B.O. B.S.: The Follow-Up

Maybe, to be truthful, they hope that you don't read the word "estimates" in the news, and just take the numbers for the gospel.

Because I have a preference for horses that are deceased, and when I find them I like to kick them about into a state that some would consider "overkill," I am yelling about the box office results from the weekend again. You might ask me why I would do this, since I do not actually follow box office figures. This is not wholly true, since I do have occasion to get fired up about purportedly factual lists like "All-Time Box Office Champions" and their ilk, which are rarely correct, since they usually keep the dollar figures for each respective film tied to the economic standard in which they were released. Therefore, even if an older film had far more viewers overall than a more recent film, the recent one comes out on top because the tickets cost ten bucks a shot instead of four. (Once in a while, someone will release a list with dollar figures adjusted to the current norm, but then it seems to disappear as soon as the latest giant box office champ arrives, and of course, it makes for better publicity to have it as the all-time winner, and the media just loves a winner.)

Just as I did a couple of weekends ago regarding The Forbidden Kingdom, this morning I checked back at Yahoo! News to see if they had decided to release the box office figures for the entire weekend before Sunday's box offices had even opened in the bulk of the country. Of course they had, and the first line in the syndicated Reuters story read: "Comic book adventure "Iron Man" proved its mettle at the North America box office, kicking off the summer movie season with estimated weekend ticket sales of $100.75 million and marking an unlikely commercial rebound for its star, Robert Downey Jr."

Once again, this report went online around 9:28 a.m., or 12:28 Eastern, which would mean that the theatres on the East Coast were mostly getting done with only their first showings of the day at that time. Hardly anyone had gone to the cinema for the day -- anywhere -- in America and Canada, and yet somehow, Iron Man was not just cleaning up in the war on terror and crime, but also at the box office. This is fine. The movie is terrific (I saw it on Friday, so they already had my cash), and deserves to be hugely successful, mainly so I can get more Marvel Comics superhero movies. And they do have the word "estimates" in the opening paragraph, so if you read that then you should, unless you are a dope, realize they are merely making a largely educated guess.

But then there is that sticky verb "proved." "Proved" implies finality in the way that it is used. It's all past tense and its subject is seemingly decided. Then they also say "weekend ticket sales," and again, they are putting a cart in front of the dead horse I am already beating. Now, we are both causing traffic problems. And it yet again causes me to point out that there is nothing that has been proved, because there is no weekend that has concluded.

But it is the second paragraph that sinks them. Ready?

"The tally far exceeded expectations of an opening in the $70 million to $80 million range for the three-day period beginning Friday. All told, the movie grossed $104.25 million, counting receipts from Thursday evening previews, according to studio figures issued on Sunday."

Suddenly, it doesn't seem so much like "estimates" to me. That total gross figure seems pretty damn precise to me for a movie that, if I were to leave home right now, I could still go see four showings of through the remainder of today. (I am tempted.) And that "three-day period beginning Friday"? The weekend ain't over, Reuters...

My railing about this subject will only be read by a few people, but please, my friends, don't buy into the box office game. Huge dollar figures are sexy -- to audiences, to the media, to Wall Street, and mostly to the studios -- and their sexiness is the reason you see these figures instead of actual head counts of people who went to whatever film. Put a dollar sign in front of an ordinary number, and suddenly, people veer their gaze in that direction. There is no surprise that the studios want you to read these figures, because the general assumption is that if people see that something is exceedingly popular, and they haven't already seen the film, there will be a magical impulse for the listener or reader to go and see the film themselves.

My argument would be, in this dawning weekend (that is not yet over, I remind you yet again) for the Summer Movie Season, that the people who are most likely to attend the opening weekend of any of these upcoming blockbuster films have already made their minds up on which films they are going to blow their not necessarily hard-earned cash, and so this premature news report on the weekend's box office is not needed in the least. The people who are most likely to be influenced by such a report are the same people who would be apt to be influenced by it on Monday: the people who go "Wow, that movie made a hundred million dollars! I have to see that!" Reuters' releasing and Yahoo's syndicating of this story on Sunday morning is entirely frivolous, as most of these people probably have their weekend plans locked in already, so the pick-up market is going to be rather small, and only a blip on the radar by Sunday evening. They can see the final report on Monday morning, and go after that.

What I really want here is some accountability. Because this isn't journalism. The journalism that I know, and that I once respected, reports facts. Estimates from movie studios, notorious for their shady bookkeeping practices anyway, are not facts. They are publicity. And yes, I am well aware that there is no such thing as bad publicity.

There is, however, idiotic publicity. Such as a story that isn't a story, released a full day before the publicity and "estimates" within the non-story can be counted as "facts." And then that story being tossed about by major news services, having it pop up on my email site as actual news, and then no one thinking twice about verifying the information within the story, just meekly accepting it as the truth, in the way that everyone accepts a thousand shitty things each and every day because we have practically had it beaten into us. We wear down, and we accept these things. Except me. I am not accepting them.

I am just worn down.

So, Which Side Is Up? The Side That Has All the Bucks (That Ain't Us, By the Way...)

Hey, “Studio Estimates!” How did you do since Sunday when you prematurely announced, as you do every single week for eons, the box office take for the weekend before a good portion of the country had even prepared to go to the movies that day?

You initially reported that the #1 film, The Forbidden Kingdom with the Chan/Li tandem, had earned 20.9 million dollars. In the final tallies released following the actual weekend, it was reported Kingdom had earned $21.4 million. Well, there’s a half million dollars difference. Where did that come from? If the theatres had already finished their business properly, from which magical realm did all this cash spring? Forgetting Sarah Marshall, reported as having earned $17.3 million by the Reuters story which so incensed me on Sunday, pulled a similar trick to Kingdom’s and tacked on 400 large to its total by the time of the final tallies.

