Deliberate Antagonism by Movie Theaters?

I took my family to see An American Carol this past weekend. We all wanted to show our support for the movie during opening weekend. We were not disappointed. It’s a great spoof full of laughs alternating with sincere moments, and it’s one heckuva great message.

We were settled in and excited for the beginning when the lights dimmed. The requisite commercials played followed by the warnings to turn off our cell phones. That’s when the strangest thing happened.

The first trailer started. It turned out to be a movie about Richard Nixon. Hmm, I thought. I haven’t heard about this one. It didn’t take long to show the movie is going to be a slam piece on the former President’s interview with David Frost, casting Nixon as the villain and the Frost writers as the small, vastly undermanned yet brave heroes standing up to the evil cadre of lawyers and PR guys protecting Nixon.

A few murmurs spread throughout the crowd. How ironic it was that this particular trailer wound up being shown before the one movie made for conservatives. Then things got weirder.

The second (and last) trailer was for W., the movie that Oliver Stone made with no pretense at truth or civility. It’s an all-out attack piece on the current President, attempting to portray him as a boozing, coked up frat boy who stumbles his way to the highest office in the land and proceeds to tear the country apart despite being a fool.

Okay, now the comments were louder and more open. What was going on? Why show these two trailers to this particular audience? Those were the only two shown. Most movies today get at least a half dozen trailers.

The movie began and the crowd settled down to finally enjoy themselves. We did, too. Carol delivered what it promised. I was mildly surprised that it did not get a standing ovation at the credits. This type of crowd is normally not given to over-the-top public displays, however. That’s usually the forte of the other side.

On the way out, I stopped and asked the manager about the trailers. He said that trailers are chosen by the distribution company and they had no input. He even agreed with me that those were inappropriate trailers to be showing for that movie, but there was nothing he could do.

Although I believed that about as much as I believed that George Patton actually came back to haunt Michael Moore Malone, I left without further comment. The next day I emailed Vivendi Entertainment, the Carol distributor. The reply was that the movie chain has sole discretion over choice of trailers, which made much more sense.

This morning I fired off a complaint to the theater’s home office. I listed two complaints – first with the deliberate choice of trailers and second with the manager who would not tell the truth. I’ll update with any response they might give me.

UPDATE - After one week, there has been no response from the theater chain other than to acknowledge receipt of my complaint. I sent a followup yesterday saying that I cannot know with certainty why they are not responding, and therefore I am left to guess as to their reasoning. Should they ever choose to respond, I'll pass it along.