Good things come to those who wait, says DONALD CLARKE
This week, a year and a half after it triumphed at the Sundance Film Festival, Courtney Hunt's Frozen Riverfinally arrives in our cinemas. How dare the distributors ask us to make do with films Americans enjoyed during the Beijing Olympics? They'll be releasing Buster Keaton flicks in your local Enormoplex next.
Punters under the age of 30 (or so) now expect films to open at more or less the same time in Dublin, Ireland as they do in Dublin, Ohio. Yet, up until a decade or two ago, a strict hierarchy of release dates regularly condemned outlying cinemagoers to weeks and months of frustration.
Before Jawschanged everything, a major movie would begin its release at a few select cinemas in Los Angeles and New York. Following (all going well) glowing reviews and (all still going well) positive word of mouth, Dirty Cassidyand The Poseidon Infernowould then slowly make its way into Chicago, Boston and Detroit. Some weeks later, the good people of Tuna Fish, Iowa would get a look.
As much as six or eight months after the film’s American premiere, when the sequel was already in preproduction, the picture would finally lumber its way into the Empire, Leicester Square. But that didn’t meant that the good people of Dublin, Ireland – not to mention those in Galway or Limerick – would get to enjoy the action just yet.
After playing at the big cinemas in central London, Dirty Cassidywould only reluctantly make its way into English provincial movie houses and the larger venues in Dublin's O'Connell Street. Decades after the film's triumphant New York opening – the cast now all has-beens; the late director mourned by a grieving family – it might finally turn up in, say, the Savoy in Limerick.
Jawsproved that a massive release throughout the US could generate more publicity than a slow build. However, it took a lot longer for the studios to come round to the notion of releasing pictures at the same time throughout the world. (As recently as the beginning of this decade, films such as Trafficand The Man Who Wasn't Therewere released a good three months earlier in Britain than in Ireland.) The dangers of piracy on videotape started the process, but it was the greater threat of internet tomfoolery that firmly established the (as they say in the business) day-and-date release practice.
Anomalies still remain. For some deranged reason, Disney insists upon releasing Pixar pictures here up to five months after their unveiling in the US. For the most part, however, the faintly demeaning business of being kicked down the release schedule has ended. If films fail to open the same day as in America, they will, most likely, be along a week or so later.
Still, it’s not all good. Remember how much fun it was to return from your holiday in America and brag about the films your pals wouldn’t see for aeons. “Robocop? Oh, is that not out here yet?” They were the days.
