Chris Marquette Message Board

Okay, thanks. That was in one of the official clips posted online too.

Excellent writeup, TeeJay. Now you can see why I haven't written much about the movie.

Exactly. That says it all right there. It's like knowing the ending at the start of The Sixth Sense. Once you know that you can never experience the movie and get the impact of it that you would have if you hadn't known it.

So much of the nuance in the movie rests on not knowing that going in. As you said, you focused less on the small things in the relationships between the characters and, to me, that is where the movie truly shines.

Just some feedback on your thoughts:

Holloway's Caleb was supposed to make the viewer very nervous. It was the awkwardness you felt in watching him which Luke actually intended. It's the essence of sexual tension and homoeroticism -- we never quite know what he's about or what he wants. The idea is that it places you in the shoes of Owen -- he isn't sure what anyone's intentions are. Luke holds back and tries to make Connor's and Caleb's advances as subtle as possible. It's not until near the end of the movie when all is revealed.

I don't remember having a problem with the editing but I guess that's something so individual -- it's based on what films you've seen and liked. Technique is pure opinion so I can't argue with that.

One thing Luke talked about extensively at the Q&As was the ending. Yes, he meant it to be somewhat ambiguous. What is Owen running away from? Where is he going? What will he do next? In a Hollywood movie we would have another scene. But he wanted to leave it to the viewer to decide.

You got it 100%. That's precisely what Luke said.

How can he go to the authorities when they, themselves, are part of the deal? And so is the local media. Who could he "tell?" Does he just decide to forget about it?

Or maybe in a few years he decides to write a script about it and make a movie.

It's hard to do. I've been playing this game for years. I've long advocated for distributors and theater owners releasing the info in advance but for various reasons they just won't do it. Normally a theater is not allowed to say if they're running a film until the Tuesday before. Even if they run trailers and have posters in the lobby they won't say.

Occasionally the info will leak out, especially if someone who has a connection to a theater owner, projectionist, or other employee. Some theater owners and distribs do announce ahead of time publicly. But it's hit or miss.

For the press, I am on some mailing lists and I get emails and faxes from some distribs and theaters. For example, I have a pretty good relationship with Landmark and usually know their bookings well ahead of time. They booked Fanboys at many theaters and I knew that a couple of months in advance. Some distribs have press sites that I can log onto with a password and get info. But some release no info at all. It's amazing how forthcoming some are while others act like the KGB.

One time there were so many people anxious to know about whether or not a particular film was coming to their area that I begged the producer of the movie to send me the list. He did. But he was so paranoid that people would find out he sent it. Obviously I couldn't reveal my sources. But I wasn't even allowed to post the list. If I did it would probably trace back to him. All I could do was, if someone wanted to know if it was coming to their area, they could tell me where they lived and I could list the theaters just in their area. That was all I was allowed to do.

I have no idea why it's such a closely guarded secret.

They have to send more prints out because as one theater ends its run on Thursday night another one starts on Friday and they have to have it in-house a couple of days beforehand.

Usually each theater gets its own print. Theoretically if a theater is ending its run tonight they could send it to one of the theaters starting on the 20th but each theater likes to have a fresh print and not one that's been shown elsewhere since it can get scratched.

This doesn't have the actual theaters. It might just be a reduction in NY, for example, as opposed to a reduction in markets.

I could look through the individual markets. Do you have the list of NY theaters? It's easy to check those.

Total so far is $207,887.

Of films #5-41, it is still the 2nd highest per screen average.

The only way to explain a mid-week increase like this is word-of-mouth.

Yup. In fact, chances are they did a trade deal on top of that in order for Comcast to also run ads for Fanboys. That means that TWC gets free advertising in lieu of paying $$, which comes out of the total $$ for the rights to run the features. It was most likely a combo. For example, instead of paying TWC outright $XXX, they may pay $XX and give them $X in ads.

We used to do something like that when I worked on the radio. It would work like this. Instead of Electric Factory Concerts (the promoter) paying us $1,000 to run ads promoting the Bruce Springsteen concert, they would give us $1000 in tickets to give away on the air and we would give them $1000 worth of ads. No money would change hands.

I hate to say it, but it's even possible that the deal included Comcast running ads for other TWC movies and not even Fanboys. That's very common.

It's just an exclusivity deal that allows Comcast sole access to and broadcast rights to the material (trailers, features, etc.). It's similar to deals that Apple, MSN, Yahoo, AOL, etc. cut when they have first rights to a trailer, song, etc. 

It works like this. Let's say you want to bring lots of traffic to your site. The best way to do that is to have some sort of exclusive deal with a film. On the one hand, it's a win/win because both sides benefit. On the other hand, it's really more in your interest than theirs since they can put their material anywhere. So they sell the rights to the highest bidder. In this case, that would be you. So you would pay them to allow you to have exclusive rights to post the material.

It's essentially no different than when NBC pays the NFL for the exclusive rights to broadcast certain football games, or when HBO pays Paramount to have them be the only cable network allowed to broadcast their movies.

How much was he in it? Can you describe the scenes? Thanks! Enquiring minds want to know.

Yes, I went right over there and it had gone up 14 minutes earlier. The person who posted it said that "I have solid info that..." as though he had some inside track lol. I would have just said it was an email from Kyle. Oh well, w/e.

Yup. The scene can't be completely cut because it comes back in the casino. It can be a lot shorter, though. The casino scene was excellent. Much tighter.

LOL Definitely pushed the gross-out envelope. There are certainly enough other bodily fluids/functions gags that will satisfy the tween boys.

I use the Firefox extension DownloadHelper. It snags flv files and converts them to avi in one step. Almost always works.

Occasionally it snags the flv but cannot convert it. In those cases I use YouTube Downloader to convert from flv to wmv. Almost always works.

http://www.downloadhelper.net/
http://youtubedownload.altervista.org/

It's rare that neither one converts the flv.