A few weeks ago, the documentary Food, Inc. concluded its local run (local review here). When I saw it, the crowd was small, maybe 20. Fewer than the filmmakers would like, but it was during the second-run. Some DK diaries on it are here and here. Another review is from the NYT and a related NYT article is by Kim Severson.
What I want to focus on, though, is not the big issues of the film, which others do very well, but on the issue implicit in the crowd size mentioned above. Namely, peeling the onion further, which demographic goes or is inclined to see the film. Or, for that matter, films like it....
One quote (since I'm a classical music nerd) attributed to Giuseppe Verdi, towards the end of his life, and told to the the new manager of the about-to-reopen La Scala theater, goes as follows:
"The theatre is intended to be full and not empty. That's something you must always remember."
Related to that is an earlier quote in a letter to a friend, where he said of paying attention to box-office receipts:
'"You will object," he wrote to a friend, "what business of yours are the receipts? But they are my business, because they prove that the show was interesting and thus they show us how to go about things in the future."'
Citation: Giuseppe Verdi, letter to Opprandino Arrivabene, 29 August 1872, from Verdi intimo: Carteggio di Giuseppe Verdi con il conte Opprandino Arrivabene (1861–1886), Annibale Alberti, editor (Milan: Mondadori, 1931), p. 148.
Food, Inc. can be seen as one of the latest salvo in left/progressive-leaning documentaries/polemics that have graced movies screens in the last several years. The primo provocateur among such filmmakers is, of course, Michael Moore. Just a sampling of his box-office figures (all just US figures):
(a) Bowling for Columbine: $21,576,018
(b) Fahrenheit 9/11: $119,114,517
(c) Sicko: $24,538,513
However, these are the exceptions among these progressive films, not the rule. Examples of more "normal" box-office values, to wit:
(d) The Fog of War: $4,198,566
(e) Outfoxed: $405,900
(f) The Corporation: $1,879,301
(g)Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room: $4,071,700
(h) Who Killed the Electric Car?: $1,678,874
(i) No End in Sight: $1,433,319
(j) Taxi to the Dark Side: $274,661
(k) Body of War: $71,716
Or, getting back to the launchpoint, food-related documentaries:
(i) Super Size Me: $11,529,368
(j) King Corn: $99,279
(k) Food, Inc.: $3,806,061 (so far)
You get the idea. It's true that box office figures exist in the context of how many theaters to which the movies are distributed, and to which markets they are sent. Most documentaries, at most, play in a double-digit number of movie houses, although neither King Corn nor Body of War broke out of single-digits for number of theaters where each was shown. (OK, King Corn did get a PBS screening, but again, that's a niche market.)
But the more important point is who goes to see these movies, and underneath that, where the distributors decide to market them. Even in Food, Inc., some of the vintage documentary footage addresses this question, with (if memory serves; please correct me if I'm wrong) Gary Hirshberg saying that at the commune-like setting where he spent some time, the message was, essentially, preaching to the converted. Even without a detailed demographic breakdown, if such a thing were possible without really invading individual moviegoers' privacy, it's a pretty likely guess that moviegoers who would go to see films like Food, Inc. are progressives/liberals/lefties, environmentally aware and reasonably conscientious consumers.
In other words, a pretty small percentage of the population, who are already sympathetic to the film's message, and won't have their minds changed by the film, i.e, "the converted". Hard to imagine wingnuts and birthers, and health-care attack nutjob thugs ("HCANTs" for purposes of this diary; the acronym doesn't exist anywhere else) going to any of those films, isn't it? No amount of factual debunking will change the birthers' minds on that subject, or the HCANT's on health-care reform, so why would they be inclined to see a movie like Food, Inc.? Even Monsanto, which gets roasted in the movie, didn't lift a finger to boycott against the film or urge people not to see it. If the idea even crossed their minds, they didn't have to, since the movie was on only one screen locally for the first part of its run, and was only on one screen for the second-theater run. It wouldn't have been worth their time. Had they done that, it might have helped Food, Inc.'s box office locally.
Severson notes that the marketers behind Food, Inc. know the need to get the word out:
"To coincide with the opening the lids of millions of containers of Stonyfield Farm yogurt have been turned into Food, Inc. ads, thanks in large part to the company's chairman, Gary Hirshberg......The documentary even has its own companion book, which is more than 300 pages long and filled with essays about global warming, hunger and pesticides along with tips on how to talk to a farmer and improve school lunch."
Astute readers will note that I left out the most obvious comparison of Food, Inc. to another documentary of note, namely An Inconvenient Truth (US box office: $24,146,161). The comparison is obvious, since, if you haven't already seen Food, Inc., it ends in very much the same manner, with an uplifting montage of people saying essentially "yes, we can" with regarding to improving our food consciousness and tips running across the screen about things we can do, as individuals. I had a sense of déjà vu while watching it, to be honest, not that the message wasn't less valid for it, of course. Severson also notes the contrast between Food, Inc. and An Inconvenient Truth:
"After watching Al Gore explain the horrors of climate change, moviegoers can turn off a few lights, think about a Prius and call it a day. People who leave Food, Inc. still have to eat.
And the filmmakers know that. At the end of the film a series of suggestions run across the screen. Plant a garden. Cook a meal for the family. Contact Congress.
'I want people to feel like they can do something,' said Naomi Starkman, a Northern California media consultant and aspiring farmer who helped create the messages. 'You make a choice three times a day on what you want to eat. That is power.'"
But is it enough, given the limited audience who will see the film through the rest of the run, if the first part is anything to go by? The average take has been declining over the last few weeks, as happens with all first-run films at some point. Eventually, there will be a brief second wave of interest when the DVD comes out.
Presumably, down the line, yet another food-themed documentary will appear, with Michael Pollan making yet another appearance, where he'll continue to expound on the American way of food and diet, as he does so well as in this recent NYT article. Pollan notes, for example, in this general comment:
"Erica Gruen, the cable executive often credited with putting the Food Network on the map in the late '90s, recognized early on that, as she told a journalist, 'people don’t watch television to learn things.'"
You could substitute "movies" for "television", especially in the context of box-office figures. True, there are exceptions, like anyone going to see Food, Inc. or other such documentaries. From that, maybe, just maybe, we all shift our behavior, one individual at a time, with hopefully enough individuals in aggregate causing a shift in larger trends and behavior. At least that's the dream.
So, it's Friday night, and time below to pontificate on new films you've recently seen. Or perhaps obscure films, blockbuster or otherwise, or maybe vintage movies you've caught up on. Have fun.....