauer
stars, A Tri-Star release.
"When the Whales Came" 20th Century
Fox picked up this small-scale British
drama about the curse that is lifted from
an island community thanks to the
friendship between an old man and two
small boys. Set in World War 1, the film
stars Helen Mirren, Paul Scofield and
David Suchet.
"Rabid Grannies" Troma International,
where titles tell the whole story, is
responsible for this wacko B-movie.
"Heavy Petting" Snippets from cornball
sex education films from the '50s and
'60s provide the link material in this hip
documentary, which also includes interview
footage with such luminaries as Sandra
Bernhard, David Byrne and the late
Abbie Hoffman, all recounting early sexual
experiences. A Skouras release.
"Erik" Stephen McHattie stars in this
drama about a man victimized by a political
struggle in a small Central American
country. An SVS Films release.
"The Return of the Musketeers" C
Thomas Howell and Kim Cattrall join the
returning cast of Michael York, Oliver
Reed, Frank Finlay, Richard Chamberlain
and others in this third installment in the
once-popular series. Richard Lester again
directs. A Universal release. (9/1)
"Loser Takes All" Molly Ringwald and
Robert Lindsay ("Bert Rigby, You're A
Fool") star in this romantic comedy about
a penniless married couple who win their
way through the gambling halls of the
French Riviera. John Gielgud also stars. A
Miramax release.
"True Love" Set in the Bronx, this is
the romantic story of two Italian-American
sweethearts who suffer doubts as
their wedding day draws near. The film,
which recently won the grand prize in the
dramatic competition at the United States
Film Festival, is directed by Nancy Savoca.
An MGM/UA release.
Relentless
Judd Nelson, absent from the screen
since the critically-savaged "From the
Hip," stars in this thriller as a serial killer
on the loose in L.A. Robert Loggia ("Big")
and Leo Rossi ("The Accused") play the
cops who track him down. The movie is
directed by William Lustig ("Hit List"),
and it is based on a veiy early effort by
"Field of Dreams" writer-director Phil
Alden Robinson (Robinson, not happy
with how the script was rewritten, has
given the screenwriting credit to his dog.
Jack). A New Line release. (9/22)
Vital Signs
Sounding a bit like the soon-to-bereleased
and untitled Thorn Eberhardt
film (once known as "Gross Anatomy"),
this is a romantic drama about the extreme
pressures felt by third-year medical
students. Jimmy Smits of "LA. Law"
stars, along with Laura San Giacomo, who
is suddenly red hot following her sizzling
performance in "sex, lies and videotape."
Marisa Silver ("Permanent Record") directs.
A 20th Century Fox release.
September. 1989 9

COVER STORY
Weathering ''Black Rain''
Michael Douglas with co-star Ken Takakura, Japan's leading actor.
Cultures clashed as an American film creiv
tried to make a Hollyivood movie in Japan.
ALTHOUGH
By Tom Matthews
Managing Editor
THOSE DIRECTLY involved
with it would tend to disagree,
a Hollywood production
company shooting on location is a brutish
thing. Fueled by an often self-generated
sense of importance and celebrity,
and forever driven by the knowledge
that every minute wasted is worth thousands
of dollars, a film crew shooting
outside the controlled environment of
the soundstage tends to throw its weight
around. It will take for granted that it
will be allowed to remain on location
long beyond its alloted time, it will block
off streets and occupy hard-to-come -by
parking spaces for hours (if not days),
and it will most likely become a nuisance
for those who live and work in the
area that has been invaded by the
moviemakers. It's small wonder that
more and more communities in and
around Los Angeles are letting it be
known that they would just as soon
have movie magic being performed on
stjmeone eke'.s block.
So when producers Stanley R. Jaffa
and Sherry Lansing took a crew to Osaka,
Japan, to shoot crucial sequences for
the new Michael Douglas thriller "Black
Rain," they found themselves in an
alien environment in more ways than
one. These two veteran filmmakers,
whose past two productions were the
10 BoxoKUCK
monster hit "Fatal Attraction" and the
Oscar-winning "The Accused," have
come to expect a certain degree of
access and flexibility when they take
their cameras on location. But they
quickly learned that in Japan, where
protocol and a strict obeyance of all
rules take precedence over the mere
whims of a Hollywood film crew, their
ingrained production techniques were
challenged and often ovemiled.
"The Japanese society does not acknowledge
that the film industry has
the right to shut down streets and tell
We had to learn that in
Japan, "Yes" means
"No," "No" means
"Maybe, " and "Maybe"
means "Never."
pedestrians that they are not allowed to
use them," Jaffe was quick to discover.
"And in truth, they are right. But when
you are going over there with the idea
that that's how you have to shoot a
scene, you create a problem."
To shoot this action movie about a
tough New York cop caught out of his
clement when he escorts a Japanese
killer back to his native land, director
Ridley Scott ("Alien," "Blade Runner")
had to take over selected sites in the city
and shoot on a scale much larger than
had ever been attempted in Japan.
While the filmmakers found officials in
Osaka to be accommodating, it was still
a strange land that they had wandered
into.
"We were shooting an American picture,
but we were having to do it under
Japanese rules," JafFe recalls. "Over
there, if they say that you can have a
location from ten until five, that means
that at ten you arrive on the location
and at five — not 5:01 — you leave. And
if you don't, they pull the plug on you."
"After the first week, we understood
the rules," says JafFe, who arrived in
Japan only a week before shooting began
because she had been overseeing
the post-production of "The Accused"
back in the States. "If we needed a location
from ten imtil twelve, we asked for
it from ten until tivo. But there were
hours of negotiations to get a location,
and once you were there, there were
hours of negotiations to get to stay. I'll
always have memories of talking to
policemen, trying to get another 15 minutes
or another two hours. I spent so
much time just talking to them — about
anything — just so that they wouldn't go
on the set and shut us down."
While maddening and exasperating,
Lansing found that the experience gave
the filmmakers unexpected insights
into the obstacles faced by their fictional
lead character.
"I must say that we — the 28 or so
Americans on the crew — found that

wc were very much like Nick Coiiklin,
Michael Douglas's character in the mo-
\ic Just like Conklin had to learn from
th(' experience, we had to learn. We had
t(i learn the cultural differences, we had
til learn to bow, we had to leam to take
our time, and we had to leam that [in
Japan], 'Yes' means 'No,' 'No' means
'Maybe,' and 'Maybe' means 'Never.' We
were initially frustrated and angry, just
as Conklin is frustrated and angiy, but
we began to respect them. We learned
that our way was not the only way."
Jaffe even goes so far as to say that
the inflexibility of their hosts almost
helped. "In a way, it is teiTific for a producer,
because you know that you are
just because you're losing light in the
Land of the Rising Sun.
Testing: One, Two, Three
Interviewed separately — Jaffe from
his office in New York, Lansing in their
sumptuous wood-paneled Paramount
headquarters which once belonged to
Howard Hughes — their recounting of
the production of "Black Rain" differs
only on one point: why the movie, after
being highlighted as one of the potential
hits of the summer, was moved to a September
22 release date. Jaffe says simply
that the movie was always dragging a
bit behind schedule, beginning with a
pre-production phase that was shut
down for five months due to the Writers
Guild strike and continuing through the
arduous Japan shoot. Production finally
ended around Eastc^r, and it was deemed
impossible to meet the originally-announced
August 1 1 release date.
Lansing, on the other hand, says that
the decision to move the picture was
based purely on Paramount 's belief that
the summer market was too crowded,
and the decision that "Black Rain" belonged
in the fall along with more serious
works.
"But we would have been fine [if we
had stayed vnth the August release
date]," she says.
Either way, the added month allowed
the team extra time with post-production,
and to focus on what they believe
to be an invaluable filmmaking tool:
audience testing. It is now common
knowledge that the finale of "Fatal
Attraction" was reshot and changed
going to finish on time. Somehow the
director has got to finish all of his work.
If you are booked on a location on Tuesday,
you have got to get everything on
Tuesday, because you are not going to
drastically when test audiences rebelled
at the original ending (in which Glenn
get back in on Wednesday."
In other words, expect no sympathy
Close killed herself and framed Michael
Douglas), and Jaffe also reveals that
market testing helped to shape the
Producers Jatfe and Lansing found themselves i
element as their lead character.
entire feel of "The Accused." Although
some filmmakers have been very vocal
in their opposition to what they see as a
crass commercial intrusion into their
artistic rights, Jaffe and Lansing stand
by audience testing.
"What I liken it to is opening a play
out of town," says Lansing, who points
out that Hollywood has always shaped
its films based on test screenings. "You
try it out and you're shocked to find out
that the second act doesn't work. So
then you realize that you have made a
mistake and you rewrite it, either by
taking something out or putting something
back in.
"I have never understood why anyone
would resist seeing if their message is
being communicated. How dare we be
so arrogant as to ignore what an au-
dience is consistently telling us? If I
have made a movie that is trying to get a
message across and the audience isn't
getting that message, why wouldn't I try
and communicate it better?"
"We are very fortunate to be in business
with Paramount, because they believe
in this process," Jaffe concurs.
"They say, 'If you are learning from
your previews and you have a way to
make the movie better, then do it.' As
opposed to saying, 'Just give us the picture,
we have to make a release date.'"
These Boom Times
Both producers have been in the
industry for a number of years — before
joining forces, Jaffe was the producer of
such hits as "The Bad News Bears" and
"Kramer Vs. Kramer" and Lansing was
president of production for 20th Century
Fox — and both are awed by the
current boxoffice explosion that will no
doubt make 1989 the highest-grossing
year in history. They have seen peak
years in Hollywood before, but both feel
that this boom period is different.
"I think it is unbelievable," Jaffe says.
"I grew up in this industry, and for
many, many, many decades people
were under the impression that there
was a finite number of dollars that could
be generated at the boxoffice. But now,
nothing is tnie anymore. When you
have a picture like 'Batman,' it's rewriting
everybody's thinking. Now you
know that those numbers are out
there."
Lansing credits the success to an
encouraging new sophistication on the
part of both studios and audiences. "I
think that movies have never been better
or more eclectic. I have the best
weekends going to the movies now," she
says. "You can have popcorn movies,
you can have serious movies, and they
are all working.
"When I first started producing there
was a rash of youth-oriented movies. Six
or seven years ago you couldn't get a
movie made unless it was about an 18-
year-old coming of age, because the theory
was that only kids wanted to see
movies," she says, recalling that bleak
post-"Porky's" era. "But then the industry
evolved and it culminated in things
like 'Fatal Attraction,' which was a serious
adult movie, and 'The Accused,'
which was a movie that you wouldn't
have thought would appeal to a general
audience. So now when you go to a studio,
trying to get them to make your
movie, they will never tell you that there
is no audience for your film. You just
can't say that anymore.
"I think that the industry has never
been better," she concludes with that
spark and enthusiasm for which she is
well-known. "I'm proud to be in this
business, and I'm proud that we're making
the movies that we're making."
^
September, 1989 11

INDUSTRY PROFILE
THE
Playing The Numbers
By Tom Matthews
Managing Editor
MOTION PICTURE industry has
b(!Come a numbers game. Ask any
studio exec, or any exhibition
chief, about a particular movie in release,
and instead of mentioning the
Hlm's clever storyline or the masterful
t.ilents of its cast, they vvdll more than
likely start talking numbers: How did
the film open? How many screens?
What was the per-screen-average? How
did the competition do? How much of a
drop-off in percentage can we expect
next weekend? In today's cutthroat
market, it is numbers — not aesthetic
tiuality — that make a movie great.
Not that this hasn't always been the
case, of course, but up until recently,
these nuinbers weren't so easy to come
by. Until 1976, when 23-year-old Marcy
Poller launched what would eventually
become Entertainment Data, Inc., distributors
and exhibitors were hopelessly
dependent on their field offices, which
arduously tabulated the tickets sold
each night. And then, once these numbers
were attained, no one was too anxious
to share these dollar figures with
the other side of the fence (distribution
or exhibition, depending on which camp
you were in), the competition, or the
general public.
But Poller, working as a booking secretary
for Mann Theatres in Los Angeles,
saw that there had to be a better
way. Realizing the incredible power of
computers and sensing the possibility of
using them to create a nationwide network
of information. Poller used the
support of Ted Mann and an $800 loan
from her father to launch a company
which has significantly changed the
way that distributors and exhibitors do
business.
"When we started out 13 years ago in
Los Angeles, the idea was to provide a
working tool for both exhibition and distribution
so that they would have this
information a lot earlier, and in a more
useable format," says Philip Garfinkle,
senior vice president and chief operating
officer, whose own background in
(txhibition and distribution began as an
usher with National (Jencral in LA.
(In a daily basis. Entertainment Data
1 2 BOXOf FICE
Entertainment Data collects the figures
which make the industry run.
has about 35 L.A.-based employees calling
up to 18,000 theatres, collecting that
day's grosses. In the major markets
New York, San Francisco, Dallas,
(L.A.,
Chicago, Washington, D.C., Atlanta,
Jacksonville and Toronto), the company
calls on the same theatres day in and
day out and records the data, regardless
of what movie is playing there. In the
smaller markets, the distributor tells
Entertainment Data which theatres
their movie (s) is playing in, and the
company dutifully contacts each
theatre for the figures.
The phone operators work from six
p.m. to two a.m., Los Angeles time, and
then the data entiy personnel work
through the night to feed the raw figures
into the company's computers and generate
the reports. The information is
then uploaded to a subscriber's computer,
or delivered by courier bright and
early the next morning, so that the powers
that be can know immediately if
they have a hit or a miss on their hands.
With this information, distributors can
begin to decide how many prints to keep
in circulation; the marketing departments
can alter their publicity campaigns
accordingly; and exhibitors can
determine whether they want to hang
onto a movie, or cut it loose and make
room for a new release.
Fun With Numbers
Beyond collecting and delivering the
essential, day-to-day figures for a particular
movie. Entertainment Data and its
computers can merge the numbers to
come up with interesting, trend-spotting
reports. For instance, the company recently
was able to announce that although
68 comedies were released in
1988, compared to 90 in 1987, the genre
accounted for nearly SI. 6 billion and a
46 percent share of total boxoffice, compared
to $L2 billion (a 38 percent share)
in 1987.
The study issued by the company also
highlighted the fact that seven of the
top ten releases of last year were laughgetters:
"Who Framed Roger Rabbit"
($152 million)"Coming to America"
($128 million); "Big" '($113 million);
"'Crocodile' Dundee 2" ($109 million);
"Twins" ($107 million); "The Naked
(uin" ($77 million); and "Beetlejuice"
($73 million). Rest assured that such
information, while perhaps seeming a
mere curiosity to the general public, is
taken veiy seriously by the development
people who decide what movies
— and what kinds of movies — are going
to be produced by their studios.
Entertainment Data also discovered
the following facts worth noting from
the year 1988:
o Family-oriented films showed a
marked increase in performance last
year. Films rated "G" or "PG" collectively
accounted for 37.5 percent of the
year's total boxoffice compared to 30
percent in 1987, this despite a similar
number of releases in both years.
o 117 wide releases averaging 1,267
screens each were recorded in 1988.
The average number of wide breaks in
1987 was 1,167 screens.
o In 1988, Paramount's 12 wide releases
averaged 1,496 screens — the
highest of any major. The studio's "'Crocodile'
Dundee 2" went the widest, hitting
2,837 screens at one point.
What's Next?
Entertainment Data continues to find
further uses for the information it collects.
It recently launched a new service
dubbed "The Release Schedule," which
provides its subscribers with a constantly
updated list of upcoming releases,
with pertinent information such as release
dates, cast and synopses. The
week-by-week calendar comes wth an
accompanying record of what was released
during a given period the year
before, and which films were taking in
the most money.
The company is also fine-tuning its
overseas operations, which Garfinkle
hopes will be as successful as it has
been in the States. "The international
system will be different in that instead
of looking at the broad bases, we will be
looking at key theatres in key markets.
We will also be looking at weekly
grosses, not daily," he says, although he
says that this won't always be the case.
"We are looking at going overseas on a
daily basis with a couple of markets, the
first being the United Kingdom. Eventually,
we would hope to have ovemight
availability in markets around tinworld."
^

Ou^ O^ietUH^ '7U

DISTRIBUTION PROFILE
New Line's Hard-line Formula
The veteran indie is still standing tall
as its competition withers and dies.
VESTRON
By Tom Matthews
Managing Editor
Cannon Spectrafilm.
Atlantic. New World. Island. Cineplex
Odeon. FilmDallas. They
all shared that middle ground between
pure exploitation distributors and the
majors, turning out a small but widely
varied slate of films which sometimes
courted film critics, and which sometimes
went straight for the lowest common
denominator. They knew that they
were never going to reap the profits of a
"Batman," but by knovdng their audiences
and by carefully moving a select
number of prints through their
regional markets, each of these distributors
had their day in the sun.
And now, each is dead, or has pulled
back operations to the extent that it
seems they may as well be. These suppliers
of everything from foreign-language
hits to quirky American sleepers
to two-fisted martial arts twaddle are all
history, the victims of unrealistic goals,
a fierce exhibition market, a shifting
video market, and the Wall Street crash
of '87. With obstacles such as these to
overcome, the question is not why all
these companies failed, but how could
any of them survived?
To answer this question there is no
better place to turn than New Line Cinema,
not only because the company
continues to stride steadily along as it
waves farewell to its fallen competition,
but because it is one of the few produc-
14 BOXOKUCK
Milchell Goldman
er/distributors of its size which still has
its phones connected. Indeed, this schizophrenic
movie company, which has
recently been responsible for everything
from the "Nightmare on Elm
Street" series to "Torch Song Trilogy" to
the quirky and popular "Hairspray" to
the wrestling romp "No Holds Barred,"
appears to be as sturdy as ever. So while
no one enjoys picking over the remains
of the dead, it seems that the easiest
way to find out what New Line is doing
right is to ask what all of these other
companies did wrong.
"I don't want to sound as if I'm gloating,
but I think we are the only independent
left not because independents as a
whole are in terrible trouble, but because
we did something right that they
didn't," says Mitch Goldman, New
Line's distribution chief "I know that
sounds egotistical, but I don't mean it
that way.
"We have kept to a game plan that
has served us pretty well. We protect
our downside and we are very cautious
with the dollars that we do expend on
our marketing and production. I think
that is one of the reasons why we have
been successful and other companies
have not. They have not had a game
plan that has proven itself out.
"I think one of our strengths is that
we're not forced to make pictures that
we don't believe in. Each theatrical picture
that we produce is made for the
theatrical marketplace and to make
money in the theatrical marketplace.
They are not made for video, or for foreign
television packages, or for television
syndication packages. They are
made to work in theatres, and if we can
get these pictures to work on that basis,
then the rest comes easily and profitably.
I don't know if all of these other
companies worked on this basis. I don't
think they did."
Michael Harpster, New Line's marketing
president, concurs with Goldman's
views. He also observes that, in
the case of some of these companies,
there simply wasn't the time to figure
out the industry'
"I think that basically the movie business
today is about the learning curve,
and the learning curve is about time,"
says Harpster, who has been with New
Line since 1970. "If you don't have time
to play the game, then you can't get a
learning curve. Vestron couldn't get a
learning curve together because they
just ran out of time."
A Track Record
Certainly one of New Line's strong
suits is its longevity. Launched in 1967
by 27-year-old Fulbright scholar Robert
Shaye, the company learned early on
about the concept of niche marketing,
whereby a distributor determines the
core audience for a film and markets it
directly to them. By foregoing the costs
and disappointments of a blanket release,
the shrewd implementation of
such a strategy can be veiy lucrative.
One of Shaye's earliest triumphs was
a sign of things to come. While attending
a function sponsored by a marijuana
legalization organization in the early
'70s, the mogul-to-be was witness to a
screening of "Reefer Madness," the
anti-drug film from the '30s which offered
a howlingly out-dated cautionary
message. Having noticed two things —
that the audience loved its camp value,
and that the copyright on the film had
lapsed — Shaye secured the rights to
the movie, pitched it directly to college
campuses, and eventually earned
around $2 million. He recognized the
film's potential, he marketed it to its
logical audience, and he cleaned up.
Michael Harpster