But then there is that completely unnecessary, and for my purposes, troublesome little remake of Prom Night. The Reuters’ piece said that the “teen horror Prom Night slipped to No. 3 with $9.1 million, taking its 10-day haul to $32.6 million.” But when the final total was announced, it’s line read this: “Prom Night, Sony, $8,670,364, 2 Wks. ($32,133,926).” Hmm… somehow, it was slashed of a half million since the story broke. Likewise, Ben Stein’s anti-intelligence, pro-intelligent design screed Expelled lost 300 grand. (Mr. Stein also would have lost his marbles, but those have apparently been missing for a good while.) Were the dollars added to the wrong films? Or was this all just shoddy guesswork?

Of course, it is. That’s why the initial story said “studio estimates.”

My problem, I will reiterate, is that these “studio estimates” are released as the gospel truth, and hours and hours -- and sometimes a full fucking day -- before the true figures are even ready to be stated. Because the headlines tout the news within the story as being finalized figures, one is not supposed to notice the term “studio estimates” within the text. The common person, jumping on the internet fleetingly before heading out for a nice Sunday morning (which might possibly include seeing one of the movies involved in the studio estimates) sees the link on their email page or on their phone claiming which movie made the most cash money for the weekend, and since the bulk of people seeing the link won’t click on it, they take only the info in the title out and about with them for the day. “Did you hear that The Forbidden Kingdom is the #1 movie?” And, yes, it happened to be at that moment in time, but the point I am trying to make is that it hadn’t yet earned the money it was being touted as making. But the story is meant to convince you it has.

And I hadn’t even gone yet that day. And perhaps some of you hadn’t either. Maybe we saw the film in another dimension where we only paid with Monopoly money, so it didn't count.

In Which I Have the Worst Case of Morning B.O. (Box Office) Ever

At 12:42 p.m. today (this would be Pacific Standard Time, or PST to those unable to read, or PT to those who are even worse readers than those unable to read), I noticed a link on my Gmail page that alerted me to a story on Yahoo which announced the weekend's box office report from a story reported on another site. This greatly confused me, since it was barely after noon, box offices had only been open in the most populous state in the union for two hours (if that), and I had yet to go see The Forbidden Kingdom that afternoon.

Mostly out of confusion, I clicked on the link. Indeed, it took me to a Yahoo page featuring that very story, itself spewed out by Reuters, the financial news network based in London. The story told me it had been placed "two hours and 6 minutes ago," which in my time would have been 10:36 a.m., just after most of the box offices had opened here, but in England, would have actually been 8 hours the other way, or this evening.

The story reported that The Forbidden Kingdom, featuring Jet Li and Jackie Chan, had conquered the weekend's box office totals over the three days with 20.9 million dollars, and further reported that Forgetting Sarah Marshall came in second with $17.3 million. And then it went on blah blah blah about disappointing returns over last year's grosses, blah blah blah, last week's champion dropping to third, blah blah blah, Ben Stein's idiot parade about creationism coming in 10th, blah blah... blather. The usual box office hooey...

Now, this Reuters story actually creeped in from L.A., but it really doesn't matter to me. What does matter is that today was NOT DONE. I believe, where I live, that the day was just getting underway here. Most of the movies in the -- start here -- West Coast still had anywhere from three to four showings to go on each screen on which they were to run -- this would be California (#1 most populous state), Washington (#13) and Oregon. Count in Hawaii and Alaska in that mix, and then zip back right across the country to all of the states who were still proceeding with the bulk of their prime viewing hours, and it becomes quite clear that this box office report is nothing but an estimate, and not a real figure. Because, for the entire country, people were still lining up for movies at every single theatre.

BECAUSE THIS "THREE-DAY OPENING WEEKEND" OF THEIRS WAS NOT EVEN CLOSE TO BEING OVER, GODDAMNIT!!!

People, I beg of you. Don't let box office monetary reports help you to decide what movies you want to see. Movies shouldn't be about seeing what is popular. They should be about seeing a decent film. I understand if all of your friends want to see a film, and that makes you want to see it too. After all, they are your friends for a reason. You have common interests, and you generally have a feel for bullshit when one of your friends is throwing it out. It just shouldn't matter to the common person how much money a particular movie has made. If you have stakes in hoping for a sequel, sure, you might care. (That also generally makes you an uncritical pussy from the outset, but that's O.K. Be who you have to be...) Or you just might have horrible taste. Regardless, your world doesn't live and die if a movie makes $20 million at the box office. It might to certain people in Hollywood, and that is where I get confused about this whole subset of the game. This bothered me in Alaska, because I would be heading to a film on a Sunday and already hear that my money had been counted on the news. But, now it really fucking bothers me in California.

Why? Because this is where the movies are mostly made. Isn't it strange in a company town like L.A. that you can catch the news on a Sunday morning, expecting to hear how your film performed from Friday-to-Sunday, when Sunday hasn't fucking happened yet? Well, no, apparently to people here, it isn't strange, because all of this hooey is based around the term "studio estimates." And the studios are right here, for the most part. These are not real figures. They are made-up figures. And studios will argue, argue, argue these figures sometimes, but somehow, come Monday, they will all somehow agree on them for the most part. And it's all so, so serious, becomes it comes down to stocks, and it comes around to shares going up and down with the various companies involved, and it actually does affect tons of people in the long run.

And they are all so anxious to get their answer, like the rest of this increasingly impatient society that they have to be so condescending to their audience that they release news reports telling you that they have pocketed your money before you have even spent it. Or even decided to spend it. Is it just more evidence of the Illuminati and how all of your decisions have been made for you? I don't care. I have a stupid movie to attend so that I can pony up bucks that I apparently owe Hollywood now.