Attention, Waco movie theaters: I want this

By Carl Hoover

There's finally an app for this, although technically it's a service and it's available through movie chains that don't have a theater in Waco: a service that uses social media as a trigger to bringing films to town.

It's called Tugg and works basically like this: Tugg members, connected by Facebook, Twitter, email and other ways, suggest films they want to come to their community and at which theaters they'd like to see those films. When requests reach a critical mass, a booker or promoter on the other end brings the film to town.

It's such a logical, simple idea I don't know why Hollywood or Starplex couldn't create a version of it for Waco customers: Designate an email address or website for suggested movies, wait until suggestions reach the number of requests that would indicate local support/interest in a film, then bring it to town.

This mechanism doesn't solve the perennial problems of too few film copies for many art movies or some of the distribution quirks on the corporate level that bring most of one studio's movies to Waco while another's rarely get here. Still, it would channel local interest in a particular film to the people with the ability to book it, increasing the chances such a movie would do good business once it opened here and satisfying local film buffs who would feel like someone is listening...

I know the Waco Performing Arts Company, which runs the currently shuttered Hippodrome Theatre, is contemplating reopening with a business model more attuned to what the theater can do well and what the Waco market will support, film being one of those offerings. Consider this a suggestion that a programming committee might consider, if only to get beyond the usual problem of plenty of suggested movies, but little way to gauge how many people might turn out for each suggestion.

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