Selling The Hulkster
Life After Freddy
New Line's fortunes have only increased
(the company earned about S5
million last year on revenues of S54 million),
but the sales philosophy remains
the same. Take, for example, "No Holds
Barred," the cartoonish wrestling adventure
starring the inimitable Hulk
Hogan. Every major studio had turned
the project down, thinking that wrestling
movies were boxoffice poison, and
perhaps also believing that the brawny
buffoonery oflTered by the Hulkster and
his ilk were beneath the studio's standards.
But Michael Haipster saw that
the movie fit well within New Line's
game plan.
"Nobody thought that 'No Holds
Barred' was going to do any business,
because wrestling pictures have never
been successful. But when I started
looking at the numbers from the
[market research] testing that we did, I
saw that Hulk Hogan has incredible recognition,"
Harpster says. "He possibly
even exceeds Freddy Knieger in recognition,
but it is a very narrow audience.
It is really selective, and you have to go
after that from a media standpoint to
find it. You don't want to go into general
audience media with big newspaper ads;
you have to go after those particular
viewers. That approach allows us to be
fairly successful."
Seeing that there was a sparsity of
films opening on June 2 ("We got virtually
every screen we asked for," Goldman
says). New Line rolled "No Holds
Barred" out on 1,318 screens. When the
dust had settled for the weekend, the
movie had come in number two — second
only to "Indiana Jones and the Last
Cnisade" — with a remarkable gross of
S5 million. This eclipsed Universal's
heavily-promoted "Renegades," which
opened against "No Holds Barred" with
a S3.1 million gross, and it allowed the
wrestling extravaganza to go on to gross
S15 million by the July 4th weekend, A
paltry amount by the majors' standards;
another hatch mark in the victory column
for an economically-nm indie like
New Line.
"Heart Condition"
"We realize that there will come a day
when we won't be able to lean on Fnuldy,"
says Mitch Goldman, referring to
the cash cow who needs no last name
He means, of course, Freddy Kruegci,
the scarred, razor-fingered madman
who is a nightmare for teenagers, and a
dream come true for New Line. With
four chapters of the "Nightmare on Elm
Street" series under its belt — and a
fifth set to open on August 11 — New
Line has generated a staggering $300
million from worldwide theatrical receipts
and home video. Furthermore, it
has allowed New Line to move into
lucrative ancillary areas traditionally
left to the majors, namely merchandising
and a TV series. The take from Freddy
memorabilia thus far is estimated to
be over S3 million.
Its impact on the financial health of
the company cannot be overstated and
yet, as Goldman points out, the Freddy
gravy train can't nm forever. To that
end, New Line has another murdering
ghoul waiting in the wings, namely
Leatherface of "The Texas Chainsaw
Massacre" fame. Cannon released the
first sequel to the 1974 cult hit in 1986,
but it was a screwy and unfaithful
followup to the original. So now New
Line has the rights to the series, and it
hopes to return to the inescapable creepiness
of the first film, while at the
same time turning Leatherface into a
certified mass market celebrity. It
would mean capturing lightning in a
bottle twice, but if successful, a spate of
"Chainsaw" hits could help to keep New
Line healthy well into the '90s.
"This picture is very important to us,
and we are going to do everything we
can to make it work," says Goldman,
speaking of "Texas Chainsaw Massacre
3," which opens on Nov. 10. "We know
that sequels four, five and six are on the
horizon if we can make this one work."
Gore, Art and the Mainstream
Such is the lot of a "something for
everyone" indie that a distribution or
marketing exec must contemplate a release
schedule which features everything
from "Babar: The Movie" to "Texas
Chainsaw Massacre 3." Those are but
two of the films that New Line will
release in the second half of this year,
and it is a source of pride for Mitch
Goldman that he and his company are
able to rise to each occasion.
"I don't think that these films are
mutually exclusive at all," Goldman
says. "I think that it is a myth that a
person — especially a person with a son
— wouldn't consider seeing 'No Holds
Barred,' and wouldn't also want to see
'Torch Song Trilogy' or 'Hairspray.' Certainly,
we direct our cflforts toward the
"No Holds Barred"
people that would be most inclined to
see the picture, but the reality is that
internally, we can be just as enthusiastic
about Hulk Hogan as we are for 'A
Handful of Dust' [the distinguished British
film which New Line released last
year]."
One film which New Line is extremely
enthusiastic about, and which both
Goldman and Harpster believe will be
able to go head-to-head with mainstream
fare from the majors, is "Heart
Condition." A racial comedy about a bigoted
white cop who inherits the heart —
and ghost — of a black man, the movie
stars Bob Hoskins, in his first feature
since "Who Framed Roger Rabbit," and
Denzel Washington. The premise is certainly
high concept, and the opportunity
to work with — and market — such an
accessible story and cast excites the
New Line top brass.
"The chance to have Bob Hoskins in a
film is significant for this company,"
says Harpster. "We are going to use him
[in the marketing of the picture] as
much as we can.
"It's interesting because while he is
not a household name, he is well-known
among a certain group. Intellectuals and
critics know him from his earlier films
["The Long Good Friday," "Mona Lisa"],
and he is known among the masses for
'Roger Rabbit.' So if the film is as good
as we think it's going to be, we think it
gives us a chance to get the critics as
well as the audiences."
"We haven't had many pictures that
could compete with a general audience
release from a Paramount or a Warner
Bros.," Goldman says,
"but 'Heart Condition'
has the potential to do that."
The company will find out when the
movie — possibly with a different title
— is given a wide release on Oct. 6.
Business As Usual
The fact that both "Texas Chainsaw
Massacre 3" and "Heart Condition"
were assigned release dates months ago
is indicative of New Line's stability and
innuniur.l'r
i:"!
September. 1989 15

ON OCTOBER 3RD,
THE EYES AND EARS OF THE MOTION PICTURE INDUSTRY WILL FOCUS ON
ATLANTIC CITY FOR THE FOURTH ANNUAL
SHOWEAST
O N
WHY?
SHOWEAST HAS A NEW HOME
BALLY'S PARK PLACE CASINO HOTEL
SHOWEAST HAS INCORPORATED A FULL TRADE FAIR
FEATURING 110 BOOTHS
SHOWEAST WILL PRESENT SEVEN MAJOR MOTION PICTURES,
TRADE SCREENEa FOR THE VERY FIRST TIME
Additionally
SHOWEAST is pleased to announce the recipients of its three major azvards for 1989
1989
SHOW E' AWARD
1989
GEORGE EASTMAN AWARD"
1989 SALAH M. HASSANEIN
HUMANITARIAN AWARD
Richard Cook
President
Buena Vista Pictures Distribution
'Sponsored by
Premiere Magazine
Stanle\' Durwood
Chairman
American Multi Cinema, Inc.
SHOWEAST '89
BALLY'S PARK PLACE CASINO HOTEL
OCTOBER 3RD - 5TH
REGISTRATION FEE: $200 (until August 15th; $250 thereafter)
REGISTER TODAY AS SPACE IS LIMITED. FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT
THE SHOWEAST OFFICE: 244 West 49th Street, Suite 305
New York, NY 10019
(212) 246-6460
Response No 28

New Line
(continued from p 15}
organization. Most of the now-extinct
indies listed above were repeatedly
forced to announce release dates mere
weeks before a movie was rolled out,
due to unstable funding and simple mismanagement.
It was hardly surprising,
then, that these companies found it difficult
to create cohesive marketing and
distribution strategies for each release,
when no one knew exactly when and
where a movie was going to open.
While New Line — like the majors —
reserves the right to occasionally juggle
its schedule where necessary, the company
takes these dates seriously.
"It is something that we pride ourselves
on in tenns of planning properly,"
says Mitch Goldman. "We are not
just announcing dates to announce
them. That's the date we picked, we are
organizing our schedules around it, and
we have told the exhibitors about it. We
don't just fill in the spaces on the
release schedule so that it looks like we
have a lot of product. That's not what
we are about."
"[Not knowing a release date] makes
it very difficult. It makes a big difference,
especially with promotionoriented
films," says Michael Harpster.
"We set up our radio promotions for 'A
Nightmare on Elm Street 5' in Jomtanj I
was also able to buy my network television
time a long time ago, so that I could
get the best prices and times. We had
already made the buys, and the film
hadn't even gone into production.
Freddy the Franchise
"When you wait until the last minute
to announce a release date, you spend
more money, you scramble more, you
have to drive people harder, and people
go crazy faster. I'm sure it drives exhibitors
nuts when things don't stay the
way they are supposed to."
Into the '90s
New Line intends to enter its fourth
decade sticking to its proven formula for
success, with Mitch Goldman promising
a rcemphasis on the foreign and art
films which are largely missing from its
1989 schedule (the company recently
announced a production deal with
Working Tide, the Uritish firm responsible
tor the acclaimed apartheid drama
"A World Apart"). Beyond that, New
Line has in the works "In the Mouth of
Madness," a thriller about a writer
whose apocalyptic novel brings his
readers to the brink of insanity, and
"House Party," an all-black musical that
is likened to "Ferris Bueller's Day Off."
This latter film, Michael Harpster
notes, is an ideal example of New Line's
continuing focus on niche marketing.
"I love films like that, where I have
an easily identifiable market," he says,
referring to the black audiences which
he expects to be the movie's strongest
draw. "I can say, 'Hey, I know who
those people are. I know how to get
them. There's no guess work here.'
"These are generally not the types of
films that make you $50 or $60 million,
but that's all right," he concludes. "It's
like baseball. On some days I would just
as soon have a base hit as I would a
home run."
Hi
OKE HUNDRED YEAKS
IN THE MAKING.
yOURS IN SEVEK MNITES,
Remind your audiences wliy they fell in love with the movies. Show them "Pieces of Silver." This epic short
film packs some of the greatest stars, action, drama, and emotions ever filmed into just seven minutes. And it's
yours free. Just call Terri Smith or Barbara Stokes at 213 464-6131 and order your print. Sponsored by Eastman
Kodak Company
^ «#f»i^r^
The Filmmakers' Film ^Aaker
© Eastman Kodak Company. 1989
lU^/f
TM
September, 1989 17

MODERN THEATRE
Computers in
Exhibition
A roundup of the latest hardware
and software for the exhibition industry.
77iis month's Modem Theatre section is solely devoted to the
fast-changing world of in-theatre computers, profiling those
companies that provide equipment, software and services for
this burgeoning segment of the exhibition industry. And burgeoning
it is Tioo years ago, when we last presented a roundup
of computer equipment and softivare, there were a handful of
companies in the market; today there are 16. Part of the reason
for that growth has been the drop in price for entry into the
electronic age: the microcomputer (personal computer) is now
eminently affordable for almost any theatrical operation.
Whatever the size of your organization, from giant circuit to
single-screen theatre; whatever your needs, from a complete
turnkey operation to a standalone PC: it just doesn't make good
hiLHiness sense today to do without an office computer From
spreadsheets to inventory control, from employee scheduling to
film gross information, from advance ticket sales to total control
of auditorium functions (lighting and HVAC, for example)
today's computer systems are playing a bigger and more
imponant role in the modem motion picture theatre.
The companies profiled here range from the suppliers of
complete turnkey systems, offering computers, concession
stand rr'^nstiTK, software, and telecommunications capabilities
to link "siitt'Uiti" theatres to a main office; to small entrepreneurs
niliiiiv^ \iittii-(ire programs designed for standalone PC's
used in sduiHo theatre operations. For large circuits, the benefits
of a complete system are immediately apparent: all the
headaches of choosing and installing a system, as well as
employee training, are bome by the suppliers. A certain level of
sophistication is inherent in these systems: telecommunication
of information, link-ups with remote credit card kiosks, complete
tracking of all boxoffce, concession and employee information.
For smaller operations, standalone PC's offer an economy
of scale: a single computer, with the proper software, can
fulfill the needs of a single theatre, a multiplex, or even a small
circuit. Whatever your computer needs, they can be met by the
companies represented in the following pages
COMPLETE SYSTEMS
Artsoft Network
I'crhaps better suited to the needs of
a full-scale performing arts center than
those of a movie theatre, the ArtSoft
Network is still capable of selling tickets
and organizing seating. It also does accounting
chores, generates direct mail
and fund-raising letters. ArtSoft has installed
systems for such clients as the
Hartford .Stage Company and Symphony
(Orchestra, Dartmouth College, the
Cheyenne Frontier Days Rodeo, the
Santa Fe Opera, the American Conservatory
Theatre and the Shubert Organization.
The company is also working on
new products that would enable
theatres to sell their tickets through
separate vending machines — where
the customer picks a specific theatre
and performance, then uses a credit
num.. ,.,^-„

EVERYTHING
YOU EVER
WANTED TO
KNOW AROUT FILMS
RUT DIDN'T KNOW
WHO TO Asr
No matter what the question, ask Entertainment Data, Inc.
As the industry's oldest, most experienced data-gathering service and with our
advanced computer network, EDI offers services that everyone can use.
• Want to know how action films perform in the winter?
• Or how many comedies are scheduled for release next summer?
• When the new Eddie Murphy film is due for release?
• Did Paramount outgross Buena Vista last summer?
• Who's directing the latest Star Trek?
• How do the opening grosses on Tom Cruise's films compare?
• How do Academy Award nominations affect grosses?
ENTERTAINMENT DATA, INC. helps you compete in the town that thrives on competition.
No matter what you need to know, ask Entertainment Data, Inc.
*
Entertainment Data, Inc.
331 North Maple Drive • Beverly Hills, CA 90210 • (213) 271-2105
Los Angeles • San Francisco • Dallas • Chicago • Washington, DC. • New York • Atlanta • Toronto

COMPUTERS IN EXHIBITION
Automated Cinema
Ticketing System
(ACTS)
The Automated Cinema Ticketing
System (ACTS) from Newton-Brown
Associates of San Francisco offers a
low-cost computer and software package
with applications for both the boxoffice
and the manager's office.
In the boxoffice, ACTS incorporates
such features as overpimch and refund
functions, advance sales for unlimited
future dates, the issuance and redemption
of re-admissions, sale of gift certificates
(either pre-printed or generated
by ACTS), and a constant record of each
cashier's drops. Security procedures
safeguard access to all the system's
functions. The cashier's statistics display
is updated as transactions occur to
show exactly how much cash should be
in the drawer at any given time. If
exhibitors have unique requirements for
reporting and communication, or for
interfaces with other systems, customization
is a possibility.
In the manager's office, ACTS features
more than 30 displays to help print
reports of daily and weekly boxoffice,
distribution accounting, attendance, and
ticket series audits. The system also
generates wall schedules for projection
and cleanup, and keeps track of bank
deposits and snack bar income. ACTS
software emphasizes ease of learning,
readouts of up-to-thc-second statistics,
and failsafe operation — in the event of
a computer failure, double-logging of all
transactions allows the transfer of a diskette
to another PC and resumption of
operation without losing any data.
Since each ticket printer is controlled
by its own personal computer, all tickets
are printed in less than a second each,
2(1 BOXOKKKK
regardless of how many printers are
working simultaneously. Printers produce
unique tickets that are vet^y' difficult
to copy. When not in use for ticketing,
the PCs supplied with ACTS can be
used for management functions such as
spreadsheets.
Contact Newton-Brown at 1527
Beach Street, San Francisco, CA 94123;
415-921-2407.
Computerised
Automated Tickets
Sales (C.A.T.S.)
C.A.T.S. is the leading computerized
boxoffice system in the United Kingdom.
New York offices opened recently
to provide installations and after-sale
servicing in the US. The C.A.T.S. System's
free support package features 24-
hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week hotline
consultation; replacement of faulty
equipment, as opposed to on-site repairs;
a backup contract with hardware
suppliers such as Texas Instruments;
and remote servicing via telephone modem
(each C.A.T.S. system contains the
necessary communication equipment).
Each C.A.T.S. Concession Till contains
its own micro-computer and works
completely independently. A customer
display panel shows full transaction information.
Customers can read on a
screen the name of each item purchased,
and its price. The last transaction
can always be recalled and
checked. Each till has 42 preset buttons.
The software assigns each item and its
price to a button. The system processes
the data and supplies a full set of
reports, which will include opening
stock counts,
closing counts, and total
sales by item and by value. Yield calculations
are obtainable.
The C.A.T.S. boxoffice system uses
IBM Personal Computers or well
-known compatibles as the "brain centers"
of the system. The ticket printers
are from Texas Instruments. Tickets
may be sold in advance for the same
day, or for any future date. C.A.T.S. also
reverse side. Coca-Cola, Burger King
and Pizza Hut have already availed
themselves of this advertising medium.
A color screen shows customers full
details of films showing, hours of performances,
and availability of tickets.
This information is automatically updated
eveiy 30 seconds. Another option
involves the purchase of magnetic
cards, like gift certificates, for use at the
boxoffice or the concession stand.
Contact C.A.T.S. at 1650 Broadway,
Suite 1208, New York, NY 10019; 212-
262-6122, or 212-262-6126; FAX: 212-
262-5880.
Cinema Computer
Systems
Cinema Computer Systems of Dusseldorf,
W. Germany offers a complete
turnkey theatre computer system consisring
of the CCS Cinema Administration
System and CCS Boxoffice System.
Among the features incorporated by
the CCS Cinema Administrarion System
are:
- input and control of admissions, turnover,
and daily boxoffice reports
- printouts of weekly film rental accounts
- handling of distributor payments
- an efficient film database
- centralized programming of CCS boxoffice
systems
- data transfer between the boxoffice
and headquarters via modem or diskette
- modifications to take care of payroll,
bookkeeping, lease accounts, concessions,
word processing, and desktop
publishing.
The CCS Boxoffice System offers
- flexible design of admission prices,
seating plan, number and time of performances,
price sections, and ticket
imprint
- ticket sales for all auditoriums and all
performances simultaneously from any
number of selling stations
provides the opportimity to sell reserved - thermal and matrix printers for fast
specific seats. The computer chooses issue of tickets
the seats by itself. This avoids aisle - numbered seats (optional)
crowding and maximizes seating capacity.
Different prices for different areas days
- advance ticket sale for a period of 365
of the larger auditoriums can even be - constant display of free and reserved
accommodated.
seats
C.A.T.S. affords operators the opportunity
to design their own tickets. Color customer cards and credit cards
- automatic invoicing of all magnetic
and size are variable, with an option for - a variety of customer information displays.
additional income from coupons on the

HARDWARE
CCS also offers the "Cinemat," an
automated ticket vending machine
which can be located in theatre lobbies,
hotels or shopping malls. It accepts all
major credit cards, and the "Concession
Pad," a concession system which can
handle up to 140 different items and
prices. The data transfer of all transactions
proceeds automatically to the CCS
manager terminal. Inventory periods
can be daily, weekly or monthly.
Contact CCS at D-4000 Dusseldorf,
West Germany, Graf-Adolf-Strabe 108;
cards, major credit cards and will give
change if you want to pay for your ticket
in cash. The system has already proven
useful in reducing lines at mass transit
terminals in New York, Vancouver, San
Diego and San Francisco by dispensing
train tickets and tokens to hurried commuters.
"We've taken the mass transit application
and applied it to movie theatres,
theme parks, music parks, ski resorts
and other venues," says Roger Oldfield,
owner of Los Angeles-based Computick-
cashiers and managers not only to monitor
the way the ticket is purchased, but
also keep a constant tally of boxoffice
receipt totals."
The machines can also be equipped
with break-in alarms, a key system that
can discriminate between technical and
administrative access, a self-locking
cash vault, automatic credit billing capability,
and direct bank links for auditing.
The machine's bill-acceptors can
accept American currency up to a S20
bill.
Contact Computicket at 5777 W.
Centuiy Blvd. #1110, Los Angeles, CA
90045; 213-670-8704; Toll-free: 800-422-
(0211) 36 57 91; Fax: (0211) 16 17 05. et, which distributes the automatic ticketing
machines in the U.S. "Pacific and
Computicket, Inc.
Mann have expressed definite interest
and will probably be testing them within 2449, 800-522-2449 in Calif; FAX: 213-
the year."
670-9142,
As if it weren't enough that we can
use our automatic teller machine cards
to buy groceries and gasoline, now we
The free-standing ticket machines,
which are manufactured by a Swissbased
multinational corporation, "integrate
can use them to buy movie tickets, too.
with a software package that we
Computicket's Automatic Ticket Dispensing
have, and information is fed directly
Machine is a movie-ticket into the theatre's management office as
vending machine that accepts banking well," says Oldfield. "This will allow
continued)
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September, 1989 21

