Now Playing Arrivals Of Films Like ‘Hamlet’ And ‘Marvin’s Room’ May Turn

On a recent weekend tour of Seattle movie houses, I noticed something surprising.

Which was this: Many of the same mainstream movies playing there also were playing Spokane.

We’re talking movies such as “The Beautician and the Beast,” “Dante’s Peak,” “Jerry Maguire,” “One Fine Day,” “Scream,” “Space Jam” and, of course, the special edition of “Star Wars.”

But that wasn’t all. Many of the more notable alternative films, pictures such as “The English Patient,” “Big Night,” “Breaking the Waves,” “Evita,” “Secrets and Lies” and “Shine,” also were playing in both cities.

Was Spokane, I thought, finally becoming a real movie town?

Well, my sense of surprise was short-lived.

And why? Because Seattle, a cinephile’s paradise, also boasted a number of movies that, I knew from experience, not only were not playing in Spokane but likely never would.

Even at the Magic Lantern.

Among these movies were such offerings as “Hamlet,” “Everyone Says I Love You,” “Kolya,” “Albino Alligator,” “Angel Baby,” “Johns,” “Freeway,” “La Ceremonie,” “Marvin’s Room,” “Microcosmos,” “Prisoner of the Mountains,” “Sling Blade,” a revival of Nicolas Roeg’s 1971 film “Walkabout” and “The Whole Wide World.”

So imagine my surprise when I learned that not only are “Hamlet” and “Marvin’s Room” opening Friday in Spokane, but so is David Lynch’s new offering, “Lost Highway.”

The fact that these films are opening here at all is strange. “Hamlet,” after all, is Kenneth Branagh’s four-hour version of the Shakespearean play. “Marvin’s Room” is a family drama that earned Diane Keaton her Best Actress Oscar nomination. And “Lost Highway” is …. well, David Lynch.

Even stranger is the fact that all three are opening at once - and “Lost Highway” is doing so at the same time it’s scheduled to open over most of the country.

As any regular Spokane movie-goer knows, the movie-marketing slogan “Opens Friday everywhere” usually includes the unspoken addendum - “except in Spokane.”

But the strangest part is this: None of these films is opening at the Magic Lantern Cinemas. All three are playing at houses owned by ACT III Theatres, the Portland-based movie chain that specializes in mainstream fare.

What is happening here?

Several things, it turns out.

One, as Seattle Post-Intelligencer film critic William Arnold recently wrote, alternative films are gaining a wider audience in general. Four of the five movies nominated for Best Picture Oscars - “The English Patient,” “Secrets and Lies,” “Shine” and “Fargo” - are distinctly non-Hollywood productions.

“Jerry Maguire” is the only mainstream contender.

“No matter how you look at it, the nominations … are a devastating repudiation of the no-risk, corporate thinking that has gripped Hollywood in the ‘90s,” Arnold wrote.

Whether it’s because film distributors recognize this trend, or whether they’re doing so for their own byzantine reasons, the fact is that more prints of non-mainstream movies are being made available to smaller markets.

“It’s not as hard as it used to be,” says one longtime film buyer for ACT III, explaining why he is willing to open more movies that traditionally haven’t played well in Spokane and similar cities. One movie company even told him that it planned to put as many as 1,200 prints of a specific art-oriented film into national circulation.

“And, see, 12 years ago that was unheard of,” the buyer said. “They’re loosening up like mad.”

The ACT III buyer, who works out of Portland, says that the standard way of releasing chancy films has been to “stagger” them. Which means to release them only in bigger cities, hope for some critical and word-of-mouth notice, and then gradually move them out to the hinterlands.

In other words, to the Spokanes of the world.

“Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t,” says the booker, who because of company policy declined to let his name be printed for this story. “Of course, it’s not a science. Everything’s guesswork in the film business.”

Much of that guesswork, though, is based on past results. And the fact is that Spokane never has been a big foreign or art-oriented market. The only art house to serve the Spokane-Coeur d’Alene area, the Magic Lantern Cinemas, has gone out of business more than once during its two-decade existence.

