#block booking

[dailylooneys]

Let me explain something too about the distribution of motion pictures. They had a thing in the motion picture, at that time, called "block-booking". And that meant, if you bought a Warner Bros. feature or an MGM feature, anything like that, you have to take whatever short subjects they gave you. You don't have a choice. And the result with that was, in some places, like at MGM, the top people over there got interested in short subjects. So when Tom & Jerry were made, they realized they had a good thing, but they wouldn't like Bill and Joe do anything but that. And so they did hundreds of Tom & Jerry's. At our place, they didn't give a damn. I mean, nobody ever cared about the cartoons anyway. But, all they knew is they had something, it was this thing, you reached in the bag, pull one out and threw it on the screen. So they had one of the "Pathe" travelogues, newsreels and so on. So, they would supply them and whoever it was [..] and so they get a good feature and they wouldn't care, they didn't try to get one that went with the feature, they say "what's there?". They pull one out and throw it in and in, that was the bag. Well, in a way that was bad. But in a way, it was wonderful for us because nobody gave a damn what we did and onus making funny pictures fell upon us. Well, we had nobody leaning over our shoulders. As long as the picture was acceptable, than that was all there was to it.

Chuck Jones on “block-booking” and the process of short subject distribution, and the freedom at WB cartoon studio

[erebusvincent]

Biden vs. Block Booking - The Bulwark

With the Paramount Decrees being rolled back in 2022, it’s worth considering how a Biden DOJ might respond to anti-competitive practices at movie theaters.

Given the precarious state of the film industry—even with a vaccine on the horizon, studios continue to lack the ability to project when the coronavirus will end and their products will be able to return to theaters; the theaters themselves remain precariously close to bankruptcy, given the lack of new product from studios—one thing worth watching from the incoming Biden Administration will be what they choose to do if the studios or theaters decide to take advantage of the recent termination of the Paramount Decrees.

[toddjurgess]

Netflix Saves New York’s Paris Theatre With New Lease Agreement

Netflix will keep the iconic, single-screen arthouse open to present its own movies.

One expects more of this as studios move to streaming and closely guard the dissemination of their IP, in the new streaming era that I wish was already over.

I figured the rollback on those old restrictions had to do with Disney corporate consolidation and monopolization, but maybe it was to make room for this kind of thing?

[holidaypictures]

Thanks to Luca Peretti for spotting this old but interesting piece by Bologna's Giacomo Manzoli, in which Manzoli discusses the 'block booking' that limits choice in Italian cinemas at Christmas time. This kind of industrial aspect is gestured at (in the interviews mainly) but not explored in my book - it has been a choice of mine, but it remains a limitation, to focus on the pleasures provided by the cinepanettone and not to discuss how viewer investment might be determined by the restricted offering of producers and distributors (see here, though, for some discussion of 'political economy' approaches to Italian cinema). Still, as Giacomo says, the potential viewer can always stay at home, watching the Sopranos, playing the Wii, whatever.