COMPUTERS IN EXHIBITION
Di/An Controls,
individual theatres to a home office.
Most circuits, however, prefer to retain
Inc.
considerable local control.
The Concession /Master is controlled
The Movie/Master and Concession/ by the central computer in the manager's
Master systems have both been upgraded
office. From there the manager
by Di/An Controls of Boston determines the function of each key on
since their last appearance in these the small concession terminals. The
concession staff punches a terminal
pages. The Movie /Master still issues
tickets at a rate of one a second. Two button indicating a particular item. The
cashiers are unnecessary unless the computer then rings up the correct
boxoffice area becomes congested. Because
price. Recent upgrades include an adap-
the relevant information is tation for commissary-style vending, a
printed on identical ticket stock, rather
than different color-coded tickets for
each movie and price, all tickets can be
sold from one window, regardless of
how many movies are playing. Several
upgrades have been integrated into the
Movie /Master since its last incarnation,
such as an improved ticket-inking system,
more user-friendly software, and a
redesign of the terminal keypads.
novelty sales package, and capacity for
perpetual inventories. Like the Movie/
Master, the Concession/Master can also
be monitored from a home office computer.
Expansion can be accommodated by
simply adding boxoffice and concession
terminals, up to a point. But because the
communication is performed over telephone
lines, it takes time for the home
office computer to dial up the local
theatre computers and take in their
data. Even with automatic dialing systems
that work through the night, circuits
with more than 200 theatres can
find the information transfer impossible.
At that point, the home office must
communicate over parallel dialing systems.
Contact Di/An Controls at 16 Jonathan
Dr., Brockton, MA 02401; 508-559-
8000; FAX: 508-559-8658.
monthly printouts necessaiA' for the
posting of all journals and/or ledgers.
The report can be printed for analysis
purposes at any time during the
month.
The theatre operations program can
meet the needs of a single-screen complex
or a circuit of any size, according to
M.I.S. Associates president Jerome
Ginsberg. It can make use of Service
Bureaus (a co-op computer), a minicomputer,
or a mainframe 'The programs
have been written for Datapoint
equipment but can readily be rewritten
for any hardware configuration.
"I don't believe in having a computer
in the theatre," says Ginsberg, "because
it makes it too easy for people to get at
it. There's tremendous cash flow in the
theatre business. My system can operate
from a main office far from those
who could meddle."
Ginsberg's software system and
equipment, four years in development,
are designed to monitor sales and inventory
at both the boxoffice and the concession
stand. The system's tamper-free
hardware components are compatible
with existing ticket dispensers and cash
registers, though neither is necessary to
the system's operation.
Contact Management Information
Services at 18040 Sherman Way #320,
Reseda, CA 91335-4631; 818-342-8259;
FAX: 818-342-7362.
Although each of the boxoffice terminals
in the Di/An system has its own
internal memon', it is actually controlled
from the manager's office. From
there the manager can program the
boxoffice computer up to a year in
advance, with such data as future movies,
future schedules and future prices.
Depending on which system the manager
has, he can call up a screen that
updates itself every time he consults it,
or every 10 seconds, automatically.
.Such a closely monitored system augments
security.
In larger situations, the manager can
also be monitored by an extension that's
installed in a circuit's home office. Before
the manager opens the boxoffice,
he can make changes and corrections in
his boxoffice. But once he starts selling,
he can't make changes until he goes
through a procedure authorizing them.
1 1

HARDWARE
- Advance Sales: Same-day presale is
standard. (Optional enhancements permit
sales up to a week in advance.
- Seating Inventory Control: Prohibits
overselling.
- Multi-Terminal: Allows several boxoffice
stations to operate simultaneously.
- Manager's Control Console: Allows reprogramming
of prices, titles, performance
times, and theatre assignments.
- Cashier's Video Display Unit: Provides
sales information, titles and schedules.
- Manager's Report Printer: Generates
accounting/attendance summaries, and
a variety of management infonnation
reports.
- Customer's Display: An alpha-numeric
readout informs patrons of the film with
details of the sale, and the film's title.
- Protected Data Storage: All prices,
taxes, titles, perfonnance limits, attendance
figures, and accumulated sales
data are stored onto diskette. Important
data is protected from power interruption.
Contact Omniterm Data Technology
at 1209 King St. W,, Toronto, Ontario
M6K IG2; 416-,S31-0023; FAX: 416-531-
8047.
Pacer Corp.
The latest offering from Pacer Corp.
is the PX-I and PX-II complete standalone
systems designed for theatres with
up to four and eight screens, respectively.
Developed with the smaller theatre
in mind, PX technology provides pointof-sale
control over admissions, finances
and other operations. The keyboard,
central processing unit and highspeed
ticket printer all occupy one
waist-high ticket cabinet. A remote unit
prints out reports and audits. The entire
PX fits easily into a five-bank mechanical
ticket issuer cutout, allowing quick
boxoffice retrofits
A multicolored sealed membrane
keyboard is used to sell tickets, take
reports, and display information. The
report/audit printer produces 8 1/2 by
1 1 hard copy of all boxoffice activity. PX
permits the operator to presell tickets
for any showing during the course of the
same day. The number of seats remaining
per showing is constantly available.
PX-I and PX-II can transmit, via telephone
lines, daily theatre information to
the corporate office computer. Optional
items are the patron display, modem for
teleprocessing, an inter-unit communications
package for linking two standalones,
and the MOS package for hooking
the PX up to the Manager's Office Station.
PACER'S service provides for modular
replacement of parts, supported by
a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week national
service organization.
Pacer also offers Dataticket II, a
complete standalone system with pointof-sale
control over admissions, finan-
(contmucd)

COMPUTERS IN EXHIBITION
cial information and, if the teleprocessing
option is exercised, direct corporate
office communications. Special features
include a component that displays the
sale amount and change due, time of
day, and even mo\ne letout times. Eveiy
station is able to sell tickets for every
screen. Since the terminals communicate
with each other, house counts indicate
the current seat capacity as selling
continues from either terminal.
Tickets are printed from fan-fold,
blank paper stock available in a number
of colors. The stock is perforated for
easy stub separation. With the proper
authorization level, each terminal is
equipped to process overpunches or
voids. In addition to function and numeric
keys for simple programming, a 56-
key grid is used to issue tickets from
preset price constants.
intN
icvci.s I ncsi" ic\'cls are keyed to allow
an individual access only to those functions
or data that his or her clearance
warrants. The terminals contain nonresettable
counters of admission totals
and ticket serial numbers.
The various reports generated by
Dataticket II are as follows:
- Cashier Summary, which facilitates
full balancing (l.S seconds)
- Boxoffice Report, which prints full
reports for all screens (1-6 minutes)
- Statistical Summary, which replaces
hourly reports, lists attendance and income
by screen and showtime (15-60
seconds)
- Screen Report, a summary of one
screen's activity (30 seconds)
- General Entries, which prints boxoffice
data plus all manual entries (30 seconds)
- Verify Program, which confirms all
pricing, showtimes, ticket titles, etc. (1-
2 minutes)
- Transmit, an optional enhancement
which can telecommunicate reports to
the corporate oflice (duration variable)
6169.
Theatre
Management
And Accounting
System (TMAS)
The Theatre Management & Accounting
System (TMAS) from the
McAllister Associates, Inc. of Reading,
Mass., is a full-service, on-line interactive
business system designed specifically
to provide instantaneous responses
to an exhibitor's request for
information, processing of data and
management reports. If purchased as a
full package, taking advantage of the
many sub-systems which TMAS offers,
the system wi[\ handle virtually every
bookkeeping task faced by the theatreowner.
The package uses as a foundation the
MAI 2000 Management System, which
is an expandable computer system designed
expressly for today's business
applications. The system features a
powerful 16-bit Motorola MC68010 microprocessor
and utilizes compact VLSI
technology. It can accommodate up to
18 terminals, and additional printers
may be attached to terminal ports or
connected to terminals as slave printers.
The TMAS feature 13 different software
modules, each designed to handle
a different aspect of the exhibitor's
bookkeeping. The inodules, which are
included with the package with a onetime
licensing fee, are:
- Theatre System, which incorporates
all of the data from the Advertising, Box
Office and Flash Systems
- Booking System
- Co-operative Advertising System, to
record all advertising transactions
- Flash (Deposit) System, to record daily
occurtences, such as daily deposits,
weather conditions and deposit totals
- Box Office (Vv'eekly Summary) System,
to generate distributor reports
- General Ledger/Financial Reporting
- Accounts Payable
- Accounts Receivable
- Payroll
- Basic Inventory
- Basic Purchase Order
The Pacer Manager's Office Station
becomes the hub of all theatre information-gathering.
Its Central Processing
Unit contains a single disk drive, but can
be expanded to dual drives if extra storage
capacity is needed. Internal to the
station is an auto-dial, auto-answer modem
to handle automatically all telecommunication
needs. Contact Pacer
- Fixed Assets
at 2210 Canyon Park Blvd., Bothell, WA
98021; 206-481-7200; FAX: 206-485-
- Concession System
The TMAS is curtently being used in
several Hoyts theatres, including the
Cinema Centers, Interstate, and SPC
chains.
Contact McAllister Associates at 274
Main St. #301, Reading, MA 01867; 617-
942-0700.
Theatre
Performance
System (TPS)
Diversified Management Services of
St. Louis now offers the Theatre Performance
System (TPS), an economically-priced
package that offers both
computerized ticketing and point-ofsale
concession input.
In the boxoffice, the TPS Box Office
System offers such features as nonresettable
ticket numbering, accurate
seating counts with a low-level oversell
warning, and a complete detailing of all
monetary transactions for each business
day. TPS also has a security system,
which allows boxoffice personnel to
perform only boxoffice sales functions.
The system can also be told how much
money should be in the cash register,
and will alert the theatre manager when
that amount has been exceeded and
money should be removed. The TPS
boxoffice system operates either as a
standalone system, or it can be integrated
with concession operations, other
theatres, and total corporate communications
reporting.
At the snack bar, the TPS Concession
System provides complete point-of-sale
transactions while at the same time providing
a total inventory tracking system.
To avoid ertors, the terminals prox'ide
both the price and the name of the item
being sold, with the preset keys being
controlled by the theatre manager. This
allows for a product mix of up to 60
keys. The system tracks the recom-
24 BoxoiHtK

HARDWARE
mended portion amounts of concession
items like synip and popcorn, and it
gives actual yields of such items so that
quantities can be modified immediately.
TPS also features a per-capita report,
which compares total ticket sales
against total concession sales, allowing
the theatre manager to see precisely
which concession items contributed the
most to the per-capita figures, and at
what time of day.
In addition to the above, the total TPS
system can perfomi such functions as
electronic spread sheets, employee
scheduling, and word processing.
Contact Diversified Management Services
at 301 Sovereign St., Suite 101, St.
Louis, MO 63011; 314-227-4855.
Theatron Data
Systems, Inc.
Theatron now offers the Mini System
II (MSII), a complete ticketing and
management system designed for
smaller theatres. The Mini System II is
PC-based, with interface to a high-speed
ticket printer for issuing tickets from
blank stock at the point of sale. With up
to a six-screen capacity, the MSII features
up to nine different ticket types,
same-day advance sales, automatic
count of seat availability, a daily audit
log of all boxoflfice transactions, daily
and weekly boxoflfice reports (detail
and summaiy), attendance reports, statistics
by feature and showing, telecommunications,
on-line help screens, and
an emergency ticket procedure.
As a bonus, the selling station doubles
as the manager's station for input of
feature scheduling, employee scheduling,
ticket prices, and generation of
reports. Security features prohibit unauthorized
access to the managerial functions.
Since the system is PC-based,
operation of standard software programs,
such as wordprocessing and
spreadsheets, is possible. Additional options
for the MSII include Theatron's
Concession Terminal System, future
ticket sales, inventory, patron display
and modem.
Contact Theatron at 2633 N. San Fernando
Blvd., Burbank, CA 91504; 818-
848-1814; FAX: 818-848-8317.
CREST SALES OF TEXAS— MOTION PICTURE EQUIPMENT
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Ed Cernosek
1900 S. Central Expressway
Dallas, TX 75215-1309
Response No 22
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Response No 25
September, 1989 25

COMPUTERS IN EXHIBITION
SOFTWARE
C.F. Software
CF Software Unlimited is a consulting
company in Lawrence, Kansas
which designs computer programs for a
number of different business applications.
The company's Multiple Screen
Box Office Repons Program (MSBORP)
grew out of an exhibitor's request for a
system that would help him with the
bookkeeping chores that are unique to a
movie theatre.
The MSBORP system is devoted
almost exclusively to areas relating to
the boxoffice, with only some attention
to concessions. The system can keep
day-to-day records for the snack bar, but
does not keep track of inventory. The
boxoffice system generates distributor
repons based on revenue data fed into
the computer. Since the data is stored
permanently in the computer's files, it's
readily available even if a report is
lost
or destroyed.
CF Software's original boxoffice system
was designed to be used v^ath Radio
Shack's Tandy computers, but the company
has since developed a substantially
identical program that will work with
the more popular IBM-PC, or IBM-compatible
units.
Although theatre applications
are not the principal thrust of CF's
business, the MSBORP has proven itself
a hardy seller. No upgrades are planned,
but a company spokesman says, "If
people want to buy it, we're still happy
to sell it to them."
Contact CF Software Unlimited at
2328 Murphy Dr. #2, Lawrence, KS
66046; 913-749-0490.
Tangent Associates
Tangent Associates is a management
consulting firm that has developed a
number of theatrical software packages
as a result of its relationship with an
exhibitor. The Fort Lauderdale-based
company was first approached by Muvico,
a small independent theatre circuit
in Florida. Muvico was already using a
system designed by Di/An Controls
when they came to Tangent for help
with front office bookkeeping.
Working closely with Di/An and
using their terminals as a foundation.
Tangent designed a complete software
package that works with either the Di/
An hardware or with IBM clones. Depending
on the theatre's budget, the
software can be used to enter data at the
point of sale. It attends to both boxoffice
and concession needs. The boxoffice
software tracks performance statistics
on each film for each screen, and it prepares
distributor reports. Beyond that,
the system can prepare payment schedules
based on the weekly leasing contract
worked out between exhibitor and
distributor. If the theatre-owner is obligated
to pay the distributor 70 percent
the first week, 65 percent the second
week, and 50 percent the third week,
the computer does the math and figures
out how much is owed.
On the concession side. Tangent
offers an inventory control system with
a number of operations, depending on
how a theatre or chain warehouses its
supplies. The Tangent system keeps
track of what's being used up and how
fast — at each individual concession
stand. When supplies get low, a program
reorders automatically. When the new
shipment arrives, the computer can record
the new merchandise and compare
it to the purchase order.
Tv^^ce a year, Tangent issues a computer
disk with all of the major film
releases scheduled for that half of the
year. By feeding this data into his computer
and adding any additional release
information that he may have gathered
from other sources, the exhibitor can
experiment with his schedule and decide
in advance which films should play
best in which theatres.
Contact Tangent at P.O. Box 49-2054,
Fort Lauderdale, FL 33349-2054; 305-
792-3429.
Theatre
Systems
John Hoover, general manager of
Theatre Systems in Green Cove Springs,
Fla., brings both a background in exhibition
and his experience as a C.P.A. to
the software package that his company
has created specifically for the independent
theatre ovmer. As an exhibitor.
Hoover saw a very clear need for a computerized
system that could free the
theatre manager from the mundane
chores of keeping books and preparing
distributor reports. These are repetitive
and time-consuming tasks that any
businessperson can do without, and
Hoover knew that independent theatre
operators don't have that time to
waste.
Theatre Report Writer 2.0, which
works with IBM-PC and IBM-compatible
computers, is an "after-the-fact"
system. Instead of entering the data at
the point of sale, as some more sophisticated
systems do, the information is tallied
by hand during business hours and
fed into the computer after the customers
have left. (Hoover says a point-ofsale
setup from Theatre Systems, with a
PC keyboard overlay, is about a year
away). Improvements over the first version
of Theatre Report Writer include
allowances for up to 99 screens, instead
of only six; room for five prices instead
of four; and a sorting function that permits
managers to track the performances
of films according to rating, studio,
or most any other factor. According
to Hoover, "If I got more than one
request for a particular feature, I've
probably incorporated it."
The after-the-fact setup still requires
more man-hours than turnkey systems,
but the ease of operation and modest
price of the software makes it a viable
budgetary compromise.
Contact Theatre Systems at P.O. Box
1195, Green Cove Springs, FL 32043;
904-284-4267
26 Boxoffice

SOFTWARE
exnibicor
coaitsax
Affordable software NOW ttiat
will:
WinterTek, Inc.
WinterTek, Inc., a computer software
systems company in Lyndhiirst, Ohio,
has responded to the needs of the small
to middle-sized theatre circuit with its
Exhibitor Toolbox. Designed by Russell
Wintner, an engineer with over 12 years
theatre experience at National Theatre
Corporation, the package represents a
comprehensive and well-designed set of
specific programs, or Tools, to solve
common problems plaguing the motion
picture exhibitor.
"Great pains were taken to avoid
writing programs that simply emulate
one company's way of doing things,"
says Wintner. "Rather, the individual
programs approach each task from a
generic point of view and allows each
user to develop his own method of
applying the Tools."
The Exhibitor Toolbox contains a tool
to manage boxoffice and other sales
information; a film rental calculator; an
automatic database for storing film "cutoff'
information; a film Castbook; a
program for maintaining a theatre and
staff directory for the circuit, and more.
Each program has a similar menu system
that won't confuse even the most
timid operator, and the program code is
equipped with several fail-safe mechanisms
that prevent the kinds of computer
errors that other systems might be
susceptible to.
The strong points of any system are
its ability to be easily learned, its dependability,
and the usefulness of the reports
it produces. According to Wintner,
the Exhibitors Toolbox excels in all
three categories.
"Plus," he says, "it speeds up the job
fice with a huge computer make a laborious
task of calculating per-capitas and Contact WinteiTek at 5915 Lander-
ticket prices."
analyzing admission data. Our ETKeypun
Module makes boxoffice and conbrook
Dr. #200, Cleveland, OH 44124;
216-461-9403.
cessions information more usable by
establishing a simple data entry process
that creates a usable database, prints
meaningful reports, and sends balanced
and audited 'dollars only' information
straight to the general ledger all in one
step."
"Our strong point, however, is the
ETAPFilm Module," Wintner continues.
"It features highly sophisticated options
that one wouldn't expect to find on a
personal computer, such as menu level
password security for each user, user
audit trails, automatic database reconstruction
on the off chance of a total
hardware failure, direct linkage to a
standard accounts payable system, and
a report section that allows the user to
design and store his own reports, which
can be printed or shared with a favorite
spreadsheet program or word processor."
The software, which follows the IBM
PC standard and nms on any IBM PC or
clone up to and including the new line
of IBM PS/2's, fits nicely into an otherwise
manual office or one that is
already computerized, according to
Wintner. He also promises what he
terms "lifetime support."
"We recognize that many people
have already spent plenty to computerize
their bookJ^eeping but never found
a good way to handle boxoffice statements
or film rentals," says Wintner,
who believes that the Exhibitor Toolbox
is ideal in that it can meet the exhibitor's
specific bookkeeping needs while
also interfacing with an existing computer
system. "We couldn't see reinvenring
the wheel. There are many
good accounting packages available at
reasonable cost. What's missing in all of
these is a film database, as well as a way
to deal with non-dollar calculations like
concession per-capitas and average
of paying rentals, sometimes by 90 percent,
and makes order out of chaos with
boxoffice data. I have seen one boxof-
• Calculate film rental
• Keep complete settlement
histories
• Allow detailed analysis of film
costs and buying performance
• Detail and analyze sales
• Provide easy input of all box
office and deposit detail
• Provide casfi management
EXHIBITOR TOOLBOXTM will fit in any small to
medium circuit wtietfier computerized already
or not. Best of all, it's written by industry
insiders wtio understand your business.
UJinteRTeK, inc.
TOOLS FOR THE BUSINESS PROFESSIONAL
5915 Landerbrook Drive Suite 200
Cleveland, Ofiio 44124
(216)461-9403
Response No 27
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September, 1989 27

National Cinema Network's
"Cinema Billboards"
Slide Into Our Unconscious
An advertising executive's most difficult
job often isn't planning a creative
strategy' or supervising a video shoot. It's
pinning down the 18-to-40-year-old consumer:
the person who works during the
day, listens to cassettes on the way
home, and in the evening zaps past
commercial interruptions on his VCR.
Now imagine the ad exec's dream commercial
medium. It would provide a
captive audience viewing images much
bigger than life, and plenty of time to
read them. The audience would be
relaxed and expectant, and they might
be in a setting where they could make
purchasing decisions immediately
based on the messages they've received.
National Cinema Network in Kansas
City purports to offer national advertisers
that very scenario with cinema bOlboards.
These big-screen slide presentations
are shown before features at the
movie theatre. They consist of 10-second
messages, including public service
announcements, theatre marketing
messages ("Gift certificates are available")
and entertainment slides, such as
trivia questions.
NCN has found receptivity to the cinema
billboards to be very positive, as
opposed to audience reactions to most
pre-feature rolling stock commercial
messages. "We've found that the moviegoing
experience is one that cannot
be matched at home with rented movies,"
says Richard Walker, vice president
of sales for NCN. "Audiences have
a sense of doing something special
when they go to a movie, and cinema
billboards have fit into that atmosphere
wnthout offending them."
In 1985, with years of advertising and
theatre experience behind them, two
executives joined forces to establish this
new medium for advertising. Four years
later. National Cinema Network may be
the nation's largest manager of cinema
billboard programs, slide presentations
shovm during the pre-feature seating
period at movie theatres. Richard Walker,
vice president of sales, and Robert
Martin, vice president of operations,
may have recognized an untapped medium
for reaching the modem consumer.
Already familiar with the theatre
business, they believed that the positive
moviegoing experience could be an excellent
channel through which to disseminate
information. They established
working relationships with theatre owners,
developed and distributed appropriate
slide projector systems, and
launched their business on 800 screens.
Today, NCN's cinema billboards are
on more than 2,000 theatre screens. By
year's end, NCN anticipates doubling
that screen count. The presentations
offer commercial messages, theatre
marketing slides, upcoming movie titles,
public service announcements, and entertainment
slides, such as trivia questions
and photo images. National advertisers
such as Eagle snacks, Ralston
Purina, and the United States Marine
Corps have already used this network to
reach prime audiences across the country,
and many local advertisers are in
their third year in the program.
Growth has allowed NCN to expand
its sales force into four regional offices.
With approximately 100 employees supporting
sales and operations, the company
maintains cinema billboard programs
in 28 states.
"Advertisers use cinema billboards
for a number of reasons," says Walker.
"This in-theatre advertising medium
provides audience captivity and targeting.
And as far as the bottom line goes,
advertising with cinema billboards is
^
price-competitive, and production costs
are extremely low."
28 BOXOFFICE