But we aren’t talking just about foreign and art movies. Sometimes it seems that any movie not featuring Chris Farley sight-gags or exploding cars just won’t capture Spokane’s imagination.

For example: One area movie fan called Walt Disney Studios to request that the company play “Prefontaine,” the bio-pic of the legendary Oregon distance runner, in Spokane. And he was told by a Disney executive that the city is considered a poor investment for such smaller films.

However, there were a number of such requests. “Prefontaine” has a strong local connection through Mead High School track coach Pat Tyson, who was Steve Prefontaine’s college roommate, and through the several area runners who appeared in the film. So the movie ultimately did play here.

And what happened? Spokane proved the Disney guy right. The film disappeared after a brief run.

To be fair, the ACT III buyer says, “The picture didn’t have any legs anywhere. The second week (it) just died off everywhere.”

Still, it’s all too common that Spokane audiences will fail to support something special. When the film “Hype!” - a fascinating documentary detailing the birth of the Seattle grunge music scene - opened at the Lyons Ave. Cinemas last November, it played to a mere handful of fans and died virtually overnight.

There are dozens of similar stories.

One guy who should know refuses to give up hope. Situations do change, says Larry Blair, who not only co-owns the Magic Lantern but co-owns and oversees management of the new movie complex in Post Falls, the Post Falls Cinema 6. And as situations change, so then do perceptions.

Blair, who willingly admits that he has his own best interests at heart, believes that the movie distributors have only themselves to blame. Not only does he have trouble getting distributors to place extra prints in his theaters, but Blair says he can’t get them to help him pay for what he considers adequate advertising.

Such support helped make Seattle into the movie town it is, Blair says. The same could happen, if on a smaller level, in Spokane.

But the distributors, he says, just aren’t interested.

“We don’t have enough screens, and we don’t have a big enough screen to do the giant numbers that the distributors are looking for,” he says.

Blair is talking about his own nine-screen mini movie-empire. But he could be referring to the whole area.

“They look at this as a little cowtown market,” Blair says. “The problem is that the marketplace, the Spokane-Coeur d’Alene-Post Falls-Deer Park-Cheney - that whole surrounding area with the mass of people that live there - is not treated as an important marketplace by the people that are bringing in the movies for customers to see.”

He points at the success in Spokane of the “Star Wars” trilogy, a success that reflects the nationwide mania for all things Lucas-created, as evidence.

“How they can say a marketplace that has theaters (doing that kind of business) is not a good marketplace is beyond me,” Blair says.

Blair and the ACT III buyer both agree that the more screens that the area supports, the better chances are that a more diverse variety of films will play here. And more screens are on the way. A movie complex is scheduled to open this summer in the new Spokane Valley Mall.

And there’s always the projected 24-screen mega-movie complex that is planned for downtown.

If any or all of that construction ends up happening, the onus will be even more on area movie-goers to make it worth the studios’ while.

“I want to bring in the broadest spectrum that I can to our customers,” the ACT III buyer says. “But they’re movie-going habits dictate what I do. I don’t tell them what to see; they tell me what to play. That’s the basic rule of thumb here. They’re the boss, essentially.”

So it comes down to this: We can’t force Warners or Paramount or Universal or Columbia or 20th Century Fox to play more movies here. We can’t force them to spend more money to advertise their product.

We can’t even force the movie houses themselves to play the movies we want to see at the venue in which we prefer to see them (say, by putting a run of “The English Patient” at the Lincoln Heights Cinemas).

All we as moviegoers can do when films such as “Hamlet,” “Marvin’s Room,” “Lost Highway,” “The English Patient,” “Fargo” and the lot open in Spokane is to go see them when we have the chance.

And especially to go see them during that all-important opening weekend.

“As I point out to the people who call in from these size towns,” says the ACT III buyer, “I tell them in all honesty, ‘We’re a retail business.’ And if a certain product isn’t supported, I’m less likely to bring it in. That’s a cold, hard fact of life.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 color photo