Section A·Page 6
The University Daily Kansan
Friday, April 3, 1998
Liberty Hall comes in from the cold after rough winter
Shadows fall across the main floor of Liberty Hall in the late-afternoon sun. The 1940s-pattern tile floor is one of the distinctive touches the hall provides movie patrons. Photo by Geoff Krieger/KANSAN
Scott Bliss threads the film through a projector above the Little Theatre. Bliss was preparing the theater at Liberty Hall for yesterday's first showing of the day. Photo by Geoff Kringer/KANSAN
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When the Hollywood studios entered the picture, independent films lost their edge.
"The alternative became the Hollywood mainstream," Tibbets says.
And that alternative is grim, very grim, for Liberty Hall's business.
When The Full Monty, a ribald British import, opened on 387 U.S. screens in September and grossed nearly $3 million in its first week. Bliss was eager to book it. Such a popular film could play five months. He began going through the usual channels to acquire Monty. But the distributor, Fox Searchlight
Pictures, instead chose to distribute the movie at multiplexes.
"It was really tough this fall," he says. "We were banking on The Full Monty, and for all practical purposes, I thought we were getting Full Monty. Then it caught fire and Hollywood had to have it.
"That was our fall, and it destroyed our fall," he said. "It was grim, very grim."
Ironically, it was Monty's success that hurt Liberty Hall, said Richard Shamban, division sales manager for Fox Searchlight in Los Angeles, who pointed out that the movie did play in other art houses.
"Liberty Hall still will play Fox Searchlight films," he says, citing last fall's The Ice Storm as an example. "But South Wind had asked for Full Monty, so on this picture, we decided to go with South Wind."
In February, the situation repeated itself when Robert Duvall's preacher drama *The Apostle*, played across town instead of at Liberty Hall.
Rob Schulze, distributor for October Films in Los Angeles, decided where The Apostle would play in Lawrence. Other art houses in larger markets, such as the Tivoli Theatre in Kansas City, Mo., did have a shot at the movie, he said.
"When you play something that's got a broader appeal, you have to ask if it will play better in a small theater or a commercial house." Schulz says. "How a movie plays in New York or Los Angeles is not going to determine how it will play in Lawrence, Kansas."
Tibbets finds the distributors' affair with multiplexes curious, considering that the suburban outlets are notoriously unkind to offbeat fare.
Apparently, that view isn't shared by Miramax. Bliss was disappointed to learn that he wouldn't receive the company's big hit of the winter, Good Will Hunting.
"Good Will Hunting?" he said. "Never had a shot at it. They told me up front, 'You cannot have this.' Everybody wants it, forget it."
"And why? It's a Gus Van San movie. It's a small picture. There's no reason we couldn't play it and do well with it." Bliss says, sounding like a loyal boyfriend who's been stood up too many times.
"We had a great relationship with Miramax for so long," he says. "We played everything. We played their junk, and even if it did $200 a week, we still played it, because it was Miramax. They were our bread and butter, but now they're considered a major studio.
"
Not only did Miramax stiff Liberty Hall, its distribution and marketing team in New York refused numerous requests for an interview.
Bliss says things will pick up at Liberty Hall.
He already has scored one coup by booking Lawrence's only print of The Big Lebowski. He credits the triumph to the fact that its distributor, Gramercy, is one of the last true independents.
"We're so much more personalized," Bliss says. "We have fliers. We do more than just a little ad in the newspaper."
And the crowds, who helped to sell out many of the early shows, are loving Lebowski. The laughter and cheering has been so intense that about a third of the one-liners are lost in the din. When the credits roll, the audience members do something practically unheard of today.
They applaud.
"When you have a good weekend, it's just a 180-degree turn," Bliss says. "The only things you start to worry about are how you'll fit all these people in and how you'll get them back out again."
"This is my livelihood. I sleep, drink, eat, and I dream about this theater every night. It's not something I'm going to easily let go of."