The Katzenberg Memo, Part 13

In January 1991, Jeffrey Katzenberg, then the head of Disney’s motion picture divisions, wrote a memo that ended up being circulated throughout Hollywood. Even though it is 21 years old, it is remarkably relevant to the current movie business. For example, the United States was in a recession as we are today. The movie industry was confronted by numerous financial challenges tied to technological advances and cultural shifts, also as we are today.

Over the next few weeks, I will be posting the entire memo. If you have any interest in screenwriting or working in the film business, you should read it. Why? Because it gives you a wide-open view of how studio executives think. After all, any script you write and circulate in Hollywood doesn’t exist in a vacuum, rather it funnels through a system, one that operates based upon the business principles and practices of studio heads like Katzenberg.

Today: The Big Screen vs. the Little Screen

The Big Screen vs. the Little Screen

In deciding on a project, consideration should be made as to where it will play best. Nowadays, every film produced will ultimately end up on a television screen. But it’s initial reason for being should be with the theater in mind. A couple is only going to pay $12-$15 for a pair of tickets to a movie — knowing full well that in six months they can rent it on video for $2.00 — if they feel they are going to experience something they can’t get at home.

So, what are the differences between seeing something on the movie screen and the TV screen? The differences are as difficult to define as they are real.

The most obvious is that things can look bigger, more powerful, more complex, more details and more involving on a large screen. The same “Star Wars” Death Star that appears so awesome in the theater looks remarkably like a model on television. But, being the most obvious difference, size is also the least important.

The more significant distinction between the big screen and the little screen isn’t the screen at all. It’s the audience. Television is an individual experience. The theater is a communal one. And there’s something about seeing a film with several hundred strangers that makes a comedy funnier, a horror film scarier and a tearjerker more heart wrenching. The entire range of emotions registers with greater force in the theater.

Home entertainment technology will not change this. No matter how big the TV screen gets or how well defined the picture, it still won’t be he same as going out to the movies. To understand this, one need only imagine seeing a film today in a large state-of-the-art theater… alone. Without the presence of fellow moviegoers, the vastness of the screen and the theater would only serve to inhibit rather than enhance the experience.

For this reason, it can be supposed that people will often rent movies they’ve already seen on the big screen for two reasons: Consciously, they simply want to see the film again. But, subconsciously, they want to evoke the memory of the theatrical experience itself.

As we develop ideas for theatrical release, these are all factors that should be at least subliminally kept in mind in narrowing down the 1,000 ideas to the 100 projects to the 10 films that ultimately get made.

As much as the recent emphasis — mistakenly I think — has been placed on hardware and home delivery systems, we should not be fooled. The theater is something special. The products we strive to put into them should be equally special.

Wow, talk about a sea change! When this memo came out, VCRs were the rage and the focus was on renting videocassettes, not buying them. That changed and evolved into the DTV [Direct-To-Video] market. Then along came DVDs which led to the DTD [Direct-To-DVD] market and a ginormous sell-through of movies to home viewers, one of Hollywood’s biggest cash cows that is only now just drying up.

It’s almost quaint to read this section, Katzenberg — like the rest of us in 1991 — unaware that consumers would start to watch movies on the computers, then their iPhones. If you had said that to Katzenberg or any other movie studio exec back in 1991, I’m pretty sure they would have laughed you out of their office.

People are gonna watch a movie on a telephone? Are you outta your freaking mind?

Then it became an obsession with four screens… which is now multiple screens. In many cases for consumers, convenience and accessibility has trumped visual quality.

But is Katzenberg right, that the lure of seeing a movie in a theater, that shared experience with an audience, will always translate into people going out to see a film? We can say that now, but we don’t know what things will be like in 20 years. Is it possible movie theaters will simply become a thing of the past?

To read Part 1 of the Katzenberg memo, go here.

For Part 2, go here.

Part 3, go here.

Part 4, go here.

Part 5, go here.

Part 6, go here.

Part 7, go here.

Part 8, go here.

Part 9, go here.

Part 10, go here.

Part 11, go here.

Part 12, go here

To read the entire memo, go here.

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