Dear Hollywood: Bring Back the Roadshow Format

I’ve decided this week to take a break from my usual fare to address a problem less elevated but still in need of solving: the extended run times of Hollywood films. It’s been discussed for years, but much like inflated home prices, inflated running times have gotten completely out of hand.

With the writers strike going on (more about that in my next post) perhaps it’s time for Hollywood execs to earn their ridiculous salaries and improve some things. Instead of shortening the run times of films, I would propose they lean into it by bringing back the so-called “roadshow” format.

Back in the 1950s and 1960s, as film faced a challenge from television (the more things change…) Hollywood studios looked for ways to enhance the theater-going experience. People needed a little something extra to get off the couch and to the cinema, and thus 3-D and widescreen formats like Cinerama were born.

Instead of using technology, the “roadshow” format was about elevating the feel of seeing a movie. This format was used for longer, epic productions. It included reserved seats, an overture, and crucially for the current discussion, an intermission. All of these features made it feel like you were going to a special event, not a regular movie. More viscerally, you could take a piss without missing anything.

For some inexplicable reason, American movies are getting longer AFTER getting rid of the intermission. Like a lot of other needlessly cruel features of our society, other nations do not act like this. When I lived in Germany I saw The Return of the King in the theater, and the theater added an unofficial intermission halfway through. German audiences expected it! We ought to as well.

In our increasingly inhumane society we completely fail to account for human needs. What bigger and more primal need is there than the need to empty your bladder? When we were in Montreal recently my wife was stunned at how museums there provided plenty of places for tired people to sit, something never seen in America.

As our society has gotten more inhumane, it has also become more crass, crude, and inconsiderate. Going to the movies nowadays is a roll of the dice, you never know if you will be seated next to someone who’s talking all the time, or scrolling their phone, or eating disgusting hot meals. The roadshow format, by virtue of its formality, sends a message that the viewer needs to elevate their behavior. I imagine seeing a film in this format will cut down on the rude jerks due to an unconscious sense of reverence.

In any case, the theaters have already started having reserved seats as a matter of course. Can’t we convince them to go just one more extra mile? The more they can make going to the theater an “event” the better the chance we have of rescuing the live theater experience at a time when it is threatened with extinction.

Bring back the roadshow, Hollywood, and make the movies as special as Nicole Kidman says they are in those AMC promos.

Postscript

Here are some of my favorite things from past roadshow formats. First off, I love the old-timey turn of the century overture and intermission cards in The Great Race

There are a lot of great roadshow overtures, but I got to see Lawrence of Arabia in this format on the big screen once and the overture just made me even more excited than I was when I bought my ticket.

Ben-Hur is a big Bible epic as cheesy as Charlton Heston’s smile, but I can’t resist it in part because the overture tells you right off the bat how great it’s going to be. The title card being a detail from the creation scene in the Sistine Chapel is just *chef’s kiss*

On my first trip to LA I had the change to see 2001: A Space Odyssey at the Cinerama Dome in the roadshow format. The experimental music intermission is so creepy, and helps set the tone for the second half of the film.