Elphaba, Sen. Kissel: This bill is wicked. So to speak.
Hartford — Should Connecticut movie theaters have to publish accurate start times for films and previews — or else face $1,000 false-advertising fines?
New Haven State Sen. Martin Looney says yes. Cinema owners say no. And an Enfield lawmaker was embarrassed that such a question would even be asked.
That debate took center stage Wednesday in Hartford towards the end of a three-hour public hearing hosted by the Connecticut General Assembly’s General Law Committee, which is chaired by New Haven State Rep. Roland Lemar.
The focus of the relatively low stakes, hotly contested back-and-forth was Senate Bill 797: An Act Requiring Scheduled Start Time Disclosures In Motion Picture Advertisements.
If approved, the bill would require movie theaters to publish accurate start times for each movie they screen as well as for the advertisements and previews that show before that movie. If they don’t comply, movie theaters could be fined up to $1,000 per violation.
The bill has gone viral, igniting a 2,000-comment debate on this X thread about movie trailers, legislating movie trailer start times, and how Connecticut legislators spend their time.
New Haven State Sen. and President Pro Tem Looney, who introduced the bill, framed the proposal as an act of consumer protection in pursuit of “truth in advertising.”
“I have received complaints from constituents who note that they incurred additional baby-sitting costs, or were late for a dinner reservation and had to wait a half hour for a table,” Looney wrote in pre-submitted testimony, “or in the case of a couple who went to see the Bob Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown, were subjected to a string of trailers for violent/horror films in which they had no interest.”
Requiring movie theaters to publish accurate start times for previews and for movies could encourage more people to go see movies in a theater “as they will be able to accurately schedule the time needed.”
In person and in writing, movie theater owners and industry advocates pleaded with state lawmakers to back off or else risk driving even more Connecticut cinemas out of business.
“This bill would require us to have two separate showtimes advertised. The ability to do that, if it’s not impossible, it’s near impossible, because the runtime of those trailers changes every single week,” testified Truman Thompson, the regional manager for Cinepolis Luxury Cinemas, which has a theater in West Hartford. He said that his theater’s trailers tend to last between 12 and 15 minutes, and are “dictated to us by the studios.” They sometimes go longer, depending on the movie.
He described the movie exhibition business as “truly an American business model” that has operated in roughly the same way for a century. Connecticut has some real movie theater gems, he said, including the Gilson Cafe & Cinema in Winsted and the Bantam Cinema & Arts Center in Bantam. “I don’t want to see us lose any more of those cinema treasures.”
Connecticut Association of Theater Owners Brian Murdoch hit on that same point when he testified right after Thompson.
Murdoch said that Connecticut had “57 wonderful movie theater complexes” in 2020. Now, it has just 38. “That’s fully a third of them, 19, have closed” since the Covid-19 pandemic.
Murdoch slammed the proposal as creating a mandate that would be “costly, confusing, and impractical.” Trailers change every day, every showtime, he said, and are chosen by movie studios rather than by movie theaters themselves.
“At a time when independent theaters are working tirelessly to recover from pandemic-related setbacks and compete with at-home streaming options,” Cinestudio’s Lew Michaels wrote in opposition to the bill, “the focus should be on supporting and sustaining these cultural institutions rather than placing additional restrictions on their operations.”
Lemar stuck up on Wednesday for Looney’s proposal. This admittedly is “not the most important thing happening” at the Capitol today, he said, but the problem of endless trailers and late-starting movies “is another one of those facets of life that infuriates people.”
He also noted New Haven lost two movie theaters in the past three years, leaving the city first-run cinema-less. With the closure of Branford’s movie theater, that means New Haveners interested in catching a film have to drive to North Haven. He recognized that movie theaters rely on pre-screening advertisements for much-needed revenue. But there’s got to be a better way for the consumer than the current status quo of “me sitting there for 25 minutes longer than I thought I had to.”
What if the legislature passes a bill that requires movie theaters to post disclaimer that a movie’s scheduled start time “may vary up to 20 minutes based on local advertising?” Lemar asked.
Murdoch said that state movie theaters could be open to such a proposal, so long as the disclaimer is voluntary and not required by state law.
Republican State Sen. John Kissel of Enfield closed out the movie-theater-debate portion of the hearing with sharp criticism of the bill, and a paean to the cinema-going of his youth.
“Very rarely do we have bill proposals that actually embarrass me,” he began. “This is one of them.”
Kissel said he no longer has a single movie theater in his part of the state. If he and his sons want to go to the movie, they have to head to Manchester or across state lines to West Springfield. This bill and its associated regulations and fines could only serve to drive more Connecticut movie theaters out of business.
He spoke about going to 99-cent Saturday matinees at the Plaza Theater in Windsor as a kid. “I have such fond memories of going to the theater with my family,” and doesn’t want to see the future of movie-watching relegated to big-screen TVs in people’s homes and not at cinemas. Lawmakers should be coming up with ways to help movie theaters survive, he said, as opposed to potentially driving them out of business.
As for trailers, he said, “I love the coming attractions. I think that’s part of the fun of going to the movies.”
Plus, he said, “the nice thing about the normal course of business is, yeah, I know what time I’m supposed to be there [for a movie’s start time], but I know there’s going to be a buffer.”
Kissel concluded by saying that, in his 33 years as an elected official, he’s never had a constituent complain to him about movie preview start times.
“What is the government doing getting its nose in this business,” he lamented. “We’re going to wake up and have even less theaters than we have now.”
Committee Chair Lemar: Why such long waits?
Cinepolis's Truman Thompson: Please, no.