Movienomics

If absence truly does make the heart grow fonder, you guys must be extra fond of me now. More than likely you've moved on and are spending your time on the internet learning about the balloon boy sleeping in the attic or mourning the passing of wrestling legend Captain Lou Albino (RIP to the man who made wearing rubber bands in his beard acceptable). While I've been MIA - Paper Planes what? - for the past two weeks, we've closed out the LLC group, submitted countless Master License Agreements (MLAs) with the major film distributors, started working on assembling a staff, ordered some samples for t-shirts, had new neighbors move in, done a heck of a lot of construction, and got a new fish, Bubbles (no relation to MJ's chimp). I'll focus on the two that are probably most interesting to you guys, the MLAs and construction.

If I thought we were signing over our lives when we got the loan for a/perture, we just signed over our lives, Nigel the dog's, and our son's firstborn with all the paperwork for the MLAs. This is probably my best chance to go all Reading Rainbow and teach you some economics of the movie theater business. So obviously getting people in the door is a crucial aspect to any enterprise. However, in order for the studios to recoup their investments in blockbuster films and help subsidize some of their other films, they typically take 50% of the ticket sales to cover their costs. For some of the aforementioned blockbusters, that can be as high as 90%. That makes it hard to pay the rest of the bills without all the fun stuff like concessions and merchandise. So, if you take nothing else from all of this, remember this - sneaking Cookout milkshakes and convenience store candy in - bad (even though I've been guilty of both before), buying popcorn, candy, and two drinks even if you're by yourself - awesome.

On the progress front, we're pretty much walled out and are waiting to get painting. The seats are being delivered November 9th, along with the sound drapes and other "front of the house" stuff, and the projection equipment will be here after Thanksgiving. Since I unashamedly just begged you all to make frequent trips to the concession stand, here's a couple of pictures of the lobby to help get a sense of it.



A little messy, but no more than my old college dorm, right mom? Well, it feels good to be back, and hopefully I've shared enough to bring what little momentum I had alive again. Lawren and her team have been working on some exciting stuff, so hopefully in the coming weeks I'll be able to tell you about more cool things happening at a/perture.