Will It (Brokeback) Play in Peoria? Yes It Will!

Brokeback' broke out in the 'burbs

C.W. Nevius

Saturday, January 28, 2006


My wife and I recently saw "Brokeback Mountain,'' the critically acclaimed story of romance between two cowboys. Being moviegoing veterans, we decided to see a noontime matinee in a Pleasant Hill movie theater on an NFL playoff Sunday. Given those factors, and the film's subject matter, we joked that we might have the entire theater to ourselves.

Not at all. There was a line at the box office, and the film started 15 minutes late so everyone could be seated. Even more striking was the crowd -- largely seniors and middle-aged women. So not only was a movie about gay romance selling out in the heart of suburbia, the audience appeared to be older, straighter and more conservative than anyone would have expected.

And that is what Jack Foley, president of distribution for Focus Features, which is distributing "Brokeback,'' calls the "unspoken truth" about a movie that has succeeded in markets where few would have expected it to.

"This movie is playing to heartland America," he said.

"Brokeback'' -- an odds-on favorite to clean up in Academy Award nominations, including best picture, on Tuesday -- is not just an art-house favorite or a cultural statement or a milestone in filmmaking. It is a bona fide hit making money in places, and with audiences, that make an East Bay movie house look like the Cannes Film Festival.

As of Sunday, the latest day for which figures were available, "Brokeback Mountain" had appeared in 1,196 theaters and earned $42.1 million in seven weeks. For a movie that cost just $14 million to make, that's already some serious profit.

Terrell Falk, vice president of marketing and communication for the huge theater chain Cinemark, notes that the film has done well in red-state strongholds like Pearl, Miss.; Lubbock, Texas; Ames, Iowa; and Ogden, Utah.

But here's the funny part. It all got rolling in Pleasant Hill.

Foley, who is winning acclaim among industry insiders for his inspired rollout of the film, had a plan for "Brokeback Mountain" and stuck to it. It began with a modest opening in Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco.

The result? Excellent ticket sales.

The reaction? Duh.

"Frankly,'' says Foley, "if it didn't do well there, you'd be in trouble.''

So for its second week of release, Foley sent "Brokeback'' in an unlikely direction.

"We said, 'Let's check out what is going on in the suburbs,' '' Foley says.

That weekend, Dec. 16, Foley picked a few markets, including Pleasant Hill, to see how the film might do. A serious student of demographics, Foley says Pleasant Hill is an excellent indicator of how a film might do nationwide. The theaters there do a huge business, and he can track the demographics of the audience to see how a film is playing. He was pretty sure "Brokeback" would do well in Pleasant Hill, and thus the rest of suburbia.

"It is Boomer U.S.A.,'' Foley says. "And the Boomer male is not worried about his sexuality.''

The reaction when "Brokeback'' opened in Pleasant Hill?

"Holy mackerel!'' Foley says. "It was consistently performing better than expected.''

And that's when everyone realized that they were onto something.

"It was obvious that we'd struck a chord,'' says Falk, whose company, Cinemark, owns 309 theaters -- with 3,353 screens -- throughout the Western Hemisphere. "The word of mouth was just fantastic.''

At that point it was just a matter of expanding into other markets and convincing theater owners to book the film. Even with the hard numbers to prove the film's popularity, it was an uphill prospect.

"I had a lot of exhibitors says, 'I'll play it, but I ain't going to see it,' '' Foley said. "And you had some male resistance. Men would say to their wives, 'You go see it. I am going to watch the football game.' ''

But whether the exhibitors were seeing it or not, it was soon clear that others were. And a key crowd was the senior matinee audience like we ran into on that Sunday afternoon.

"The thing about the senior crowd is that they go to a lot of movies, and they like good movies,'' says Foley. "By the third weekend, we were in Scottsdale (Ariz.), West Palm Beach (Fla.) and La Jolla (San Diego County) -- urban, well-to-do and a tremendous senior crowd.''

The film opened in Plano, Texas -- an upscale suburb of Dallas -- and did great business there, too. Falk says for the first week in Jacksonville, Fla., "we did double anything else we did that week.'' Even in Utah, where there was a brief flap when one Salt Lake City exhibitor pulled the movie, "Brokeback'' is doing very well.

At this point, Foley can just sit back and ride the wave. Jay Leno and David Letterman are doing "Brokeback'' jokes nightly, there are cartoons, and this week President Bush fielded a "Brokeback Mountain'' question at a news conference.

The movie, Foley says, has become one of those cultural landmarks like "The Graduate'' or "Pulp Fiction,'' movies that everyone uses as a reference to a specific time period.

In fact, Foley is still adding theaters nationally. After starting with those few screens in L.A., New York and San Francisco, he now thinks that if the Oscar buzz is as strong as expected, "Brokeback'' may reach 2,000 screens next week. When the film first came out, he says he was hoping it might appear on 800 to 1,200 at most.

And to think, none of it would have been possible without Pleasant Hill.

C.W. Nevius' column appears Tuesdays and Saturdays in the Bay Area section. E-mail him at [email protected].