Here are a few of many messages I've received about intermissions in movies as previously discussed here. We start with this one from Steve Replogle…
What bothers me about Scorsese is the hypocrisy. I bet he doesn't sit through a three-and-a-half hour movie. Or wait! Maybe I'm wrong. That could show this discussion in an entirely different light. If Martin Scorsese at 80 years old can indeed sit through a movie of that length, I really want to learn the secrets of his medical team. Urologist, orthopedist, ophthalmologist — let's hear from them!
And then we have this one from old friend Pat O'Neill…
As you are well aware, it is the rare stage production that does not have an intermission. I have never been to a professional performance that didn't have one and in my amateur acting career, appeared in only one show that was done without an intermission — and that one was only about 75 minutes long. If stage directors and playwrights can keep the audience's attention enough to have them come back from a 15 or 20 minute break, I fail to see why their cinematic counterparts cannot do the same.
Sports have half-times (even baseball has the seventh-inning stretch).
And this one from Mike Kyner…
Last movie I saw that had an intermission was Tess (I think, been so long ago I can't remember). I've run theaters off and on for a few years and here's something else you didn't touch upon…
When a movie is that damn long, chances are you can only show it once a weekday and on the weekends, maybe twice a day. Include ads/movie previews and you're looking at 4+ hours in the theater. I quit going to most theaters because there was literally forty minutes of crap on screen (I counted, 12 damn previews for upcoming movies @ roughly 2:30 minutes each, 30 minutes of my time being wasted) before the actual movie started. What that does is cut your concession sales down to about nothing, they'll buy stuff once they come in and you might have one or two come out to buy something during the show.
Two: Theaters prefer movies to be roughly 90 minutes to 2 hours long. More showings per day means more money coming in and more concession sales. When the studios take roughly 60% of your box office, you need as many people coming in as possible to buy was much stuff as possible at the concession stand.
Many times the studios force you to take X movie for 3 or more weeks and if it's a turkey, good luck trying to get out of it. Multiple screen theaters can just shift it to the smallest house and forget it, one or two screen mom & pop theaters are screwed.
And lastly, this one from Marcus Bressler…
In my semi-retirement, I manage the kitchen in one of those movie complexes that offer a full dinner menu as well as a bar. When a popular movie comes in, we can get really busy: like 600 lunch/dinner orders and, on the side that doesn't have service at your seat, a concession line that goes out the door! This was true of Barbie, for instance.
When the movie is very long in duration, we like it in the kitchen as there is down time in terms of food orders because people order in the first 30 minutes prior to the movie starting and for about 30 minutes after, depending on crowd size. It gives us a chance to regroup, re-stock, and catch our collective breaths.
Management only likes long movies if they are very popular and draw in high food and beverage and candy/popcorn/soda sales. Otherwise they have negative feelings toward them because it means one less movie in that theatre (we have 14 theatres). Since we don't earn any real money from admissions, the ancillary sales matter.
Some of the more recent superhero movies have bombed. We expected large crowds for the Taylor Swift concert movie and we got them. Funny though, they hardly ordered any food! One night we had 58 people at an 8 PM showing and we had one dinner order!. Typically, it would be about 40-50%.
I would like an intermission, personally. I never make it through a movie without a visit to the restroom, even if I curtail my consumption of fluids beforehand. But if my doctor needs a urine sample, guess what?
These messages and others I've received caused me to think more about this issue…but not much more. Obviously, there are marketing reasons for keeping a movie short. A director can't ignore the economic needs of the theaters any more than he can shirk his or her responsibility to do a certain amount of promotional work to help drive folks to the box office.
Mr. Scorsese must have that end of his job under control. He's been at this long enough and he doesn't make movies to not be shown in theaters. After two weekends in release, Killers of the Flower Moon is the third highest-grossing film following Five Nights at Freddy and the the Taylor Swift film. That's probably about where Paramount expected the new Martin Scorsese film to be. As he keeps telling us, he doesn't make "comic book movies" that young filmgoers line up for the first weekend.
I guess what I'm thinking here is that okay, I'm not fond of the idea of a 3.5 hour movie. The sheer length will probably keep me away and this doesn't feel like the kind of movie I want to watch here at home where so many distractions abound. But I didn't go to see The Irishman (which ran only three minutes less, also with no intermission) and I don't think Scorsese or his studio missed my patronage. So I think I'm going to stop thinking about this.