WATCHMEN WEEK - The Electric Kool Aid Rorschach Test

A mere week before the opening of the WATCHMEN movie, my girlfriend reminded me that I didn't yet have tickets to see it.

So I logged onto Moviefone and sought the best available seats for the very first midnight showing. There are pros and cons for attending midnight shows, but for a film like Watchmen I wanted be absolutely sure that none of my friends or colleagues would inadvertently divulge information that would unfairly color my perception before I had a chance to see it for myself. I quickly discovered that in Hollywood, the only way to see the film at midnight was to buy directly from Arclight Cinemas, who do not make their tickets available via Moviefone or Fandango or any other widely used online ticket-sale service.

I've had an Arclight membership since they reopened the Cinerama Dome back in 2002, but I can never remember my login info on their website, so I rarely buy my dome tickets online. They have a not-too-user-friendly shopping cart, which is a shame because they tend to do everything else so well. This is a theater that only sells reserved seating, which cuts down on the type of fight-for-your-seat nonsense that makes seeing a blockbuster on opening weekend a total bummer in lesser venues. They have a membership rewards program that grants moviegoer points good for discounts on either tickets or concession stand –which sells the best caramel corn I've ever eaten. They have a kick-ass bookstore in the lobby and a decent onsite restaurant which offers cocktail deliveries for special 21+ screenings. They host numerous talent & creator Q & A screenings, and provide a convenient location for several local and international film festivals. They are probably the best theater in Los Angeles (or at least tie with El Capitan) but their site navigation is incredibly frustrating.
I managed to soldier onward and I reserved two tickets for "12:01 AM Thursday, March 5, 2009."

I use my iCalendar for scheduling all of my appointments, so immediately after receiving my emailed confirmation for these tickets (which are dead center in the very last row of an otherwise sold-out show), I added the show to my calendar. In spite of lagging to actually buy the tickets, I've been anticipating this film for ages. Since my girlfriend just finished reading the series and is currently also a huge fan of the Watchmen, I plotted some additional activities around this special event. I made dinner reservations at Cobras & Matadors, and RSVP’ed for two art gallery openings in close proximity to both the restaurant and the movie theater -neither of which is exactly close to where I live. Lastly, I canceled, rescheduled or blocked out time for the next morning, knowing it would be a late night of reflection and dissection that would require sleeping late on Thursday if I was to wrangle my required eight hours.

12:01 AM is, after all, the very first minute of the day. It occurs just after midnight, which is the last minute of the previous day. Therefore, 12:01 AM on Thursday, March 5th is for all intent and purpose the end of Wednesday evening. It is not the first show on Friday, March 6th. Right?

Right!

…except in the eyes of the Arclight Cinema group.

With less than five days remaining until the clock counts, a friend of mine confided that he had tickets for the same screening, and wanted to invite my girlfriend and I to join up with his group just prior to the show on Thursday evening.
I warmly corrected him, and reminded him that 12:01 AM on March 5th would be at the end of Wednesday evening, not Thursday night. He concurred that while the aforementioned time was in fact Wednesday evening/ Thursday morning, the truth is that the screening would be held on Thursday evening / Friday morning -or at 12:01 AM Friday, March 6th. He let me know that theater chains considered the midnight show to be a continuation of the previous business day and sold tickets with the assumption that the public would expect any show screening at midnight to carry a date consistent with the continuation of the previous day's schedule -regardless of the fact that this was incorrect. I just couldn't understand. If that was indeed the case, why did my receipt read 12:01 AM Thursday, March 5? If the screening was to be held on Friday -at the end of Thursday night- the proper listing on my receipt should have been 12:01 AM, Friday March 6th.

I am well aware that the national launch of this long awaited film is March 6, 2009. It's written on virtually every piece of advertising connected to the film. However, it is common for theaters in Hollywood to open a film one-to-two days before the national launch, so I didn't think it was unusual to be able to see the film a full day earlier. The date listed on my ticket receipt would seem to confirm this, but I would have felt damned foolish if I showed up at the theater to discover that I was a day early, and many dollars in the hole over it.

Faced with this conflicting data, I did what any reasonable person would do.
I called the Cinerama Dome box office.

