One possible answer is that they’re cheap. But we could never say that about Britain’s most distinguished thespians and artists. Of course.
The actual answer is also more interesting:
It’s not the first time that directors have bought the shop window. Quentin Tarantino owns two theatres in LA, including the Vista. And back in 1970, avant-garde maestro Jonas Mekas co-founded the Anthology Film Archives in New York, which is still electrifying the edges of movie culture.
In the UK, some film-makers have had a go. Here in Scotland, for example, Jeremy Thomas, who produced Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor and David Cronenberg’s Crash, co-owned Edinburgh’s Cameo Picturehouse for a while, and even Tilda Swinton and I got into the world of projectors and popcorn for a bit with our Brigadoon-like pop-up The Ballerina Ballroom Cinema of Dreams.
But with cinemas struggling or closing in several cities – Bristol, Edinburgh, etc – why haven’t UK-based directors bought some of them?
We’ve already ruled out that obvious answer, they’re cheap. So, what is it?
Then there’s the fact that part of the UK’s cinema circuit isn’t purely a private sector endeavour. Networks such as Picturehouse, Vue, Everyman and Curzon are all showing aesthetically bold movies like The Zone of Interest, but beyond them there are cinemas that receive some public funding – from the BFI via the National Lottery and the Film Audience Network or local councils, for example.
These sums are small and not secure – council funding is particular is disappearing – and to access them cinemas and arts centres often become charities. You can donate to them but not invest because they don’t exist to make a profit. They do specialist seasons and, at their best, film education, so are not purely commercial organisations. The result? The film exhibition scene in many UK cities is broader and richer than equivalent towns and cities in the US.
There’s another way to describe that and it’s “crowding out”.
There are things that people would do, unaided and off their own bat. But which they don’t do if government is already doing them. That is, government action crowds out those private actions.
This idea is hotly contested of course - those in favour of government action on all sorts of things like to stoutly deny that crowding out can ever happen. Government is only ever additional to private efforts, it does not replace. For that argument makes government action look better, bolsters the arguments for government acting. Those less enamoured of bureaucrats like to point up the crowding out effects.
But here we have it from the belly of the beast. The reason luvvies don’t support little cinemas is because government already does it. So, if we stop the taxpayer having to support little cinemas then the luvvies will indeed support them instead. Rather a win/win there for everyone.
It’s also proof perfect that we can shut down the Arts Council entirely and save a £billion a year in the process. For that spending only crowds out what would happen privately anyway.
We mean, sure, we should do that anyway, but nice to have another arrow of an argument in the quiver, no?