University of Virginia Library

Crossbooking

But the risky booking paid
off when the students realized
the quality films they were
being offered for $.75 and the
word spread.

While there are currently
five groups running film series
at the University and there are
films for film buffs almost
every night of the week, this
presents tremendous problems
for booking the films and
avoiding crossbookings with
other groups.

Crossbooking can really be
a problem, considering the fact
that Henry plans to book
$10,000 worth of films in June
for the semester beginning next
September.

"You feel that: 'If I do all
my work right then everything
will turn out all right,'" Henry
explains, "and then someone
comes in and crossbooks you
after you've already ordered
your films. The wild card
groups are especially bad, the
groups that only show two or
three films a year and end up
crossbooking you. They throw

a wrench in the machinery all
across the board."

However, there is an
element of excitement when
Henry gets together with his
co-chairman Paul to plan
booking. This year the films
were divided between what
Henry calls the "director films
on Sundays and the
entertainment films on
Thursdays."

The idea is to get the "hot"
films booked first, the films
that have just passed the one
year time lag from public
release to re-release in 16mm
to groups like the Union's film
series.

From there, Henry's love
for films causes these to be
explosive sessions as he toys
with all kinds of ideas for
booking films.

His ideas run the gamut, as
he suggested: "We thought
about getting My Fair Lady
just to see what kind of
response we would get. We also
threw out the idea of booking
a really hard core porn film,
but in the end we decided to
stick with what type films we
knew had been successful and
rejected these ideas."

"I really love the director
films," Henry quips, "and Paul
has to be a sounding board or a
sort of governor to keep me
from booking marathon Fellini
flicks."