I navigated my way through the usual assortment of electronic options and robotic gatekeepers until I found myself mouth-to-ear with a real live Arclight employee.

Sure enough, the screening takes place on Friday, one minute past midnight on Thursday evening.

I asked Mr. Arclight why my receipt said otherwise, and to make a long story short, he explained that people wouldn't be able to discern 12:01 AM as the first minute past midnight on the proper day, so they've implemented the posting of the wrong date to -get this- avoid confusion!
When I confessed my befuddlement at the notion of intentionally posting incorrect information, he intimated that in the two years he's been working there I was the first person to ever raise the question. He said, "99% of the public wouldn't know that 12:01 AM Thursday wasn't Thursday evening."
He repeatedly admitted to knowing that the posted time and the actual time were different, and that this difference was due to an intentional posting of the incorrect show time. He admitted that it was"technically" incorrect. When I asked him if there was any difference between it being technically incorrect and completely wrong he fell silent. It was a silence unfilled for about fifteen seconds. When it became apparent that he had no intention of speaking without provocation I asked again, "Why would you continue to post information that you know is incorrect?"
He replied, "Because it's never been an issue until right now. With your phonecall, Sir. Is there anything else I can help you with?"

I thought about offering my help with proper preposition placement, but I realized it was pointless to continue this conversation.

I hung up and checked a few other sites, discovering to my absolute shock and horror that this incorrect time-slotting was not isolated. In fact, it is the industry standard!

But I would be remiss if I didn't add that the other online ticket services offer an explanation that alleviates a degree of the potential confusion by addressing the concern that people can't read a clock. On Fandango the 12:20AM presentation of WATCHMEN reads as such:

Date of Show: Thursday, Mar. 5, 2009
Time of Show: 12:20 AM
You have selected a late Thursday night (Friday morning) show.

While this still lists the date as Thursday, it at least carries the caveat that this 12:20 AM show takes place in the late evening of Thursday on Friday morning. This additional text supplies seekers of a Thursday night show with the correct information before checkout. It addresses the hypothesis that people don't know how to tell time, by supplying a qualifier.
The Moviefone website posts the Thursday date with the Friday morning timeslots, but has no available tickets for sale. Another website listed a similar (though less specific) explanation that the 12:01 AM show was in the evening on Thursday rather than the morning, without mentioning Friday. While the AM post-script contradicts the info in the sentence, it does seem to attempt to make clear that it is not offering a one-minute past Wednesday evening slot.

I'm not bothered by the fact that I have to wait a day longer than I initially thought. I'm not special and I can wait alongside the rest of the midnight masses at the end of Thursday evening. I'm not bothered that I have to make an unnecessary trip into Hollywood to eat an expensive dinner and stop by two art galleries when I otherwise would have stayed home. I not even bothered that I pushed some important appointment into next week as a result of rescheduling my Thursday, or that I had to move Friday's schedule back and forth to cover for an anticipated late evening on the 5th.

So what’s the beef?
What bothers me is the obstinate and flagrant disregard of logic that I've never before noticed, and which has apparently been in place for a long time. It's the admission of fault without the intention of ever correcting it. But most if all, it's the assumption that people are stupid. I don't think that 99% of the public (to use Mr. Arclight's statistics) would misread the information if it were properly presented. This underestimation of the core consumer base seems to be a generational problem that has suffered alongside customer service over the years to the point that it's expected that service will be bad, when bad service used to be the exception.
That's just bad marketing.

At the end of the day, if you run a business in a competitive market and you do things right, you'll rise above peer competition. If the business as a whole is failing, there probably isn't much you can do, but if the business model is built to deliver to higher rather than lowered expectations there's a good chance of success overall, and a guarantee of success within the targeted base. If the worst thing you've done is do everything right, you'll be able to prosper on future endeavors via the reputation you've built for yourself.

But if you treat the public like sheep, you'd better have a great shepherd, and it seems that history hasn't exactly been kind to shepherds.

And the epilogue?

Well, I would be remiss if I didn't point out the irony of widespread incorrect time-slot postings of a film entitled WATCHMEN...