SHORT TAKES
New Technologies Help
The Sensory Impaired
Enjoy Movie-Going
New technological developments are
returning hearing- and vision-impaired
customers to the movie theatres in
droves. A few competing firms are putting
the enjoyment back into moviegoing
for the nearly 20 million hearingimpaired
adults and children in the
United States, frequently through the
use of infrared systems that transmit
sound to a headset and portable receiver
worn around the spectator's neck. The
hearing-impaired can now go to selected
theatres and enjoy all the nuances of
a feature film, from the crunch of feet
over gravel to the staccato reports of a
gun battle.
Infrared sound transmission was first
used in legitimate theatres in the 1979
Broadway production of "Peter Pan,"
but it didn't hit the movies until the late
1980s. On June 23, Mann Theatres
opened an eight-screen theatre in Laguna
Niguel complete with the so-called
Audex system, bringing Mann's number
of enhanced screens to 33. The company
opened a nine-theatre complex that
uses the Audex system in San Diego last
Christmas. Cineplex Odeon has several
theatres equipped with infrared systems
made by other companies. And United
Artists has started a pilot program using
a hookup created'by Nady Systems of
Oakland.
The expense can be great, but
theatres are starting to spend up to
$1,000 per screen to make movies more
accessible. Exhibition is so competitive
that a market of millions can't be
ignored. And state governments are
starting to insist on accessibility for the
handicapped. California and Florida are
the first two states to adopt building regulations
demanding that assembly halls
open to the general public be equipped
with assistive listening devices.
It hasn't been an easy battle for the
hearing-impaired. It took three years of
intensive lobbying before California's
regulations were enacted last January,
and they still don't go into effect until
New Year's Day of 1990. Existing buildings
will be exempt unless they are
remodeled.
The Audex system provides hearing
assistance through the use of a portable
personal receiver that is avaOable free
at movie boxoffices. A transmitter is
hooked up to the theatre's sound system.
The transmitter amplifies the signal
as it changes it into infrared light
and beams it across the theatre. The
infrared is invisible to the human eye
and stays within the theatre walls,
which keeps it from interfering with
other neighboring auditoriums. The
beam is intercepted by a small portable
receiver equipped with a lens. The lens
converts the light into electrical energy
so it can be amplified and delivered to
the ears via headphones.
The hard of hearing aren't the only
disabled group to benefit from recent
research and development. AudioVision,
the art of describing film for the
blind or vision-impaired, is a brand new
genre being pioneered at San Francisco
State's School of Creative Arts under a
two-year grant. Acting as a camera lens,
the AudioVision describer objectively
describes those visual elements of set,
character and action not seen clearly, if
seen at all, by the vision-impaired visitor.
San Francisco State now offers
classes in film description for aspiring
Audiovision voices. Currently, no
theatre offers both Audiovision and one
of the assistive listening devices, but it's
only a matter of time. Some theatres
may soon have to review their "No Pets"
policies as seeing-eye dogs become
commonplace movie companions.
Interactive '900' Phone
Numbers Help Studios
Merchandise Films
Fans of Indiana Jones and "Star
Trek" can now brave hostile jungles and
marauding aliens at the push of a button
on their home phones, through a pioneering
nationwide telepromotions
campaign for Hollywood movies. The
campaign, which began in late may for
"Star Trek V: The Final Frontier" and
July for "Indiana Jones and the Last
Crusade," uses caller-paid 900 numbers
to promote interest in selected movies
via an interactive adventure game
pegged to a sweepstakes contest.
Interactive Telemedia, which runs
the 900 lines for the campaign, pronounces
it "Theatre of the Ear." For
example, callers to a 900 number for
"Star Trek V" are greeted by the prerecorded
voice of William Shatner as Captain
Kirk, ready to lead them on one of
six new adventures of the Enterprise.
Callers can determine the crew's fate by
selecting various options for action on
UlUatxc J^^fioxL ^WxLUx
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THEATRE OWNERS & MANAGERS
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REPORTS AND FILES INFORMATION
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(404) 956-7460
Response No 33
September, 1989 29

SHORTTAKES
their touch-tone phones. Those who
dodge the obstacles by pressing correct
answers can receive one of more than
1,000 prizes, including movie posters
and the film's soundtrack album. For
the "Indiana Jones Treasure Hunt"
campaign, which runs through Oct. 31,
each winner is automatically entered in
a final contest for S25,000 in gold coins.
ITM, which calls itself the largest
entertainment telemarketing agency in
the country', expects the use of telepromotions
for the marketing of consumer
goods, services and entertainment to
multiply in the next decade — up to a
projected $3 billion in industry revenue
by 1992, from a mark of $450 million in
the mid-1980s.
"Telepromotions is one of the hottest
buzzwords out there right now," says
Barclay Lottimer, vice president of sales
Interactive Telemedia, about using
for
telemarketing to promote movies.
"We're breaking new ground here, and
it's totally fertile."
According to Lottimer, the average
customer sees about 1,000 ads a day in
various forms — a clutter that interactive
telepromotion avoids by gaining
one-on-one attention from customers.
ITM can handle 30 million call-minutes
a week. With each call lasting two minutes,
that translates into 15 million calls
per week for ITM's entertainment applications.
Companies such as ITM provide their
service with no monetary outlay by the
client. The money invested in scripting,
performing, and plugging in a 900 line is
paid back to the client and the promotions
agency by a carrier company, such
as MCI, which also pockets a chunk for
itself In addition to the revenues,
clients can gain valuable demographic
and "psychographic" information, such
as a person's age, sex and address, for
the "Star Trek V" campaign. Paramount
licensed the rights to ITM for an openended
campaign that could last through
the end of the year. Although both films
involved are from Paramount, ITM's
"ongoing working relationship" with the
studio is non-exclusive, and negotiations
are reputedly under way with Universal
and Carolco, among others.
Computer Database
Mailing List Maizes
Entertainment PR Easy
Looking for an inexpensive way to
create a publicity campaign for your
low-budget, independent film? Want to
publicize your latest product, that item
you think wall revolutionize the moviegoing
experience? Need to create a little
national interest in your circuit or
chain? With the aid of a computer and a
mailing list, national publicity campaigns
are only limited by the postage
funds in your bank account and a little
ingenuity in the vmting of a presentable
press release.
The most important part of any publicity
campaign is the press mailing list:
those thousands of contacts around the
country who might mention your organization,
product or service on their TV or
radio show, or in their newspaper or
magazine. But putting together such a
list can be a major undertaking, and
"renting" a list from a "list house" an
expensive venture. Which is why Ron
Gold of Santa Monica, Calif, has put
together his That's Art + Entertainment,
a computer mailing label database
of some 2,700 entertainment press
contacts.
The list, which comes on a single
floppy disk (for IBM-compatible computers),
contains complete information
further merchandising efforts.
Interactive Telemedia is also working
to develop a system to prevent abuse of
on contacts at approximately 703 radio
stations, 510 TV stations, 1072 newspapers,
telepromotions, especially by minors.
389 magazines, and 57 news ser-
"Our own internal monitoring system vices and independent columnists. In
and software automatically identifies addition to trade and consumer magazine
repeated calls from the same number of
origin," says company president Kayes editors and TV talk show program
contacts, the list targets those responsible
Ahmed. Calls to the "Star Trek" line
confirmed that more than two dialings for editing film, theatre, art, dance,
music and video sections of the publications
listed.
of the game number on any given day
are not put through.
Television commercials for the
The database comes in ASCII format
(uncoded text) ready to be converted
Indiana
Jones $25,000 Instant Win campaign
into a format suitable for use by your
were produced by J2 Productions, favorite word processing program for
with U.L. Blair as the sales promotion the creation of personalized letters and
agency handling legal, administrative labels. The information can also be
and judging elements of the program. J2
is in turn sublicensed by Lucasfilm. For
imported into the dBase database program
for further refinement. For more
information on That's Art -f Entertainment
contact Gold at 1341 Ocean Ave.,
Suite 366, Santa Monica, CA 90401; 213-
399-7938.
Nightsounds for
Commuters
We don't typically review audio tapes
in BoxoFFiCE, but Nightsounds, a 90
minute audio tape, isn't your typical
run-of-the-mill audio tape. No, it's not
an intermission sound effects tape; it's
an aural anthology of tales of horror and
suspense that we think just might be an
interesting addition to the merchandising
sections of many theatres.
Published and distributed by Embassy
Cassette Inc. of Santa Ana, Calif, the
tape is designed for the harried commuter
in mind: five original, weird tales,
each running 15 to 20 minutes in length
so that a listener can enjoy a complete
story in the average time it takes to
drive to or from work. Though Nightsounds
is reminiscent of old-time radio
shows (in the tradition of "Lights Out"
and "Inner Sanctum"), Embassy has
created a whole new listening experience
with digital sound effects and musical
scores. The five stories on Nightsounds
nm the gamut from a story
about telepathic powers to a tale about a
werewolf on a Nazi submarine to a
thriller about a hijacked airliner.
Though die-hard horror aficionados
should have no problem figuring out the
twast endings of these stories well before
they're over, the sound effects and
professional acting make each tale a
spell- binding listening experience: we
didn't want to end our commute untO
each stoiy had come to it's conclusion.
The Nightsounds tapes could be an
extra income generator for theatres if
displayed and sold during the run of
such films as "Friday the 13th," "A
Nightmare on Elm Street," or any other
horror or thriller film appearing at Halloween
time. The tapes carry a disclaimer,
however: "Warning! Lock your
car doors before listening to this tape!"
For more information on Nightsounds,
contact Steven Sanders at 3617 W. Mac
Arthur, Suite 500, Santa Ana, CA 92704;
800-541-8899, 800-331-1132 (in California)
or 714-557-5757.
30 BOXOFFICE

SHOWMANDISER
Roy Dunkelbarger (center) with the Arizona Civil War Council.
South rose again in the West
THEwhen the newly-restored version
of "Gone With the Wind" rolled
into Scottsdale, Ariz, in May. The film
had played in Scottsdale only three
years ago to mediocre business, but this
time — thanks to the always-innovative
promotional skills of Harkins Theatres
— the epic movie earned grosses commensurate
with its legendary status.
Plajring in the same theatre that it
played in in 1986, "Gone With the
Wind" this time around tripled the
amount of money that it took in during
its previous swing through town.
Credit goes to Harkins Theatres manager
Roy Dunkelbarger, who decided to
celebrate the rerelease of the 50-yearold
film by restaging the CivO War at
Counsel even provided a small company
of authentically dressed soldiers to complete
the picture. Counsel leader Terry
Leavy used a Civil War saber to cut a
birthday cake celebrating the film's
50th anniversary.
Local NBC affiliate Channel 12 covered
the event for its 10:00 p.m. newscast,
running a four-minute spot which
was estimated to have reached over
110,000 homes. Scottsdale Mayor Herb
Drinkwater joined in the festivities;
John Gable, the son of "GWTW" star
Clark Gable, was in the area shooting a
movie in Phoenix, but was unable to
attend the gala.
"The effect of shov^onanship is often
hard to measure," says Dan Harkins,
president and owner of the circuit,
which prides itself on its aggressive
point-of-purchase promotions. "In this
case, however, it is clear that a theatre
manager's hard work has increased attendance
300 percent, and helped keep
Harkins' Kachina Theatre. Incorporating
the help of the Arizona Civil War screen."
am
alive a classic film deserving of the big
Counsel, Dunkelbarger and his crew
were able to decorate the theatre's lobby
in full Civil War regalia, and the
The 87th Convention of the AUDIO ENGINEERING SOCIETY
OCTOBER 18-21,1989
NEW YORK
AUDIO
for^the next decadeMnd beyond
AUDIO ENGINEERING SOCIETY
New York Hilton & New York Sheraton Centre
60 East 42nd Street, Room 2520, New York, New York 10165
Fax: 21 2-682-0477 Telephone: (21 2) 661 -8528 or (800) 541-7299 (n. America, e.cept ny)
September, 1989 31

Shrunk
NATIONAL NEWS
Hemdale, Kopelson
Let Saigons Be Saigons
Alter nearly two years ot litigation. Hemdale
and producer Arnold Kopelson have settled
suits involving the proceeds from "Platoon."
Kopelson refused to confirm speculation
that he had pocketed close to $20 million
in the settlement. He had charged that he was
owed at least $25 million in overdue "Platoon"
payments He also alleged fraud,
breach of contract, and fraudulent concealment
of funds, but that's all over now. Daly
and Kopelson are hoping to engage in future
business, "now that their disputes have been
put behind them."
June Wards Off
Boxoffjce Cleaver
Domestic tllm boxoftice records dropped
like aitches in
a pub, as the national gross for
lune shot past $770 million It was the biggest
lune ever. )une was tht' biggest month ever
One statistic even set luo reiords $ l'-»7 million for the third week in lune marked not only the
most lucrative week in Hollywood history,
The half-year (26-week) running tally lor
1989 is a record $2.42 billion, up more than
11"u from a year ago. Should the second half
of the year merely equal that of 1988, the
final 1989 national boxoffice total would be
but the following week it set the record for
the shortest-lived record in Hollywood history,
when a take of $209 million surpassed it.
The top three pictures were Batman
'
"Indiana
lones and the Last Crusade and
Chostbusters II
The Thin Blue Bottom Line
Randall Dale A(Jams may not sue the director
of "The Thin Blue Line," the film that got
him off death row and out of jail, after all.
Director Errol Morris had said that he was
"hurt and upset" by the threatened suit, in
which Adams sought to gain future film rights
to his life story. Adams contended that Morris
lost his rights to the life story last December,
when he failed to renew the two-year option
he purchased from Adams for $10 In December
of 1986.
$4.7 billion, a new annual peak nearly h'\,
ahead of last year's $4.46 billion.
Other top hits last month were; "DeadPoets Society Star Trek V Honey the
Kids Field ol Dreams See No Evil Hear
No Evil No Holds Barred Road House,"
and The Karate Kid Part The exact
III
national gross in lune was $770 3 million from
at nearly 174 3 million tickets sold a composite
ticket price of $4.42. Comparable data a
year earlier were $557.6 million,
and only $4.09.
Vestron Unstrung!
141.5 million,
.Approximately 140 starters and executives
at the financially ailing Vestron Pictures were
given their walking papers lune 29. Anticipating
the bad news - which passed over the
home video, television and international divisions
- company personnel at Vestron's
Stamford, Connecticut headquarters uncorked
champagne in an attempt to revive
sagging spirits Vestron Pictures will retain a
skeletal staff to handle current projects
Coming Soon
To a Living Room Near You
ABC will launch a major campaign this summer
to promote new fall shows on theatre
screens across the country The unprecedented
campaign will begin in August ABC's
access to the big screen stems from an agreement
with Screenvision, the nation's largest
independent broker of screen advertising.
Screenvision has advertising contracts with
exhibitors representing 5,644 screens, or 31%
of all screens in America. ABC expects the
promotion to reach an audience of about 27
million
Exhibs Get Their
Two Per Cent's Worth
You'd think exhibitors showing "Batman"
would have enough to crow about, what
with all those big concession sales now, and
possibly bigger theatrical income later, once
the picture's accounts are settled with Warner
Brothers. But it's another avenue to revenue
has these same exhibs smiling joker-wide
smiles In a previously untried component of
Warners' mammoth merchandising campaign,
ushers have been handing out brochures
for "Batman" collectibles and gifts to
patrons as they buy tickets Stamped on the
brochure's order box is an ID. code
(AMC001 for AMC, CTYOOl for City Cinemas,
etc ) that guarantees the participating
chain a two per cent commission on items
sold from brochures distributed at their
theatres.
The potential is in place for WB to enlarge
its merchandising income, and for exhibitors
to get a nice piece of change for their time
and trouble One source said Warners is
receiving
1,000 orders a day, and orders are
mostly in excess of $75 each. It didn't hurt
that the pamphlet was also sealed inside
People magazine the week "Batman"
opened; there's no telling how many order
blanks were coded PEPOOl. Marketing execs
at the nation's two largest theatre chains,
UATC and AMC, received approximately
two million brochures apiece U.ATC's Criterion
five-plex in Times Square went through
65,000 in a week The ploy makes in-theatre
merchandising virtually unnecessary. That aspect
of the program has some exhibitors so
32 BOXOKKKK

pleased that they're handing out brochures in
all their theatres, whether they're playing
"Batman" or not.
A Large with Everything
Spike Lee's controversial "Do the Right
Thing," a Universal release, opened without
incident the weekend of lune 30-|uly 2, and a
sizable audience is debating the issues raised
by the film. Nationally, "Do the Right Thing"
grossed $3 5 million in its first three days on
353 screens. In the racially volatile New York
metropolitan area, where the film is set, the
tilm racked up a $13,714 per-screen average.
"Do the Right Thing" is set in the predominantly
black and Hispanic Bedford-Stuyvesant
district on one of Brooklyn's famous summer
dog day afternoons. A dramatic comedy that
has received overwhelmingly favorable reviews,
it deals with neighborhood life and the
mounting tensions among an Italian pizzeria
proprietor, his black deliveryman (Lee), and
the locals who frequent the place The friction
escalates into police brutality and the
torching of the pizza parlor Consequently,
the extensive pre-release media coverage of
"Do the Right Thing" focused largely on
whether Lee was advocating violence as a
justifiable reaction to racism. In Newsweek,
which took the highly unusual step of running
separate pro and con reviews, critic lack Kroll
committed the cardinal sin of film criticism by
trying to predict the future, a tactic sure to
make even the best critic look like a fool
when the future fails to cooperate. In Kroll's
case, his clairvoyant observation that "this
movie is dynamite under every seat" looked
pretty myopic by Monday
Releases Off in First Half
Feature film releases for the first six months
of the year were down 17"o from last year at
that time, with 225 new films debuting domestically.
This pace is about the same as it was
five years ago. American independent pictures
are down 25°> compared to the past
two years. Statistics illustrate the steadiness of
the major distributors, both in quantity and
type of films released. The number of saturation
bookings by the majors was identical for
1988 and 1989; 36 pictures during each first
half, or 50''o of the maprs' total output.
Beneath this level, 13 films from the majors
had 500-999 prints in circulation at their peak
so far in 1989, compared to only six in this
category last year These medium-sized runs
are described as "Nervous A's," industry parlance
for films that fall between the traditional
"A" and "B" stools.
Eleven films in 1989 received 150-499-print
runs, compared to seven last year This year
the group was heavily populated by MCM/
UA pickups, several of which were low-budget
films acquired mainly for ancillary uses
such as pay-cable delivery. Besides foreignlanguage
films (mainly from Orion Classics),
marginal releases from the majors tended to
be pickups, like the Lorimar and Handmade
productions distributed by Warners. Among
the struggling
independent companies, only
five films in 1989 have received 1000-print
breaks, of which New Line's "No Holds
Barred" has been the most successful.
Kiser Rolls on Promo Tour
In a summer where 20th Century Fox is
one of the '^w majors without a presold
sequel among its releases, its publicity and
promotion staff is working overtime to get
the public and press to notice its films. For
"Weekend at Bernie's," their comedy starring
Andrew McCarthy and lonathan Silverman,
Fox is sending around a six-foot, 30-lb.
"corpse" made up to look like Terry Kiser,
the actor who plays the stars' murdered boss
through most of the film.
For the tour, two lifelike dummies were
constructed of latex, hard plastic and aluminum,
at a cost of $20,000. One "Bernie" is
visiting several U.S. cities, while the other one
travels around director Ted Kotcheff's native
Canada Besides meeting the press for
lunches (where questions directed at America's
Bernie were handled by Steve Silva, Fox'
Northeast assistant manager for publicity and
promotion), Bernie also takes in the sights,
with rubberneckers receiving handbills promoting
the film. In Boston, Bernie rode the
swan boats through Boston Common; in DC.
he received clearance for a tour of the White
House. He is also doing electronic media, with
an appearance scheduled for "Good Day,
New York."
EASTERN NEWS
New York
An argument between two men over who
was first
in a popcorn line before the start of
the movie "Batman" ended in a deadly shootout
at National Amusements' Whitestone
Multiplex Cinemas in the Bronx. Police said
that during the argument, one man threatened
to get a gun from his car. The victim,
21-year-old Sean Victor Worrell, told him to
"go ahead," then got his popcorn and took a
seat inside. During trailers, before the lights
had gone down completely, the gunman
returned, found a seat, spotted Worrell and
yelled, "Hey, are you the guy with the popcorn?"
They both stood up and the guns
came out. Worrell squeezed off one shot
from a .38-caliber handgun; his assailant fired
two shots, one of which struck Worrell in the
head. No one else was hurt. The gunman
fled. Sean Worrell was pronounced dead at
the scene
Boston
Showcase Cinemas is bringing back the
Swap 'n' Shop Flea Market on Sundays in the
parking lot of its multiplex in Revere The
bazaar was a popular attraction 15 years ago,
but lost its foothold when the Revere expanded
from three screens to 10...
The Five Star Theatre in Palmer, currently
used for cold storage, will now be converted
to six subsidized housing units...
Showcase Cinemas arranged a special
showing of "Batman" for singer Ion Bon lovi,
who was in the Boston area performing The
lovial One had called National Amusements,
owners of Showcase, with his request, and
was granted a 2 AM. screening for him and
his wife Questioned about this seemingly
preferential treatment accorded a multimillionaire
rock star who wanted to see a movie
the rest of us have waited in line for hours to
see, a Showcase spokesman said, "Favoritism'
Nothing of the kind. No one ever asked
before" ...
New Bedford, MA
The historic Zeiterion Theatre will continue
operations, owing to positive community response
to the "Save the Zeiterion" campaign.
Since March 21, hundreds of volunteers have
raised $123,525 in cash donations, with another
$28,000 in committed pledges. It is estimated
that another $25,000 will accrue to the
campaign from scheduled fundraising activities
yet to take place, and outstanding phone
pledges. Over 5,000 donors have contributed.
The campaign officially ended on May 31,
but many volunteers continue to work on
eliminating the theatre's debt, hoping to generate
$50,000 more.
Philadelphia
The Colonial Theatre, last movie house in
South Philly, has quietly closed The theatre
was the last in a neighborhood once blessed
with a profusion of movie palaces, including
the Bell, Breeze, Broadway, Empress, Grand,
lackson, jerry. Lyric, Penn, Plaza, President,
and the Venice The 954-seat Colonial, a L-
shaped terra cotta brick building, belonged to
Remington Fox of Fox Enterprises It opened
in 1910 as a nickelodeon, and closed after a
second-run showing "Troop Beverly Hills " In
1939, there were more than 165 singlescreen
in theatres Philadelphia Only a few
remain; the Capital in West Philadelphia, and
the Devon in the Mayfair neighborhood. ..
The major chains are covetously eyeing
the Philadelphia market, which is thought to
be seriously underscreened General Cinema
IS building a 10-screen theatre on Woodhaven
Road, in the Northeast section of the city.
Ramon Posel, who operates the five-screen
Ritz Theatre, plans another five-screen Ritz
just a block away. AMC, which has an eightplex
at Granite Run and a niner in Montgomeryville,
will put up at least 30 more screens in
the area - eight in Philly, 10 in Springfield,
and 12 in Willow Grove, More in South lersey
may follow Meanwhile, developer Bart Blatstein,
builder of the $70 million Riverview
Complex of apartments, office space and
shops, said that a multiplex will go up behind
Reading, PA
After almost three years of dormancy. Fox
Theatres' Sinking Spring Drive-ln will has
opened again as a first-run movie theatre.
Currently,
there are only 75 drive-in screens
operating in Pennsylvania The regular billing
will be a double feature, but Fox has brought
back the popular "Dusk to Dawn" shows,
screening four or five different movies all
night for Memorial Day, Independence Day
and Labor Day
The theatre's 140-foot screen, which was
September, 1989 33

