The Monster That Ate the Movies: How Big Business Is Destroying an American Institution - Softcover

Saving the Cinema

This particular monster with an appetite for the movies has no fangs, doesn't breath radioactive fire, and packs no death ray. It's worse. It's a Frankenstein's monster of greed, malaise, and a lack of showmanship. And it's at your theatre, right now. Here's how we stop it.

Director, writer, and producer Bill Dever's insights into what ails the modern motion picture exhibition industry have inspired moviegoers and theater owners alike to question whether the current system of franchise films, cookie-cutters theaters, and discredited box office stars is sustainable.

Dever recounts the decline of classic theaters, the glitzy, glamorous movie palaces of yesteryear, as wondrous as the images thrown up on the screen, and the disappearance of the quirky, sometimes cocky, but always compelling showmen who ran them.

Now, the moviegoing experience has become like a trip to the mall: the prices are high, the selection slim, and the air recycled.

To slay this all-too-real monster of the movies, Dever offers strategies and a plan of action for theater owners, film executives, and anyone with a passionate interest in the moviegoing experience.

With a foreword by Troma Entertainment co-founder Lloyd Kaufman.