Here are the numbers for the weekend release of "I Am A Sex Addict" at the Balboa Theater in San Francisco and at the Elmwood Theater in Berkeley. It doesn't sound like all that much money to me, but I am told that the film did good business and that the numbers need to be seen in context.
The film made $11,163 at the Balboa theater in 5 days (the film opened on a Wednesday). The Elmwood Theater, usually a second run theater, grossed $3,824 in 3 days (which I am told is a solid gross for them).
For comparison, "The Devil and Daniel Johnston" (a film I love and can't recommend highly enough) made $4,940 at Landmark's Lumiere Theater in San Francisco and $2,431 at Landmark's Shattuck Theater in Berkeley (where "I Am A Sex Addict" was scheduled to open before Landmark Theater owner Mark Cuban decided to pull the film for reasons explained at great length in previous blogs).
"L'Enfant" (which won the Palme D'Or at Cannes this year) did $2,512 at Landmark's Embarcadero Theater and $1,410 at the Shattuck.
The numbers so far are promising, if not record-breaking (and, I have to admit, I was kind of hoping for record-breaking). The film opens this Wednesday in New York City at the IFC Center, and the numbers (I'm told) will no doubt depend to a large extent on the New York Times review that day. It strikes me as remarkable that the fate of one's film resides to such an extent in the hands of one person.
Philip K. Dick was fond of quoting Horace who said: "Gustibus Non Disputandem Est," which apparently means "There's no arguing with taste." Well, in this case, there's really no arguing with the taste of the New York Times film critic. He either likes it or he doesn't, and if he doesn't, you're pretty much fucked.
posted by Caveh Zahedi at
1:11 AM