the largest in existence when it was built in
1956. remains the largest on the East Coast
even today, in the age of IMAX New projection
equipment was installed, and the screen
got a fresh coat of white paint Transmitters
broadcast a movie's soundtrack over 530 AM
on the car radio Patrons with lousy reception
can gel transistor radios free of charge at the
concession stand Novelties at the concession
stand include pizza, steak sandwiches, french
fries cooked in 100",, vegetable oil. Dove
Bars, and Chilly Willies, Speaking of willies,
vending machines in men's and women's
restrooms will promote the use of condoms,
as will the accompanying slogan, 'Wrap That
Rascal "
On Saturdays and Sundays from March
through November, the 1,000-car drive-in
becomes the site of the largest flea market in
Berks County. Several hundred sellers set up
their wares on unlimited space for $5 each
day.
returns to $2.
The historic Ohio Theatre has a custommade
26' X 48'screen this year, its first new
screen in 20 years. The Ohio's summer film
series started June 21 with a 50th anniversary
showing of "Gone With the Wind".
.
Randall Dale Adams, whose murder conviction
was questioned in "The Thin Blue
Line," does not feel fully vindicated by his
recent release Adams and filmmaker Errol
Morris fielded comments from about 300
people who attended a special screening of
the film in Columbus recently. Although Adams
is free, it appears unlikely that he will
receive a new trial He means to spread his
story widely, hoping it will keep others safe
from false imprisonment.
As for writer-director Morris, he has been
deluged with letters from inmates proclaiming
their innocence. Although gratified by his part
in Adams' exoneration, he swore, "No more
miscarriage-of-)ustice films for me."....
redeeming social importance are not obscene.
The restored "Gone With the Wind" was
named best film of the 1989 Cleveland Film
Festival, Last year's "The Beast" was named
best new film, Cleveland native and festival
attendee Dale Pollock produced "The
Beast "
Kansas City, KN
Robert Maes, the pipe organist turned
entrepreneur who has reclaimed the Kansas
City's Granada Theatre as a performing arts
center, plans to extend the concept to other
eastern Kansas towns His first step in that
direction was the recent purchase at a tax
sale of the dilapidated Emporia Granada,
about 100 miles southwest of Kansas City, for
only $950 Maes estimates that it will take
Flicker's Cinema Pubs has opened its second
"theatre-restaurant, " Flicker's East, in the
about $875,000 to rehabilitate the old structure,
whose roof is almost caved in, and is
Washington, O.C.
A skin house two blocks from the White
House has become the victim of urban development.
Workmen have entered the Casino
Royale, last theatre in downtown Washington
showing X-rated pornographic movies, to
prepare it for demolition. The theatre and an
adjoining adult
bookstore are giving way to
an office building. Two other theatres in the
Washington area still show full-length adult
films. One is in the Northeast part of the capital,
the other reportedly in a shopping mall in
the city's Virginia suburbs.
Baltimore
The Liberty Twins Cinemas, inactive for
several years, reopened in July as the $1 Cinemas,
Admission to the four screens will be
$1 at all times. Old seats and equipment will
be replaced, Tom Herman, formerly with
Loew's Theatres, and jack Fruchtman, whose
)F Theatres once owned a chain of Baltimore
houses (most of which were acquired by
Loew's). are jointly responsible for this Liberty
Road renaissance. ..
MIDWEST NEWS
Columbus
The Grandview Theatre, a nabe house
which had been offering foreign and independent
films, has returned to second-run
programming The move was made because
so many of the primary distributors are drastically
reducing the number of films they
release, said Drcxel theatres owner left Frank,
who had been scheduling the Grandview
since October of 1988 Booking chores for
the Grandview now revert to the management
team of the Yorkland Theatre, owner
of the restored suburban venue. With the
format change, admission to the Grandview
former Forum Theatre. The new operation is
similar to the original Flicker's at Bethel Center,
where viewers sit at tables and can order
food from a menu while watching secondrun
features. The opening bill at Flicker's East
included "Beaches," "The Dream Team,"
and "Rain Man," Admission is $3, and a nightly
buffet goes for $5,95,,,,
The derelict Linden Drive-ln has provided a
dumping ground for nine barrels of toxic
waste, which were found to be leaking a
potentially hazardous cleaning agent The
Ohio Environmental Protection Agency
showed up to cart away the spent solvent.
Dayton
Chakeres Theatres has signed a consent
agreement to stop showing X-rated movies at
its Skyborn Dnve-ln, The accord resolved a
dispute with County Prosecutor William
Schenck, who had filed a civil suit claiming
that the Skyborn allowed juveniles to enter
the premises and was a public nuisance. The
suit followed a raid in which three X-rated
films - "Ring of Passion," "Strip Tease," and
"The Psychiatnst" - were seized, Chakeres
attorney James Brandabur said that the exhibitor
wanted out of the blue movie business
anyway,,,.
Film critic Terry Lawson of the Dayton Daily
News was named Best Feature Writer in
the second annual "Best of Cox" awards,
which recognize the 18 papers in the Atlantabased
Cox Newspapers chain. His citation
honored stories about actors Sean Penn and
Anthony Michael Hall, and carries a $1,000
stipend, Lawson also won an honorable mention
in the Best Writer category
Cleveland
The Coventry Cinema is likely to stay dark.
Until closing last August, the cinema was a
highlight of Coventry Road's busy nightlife.
specialized in art films, Louis K, Sher, president
of the Art Theatre Guild, wants
$250,000 for the 19 16 building, which houses
the theatre, four stores, and five apartments,
A manager's arrest for showing Louis Malle's
"The Lovers" led to the US Supreme Court's
landmark ruling in 1964 that works with
It
negotiating with the Emporia City Council for
a grant of $175,000 to begin the project The
rest of the money would be raised through
private donations, possibly with a special fundraising
campaign
Maes got into restoration because of his
interest in reclaiming a grand old theatre
organ It was installed in the K C, Granada at a
cost of $25,000, and remains a mainstay of its
entertainment programming. Many of the
elements of Kansas theatre's success could be
duplicated at the Emporia Granada, with the
advantage of booking entertainers and acts
for longer stands, Maes is planning beyond
Emporia, with his eyes on the shell of the old
Fox Theatre in Salina about 135 miles west of
Kansas City,
St. Louis
Wehrenberg Theatres has expanded its
CineCentral Telephone Service, The service
was begun in 1977 to provide callers with
digital-quality audio coming attractions
showtimes and theatre locations. Now, all 16
local Wehrenberg Theatres are included on
the line, which is accessible to all touch-tone
phone users free 24 hours a day, 7 days a
week. The number remains (314) 822-4900,
With 24 incoming lines, the modified service
can handle well over a thousand calls an hour
without a busy signal
SOUTHERN NEWS
Gloucester, VA
Paul Carroll of the Hillside Cinema won an
RCA stereo color TV from SMART Theatre
Systems for his winning entry in
their contest
to name the new SMART subwooter product
line An ad run in BcAotncE generated over
200 responses, out of which Carroll's "The
Big Bad Woof" was judged the best Two
identical submissions were received at a later
dale from Carl Cook of Richmond, Indiana
3-4 U()\()lll(^

I
and ),W. Williams of Knoxvilie, Tennessee.
Each won a consolation prize
Miami
AMC's Kendall Town and Country 10-plex
in Southwest Miami is one of the city's highest-grossing
venues, drawing one million patrons
during the last fiscal year, and Wometco
wants a piece of that action. On luly 7
Wometco opened its Kendall 9, a 2 100-seat
spread hardly a stone's throw from the AMC
"Lethal Weapon H" premiered in the Kendall
9's two largest chambers (350 and 450 seats)
In keeping with an agreement between the
two companies, no film will play in both complexes
at the same time.
Sarasota
The Sarasota French Film Festival, an event
to be held annually beginning November 14-
19, 1989, will be the first US. festival devoted
solely to French films. French officials have
long been seeking a permanent location lor a
festival to increase the visibility of French film
in America The French government has
offered considerable support in contributions
and in-kind services, while the Florida State
Legislature has appropriated $250,000 to assist
in funding the festival.
Ocala, FL
Wometco Theatres will replace its triplex in
Ocala with a six-screen complex. The new
16,550-square-foot theatre will be incorporated
into Phase II of the Ocala Shopping
Center, and should open in time for the 1990
summer movie season. The current Ocala Triple,
located in the older section of the shopping
center, will remain in operation until
then. The six-plex will feature Dolby sound in
every auditorium, Tivoli strip lighting, cupholder
seats, and a computerized boxoffice
with advance ticket sales. Wometco first
opened its Ocala Theatre in 1971.
WESTERN NEWS
Los Angeles
Cineplex Odeon has completed the second
round of renovations to the Beverly Center
Cinemas. The refurbishment took in the
lobby and 10 of 13 theatres The 1,866-seat
complex originally opened in luly of 1982 as
the first Cineplex Odeon theatre built in the
United States. A 1987 workover added 500-
and 350-seat auditoriums
Cineplex redecorated the complex in pastel
shades of mauve, green, grey and peach,
with matching pure wool carpeting and lobby
lighting. Dolby Stereo Sound Systems are
now in all auditoriums. With the installation of
100 new |BL speakers and new amps, an
additional 4,000 watts of sound power are
now available ...
As part of a plan for preservation of seven
of the 10 Metropolitan Theatre outlets in
downtown LA., the other three have been
marked for the wrecking ball The Arcade,
Cameo and Roxy will die, that the United Artists,
Los Angeles, Loews State, Palace, Million
Dollar, Olympic and Orpheum might live. The
Los Angeles Historic Theatre Foundation may
resist the tradeoff. They have applied to the
National Endowment for the Arts for a
$100,000 grant to fund a feasibility study
exploring the preservation of all
15 theatres in
the Broadway district. The area has already
been named to the National Register of Historic
Places.
Metropolitan has entered into an agreement
with a buyer to convert the contiguous
Roxy and Arcade theatres into an office building
with underground parking. Discussions
are also under way for sale of the Cameo,
which would be razed to make room for
another office building with an adjacent parking
lot. Metropolitan president Bruce Corwin,
whose family has been active in downtown
exhibition for 65 years, is meeting with some
of LA'S stage companies to encourage the
use of certain Broadway houses for legitimate
theatre...
Ground was broken March 31 for the Hollywood
Promenade Project, a four-story
complex on Hollywood Boulevard slated for
completion late in 1991, and destined to
house the long-in-the-works American Cinematheque.
Ex-FILMEX showman Gary Essert
envisions screening 2,800 films or so a year.
The Cinematheque will host film series the
way museums host exhibitions, with half the
programs to be created in-house, and half
touring from around the world.
A temporary Cinematheque saddled with
the nickname "Temp'theque", which unfortunately
makes it sound like a secretahal
school, launched its regular public programming
June 9 at the new Directors Guild building
with Amnesty International's "Close-Up
on Human Rights," featuring 27 fictional and
documentary films and videos surveying
ongoing human-rights abuses worldwide.
This program, the first of many to be shown
on the second weekend of every month
while the permanent site is under construction,
drew healthy crowds for both the films
and the heated discussions afterward. Future
attractions include tributes to Kirk Douglas
and Milos Forman; investigations of comedy
craft, motion picture design, politics in media,
and sex at the movies; and a retrospective of
the works of Gabriel Axel, director of "Babette's
Feast,"
Bonsall, CA
CinemaCal Enterprises, with a chain of
theatres throughout central and northern California,
has signed a $4 million, 20-year lease
for an 18,000-sq.-ft. six-plex at River Village
Site preparation is under way, with construction
scheduled to begin in August, and the
first phase slated for completion next summer.
River Village is a 25-acre shopping and
entertainment center developed by Centrumlnvest,
one of Northern Europe's leading
developers and managers of shopping centers,
hotels and restaurants The Bonsa complex
is the firm's first venture in the Uriited
States. The company was established iii 1969
and belongs |ointly to the Swedish National
Personnel Fund, company management, and
Folksam, Sweden's third largest insurance
company.
Orinda, CA
One of the last Art Deco movie palaces
built in California, the Orinda Theatre opened
its doors for the first time in a decade over
the Fourth of )uly weekend. Kaplan/
McLaughlin/Diaz (KMD), a leading architectural
firm specializing in
restoration and preservation,
engineered the refit Depicting
Earth, Wind, Fire and Water in vibrant colors,
the original murals of Anthony Heinsbergen
have been restored under the supervision of
independent mural conservator Ann Rosenthal
The stylized neon pylon of the 650-seat
movie house, built in 1941, still dominates the
main street of Orinda
Exterior renovation work involved repairing
the fabric of the pylon tower and repainting
it in its original red, yellow and green;
restoring the neon lights and marquee; installing
replicas of the original front doors; and
reconstructing the outdoor terrazzo paving,
incorporating a new panel patterned after the
original 1941 design motif While the existing
Art Moderne women's powder room has
been preserved, a toilet for the handicapped
has been added next to the foyer. KMD also
brought the building up to current code standards
for seismic and fire
requirements.
Like many old theatres, the Orinda fell
into
disrepair in the 1970s. In 1981 it became the
center of a controversy between developers
and preservationists which lasted seven
years. The outcome has involved the revamped
theatre as anchor to a new 90,000-
square-foot retail/restaurant/office complex
under development by Wallace Olson Associates
of Moraga. The reopened movie palace
will be operated by Allen Michaan, owner
of Renaissance Rialto Theatres, a sixtheatre
Bay Area chain.
Rancho Cucamonga, CA
The 10'\, admissions tax in this California
town has been thrown out by the State Court
of Appeal in San Bernardino County, reversing
a Superior Court decision which had
upheld the levy. As in the case of earlier successful
fights to void admission taxes in the
California towns of Montclair and Pleasant
Hill, the appellate court held the tax on
moviegoers to be an unconstitutional violation
of First Amendment rights guaranteeing
freedom of expression
Fargo, ND
The Fargo Theatre celebrated Chaplin's
birthday by staging one of their grandest
silent movie nights ever. Lance Johnson performed
an original score for "The Gold Rush"
at the console of the Fargo's Wurlitzer pipe
organ Douglas Hamilton of KTHI television
wore the emcee's tux, and Hildegarde Kraus
September, 1989 35

