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                                              Scholocktoberfest

 

Lately I’ve been thinking about audiences. The largest movie-going audience in America is young, very young. According to the Motion Picture Association in 2006, 65% of tickets sold were bought by customers whose ages were between 12 and 39 (the largest group being the twelve to twenty-four bundle at 36%). So if you ever wonder why there isn’t a single movie you want to see among the dozens playing at your local multi-plex, here’s your answer--you’re too old. Films are conceived for and marketed to the under forty crowd.

 

I used to think this was a new development. Watching "classics" on TCM lead me to believe films and their audiences used to be more sophisticated. But now I’m not so sure: gangster films and musicals, child star vehicles and social dramas all have their corollary in today’s market. People dressed better and grew up faster in the days of world wars and black and white photography, but I imagine movies that succeeded back then also catered to the same demographic. However, even if I’m wrong, the fact remains movies today cater almost exclusively to young people. Given that axiom, how can a theater that shows independent, foreign and classic films survive? In other words, can the theater I plan to open in my small Mississippi town succeed? To find the answer to this question I went to my local library and talked to Jamie L. Elston, Assistant Director of Public Services for the Hancock County Library System, who has for years presented independent films at the Bay St. Louis library.

 

Ms. Elston loves cheesy horror films, especially ones that deal in the supernatural, the kind of films, she suggested with a giggle, that are so bad they’re good. She worked for the New Orleans Worst Film Festival until she moved to Bay St. Louis. Then she partnered with Scott Foy to put together Schlocktoberfest, an event celebrating films that "Schlock and Awe," as coined in the festival’s 2003 video promo. Not quite Citizen Kane, though Orson Welles, I’m sure, would appreciate the hutspa. The library’s movie attendance figures were acceptable if not overwhelming: generally between ten and twenty with an occasional three or four count and an all-time high of forty, when a volunteer group that came after the storm arrived en masse. Nonetheless, Ms. Elston insisited an independent theater could succeed and gave me a good deal of practical advice. For instance, she offered ideas on the best places to get free advertising (the library doesn’t pay for advertising), and she stressed that local organizations would be especially helpful, like the Hancock Arts Commission. the Bay St. Louis Chamber of Commerce, and our local radio station, WQRZ.  

 

But practical advice aside, it was her generosity and enthusiasm for bad movies that most impressed me. I’ve had this experience several times since I arrived from California loaded with stereotypes about the South and Mississippi--Strother Martin terrorizing Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke, "What we have here is a failure to communicate." But over the last couple years, especially since Katrina, I’ve realized how useless those preconceptions were. The more people I meet, the more I realize there’s nothing typical about this Mississippi town. The motto of Bay St. Louis is "A Place Apart," and it’s fitting because BSL is filled with people who surprise you, classically trained chefs, painters and potters, transplants from Manhattan and Ireland, the sort of one-of-a-kind characters you find in independent films that stay with you long after the movie is over.