Our esteemed leader, by virtual of being a celebrity and a millionaire, Michael Moore, has decided to rescue documentary. Thank goodness he is going to throw his considerable weight onto theater chains and demand they show docs on Monday nights on one screen. Whew.

I should be happy about this, right? Let’s see: a distribution company takes on a doc to distribute. Part of that commitment is creating a plan to maximize profits of a particular film, and let’s assume in our hypothetical example that the film is best suited for a theatrical run that will fuel DVD and broadcast markets down the road. Oops, but wait, the crux of the problem might just be: what makes a film suited for a theaterical run? Has the film won an award at a festival (Manda Bala)? Maybe audience awards (We Are Together)? Are there celebrities in the film (does Crazy Love fall in this category?)? What mass audiences pick up on and flock to see is part of movie magic because its impossible to predict. Who would have thought that anthropomorphized penguins would earn $70+million?

Distribution companies are picking up more content than they can effectively distribute. They put a bunch of films out into the marketplace hoping something will catch fire. But, it is also known that box office return is related to the amount of money invested into advertising, and that is expensive so it is forgone in any meaningful way for the majority of films. Theater owners don’t want to show films that have no marketing commitment from a distributor because they know they won’t make much money on it. Moore’s idea is to subsidize marketing to entice the theater owners to go along with his idea of Doc Mondays.

In effect, he’s admitting that distributors aren’t doing their job, and while this isn’t true of all (Zeitgeist, for example), it does highlight a trend and helps account for the current state of docs: largely under-performing considering the high quality of work. I’ve come down on Moore in the past for being all bark and no teeth, and perhaps he is ready to roll up his sleeves and really try to give back to his community, but I can’t help but be skeptical of the approach. What is it about this man’s make-up that requires him to fly solo always?

The plan ghetto-izes certain films as unable to make a profit so they can only get into the theater on a night when almost no one goes anyways. By creating a subsidy, it lets distributors off the hook for not doing good business (IE breaking the studio strangle hold on theaters, and picking up fewer and/or better films and investing in their success), and at the end of it, something tells me that Doc Mondays would overall not be worth the effort for theater owners for them to want to continue or expand it.

I’ve been involved in documentary exhibition for a number of years now and each time I show a doc, I wonder whether we’ll get a full house or only a few. I’m almost always surprised. I don’t want to name specific titles but I’ve been in nearly empty theaters with films that have had lots of praise/awards/deals, and full theaters for films that are unheard of. And for theater owners who need as many paying butts in seats as possible on any given night, there can be no “losers.” Not every film is a $20 million film in the waiting. How long will they go along with the plan if two out of four in a month under-perform even with a strong ad buy? If distributors were helping their films succeed at the box office, as opposed to simply releasing them, theater owners would be more amenable to screening them. Doc Mondays might be one patch of many that are needed for this limping system.

I don’t think there are any simple answers, and I’ll give Moore a point for actually showing up to the IDA Oscar event this week and another for at least stating that he wants to help other documentaries get out into the marketplace. But I give him negative marks for failing to get any buy-in from, oh, anyone. Like so many other ideas that get floated in this manner, we’ll just have to see how it shakes out. I hope I’m wrong. I’d like to see docs pick back up at theaters.

More on Moore’s plan:

Jeff Goldsmith podcast of his discussion with Moore
indieWIRE: Moore Calls for Distribution Reform
All These Wonderful Things: Moore Calls for “Doc Night in America”