fans
played the grand piano in
the lobby betore
the show and during intermission. Classic
antique automobiles from the Red River Valley
Horseless Carnage Club gleamed at the
curb out front
As it a calendar of second-run and revival
programming, free infrared listening aids, and
the Mighty Wurlitzer Theatre Pipe Organ
weren't enough to lure entertainment-hungry
North Dakotans, the Fargo Theatre now has
70mm proiection equipment, thanks in part
to a grant from Great Plains Software
Maiestic (451 seats), the Olympia (298 seats),
the Bijou (254 seats), and the Alto, Palace and
Rio (238 seats) Famous Players reported fast
movement for merchandise connected with
"Batman," "Star Trek V." "Indiana Jones and
the Last Crusade." and even "Road House."
"
even though "Batman was the only picture
actually showing there It played on two
screens, as did "Dead Poets Society," for
which the merchandising campaign has been
light, and "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids." Oakville
is a bedroom community on the outskirts of
Toronto
Pictures Entertainment, overseeing matters
pertaining to film production, distribution,
television, home entertainment, copyright infringement
and piracy. He also has experience
in site selection, lease negotiations and
property management Benjamin even
served as property manager of 7 1 1 Fifth Avenue
in New York City, where Columbia maintains
its corporate headquarters A graduate
of Hunter College and Brooklyn Law School,
Beniamin and his wife Phyllis live in
New York.
Bardonia,
Colorado
In a surprise move on June 2 1, Colorado's
House Finance Committee killed the proposed
3 '.. tax on amusement and entertainment
in favor of a 3",, food tax A 6-5 vote
reportedly followed two hours of objections
from members of the exhibition and skiing
industries.
Houston
The City of Houston Health Department is
administering free children's immunizations
during the summer at various General Cinema
theatres in Houston. Each Wednesday from 9
a.m. to 1 p.m., nurses give shots against measles,
mumps, polio, tetanus, diphtheria, pertussis
and rubella
"
Angry "Batman grew violent and
rocked a KLC)L-FM radio van, shouting obscenities
and disrupting transmission, after it was
learned that the station had issued too many
free tickets
San Antonio
Three gunmen robbed the Embassy XIV
Theatre, operated by A-3 /Santikos, as employees
were closing up at 4 AM the morning
of lune 25 The culprits filled a large trash
can with an undisclosed amount of cash, and
also took wallets and watches from employees,
threatening to kill anyone who called
the police, police said. .
The Guadalupe Theatre's foreign and classic
film series is in limbo until the city-owned
and -operated venue can find a replacement
for Linda Cuellar, who resigned as manager in
lune This leaves the Alamo City with only
one open art theatre, the Unserhaus
CANADIAN NEWS
Oakville, ONTARIO
Famous Players launched the new Oakville
Town Center Cinemas six-plex June 23, featuring
the first Famous Movie Shop memorabilia
outlet in the Oakville area The Torontobased,
454-screen circuit installed Dolby
spectral recording in all six individually
themed and decorated auditoriums; the
INTERNATIONAL NEWS
ISRAEL - The High Court of Justice voted
unanimously to overrule the Censorship
Board's ban on "The Last Temptation of
Christ." It is a ruling from which there is no
appeal
LONDON - British
distributors are pressing
for the immediate introduction of a "12" certificate
that would allow millions of teenagers
to see the current lames Bond picture, "License
to Kill," and such upcoming releases as
"Three Fugitives" and "K-9." They argue that
a 12 rating (children under 12 not admitted) is
needed to bridge the gap between PC (parental
guidance suggested, but everyone admitted)
and " 15" (no one under 15 admitted)
The exhibitors opposed the "12" category
when the British Board of Film Classification
first applied it in April. Their trade association,
CEA, fought the Board because, with no
national ID. card, it might have proven difficult
to determine who is or isn't under 12,
and because cinema managers might face
prosecution if they unwittingly admitted underage
children. After sustained lobbying by
the distributors, CEA has agreed to review its
position ...
Theatre chains are putting the brakes on
the recent multiplex boom in Great Britain.
High construction costs, coupled with disappointing
attendance is having a dampening
effect on exhibitors. Admissions this
year are
almost certain to rise for the fifth year in a
row, but ambitious plans to build hundreds of
screens have been scaled down.
ON THE MOVE
Kenneth B. Benjamin has been named vice
president In charge of real estate for Loews
Theatre Management. Prior to his new appointment,
Mr Benjamin spent 20 years as
executive director of real estate for Columbia
Sylvester Novelline is the new Controller
for National Amusements. Novelline joined
National in
1984 as Director of Accounting, In
his new position at National, Novelline will
report directly to lerome Magner, the treasurer
and senior vice president of finance.
Prior to joining National, Novelline worked
in a variety of positions at the Stop & Shop
Companies, culminating with his advancement
to Comptroller of Perkins Tobacco. He
was graduated from Bentley College with a
bachelor's in
accounting.
Following a highly successful sales program
in Cannes. Peter V\/etherell has been upped
from vice president to president of Bandcompany
International. Esther Freifeld has stepped
down from the presidency, but will continue
as an independent consultant handling certain
sales activities Wetherell began working at
Bandcompany forerunner Empire Releasing in
1985 as traffic manager, and had been promoted
to international sales in the company's
Beyond Infinity division. After that he became
director of administration for Empire Entertainment
In the period between Empire's sale
to Epic and the formation of Bandcompany,
Wetherell served as a sales executive for
TWE's Emerald division Bandcompany recently
disclosed sales of "The Pit and the Pendulum,"
"Trancers II," "Puppetmaster,"
"Shadowzone," "Crash and Burn, 'Zombie
"
Hotel" and "Spookhouse" to seven territories
at Cannes
Hemdale has announced the appointments
of Paul Rosenfeld and Bill Lewis to the positions
of Western and Eastern Division Manager.
Rosenfeld will be based in Hemdale's
Los Angeles sales headquarters and will oversee
activities in San Francisco. Seattle, Portland,
Denver, Salt Lake City, Kansas City and
St. Louis Most recently. Rosenfeld served as
senior vice president of distribution at Cineplex
Odeon Films Prior to joining Cineplex,
Rosenfeld headed distribution for Alive Films,
and previously was head film buyer for Mann
Theatres.
Lewis will work out of Hemdale's New
York sales h.q and will oversee operations in
New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Washington,
DC Before joining Hemdale. Lewis was
a film buyer at United Artists Theatre Corporation,
and previously served as Eastern Division
Manager for Lorimar
Hemdale's Midwestern Division Manager is
Franklin Osborne of Chicago, and Richard
Carman is their Dallas-based Southern Division
Manager.
Paul Dwight, previously the Southwest Division's
Training Director, has been appointed
36 BOXOFFICE

September, 1989 37
to the newly created position of Training
Projects Coordinator. Matt Lee, a two-time
General Manager of the Year, will replace
Dwight
Gregory von Hausch has been named the
executive director of the Broward County
Film Society. In his new position, von Hausch
will be responsible for the long-range development
of the film society and its major
annual event, the Greater Fort Lauderdale
Film Festival, this year scheduled for Oct. 21-
28.
Von Hausch, 39, arrives in South Florida
after more than 15 years as a leading figure in
Florida theatrical circles. From 1973 to 1988,
he served as producing director of the Hippodrome
State Theatre, which he founded in
Gainesville. Most recently, he was managing
producer for the Tampa Players. The director
of more than 100 theatrical productions
throughout Florida, von Hausch has also
appeared in more than 60 roles during a 22-
year professional acting career. He has also
produced more than 50 jazz, blues and rock
concerts. A graduate of the University of Florida,
von Hausch also attended Broward Community
College and the College of the Virgin
Islands on St. Thomas.
)oerg Agin, vice president and general
manager of Kodak's Motion Picture and Audiovisual
Products Division, will establish his
main office in Hollywood, effective late this
fall. To support these activities. Agin has
established a Business Marketing Planning organization
in
Hollywood. The new organization
will be responsible for forecasting the
needs of what they're calling the "motion
imaging industry" Developing worldwide
strategies and investigating "value-generating"
(lucrative) business opportunities will also
be responsibilities of the new group.
Kenneth Knaus has been appointed manager
of the Business Marketing Planning outfit.
Brian Spruill has been named director of
strategic planning. Knaus and Spruill are currently
serving as district sales managers for
Kodak in Hollywood. Agin will retain his office
and staff in Rochester, New York, where
Kodak is headquartered
Three new employees will be based in the
San Antonio office of Santikos Theatres. Bob
Mezetti, formerly with AMC, will be division
manager of the Austin area. Randy Blaum was
recently hired as director of advertising, publicity
and promotions. And Richard Tucker,
late of the Portland office, has been transferred
to San Antone as a technical assistant.
Alan C Stokes has been appointed director
of advertising, promotions and publicity for
Metropolitan Theatres Corporation's 80
screens in Southern California. Stokes will
coordinate all
marketing and advertising activity
for Metropolitan, with special emphasis
given to expansion- plans in Santa Barbara,
Palm Springs, Palm Desert and Indio,
as well
as targeted campaigns aimed at expanding
MTCs downtown Los Angeles and Hispanic
market shares Stokes, formerly advertising
director for AMC's Western Division, brings
16 years of exhibition experience to Metropolitan
OBITUARIES
Florence S. Murphy Blank, 77, a nationally
recognized director of film libraries, died May
29 at her home in Wayne, Pennsylvania. She
was honored in 1979 for her contributions as
the premier film librarian in the state. She is
survived by her husband, L.
Maitland Blank, a
son, four daughters, 14 grandchildren, three
great-grandchildren and a brother.
Roy |. Baunach, 77, the Toledo inventor
whose innovations included the Multipop and
Prontopop popcorn makers, died June 6 after
a brief illness. He started his own manufacturing
firm, the Electroware Corporation, in
1956, and continued with the company until
his death. He developed and patented numerous
household appliances His popcorn
machines were the precursor of today's automatic
poppers, and were sold throughout the
United States. His wife luanita, two sons, a
daughter, sister and eight grandchildren survive.
Longtime motion picture sound professional
lohn K. Hilliard died March 21 at his home in
Santa Ana, California. Hilliard
joined MGM at
the advent of talking pictures. In his 14 years
there, he contributed to all
aspects of sound:
studio and theatre acoustics, microphones,
optical recording, and loudspeakers At the
onset of World War II, Hilliard moved to
Cambridge, Massachusetts to work on radar
development at M.I.T. He later worked on
sonar equipment for Altec Lansing Corporation,
where he rose to vice president of
advanced engineering. Projects he directed
included Voice of the Theatre loudspeakers,
precision microphones capable of measuring
the shock wave from a nuclear blast, acoustic
testing of metal fatigue in McDonnell Douglas
airplanes, and ultra-high-power loudspeakers
for Giant Voice outdoor voice warning systems.
In 1946 he proposed the little maestro
as a symbol of elegance and quality, still
today at
Altec Lansing.
in use
Hilliard received a B.S. in physics from Hamline
University in St. Paul, and did graduate
study in electrical engineering at the University
of Minnesota. He retired some years ago
to a home overlooking all of Orange County,
California, and had a set of magnificent stereo
loudspeakers built into the masonry of his
chimney.
Edmund L. Palmieri, who enforced the
1948 Paramount consent decrees, which led
to the divestiture by major studios of their
exhibition interests, died lune 14 of cancer at
his home in Manhattan. He was 82 years
old.
Until only a few weeks ago, Palmieri served
at the court for the Southern District of New
York in Manhattan, to which he was appointed
in 1954. The son of a City Court
judge, Palmieri received both his bachelor's
and law degrees from Columbia Palmieri,
who has been the sole administrator of the
consent decrees through the years, was
thought to be the mam impediment to the
Reagan and Bush Administration's desire to
see the decrees wiped off the books. If the
industry now opts to push for termination of
the decrees, the motion must be considered
and approved by the new assistant attorney
general, James Rill, who is in the process of
being confirmed
Palmieri is survived by his wife Cecile, three
children - Alain Palmieri, Marie Claude
Wrenn, and Dr. Michelle Warren - two sisters,
and seven grandchildren
Louis A. Credidio, 46, president of Trans-
Lux Corporation, died of cancer June 10 in
Norwalk, Connecticut. Credidio had been
elected president and CEO of Trans-Lux on
May 27, 1987. He spent more than 20 years in
Trans-Lux' employ, and was considered instrumental
in moving the company into the
modern electronic world. Credidio's widow
Evelyn and their children, 19-year-old Louis
and Kim Marie, 18, reside in Fairfield, Connecticut.
Film producer, distributor, and theatre executive
Robert Patrick, 68, died of a heart
attack June 23 at his home in San juan Capistrano,
California. A native of lackson, Georgia,
Patrick began his career as a young
theatre man in Atlanta, later joining Republic
Pictures'
Atlanta Exchange. After flaming out
with the Eighth Air Force over the English
Channel in World War II, Patrick later settled
in Denver, where he built and operated
theatres and booking services throughout the
Rocky Mountains.
He then came to Hollywood, where he
began his production career His feature
credits include "To the Shores of Hell" and
"Hell on Wheels," both starring Marty Robbins.
Patrick was a founder of Parade Pictures
and Superpix, whose distribution led him into
the international market. He became especially
involved in the European and South African
territories, headquartering for a time in Johannesburg
When his last theatre venture, a showcase
drive-in in San )uan Capistrano, was sold to
Pacific Theatres, he concentrated on producing
pictures in which he had a special interest.
At the time of his death he was completing a
senes of World War II television features in
association with retired Air Force General
Curtis LeMay. Patrick is survived by his wife
Carolyn, three daughters, a son and several
grandchildren.
lames E Nasser, 88, longtime owner of
General Service Studios in Hollywood, died of
a respiratory ailment June 27 in an .Amsterdam
hospital. He and his wife Dorothy were
on a cruise on the Baltic Sea. Nasser, who was
active in the Nasser Bros. Theatre Cham in the
Bay Area for many years, came to Hollywood
in the early 1940s and participated in the
financing of several United Artists pictures. He
is survived by his wife, two daughters, two
stepchildren, and several grandchildren
Bert Nathan, a Lifetime Honorary Board
Member of the National Association of Concessionaires,
died lune 21 of cancer Nathan
had been a member of NAC since 195 1 and,
from that time on, one of the association's
staunches! supporters

Reviews
Certainly real-life Vietnam vets don't deserve to be once
again portrayed as profane madmen, but "Casualties of War'
is based on fact and it's an undeniably riveting story. Aside
from its conclusion, which really does leave a lot unanswered,
this is tough, unsettling filmmaking (in a dubious distinction,
it may contain the most repellent rape scene in movie history)
Critical praise and public debate should bring it plenty
of attention
Rated R for violence and language.— Tom Matthews
BATMAN
Starring Michael Keaton. Jack Nicholson, Kim Basinger and
Robert Wuhl
Produced by Jon Peters and Peter Guber Directed by Tim
Burton Written by Sam Hamm and Warren Skaaren
A Warner Bros release. Action, rated PG-13 Running time: 126
min Screening date: 6/21/89
CASUALTIES OF WAR
Stamng Michael ) Fox. Sean Perm, Don Harvey. John C Reillij,
John Legutzamo and Thuy Thu Le
Produced by Art Linson. Directed by Brian DePalma Written
by David Rabe.
A Columbia Pictures release. Drama, rated R Running time:
120 min Screening date: 7/17/89.
In his Grst film since the fairly safe "The
Untouchables," director Brian DePalma returns to form
and has created a disturbing war drama which is sure to
spark considerable debate.
"Casualties ot War," a powerful and disturbing cross
between "Platoon" and "Serpico," stars Michael J. Fox as
Eriksson, a green recruit who has only been in Vietnam for
three weeks. A decent kid with a wife and child back home,
Eriksson is nearly killed in the horrifying opening sequence of
the film, when he finds himself stuck up to his chest in a Viet
Cong tunnel as mortars fall all around him He is saved at the
last moment by Sgt. Meserve (Sean Penn), Eriksson's lawless
commanding officer.
Their platoon settles into what appears to be a peaceful
village, only to have one of their men — Meserve's best friend
— shot and killed by a sniper. Under Meserve's rabid command,
the distraught and war-weary soldiers — save for Eriksson
— resolve to avenge their friend's death by kidnapping a
village girl (Thuy Thu Le), taking her out on patrol, and gangraping
her.
Eriksson furiously tries to stop the assault, accomplishing
nothing but earning the derision and distrust of the rest of his
squad. When they ultimately kill the girl, Eriksson forces a
murder investigation, despite the fact that Meserve had once
saved his life, and despite the fact that none of his superiors
want to see the case pursued. The story turns into a maddening
and nightmarish attempt to find justice in a world that has
literally gone mad; it concludes with an abrupt, unsatisfying
ending which finds Eriksson getting satisfaction, but at an
unclear cost.
"Casualties of War" is essentially a searing examination of
gang mentality. How does one man do the right thing, when
everyone around him wants blood? And how does he survive
when the murderous gang that he is forced to run with insists
that he participate in the carnage, is not content to let him just
stand and watch? The movie is set in Vietnam, but it had us
thinking of urban gang violence, in which young boys have no
choice but to take part.
Fox, his helmet seeming three sizes too big for his head, at
first appears hopelessly miscast, just another cute sitcom
actor trying for legitimacy. But as the story evolves, his casting
becomes particularly smart. The war drafted little guys too,
and Eriksson, a runt among warriors, finds himself in a world
where the things that make him strong back home — his
compassion and intelligence — are not only useless, but dangerous.
Fox, with his diminutive frame and squeaky, boyish
voice, handles the role authoritatively, eventually even holding
his own against Penn, whose steely blue-eyed intensity
has never been more menacing.
When we're in the thick of Hollywood's next depression,
will we look back at this undeserving megabit as the
beginning of the domiward spirals Could be. Four weeks
grossed a dizzying $167.7 million.
Saying that the inegahit "Batman" is a lousy movie is like
complaining about a game-winning grand slam coming off a
bad pitch. When it comes down to it, the ball is knocked out of
the park, and only losers and purists are going to argue about
the faulty means by which success was attained. But we are
convinced that "Batman's" triumphs are purely a result of
ruthless marketing, a remarkably broad built-in audience, and
runaway merchandising opportunities. If blank leader had
been projected on its opening weekend, the movie's grosses
would've probably still been the same. It may, however, have
been more entertaining than the film that was made.
So many complaints; so little space First and foremost, the
promise of revealing the dark, psychological underpinnings of
the Caped Crusader (Michael Keaton) goes largely unfulfilled.
In fact, although we know this is not true, it seems in retrospect
that the character was not even on screen for more than
a half-hour combined He is a flaccid, uncompelling superhero,
and this has nothing to do with Keaton's performance. As
written, no actor could make an impression.
Playing opposite Keaton is Jack Nicholson as the Joker and,
as with the universal appeal of the title character, the producers
were scoring points before a single frame of film was
exposed. Nicholson has become such a caricature and
audiences are so conditioned to laugh at him that he can get
howls by doing nothing at all. Put him in a funny costume, and
there's no stopping the guy. But we defy anyone to recall one
thing that the Joker said or did that was particularly memorable.
The film also has a lumbering, claustrophobic feel to it
which is lethal. The way that Batman makes his entrances, for
example, by slowly lowering himself with a series of poorlyexplained
winches, is hopelessly clunky and uncinematic.
The batsuit itself is completely lacking in character; it looks as
if someone melted a tire and poured it over Keaton's head
Review Index

—
each morning. And Gotham City, while being neatly art
directed, is so obviously shot on a soundstage that it's stifling
("Bladerunner," a film to which "Batman" is repeatedly compared,
didn't have this problem).
The script is a mess. A crucial scene, in which Vicki Vale
(Kim Basinger) first learns that Bruce Wayne is Batman, is so
underplayed that we honestly thought the reels were being
shown out of order, that we had somehow missed the big,
emotional moment in which the girl photographer discovers
that the man she loves has a fetish for dressing like a winged
rat and fighting crime. But, nope, that is the scene.
The story cheats on Batman's past by unnecessarily and
illogically establishing that the Joker had killed Bruce
Wayne's parents; it cheats on his future by having Vicki Vale
and the Caped Crusader running off together at the end of the
movie. And we're not comic book fanatics, upset over somebody
tampering with the Batman legend. These are just stupid
and lazy creative decisions.
Why do any of these gripes matter in the face of the movie's
record-breaking success? Because we shudder at the thought
of the lessons that will be learned here. The Hollywood
formula of cartoon mentality + presold concepts + marketing
gimmicks has now been bumped up to the next plateau in
a big way, just when it looked like the industry might be
moving away from that crass philosophy. As a result, count on
the millions currently being earned by "Batman" being diluted
over the next few years by the "Batman" wannabes, which
will all substitute merchandising tie-ins and anticipated
audience awareness for creativity, and which will all flop dismally.
Like the spate of rotten space movies which followed in the
wake of "Star Wars" and helped to drive the movie industry
into a depression, we now anticipate being superheroed to
death. At least "Star Wars" was a great movie.
How can we thank you for all you've done for us. Batman?
Rated PG-13 for intense cartoon violence. Tom Matthews
first introduced to us just as he was about to commit suicide
The rapport between the two leads is cute but not as sharplv
written as before, and in fact the movie is practically stoliri bv
Pesci, who is wonderful as the ever-chipper accountant A soi t
of Tommy ("Yeah, that's the ticket!") Flannagan on helium,
he ultimately serves no real purpose in the story but is a
welcome addition to the cast.
Overriding all complaints, however, is the fact that the
action is suitably awesome and so overwhelming that summer
audiences should buy all this eagerly. An entire house is blown
up and shoved off a hill, a wild car chase concludes with a
villain getting his head turned into goo by a surfboard,

