Day and Date

I have to assume that Mark Cuban is a solid businessman who know what he's doing, but for the life of me I just can't figure out why he's promoting this whole day-and-date movie release scheme of his.

Cuban runs HDNet, one of the few cable channels that broadcasts exclusively in high definition. I've had a hi-def set for a few months now, attached to my hi-def Series 3 TiVo (one of the great inventions), and I love it. I'm a movie guy, so of course I love it, but what's not to love? Widescreen, great image detail, and it's attached to a good stereo with good speakers. I've even started pulling DVDs off my Netflix list if I saw they were going to be broadcast on an HD channel because they look better there. (And yes, I too am one of those waiting on the sidelines for the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray thing to work itself out before I commit to one machine or another.) So HDNet is one of my mainstays, and I particularly love it when they show some NASA footage--simply spectacular. (Though nothing so far has beat the recent Planet Earth specials on Discovery HD Theatre.)

But HDNet also has a movies-only hi-def channel, and the other night they ran a movie called Diggers. As it happens, I had heard about this movie a couple days before and thought it looked interesting: an offbeat indie about clam diggers, with a good cast including Paul Rudd, Sarah Paulson, Lauren Ambrose and Maura Tierney, all of whom I like. I noticed it was going to be playing at a theater only a few blocks away--a theater for which I have a free admission pass. So it was within easy walking distance and wouldn't cost me anything to go and see the movie. "Well maybe I'll do that," I said--but then I checked the TV listings and discovered that Diggers was also playing on HDNet, that same night.

I ask you, why would I want to go to the theater, then? It's more comfortable at home, my equipment is all first-rate, and I can watch when I want. About the only thing that might have made me go to a theater in such a circumstance would have been if I'd had a date, but that didn't happen to be the case. So I stayed home and recorded it on the TiVo and was completely happy. But, as I say, baffled.

Because bear in mind: I'm a movie guy. And I certainly have a keen appreciation for the power of a shared theatrical experience by an audience of strangers experiencing something together (by the way, for the record, Zen Noir works best on a movie screen; I'm just saying, I've seen it happen over and over, that really is the ideal way to see it). I was already motivated to see this particular film, the theater was in easy walking distance, I like to walk, and I had a pass to see the movie for free. It was, in short, about as easy as going to a movie theater can possibly be--but I didn't go, and the only reason I didn't is because that same movie was showing that same night on my TV.

That's what day-and-date means, and it mystifies me. It refers to a newfangled way to release movies in which the movie is broadcast and shown in theaters on the same night, then gets released on DVD the next Tuesday: all formats show up at once, and people can have their choice of watching it in any way they prefer. Nice for we the viewers, but where is the business model? How is Cuban making any money off this?

Sure, Wagner gets my money as a subscriber to the channel, but he gets that anyway; and now he's lost my theater-going money (well, except for that free admission pass, but that's not really germane). The one thing you most don't want to happen is what happens: one format cannibalizes the possibility for success of another format. I paid nothing to watch it on TV, and did not pay anything to watch it in a theater. They tried this with Steven Soderbergh's Bubble several months ago, and lo and behold, that movie did lousy at the box office. (According to Box Office Mojo, it made $145,000, with a production budget of $1.6 million.)

I don't think I'm being a stuffy old traditionalist about this, and I admit the possibility that Cuban is smarter than I am, but I just don't see how he's making any money here. But in the meantime, what the heck: I've got this lovely movie sitting on my TiVo, I think I'll go watch it now.