Adventures in the Screen Trade by William Goldman

add a few more cities. If the movie doesn't work, it disappears, and you haven't spent a lot of money.
    Now, within these extremes there are infinite variations, and it's often here that a producer fights his ultimate battles, trying to convince the studio to release his film in a manner they consider best for their individual project.
    Another giant battle for a producer is not how his movie is released but when. All the different media have a "target audience." For pop music, that audience is made up of kids from the ages of eleven to fifteen. That's the group the pop music moguls must reach. Television's prime-time target audience is a different age group-twenty-five to forty-nine. For films, the target audience is different still: Movies must hit those between sixteen and twenty-four. That's the bulk of the popcorn buyers. No one knows for sure why, but the com- mon wisdom is this: When a kid hits sixteen, he wants to get the hell out of the house, away from his folks. By the time people are twenty-four, a lot of them start getting married and having families, and the cost of a movie escalates for them-sitters, etc.
    Which is why the most lucrative time for movies is summer; and after summer, Christmas. The target audience is out of school. Which is why so many expensive films come out at those two periods, competing expensively with each other.
    Now, there is certainly logic behind that thinking. And more than a little madness. Because in the rush of product, some films are certain to be lost and left behind. One of Hollywood's leading producers, Daniel Melnick (That's Entertainment, All That Jazz), had some comments on that madness in a recent inter- view concerning a film of his that was scheduled to open in ear- ly '81 but, at the last minute, got shoved into the Christmas barrage.
    I wanted to release Altered States in January, because I felt there were no other major movies being released then and there would be an audience. I would rather go at a time when there are fewer people attending movies and offer them pictures they want to see, rather than to divide a larger audience with ten other desirable films.
    I think that as an industry we have very often shown the instinct of lemmings. To find ourselves releasing films basically twice a year and glutting the market is, I think, folly. I realize that historically Christmas and summer have had the highest attendance. But I think to some degree that's a self-fulfilling prophecy. We're all convinced that people go to the movies primarily at Christmas time, so we release our big pictures then....
    Obviously, Melnick lost his battle in Altered States. But you can assume that, like any quality producer, he didn't go quietly. A producer is really like Willy Loman trudging along with his suitcase under his arm, trying to convince people to buy what he's selling. Often they end up with no more success than poor Willy eventually found. (There are exceptions. Warren Beatty, a brilliant producer, had, as his first film, the famous Bonnie and Clyde. Only it didn't get famous its first time out. Controversial it was, but successful it wasn't. But Beatty-cajoling, kicking, screaming, God knows how-convinced the studio to give the film a major re-release soon after its original time at bat. The movie became a gigantic success, but had it not been for Beatty's unique skill, it might have been just another unknown cult film today.)
    Studios have the money, and that's always where the power lies. I remember an early Sam Peckinpah film-still for me his best-called Ride the High Country. It opened in New York as the bottom half of a double bill with a European Mongol-type picture. It got some sensational notices, and when I saw it, I couldn't believe the way it was handled. I eventually tracked down an executive at the studio and asked why it had been dumped. He explained: "Sure we previewed it. And the preview cards were sensational. But we decided to send it out the way we did because