iIk
mopean
How
oiild
ihlmh
in
—
know how it works, even while it's working on us. But just as in
"
"Do the Right Thing, where if just one more character were
to mop his brow or exclaim "Phew! What a scorcher!" the
audience would probably storm the screen, all that ladled
atmosphere serves only to hurl the audience headlong into the
Fine acting helps here, too. James Spader collected the Best
Actor Prize at Cannes for his work as Graham, and it's not
hard to see why. How often do the Cannes critics get to reward
a brilliant performance in the role of a man more comfortable
with images than people? Still, critics' familiarity with Graham's
predicament shouldn't taint the acclaim Spader continues
to receive. He's given Graham a great, indelible smile
that's really more of a wince than anything else, and a pained,
searching voice to go with it.
The rest of the company matches him close-up for closeup.
There's Peter Gallagher, who pulls off a great piece of
slapstick character acting when he wants to hit his wife but
knows that husbands aren't supposed to do that anymore, and
so swishes his arms menacingly around her head and shoulders
instead. There's cover girl Andie MacDowell (look for
that epithet to disappear faster than "acrobat Burt Lancaster"
did) in a startlingly natural performance. Lastly, there's the
previously unseen Laura San Giacomo, who singes everything
she touches in the misunderstood-siren part of all time.
For all its triumphs, "sex, lies, and videotape" isn't exactly a
masterpiece. Too much revelatory significance is placed on an
unlikely Freudian slip late in the proceedings, and that lowercase
title really is the last word in pretentiousness. Or is it just
a sly wink at the deplorable undercapitalization of American
independent films?
Rated R for sex. —David Kipen
LICENCE TO KILL
Staniug Timothy Dalton, Robert Davi, Carey Lowell and Talisa
Soto.
Produced by Albert C Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson. Directed
by John Glen. Written by Richard Maibaum and Michael G Wilson.
An MGM/UA release Action, rated PG-13 Running time. 133
min Screening date: 7/6/89
If "Lethal Weapon" ever reaches its 16th installment (let's
all say a prayer for that eventuality), it should be so lucky as to
be as entertaining and well-made as this latest chapter in the
James Bond series. Just when we thought that the spy saga
had completely run out of steam, along comes "Licence to
Kill," a surprisingly fun piece of work.
The structure of this globe-trotting adventure is doggedly
faithful to what has come before, but with a dark twist: Bond
(Timothy Dalton), intent on avenging the brutal assault on
two friends by an infamous drug dealer, has quit Her Majesty's
Secret Service because it wants to pull him off the case.
Fueled by a personal vendetta and relieved of the constraints
of the law, this is a more human and definitely more lethal
James Bond. We know he's ultimately going to get his man,
but this time his means are just a bit more vicious.
007's prey this time is Franz Sanchez (Robert Davi), one of
the best Bond villains in years. While on a drug run in Florida,
Sanchez had brutally tortured Bond's old friend Felix (David
Hedison) and killed Felix's new wife (Priscilla Barnes), and
Bond, who had been best man at their wedding, will not be
stopped until he stops the international drug trafficker.
His search ultimately takes him to the tropical gambling
city of Isthmus City, which is completely under Sanchez's
rule Bond attracts the lust of both Sanchez's mistress (Talisa
Soto) and a spunky, tough-talking former Army pilot (Carey
Lowell), and in time he infiltrates Sanchez's drug factory,
which is hidden within a religious compound run by a comical
and under-utilized Wayne Newton. The film concludes — and
Sanchez gets his fiery comeuppance — during a jaw-dropping
chase sequence involving massive Kenworth trucks.
"Licence to Kill" l.iki's some shrewd incisures to keep the
story fresh for Amciii .m .niJii m . . I',\ l.iuni hmi; the story
from an American s( inn.', ii . Inniniir .
I bias
which most of the cuhei tihiis emln.K ( d .\iu\ by making
Sanchez a fairly realistic villain taken straight from current
headlines, it allows the story to rise above the cartoon level
which manv of the recent ludicrous Bond bad guys engen-
(IcM-.l
Some of the recent Bond problems remain, however. Most
of the bit parts are handled by remarkably bad actors, and
some of the less spectacular stunt scenes are directed in a
stiff, TV-like fashion (John Glen, who has directed the past
five Bonds, is long overdue for a replacement). But Dalton has
settled into the role nicely, and his sexy repartee with Lowell
(she of the long neck and gorgeous gams) provides an unexpected
lightness to the character.
If audiences haven't finally grown tired with the series —
and if space can be found in this summer's outrageously
crowded field — "Licence to Kill" should do well. It's a far
better film than I987's "The Living Daylights," and it deserves
its share of the boxoffice pie.
Rated PG-13 for violence, language and sexual situations.
Tom Matthews
GREAT BALLS OF FIRE
Stalling Liciiius Qiuiid, Wmuna Ryder, Alec Baldwin, Trey
Wilson, Lisa Blount, Stephen Tobolowsky, Mojo Nixon, and Joe
Bob Briggs
Produced by Adam Fields. Directed by Jim McBride Written by
Jack Baran and Jim McBride
An Orion Pictures release Musical drama, rated PG-13 Running
time 108 mins
Could it be that we only want biographies of '50s
rockers if they died young? The Killer is still kicking
but his movie isn't, having grossed an
industry-surprising low of $10.8 million in three weeks.
If anybody could have made a movie out of Jern,' Lee Lewis'
life, that man looked to be Jim McBride. On the evidence of
"The Big Easy," McBride had the feel for music, for the South,
and for the dangerous, reluctant sexuality that pervades
Lewis' story. For those of us too young to remember, Jerry Lee
Lewis was everybody's choice for "the next Elvis" when the
King shipped out to defend the 49th Parallel. How he blew his
chance, if indeed he wanted it in the first place, by marrying
his 13-year-old cousin and failing to seem dutifully ashamed
of it, especially on his British tour, is the subject of McBride's
strangely slack biography, "Great Balls of Fire."
If casting is 90% of any movie, as some directors and almost
all casting directors will insist, Dennis Quaid as Jerry Lee is
about 50% of that 90% absolutely perfect. He seems completely
comfortable behind, and frequently on top of, Lewis' piano,
and his concert scenes go a long way toward reminding us of
how threatening his thirty-year-old "devil music" inust originally
have seemed. In person, however, down from the stages
and away from the crowds, Quaid doesn't size his performance
down in the slightest. He pitches his bedroom scenes
with Myra as though he's still trying to reach the last row of
the balcony at the Albert Hall.
His performance is an unmistakabl.e cousin to Nicholas
Cage's gaga turn in "Vampire's Kiss," where mis-inflected
lines became almost a style, and rumors had Cage eating cockroaches
even off-camera, straight out of the wrangler's bag,
Quaid and Cage have the guts to make fools of themselves,
and deserve our appreciation for that, but it's a strategy' that
works better in solo scenes than with other actors waiting for
them to spit out the scenery and get on with it.
Resplendent among Quaid's patient co-stars is "Beetlejuice's"
Winona Ryder as Lewis' child bride. She's a coquette
without trying, alternately flattered and flabbergasted by the
attentions of a whole generation's heartthrob. The rest of the
cast has little to do but look scandalized, which can't have
been hard with the spectacle of Quaid stealing scenes from
himself right there in front of them.
Since M( I'.iule has failed to do justice to Jerry Lee Lewis'
life, ni,i\ be nil one i
have. No one will, now, so it doesn't
much 111, nil 1 ihis version even made it to the screen,
though, wuli ,1 si,ii|)t so feeble ,in(l c .irtdonish, is a puzzlement.
Was it rushed into produc luui in i .i|iii.ili/c on the recent
scandal involving Lewis' olhii . hiiimy Swaggart?
"
Swaggart pops in and out of "Gre.ii I'., ills ol I ne the person
of Alec Baldwin, but the easy irony of an eventually unmasked
patron of prostitutes lighting into Jerry Lee for moral turpitude
wears thin fairly fast. Moreover, Swaggart's period sermons
are woefully unconvincing ,\t one point he lautions his
Aui;iist, l'>xy R-5S

parishioners that "This whole life's about choices!" — a careless,
foggy, degraded use of the preposition "about" that, while
mcsrapable nowadays, has only cropped up within the last
yc.ir or two. Period films set in our recent past have trouble
enough justifying their necessity without getting their periods
wning.
Ivated PG-13 for language, and for Myra's knockabout
dctlowering. — David Kipen
THE KARATE KID III
Starnng Ralph Macchiu, Nunyuki "Pat" Monta. Thomas Ian
Griffith and Martin L. Kuve.
Produced by Jerry Weintraub. Directed by John G Aviklsen
Written by Robert Mark Kamen
A Cohimbia Pictures release Drama, rated PG Running time:
111 min. Screening date: 6/26/89.
"The Karate Kid III," a screwy, shockingly misguided
is filled sequel, a hoot, to the brim with howlingly bad logic,
peculiar character motivations, and an utter betrayal of the
first two "Karate Kid" movies. Even if the film had been any
good, this gentle underdog series would've probably been clobbered
by the brawny summer competition. But as it is, this is
an embarrassment of grand proportions.
The story seems to take place immediately following "Karate
Kid I," with only a passing reference to the events of
"Karate Kid II." At the end of the first film, as you'll remember,
young Daniel (Ralph Macchio) had defeated the toughest
student of evil karate instructor Kreese (Martin L. Kovej.
Then, to make matters worse, wise and serene Mr. IVliyagi
(Noriyuki "Pat" Morita) had humiliated Kreese in the parking
lot outside the match.
So now, Kreese is mad In fact, we must stop right here until
you understand just how mad Kreese is. He's just plain MAD
If Daniel and Miyagi had killed Kreese's entire family and
carved their bodies into tiny little pieces, Kreese couldn't be
more M-A-D He's just really, really vexed, basically.
So Kreese goes to his best friend, Terry (Thomas Ian Griffith],
another evil karate instructor, and Terry quickly
becomes just as mad as Kreese (see above). Eageriy devoting
his whole life to avenging his friend's seemingly minor humilation,
Terry launches some sort of baffling plot to split up
Daniel and Miyagi, and then trick Daniel into another karate
competition. His scheme works, Daniel is nearly pummeled to
death in a rigged fight, but darned if he doesn't come through
— with Miyagi's help — to crush the villains.
While watching "The Karate Kid III," at the end of the
scene in which an awkward, fumbling Daniel meets the film's
love interest, a teenaged giri sitting behind us was overheard
to remark, "What a dork." Now, this is not to cast aspersions
upon Mr. Macchio's character, but simply to suggest that this
film's only hope — the Tiger Beat crowd — wasn't buying this
nonsense any more than we were. The relationship between
Daniel and Mr. Miyagi has become dull and often embartassing
(Macchio, despite appearances, is now 27 years old), the
slobbering, Nazi-influenced bad guys fillet the scenery before
chewing it, and there are gaps in logic and storytelling which
are truly stunning. That Columbia Pictures — desperate for a
hit — let this script go into production forces us to wonder
what's going on over there.
So, as this series meets its deserved death, we will leave the
last word to Mr. Miyagi, that diminutive fount of sage wisdom.
Early in the story, as Daniel tries to convince the old man to
open his own bonsai tree shop, the "kid" cries something like,
"You're letting your dream pass you by!"
To which the tiny karate master replies, in that whimsical
Japanese lilt, "Then I will take a bus."
What>'
Rated PG for violence.— Tom Matthews
A TAXING WOMAN'S RETURN
Starring Nobuko Miyamoto, Rentaro Mikuni atui Torn Masuoka
Produced by Yasushi Tamoaki and Seigo Hosogoe Written and
directed by Juzo Itami
A New Yorker Films release. Comedy, not rated. In Japanese
with English subtitles Running time: 127 min. Screening date:
6/21/89
There's a little less sex and a lot more gratuitous violence m
Juzo Itami's "A Taxing Woman's Return," but in most other
respects it is little different from "A Taxing Woman." Fans of
the award-winning Japanese director may be disappointed
that the new Itami film doesn't offer much that is new, but it's
likely that, based on the growing name recognition of the
director, this new film will equal or surpass the boxoffice success
of the film's original. It already has broken boxoffice
records in Japan, although some of the humor that is appreciated
in the East may be lost on Western audiences.
The film was prescient of the real-life scandal that recently
forced the resignation of Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita,
but plenty of the corruption that is portrayed in the movie also
suggests domestic scandals that are all too familiar to the
American public. And even when viewers can't relate to the
plot, they will still find the exotic behavior of the Japanese
business people a source of laughter
This time around, the befreckled government tax inspector
Ryoko Itakura (Noboku Miyamoto], with the help of a preppy
young male assistant (Toru Masuoka), is relentlessly investigating
a fundamentalist cult suspected of tax evasion. The
Holy Matriarch (Haruko Kato) has a special calling for Russian
sable coats and jewels; her adulterous husband, the Chief
Elder Onizawa (Rentaro Mikuni), runs a lucrative eviction
racket. He has his hired thugs harass six poor tenants so that
they'll make way for real estate developers to build huge
office towers. Given the Japanese bureaucracy, these land
deals could not occur without a good deal of bribery of senators,
respected intellectuals and cnisading reporters.
Itami is scathing in his portrayal of Japan as a nation
devoted to material wealth. Like all of his previous films, this
is a noisy, fast-paced, raucous picture, filled with rich and
exotic images carefully edited into an intricate web. The plot,
however, is often too complicated to be followed by anyone
forced to rely on subtitles.
The score of "A Taxing Woman's Return" is more complex
than that of the original, but it is not as catchy. And while
there's more depth to the screenplay, the development of the
title character falls far short of the first film. That's a pity,
because in all of Itami's films, Nobuko Miyamoto (Itami's wife
and usual star) has always been his strongest card. In this film,
we see less of her and more of an ensemble that is, fortunately,
quite strong. Particularly touching is a December-May relationship
between Onizawa and a young girl (Yoriko Doguchi)
who has ben given to him as collateral for a loan.
The film has no rating, but it contains excessive violence,
full female nudity, and sexual situations.— Karen Kreps
THE FOUR ADVENTURES OF
REINETTE AND MIRABELLA
Starring Inrllr Muiiwl and /e.s.sico Forde
Produced, written aiul dincted by Eric Rohmer.
A New Yorker Films release Comedy, not rated. In French with
English subtitles. Running time: 95 mm Screening date: 7/6/89
"The Four Adventures of Reinette and Mirabella" was shot
on a minuscule budget, and it is not a part of producer- writerdirector
Eric Rohmer's well-known series. Comedies and Proverbs
Yet with his exquisite lighting and ripe, summery images,
the tone of the film is quite rich. It is the kind of endeanng
French film in which the protagonists can get caught in a
rainstorm and find shelter in a bam, where they are able to
enjoy a sumptuous repast.
Divided into four episodes as it illustrates the evolving
friendship between two young French giris, the screenplay
hasn't much in the way of plot. City mouse meets country
mouse in the first segment, in which Mirabella, a Parisian
student, is invited to spend the night on the overgrown farm
where her new friend, Reinette, lives alone. While there, the
giris rise before dawn to experience what Reinette calls "The
Blue Hour," a moment of great tranquility before daybreak.
That and most other scenes are filmed by Sophie Maintigneux
with a soft, almost surreal, graininess.
The three other episodes take place in Paris, where Reinette
has come to take art classes and to room with Mirabella.
The complex relationship between the giris intensifies as we
see that they are opposites, and are therefore ofien in conflict.
Deeply emotional Reinette is driven by strong moral principles;
Mirabella, by contrast, is as irrational as she is irreverent
The'former gives to every beggar she meets; the latter only to
those she finds sympathetic.
R-59 BOXOKFKK

Early on in "The Four Adventures of Reinette and Mirabella,"
Rohmer throws the audience a bone. The moment elicits
the first laugh out of viewers who are familiar with the directors
ambiguities, and, for the more inexperienced viewers, it
makes the rest of the film easier to watch. It happens as
Reinette is showing Mirabella one of her surrealistic paintings
of legg>' women, and she says something like, "Don't try to
understand it. Just look at it, it's like a comic strip" This,
Rohmer advises, is the key to watching the film itself Like
much of the auteur's early work, the movie is deceptively
simple You want to analyze every image, every word, but to
do so is to miss the charm.
It's doubtful that "The Four Adventures of Reinette and
Mirabella" will get the kind of critical and popular attention of
some of Rohmer's eariier works, like "Claire's Knee," "My
Night at Maud's" and "La CoUectioneuse." But long-time fans
of the filmmaker won't miss the chance to see the latest from
one of the acclaimed pioneers of the French New Wave, who
has been absent from the public eye for too long.
The film contains nothing unsuitable for a young audience,
but its market surely lies vdth an older one.—Karen Kreps
Story type key
REVIEW DIGEST
(Ac) Action: (Ad) Adventure: (An) Animated: (B)
Biography. (C) Comedy: (Cr) Crime: (D) Drama: (DM) Drama with
Music: (Doc) Documentary: (F) Fantasy: (H) Horror: (M) Musical:
(My) Mystery: (OD) Outdoor: (Pol) Political: (R) Romantic: (SF)
Science Fiction: (Sus) Suspense: ( W) Western.
Baron Munchausen PG
(Coll
isigiliii I J
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Uv o < oa < >: V. ? 01
A FLAME IN MY HEART
Starnng Mynani Mc Azaz Kahouche, and Benott Re
Produced by Paulo Branco Directed by Alain Tanner. Scenario
by Myriam Mezieres Adaptation and Dialogue by Alain Tanner
From Roxie Releasing, not rated. Running time: 110 mms
Screening date: 6/23/89 Aspect ratio: 1:33.
What is drama but life with all the dull hits cut out^
— Alfred Hitchcock
If you pasted together a movie from all the dull bits that
drama cuts out, the resulting hash might look a bit like "A
Flame in My Heart." Alain Tanner's new film is a completely
foreign film: something alien, divorced from all the pleasures
we've come to expect out of a movie. This is not a compliment.
A compliment might be, '"A Flame in My Heart' opens
up new, hitherto unexplored vistas in the topography of creative
filmmaking," but it doesn't. It's a cul de sac, an inert,
undermotivated tossoff with barely the energy to make it from
projector to screen.
The heart in question belongs to a Parisian actress named
Mercedes, and she can't give it away. She offers her heart to
her swinish ex-lover Johnny, but he doesn't understand her
career, so she offers it to Pierre, a political journalist whose
career she doesn't understand. Pierre takes off for two weeks
to cover an uprising, and Mercedes proceeds to mope her way
clear out of the play she's been rehearsing for. Fired, she holes
up in Pierre's apartment, where she yanks out the telephone
wires, watches TV all night, masturbates, and lives on breakfast
cereal.
By the time Pierre comes back, his flat looks like the last
reel of a David Cronenberg movie. Unfazed, he rights his potted
palm and continues to love Mercedes, even when he discovers
her performing an elaborately lewd public striptease
with a stuffed gorilla. His next field assignment takes him to
Cairo and, perhaps fearing eviction this time, he schleps Mercedes
along. She deserts him, and that's the movie. We last see
her exchanging enigmatic smiles with a ragged but radiant
Egyptian girl. Is she cured of her abject dependence on men?
Has her feminist consciousness been raised? Is the gaffer
mooning the grips?
There's no way of knowing. The screenplay's no help; Alain
Tanner doesn't believe in them. "The script is a thing that no
longer interests me," he has said. Don't get him wrong,
though. "Many magnificent films have been made with great
scripts," he concedes. But flukey exceptions like these don't
tempt him. Tanner's much happier just pointing the camera
at Myriam Mezieres, who plays Mercedes and shares the writing
credit with him, while she looks downcast and appears to
read pedestrian observations off the subtitles.
"A Flame in My Heart" is a foreign film to give foreign films
a bad name: senseless, aimless, and totally devoid of wit. A
good film can get by without one of these qualities, a watchable
film without two; but without all three, you're better off
dreaming
Nol rated, but an X if ever there was one. —David Kipcn
August, 1989 K-60

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SNEAK PREVIEWS
The following films are tentatively scheduled
for release during the months of November
and December The distributors, however,
cannot stress strongly enough that these
dates and titles are subject to change.
DAD
lack Lemmon shaved his head, lost a lot of
weight and sub|ected himself to extensive
makeup applications in order to play Ted
Danson's dying father in this dramatic-comedy
from "Family Ties" creator Gary David
Goldberg. Steven Spielberg's Amblin' Entertainment
produces. A Universal Pictures release.
MACK THE KNIFE
"The Three Penny Opera," the beloved
musical by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill,
comes to the screen under the direction of
Cannon Films' Menahem Golan. Starring in
this story about love and revenge among a
group of street beggars are Raul lulia, Richard
Harris,
)ulie Migenes, Roger Daltrey and lulie
Walters. A 2l5t Century release.
AMERICA'S RED ARMY — DELTA
FORCE II
Chuck Norris returns in this sequel to his
minor 1986 hit. This time, America's elite antiterrorist
force teams up with its Red Army
counterpart to take on a mutual foe. Norris'
brother Aaron directs. A 21st Century release.
THE BEAR
A big hit in Europe, this is a live-action family
drama about an orphaned bear cub that is
brought up by a grizzly. )ean-)acques Annaud
("Quest for Fire") directs. A Columbia Pictures
release.! 11/3)
STELLA
Touchstone's leading lady, Bette Midler,
stars in this remake of the classic tearjerker
which gave Barbara Stanwyck one of her best
roles in "Stella Dallas" in 1937 The story is
about a single mother who withstands considerable
adversity so as to ensure her daughter's
happiness. John Erman (TV's acclaimed
"An Early Frost") directs, A Buena Vista
release.
BLAZE
Fresh from his success with "Bull Durham,"
writer-director Ron Shelton returns with this
fact-based dramatic comedy about Earl K.
Long, former Governor of Louisiana, and his
celebrated affair with stripper Blaze Starr. Set
in the 'SOs, the film stars Paul Newman and
newcomer Lolita Davidovich. A Buena Vista
release.
THE TWO JAKES
Having wiped off his loker makeup, lack
Nicholson directs and stars in this long
awaited sequel to 1974's "Chinatown" Nicholson
once again plays detective lake
Gittes, who is joined by another private dick
named lake (Harvey Keitel). Together, they
become embroiled in shady political dealings
on the seedy streets of LA, circa 1940 A
limited release from Paramount Pictures, to
go wide in lanuary.
NATIONAL LAMPOON'S CHRISTMAS
VACATION
Chevy Chase returns as the patriarch of
the screwy American family which can't help
getting into trouble every time they hit the
road. This time out. Chase is determined to
track down and experience the kind of
Christmas he knew as a kid Beverly D'Angelo
and Randy Quaid return to the cast. A Warner
Bros
release.
SHE-DEVIL
Roseanne Barr, without question the star
of last year's TV season, assaults the big
screen, with no less than Meryl Streep as her
co-star, Barr plays a housewife whose frumpy
husband is swept away by a sophisticated
beauty (Streep), prompting the spurned wife
to extract comically evil
revenge. Ed Begley,
Ir., Linda Hunt and Sylvia Miles co-star, Susan
Seidelman directs An Orion release.
THE FOURTH WAR
Roy Scheider and director lohn Frankenheimer,
who teamed up on the dark "52 Pickup,"
reunite for this action-drama about the
personal conflict between a Vietnam combat
hero and a Soviet officer which nearly escalates
to global war. Starring opposite Scheider
IS lurgen Prochnow ("Das Boot"), A Warner
Bros
release
HARLEM NIGHTS
Eddie "The 500 pound gorilla" Murphy
writes, directs and stars in this period comedy
about a Chicago nightclub owner who rises
to the top of his field with the help of a veteran
clubowner, played by Richard Pryor, lasmine
Guy (TV's "A Different World") and
Redd Foxx also star, A Paramount release.
GLORY
The first black regiment to fight in the Civil
War is celebrated in this period drama
directed by "thirtysomething" creator Edward
Zwick, Matthew Broderick stars as the
white leader of the squad, with Denzel
Washington and Morgan Freeman also starring
A Columbia release, (12/22)
ENEMIES: A LOVE STORY
Paul Mazursky directs this dramatic comedy
that is based on Isaac Bashevis Singer's
novel Ron Silver ("Blue Steel") plays a man
hopelessly involved with three women, with
Anielica Huston and Lena Olin making up part
of the quadrangle, A 20th Century Fox
release.
September, 1989 45

