![]() ![]() Independent theaters and multiplexes alike don't have to completely remodel to compete - I don't mind stretching my legs to get food myself when the movie is the two-hour-and-ten-minute-long Mary Poppins sequel. Theaters like the Alamo Drafthouse and iPic have built empires off the understanding that people will pay more to make the experience of sitting in a dark room for long periods of time physically pleasant. It isn't even healthy to sit for the average Hollywood runtime! Plus, as a wise man once said, "the length of a film should be directly related to the endurance of the human bladder," an issue that is circumvented by breaks. Once Upon a Time in America (1984) R 229 min Crime, Drama 8. Going to the movies shouldn't be an endurance test I can sit through a three-hour movie without an intermission, but that doesn't mean I want to. While the downside to intermissions is that the extra time prevents theaters from cramming more screenings into their day, it also creates more revenue via people like me who spend the first half of a movie listening to a neighbor eat popcorn and regretting not partaking oneself. Movie theaters make around 85 percent of their profit from concessions, and a midway break for people to double up on their frozen Cookie Dough Bites will help the struggling industry. Intermissions are good for the industry, too. ![]() In a film as modern as Get Out by Quentin Tarantino, an intermission is not merely a refueling interval between scenes. Its unique filming method gives it the feel of a 1960s road-show movie. That structured break is expected by the audience. The idea of a mid-movie intermission originated with James Cameron’s one-sit Titanic. No one complains about intermissions in staged plays and operas, after all. A 10-minute break isn't an interruption when it is literally built into the movie. India's Bollywood films are structured in halves, and are so tightly framed around the assumption of an intermission that when they omit the break, it makes headlines. Meanwhile, mid-movie intervals are alive and well overseas, from Iceland to Turkey to India. This list documents the rise and fall of the Overture/ Roadshow practice over film history. There was one in 2014's The Hateful Eight if you saw it on the " roadshow," although the practice mostly died off in the mainstream with Gandhi in 1982. Often, but not necessarily, these films also include an intermission with entr'acte, followed by exit music (after the credits). While stateside audiences were once encouraged to stretch their legs at the midway point of gargantuan epics like Gone with the Wind, Ben-Hur, Lawrence of Arabia, and 2001: A Space Odyssey, it is much rarer to find intermissions in modern movies. Why must we moviegoers suffer so? After all, the solution is simple: If we had movie intermissions in America, I could have had my popcorn, seen one small step for man, and we'd all have gone home happy.Ĭompared to other countries, the U.S. ![]()
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