January 12, 2006

By Lauren Heaton

There may be a dozen ways for the corporate multiplex movie theaters to pressure small-town theaters into oblivion, but there are a dozen more ways for the little guys to fight back.

This month the Little Art Theatre instituted a scheduling change that has its films “slated, not dated” to allow the movie house to show the kinds of films it wants earlier and for a longer period, said the theater’s owner, Jenny Cowperthwaite-Ruka.

Going “off calendar” may seem inconvenient at first, but Cowperthwaite-Ruka said she hopes that the new practice will benefit both the business and its patrons.

Those who have come to rely on the bimonthly schedule will notice the dates for films on the Little Art’s January calendar have disappeared. The films for this month, such as The New World, The White Countess, and Brokeback Mountain, are expected to show here, but the dates and duration of showtimes all depend on the films’ earliest availability, Cowperthwaite-Ruka said.

If Little Art patrons are a little ruffled by the operational shift, they are not alone. No one likes change, Cowperthwaite-Ruka said, least of all her. Each time she sits down in her office above the theater and looks up on the wall for the dates of a particular film, she said, she is shocked again to find they aren’t there. But she said she has faith that because the theater will still be able to provide the high quality, independent films its audience wants, the public will find that the shift in scheduling better accommodates their needs.

“I’m hoping people won’t see a difference in the films we bring, but I’m hoping people will see them here sooner,” Cowperthwaite-Ruka said.

Getting information on what’s playing, showtimes and how long the films will run should be very easy, she said. Each week, likely by Monday and at the latest Wednesday, the theater will send an e-mail with the most current list of films and showtimes. Patrons can sign up for this free service at the theater’s Web site, www.littleart.com. They can also find this information on the Web site, and in the Yellow Springs News, Dayton Daily News, Dayton City Paper or Springfield News-Sun.

The Little Art may continue to print the monthly calendars with film summaries, but they will only serve as a rough guide to what’s most likely to screen in the next few months, Cowperthwaite-Ruka said. It’s possible that the theater may not show some of the films that appear in the calendar, and it may show others that were never anticipated, she said. But the Little Art wants its audience to have faith that the films in the calendar eventually will come to the theater, she said.

Cowperthwaite-Ruka managed the Little Art for 20 years before purchasing the business in 1998. The theater has always struggled financially, she said, but she is committed to keeping it alive because she believes in the films she brings to the Yellow Springs area. No one in the independent movie theater business is in it for the money, but the Little Art has especially in the past few years felt the pain of shrinking attendance numbers and had to do something to compensate for it, Cowperthwaite-Ruka said.

At the urging of Ken Eisen, director of an independent theater in Maine and Cowperthwaite’s longtime mentor, in 2001 the Little Art began asking for donor support from Friends of the Little Art. The tiered financial support has helped buoy the theater through evenings when attendance for certain films would sometimes fall to under a dozen patrons, Cowperthwaite-Ruka said. It was a lifesaving move for the theater, without which, she said, the business would likely have gone under.

But attendance has dropped 14 percent over the last three-year period, which averages to approximately 60 fewer people per week, or 3,120 per year, now coming to the theater compared to 2003. The Little Art needs to bring in about 400 people a week to gross $2,500 to break even, and it was becoming clear that the theater could not rely solely on the Friends group, Cowperthwaite-Ruka said.

The Little Art was also having more trouble scheduling films with distributors who are increasingly reluctant to dedicate a copy of a film to a small art house before they know how the film will fare at multiplexes, where most of their profit is made, Cowperthwaite-Ruka said.

By going off calendar, the Little Art will receive first-run films such as Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire soon after Dayton opens the film so the small theater can “catch the wave” of positive word-of-mouth that still has people excited about seeing a film, she said.

Off calendar, the Little Art will be able to screen popular films longer and drop films that flop earlier, Cowperthwaite-Ruka said. March of the Penguins, for instance, brought in just over 1,000 people the first week it played here last summer. But the calendar forced her to stop showing it, and when she rescheduled it two months later, it had lost momentum and only attracted 260 people for the week, Cowperthwaite-Ruka said.

She said she also hopes the fluid scheduling will increase patrons’ involvement with the Little Art and encourage them to get excited about finding out what’s coming next. “As soon as I know, they’ll know,” she said.

Cowperthwaite-Ruka said she’s still learning how best to proceed with the Little Art’s new mode of operation.

“I hope in six months we’ll all have a better feel for what to expect,” she said. “I feel responsible to do whatever it takes to keep it going.”

Contact: lheaton@ysnews.com