I
G
Bill
, G,
BOXDFFICE
JUNE
AUGUST
Buena Vista
(818) 560-5151
Dead Poets Society, D 128 Min, PC
Roliin Wilhams 6?
Honey. I Slirunii the Kids. CF, 100 ^
PG Rick Moranis 6/23
Peter Pan, anm ,
7/14
Keith Cogan, Lucy
Cinecom
(212) 239-8360
Comic Book Conridentlal. N R. doc
, C, R, Adam Anl, Talia Balsam,
Columbia
(818) 954-6000
(212) 751-4400
Ghoslbusters II. C. 102 Mm. PG. Bill
Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, R
Mofanis, Sigourney Weaver 6/16
When Harry Met Sally. C, 95 Mm. R,
Crystal, Meg Ryan, Came Fisher, Bruno
Kirby 7/28
MGIVI/UA
(213) 444-1500
Miramax
[212) 888-2662
Sei. lies and Videotape. CD, James
Spader, Peler Gallagher, Andie MacDowell
The Little Thiel. D, Charlotte Gamsbourg,
Simon de la Brosse
Kane, Kalhryn Grody
Loser Takes All. CD, Molly Ringwald,
Rot)ert Lindsay
New Line
Cinema
(212) 239-8880
Babar: The Movie, anm, G 7/28
. thr. Judd Nelson, Rooen
Orion
(213) 282-0550
(212) 980-1117
Heart ol Dixie. D, Phoebe Gates. Virginia
Madsen, Ally Sheedy 8/25
Rude Awakening, C, R, Eric Roberts,
Cheech Mann 8/17
The Package. Bus, R, Gene Hackman,
Tommy Lee Jones 9/25
Miami Blues. C, R, Alec Baldwin, Fred
Ward, Jennifer Jason Leigh
Street Legal. D, Brian Dennehy, Bill
Paramount
(213) 468-5000
(212) 333-4600
Tri-Star
(Columbia)
(213) 201-2300
20th Century
Fox
(213) 277-2211
1 the 13lh 8. H, R 8/4
Ride. C. PG 13. Richard Dreyfuss
. CD, Pauline Collins, Tom
Lock Up. Ac, Sylvester Stallone 8/4
The Abyss. Bus, Ed Harris, Mary Elizabeth
Maslrantonio 8/11
Millennium, thr, PG-13, Kris Kristoflerson,
Cheryl Ladd,
Worth Winning, C. Mark Harmon, Leslie
Ann Warren, 8/16
Loose Cannons. C. Dan Aykroyd. Gene
Hackman
Look Who's Talking. C. Kirstie Alley, John
Travolta 9/15
Blind Fury, Ac, R, Rulger Hauer
Johnny Handsome. D, Mickey Rourke,
Foresi Whilaker 9 29
Jimmy Bmits, Laura Ban
Universal
(818) 777-1000
(212) 759-7500
Siilhctland Lou Diamond Phillips 6/2
C, PG, John Candy 8/16
C, PG 13, Steve Marlm, Rick
Moranis, Jason Robards 8/2 I Pacino, Ellen Barkin
Warner Bros.
(818) 954-6000
I Weapon 2. Ac, 114Min, R, Mel
In Country. D. Bruce Willis, Emily Lloyd
9/15
Men Don't Leave. CD, Jessica Lange 9/8
Penn and Teller Gel Killed. C

FEATURE CHART — SEPTEMBER 1989
OCTOBER NOVEMBER DECEMBER JANUARY

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Miami.
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the Alabama and Florida area. Please send resume to
William Homer. Cobb Theatres. 924 Montclair Road.
Birmingham, AL 35213 Replies will be held in strictest
confidence.
BURLAP WALL COVERING DRAPES: $1 68
per
yard, flame retardant. Quantity discounts Nurse & Co
.
Millbury Rd . MA 01540 (508) 832-4295
LENSES new. like new. demo, secondhand
Anamorphics:
Isco Ultra MC 2X $450. Benoist Hypergonar
$375. B&L $250. Kowa $325. Sankor $300 Isco
Magnacoms $325. Isco Ultra MC from 90-150MM like
new $300. other lenses from $75 Magnacoms for
70mm 4" dia. for dome or special application projection.
International Cinema 6750 NE 4th CT., Miami, Fl
33138 Ph: 305-756-0699 Fax 305-758-2036
EQUIPMENT WANTED
TUBE-TYPE EQUIPMENT by Western Electric, Westrex.
Langevin. Mcintosh. Marantz, Quad, ARC. Early
speaker systems, units by W. E Jensen. Altec. JBL,
EV, RCA, Tannoy Telephone (818) 701-5633, Audio
City, P O Box 786, Northridge, CA 91328-0786
THEATRE SEATING
ALLSTATE SEATING, INC. Specialists ii
and theatre seating service, installation, covers
(617) 436-3448
Phone
TRI STATE SEATING AND INSTALLATION CO.
Used seats & parts, sales & service, preventive maintenance
programs, complete & partial renovations to
accommodate your budget, acoustical wallcoverings
and more Services offered throughout the United
States and Canada Free Information: (313) 928-
9390
"ALL AMERICAN SEATING" by the EXPERTS! Used
seats of quality Various makes American BodiForm
and Stellars from $12 50 to $32 50 Irwins from
$10.00 to $30 00 Heywood & Massey rockers from
$25 00 Full rebuilding available New Hussey chairs
from $69 50 All types theatre projection and sound
equipment New and used We ship and install all
makes Try us! We sell no Junk! TANKERSLEY
ENTERPRISES BOX 36009 DENVER. CO 80236
Phone: 303-980-8265
RCA/NCS Is On The tvlove and needs qualified theatre
service Technicians Car. expenses and full benefit
package offered Send resume to: RCA/NCS. 1305
Distributors Row. Suite I. Harahan. LA 70123.
POSITION WANTED
THEATRE EXECUTIVE, Semi-retired, seeking temporary
or short term top level management position in
movie theatre industry Familiar with all phases of the
business including real estate, construction, operations,
and negotiations. Travel anywhere. How can I
help you? All
#4678.
replies confidential. Boxoffice Reply Box
EQUIPMENT FOR SALE
COMPLETE THEATRE EQUIPMENT: (New, Used or
Rebuilt) Century SA, R3, RCA 9030. 1040. 1050 Platters:
3 and 5 Tier. Xenon Systems 1000-4000 Watt.
Sound Systems mono and stereo, automations, ticket
machines, curtain motors, electric rewinds, lenses.
parts and many more items in stock. COf^^fvlERClAL
large screen video projectors. Plenty of used chairs.
PROFESSIONAL SERVICE AND INSTALLATION
AVAILABLE DOLBY CERTIFIED Call Bill Younger
Cinema Equipment Inc 9418 N W 13 Street, Miami,
.
Florida 33172 (305) 594-0570
XENON BULBS-Factory fresh, full warranty.
2000W/HTP or HWL $535, 3000W/HTP or HWL
$630, 4000W/HTP or HS $1070. New surplus bulbs,
ORC 1000W/VWL $350, 2000W/HTP $500,
2500W/HS $450, 4000W/VWL $900. Also, hard to
find export only lamps. International Cinema 6750 NE
4th Ct., Miami, FL 33138. Ph: 305-756-0699, Fax
305-758-2036
SOUND INVESTMENTS-Dolby CP-100 $4000, Dolby
MRU's $1500, Dolby CP-50 $3150. Dolby CP-55
like new $4300. Dolby CP-200 $1 1000. Smart SR300
$1500-new. Eprad Starscope $1400. Altec 1593
amps $175. Marrantz stereo amps $250. surround
speakers $65. lots more! Export requests invited. International
Cinema 6750 NE 4th CT .
FL 33138
Ph: 305-756-0699 Fax 305-758-2036.
MULTIPLEXING, building, upgrading? We have the
largest selection of pre-owned equipment in
the USA.
Rebuilt equipment has two year warranty Service and
installation anywhere. Trades accepted. We have 20
years of continuous service to the cinema trade. International
Cinema 6750 NE 4th Ct., Miami, Fl 33138 Ph:
305-756-0699 Fax 305-758-2036.
REBUILT automated systems—two year parts warranty.
All with lens turret and aperture changer. Simplex
PR 1050 (XL) projector & soundhead $6045, Century
Sata projector & R3E soundhead $6185, Kinotone FP-
20 $7500. Century JJII 35/70MM $1 1000. Kinotone
DP-75 $11000. Cinemeccanica V-8 35/70mm
$11000, Bauer U-4 with lamphouse $5500. Custom
automation systems available International Cinema
6750 NE 4th Ct., Miami. Fl 33138 Ph; 305-758-0699
Fax 305-758-2036
ROCKERS needed with cupholder arms—approximately
600. Also two Dolby Stereo systems. Call Mike
(209) 784-5060; (209) 782-1420
THEATRES FOR SALE
BUY ONE OR ALL THREE! A newly remodeled twin
theatre in southeast Arizona, and two in south central
Arizona. Interested parties please call Coldwell Banker/
Curtis Real Estate at (602) 428-5515
TWIN THEATRE Jackson, Mississippi operating since
1972. Excellent equipment, building and land
$150,000. Profitable. Will finance. Owner retiring Contact
Forbes Watson. P.OB. 1196, Ridgeland. MS
39158.601-267-7311.
MOVIE THEATRE FOR LEASE: Old town atmosphere
with art deco architecture. North San Diego County
California Population 56k + . screen with approx.
465 seats. New screen, room for stage. Exterior
renovation planned. Contact Randall Hall at (619)
758-0225.
TWIN THEATRE-525 seats. Eight years old. fully
automated. Located in growing East Texas town of
7.500 population. Financing available witfi $50,000
down and good credit. Call (214) 693-7836 or night
693-3575.
NICE TWIN THEATRE on two acres.
400 seats in
each side. Parking lot black topped Sell or lease, will
negotiate. In Conroe, Texas. Call (409) 856-6495 or
(214) 754-0400.
SEVERAL THEATRES including a twin and a Drive-ln.
ideally located in various areas of New York. Prices
ranging from $1 10,000 to $450,000. Owner financing,
if qualified. Call JON HOYT REALTY, LTD (914) 339-
4444
HOLIDAY THEATRES-Hawaiian Theatre Chainwith
seven screens operating and three screens under
construction is available to cash buyer. One free standing
video store and two theatre lobby stands included
Contact J Shick. GM for further details at (808) 845
6032, or write to 1 1 1 1 Dillingham Blvd, #E-8. Honolu-
THEATRES FOR LEASE
MOVIE THEATRE FOR LEASE. Highly popular, newly
remodeled theatre. Three-screen complex. First run
pictures, no competition area. Southern Cat city
Includes separate video arcade, business rental, apartment
rental and office. Entire complex for lease or possible
sale. Contact Tom DeSimone at (714) 849-
8770.
PROPERTY FOR SALE
WATERFRONT PROPERTIES in Washington States
San Juan Islands, Puget Sound, and along Washington's
wild Pacific coastline. For brochure, call WAVES
Waterfront Properties. Inc. at 1-800-346-9235
SERVICE
Attention Projection and Sound Service Men: Why
send your parts customers to your service competitor?
We are a full-service, stocking supply dealer, heavy on
technical ability and personal attention We would like
to hear from you Object mutual business We can
supply you parts, list you for work, and provide you
technical backup support Future unlimited Contact:
Louis Bornwasser. Hadden Theatre Supply Co 10314
.
Bluegrass Pkwy . Louisville. KY 40299
THEATRE REMODELING
FOR TWINNING THEATRES call or write Friddel Construction.
Inc.. 402 Green River Drive, Montgomery, TX
77358 (409) 588-2667
MULTIPLEXING THEATRES We can perform all funotions
from consulting to complete turnkey package professionally
and efficiently with minimum down time.
Write or call Bill Clark, Quadrants Construction, (313)
261-9800, 12425 Stark Road, Livonia, Ml 48150
DRIVE-IN CONSTRUCTION
SCREEN TOWERS INTERNATIONAL New, Used,
Transplanted, Complete Tower Service Plus Indoor
Screens. Box 399-Rogers, TX 76569, 817-642-
FLAGS—FLAG POLES
FLAGS OF ALL NATIONS Custom flags, flag poles,
large or small Prompt shipment BUX-MONT FLAG
POLE CO., 221 Horsham Road, Horsham, PA 19044.
(215) 675-1040.
FILMS WANTED
X RATED, HARD CORE 35mm films wanted Paying
$100.00 per feature, must be in good running condition,
complete and not badly scratched Reply to BOX-
OFFICE # 4677
MISCELLANEOUS
WANTED: MOVIE POSTERS, lobbies, stills, etc Will
buy any sized collection. The Paper Chase. 4073 La
Vista Road. Tucker, GA 30084 Phone 1-800-433-
0025.
WANTED: Collections of movie posters and lobby
cards. Will buy a few or many Older materials preferred,
but will consider all offers. Call (213) 651-
5618.
FREE DETAILS-Theatre Management. Advertising
Promotion, Concessions and much more on audio cassette
tapes. Rush! Self-addressed, stamped envelope
to EXEC-U-TAPES, PO Box 9306, Waterbury. CT
06724.
September, 1989 49

Inc
Inc
HOLLYWOOD UPDATES
Bevellte-Adler 21
PRODUCTION NOTES
look deal with Universal Pictures. In the
past, De Laurentiis produced the "Conan"
Christie Electric Corp
Cinema Concepts Theatre
ci
Columbia Pictures has announced films and "Dune" Service
for Universal.
Co 29
that it has i'.i pictures in various stages of Sam Grogg, curtently president and Crest Sales of Texas 25
production and scheduled for release between
CEO of FilmDallas Inc., has announced Dinet Distributed Networks, Inc 21
now and the end of 1990 Many of the formation of a new motion picture Eastman Kodak Company 17
these 33 projects include prestigious projects
and television production company, Entertainment Data, Inc 19
made by Tri-Star Pictures, which has Grogg Entertainment Inc. A primary Filmack Studios
been merged with Columbia. Among goal of the new company will be to reorganize
FilmDallas Inc. and its subsidiary,
those Tri-Star movies are "Family Business,"
Hadden Tfieatre Supply Co
25
23
a multi-generational crime drama FilmDallas
Hurley Screens
Pictures Inc., which are now
25
starring Sean Connery, Dustin Hoffman in Chapter 11. Recent International FilmDallas projects,
Cinema
which were
and Matthew Broderick; "The Freshman,"
starring Broderick and Marlon not commercially successful, were "Da," JBL Professional 5
Equipment
critically acclaimed
Co 27
if
Brando as a young mobster and the elderly
hood who tutors him; Lawrence Kasdan
"Spike
Rocks."
of Bensonhurst" and "Patti Newton-Brown Associates
Pacer Corporation
9
7
s "I Love You to Death," starring Citing his satisfaction with the way that ShowEast 16
Kevin Kline and Tracey Ullman about a
"Bull Durham" and "No Way Out" were Smart Theatre Systems 13
husband who falls back in love with his handled by the company, Kevin Costner
has entered into a long term relationship
Soundfold International 23
with Orion Pictures. Costner will produce
Strong International
C3
and/or star
Theatre
in a number of projects
Systems 29
wife after she tries to kill him; and "Total
Recall," a long-in-the-works science fiction
drama starring Arnold Schwarzenegger
and directed by "Robocop's" Paul Verhoeven.
As part of the major restructuring of its
production divisions, 20th Century Fox
has named producer-director Joe Roth
chairman of the newly formed Fox Film
Corp Roth, who had been partnered in
the very successful Morgan Creek Prods.
("Major League," "Dead Ringers,"
"Young Guns"), replaces Leonard Goldberg,
who left the company in May.
Having dominated the spring with hits
like "K-9," "The Dream Team" and
"Field of Dreams," Universal Pictures
has announced it upcoming production
slate for the next 30 months. Movies
scheduled to go into production within
the next year include "Henry and
June," the first project from director
Philip Kaufman since the critically hailed
"The Unbearable Lightness of Being;"
"The Dark Man," a thriller from goremaster
Sam Raimi; and "Havana," a drama
which is expected to reunite "Out of
Africa" director Sydney Pollack with Robert
Redford. In 1990, Universal expects to
have 24 releases, three times the number
it had in 1987.
In a major step toward rejuvenation following
its pending sale to Qintex Entertainment,
MGM/UA has named Christopher
Bomba vice president of production
for the studio Bomba, who started with
the company in the story department in
1980, will report directly to John Goldwyn,
president of production.
Headstrong writer-director Oliver
Stone ("Platoon," "Talk Radio") has
signed a first-look deal with Carolco Pictures,
which heretofore has primarily
done big-budget action flicks like "Rambo"
and "Red Heat." Stone's immediate
concerns, however, are the release of
"Bom on the Fourth of July" for Universal,
and the production of "Evita" for the
Weintraub Entertainment Group.
Rafaella De Laurentiis, the ineffective
head of production for her father's
doomed DEO, has signed a two-year, first-
for the studio under the actor's Tig Production
Company banner.
Dennis Quaid has also signed a production
pact with Orion, which recently
released the disappointing "Great Balls of
Fire." The first film to go into production
under the long-term, non-exclusive pact
will be "22-Cent Romance," a romantic
comedy about a woman who receives a
strange visit from her pen pal.
PERSONNEL
New Line Cinema has promoted
Theresa Collins to senior vice president
of advertising and Alison Emilio to senior
vice president of marketing and publicity.
Collins, with the company for four
years, will now handle all areas of national,
co-op and corporate advertising. Emilio
will be creating and overseeing national
and field publicity, as well as being
involved in the formulation of national
promotions.
ACQUISITIONS
Cinecom: "Queen of Hearts," a drama
from Jon Amiel, the director of the
acclaimed BBC series, "The Singing Detective."
The film, which follows 20 years
in the life of an Italian family living in
London, will open in limited markets this
fall.
Fries Entertainment: "Easy
Wheels," a racing comedy starring Paul
Le Mat ("Melvin and Howard") and Eileen
Davidson.
Orion Classics: "Mystery Train," the
new film from "Stranger Then Paradise"
director Jim Jarmusch. Winner of the
prize for Best Artistic Contribution at this
year's Canne Film Festival, the film consists
of three separate stories that deal
with life on the road. The movie, which is
Jarmusch's first color feature, will open
in New York in November and a month
later in Los Angeles.
Automaticket 25
Theatron Data Systems
C4
WInterTek, Inc 27
Oliver's Stoi?'
Oliver
is one of the lucky ones.
He was one of six dogs we rescued
before they could be sold to a major
dog dealer for experimentation.
The interstate transportation of lost and
stolen dogs desfined for laboratories is a
nightmare for these animals—many of them
beloved companions— even before the experiments
begin. It is estimated that 100.000 dogs
per year make the journey to dog dealers and
experimenters.
Since 1980. People for the Ethical TVcatmcnt
of Animals has become this nations mo.st effective
and hard-hitting organization when it
comes to exposing and stopping animal cruelly,
especially in laboratories.
Suffering animals need knowledgeable and
assertive fighters on their side— they're not all
as lucky as Oliver.
For additional information on how vou can
help, write: PETA, P.O. Box 42516. Washin0,in.
DC 20015. or call (202) 726-0156.
50 BOXOFFICE

SEPTEMBER 1989
Reader Service
Ijr more information,
lie advertisement and product news Response Numbers in ttiese boxes.
SEPTEMBER 1989
Void after November 1989
Reader Service
For more information,
write advertisement and product news Response Numbers In these boxes.
>mpany
reet
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D News Media
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10 D Video Related Business
D Film Distribution 1 1 D Provide Services to the Movie Industry
D Film Production 12 O Other
I Yes! Enter my personal subscription to Boxoffice!
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.
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STRONG INTERNATIONAL, THAT'S WHO!
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Your Problems.
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Manager's
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Theatron Data Systems is dedicated to providing
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Let Theatron Provide The Solutions.
THEATRON DATA SYSTEMS 2633 N. San Fernando Blvd. • Burbank, CA 91504 • (800) 877-4837 J