Dear Sir or Madam

About a Boy / Greenpeace Commercial

It has been bought to our attention that a commercial for Greenpeace may have been attached to the beginning of your print of About a Boy. Would you please remove this commercial , as it has not been authorised by either ourselves or the Cinema Advertising Association, and therefore you will not recieve any revenue foe exhiditing it.

If you have any questions regading this please do not hesitate to contact me on.......

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Personally since i am a second run university cinema I'm not running About a Boy now.

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Havn't heard anything from P&D though, except for someone using their snipe as a replacement footer on a print of Rat Race (what an awful film!) we had last week. It isn't *that* bad is it?

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Basically (explanation for non-UK readers), they're supplied by one of two advertising agencies in the form of a 5-10 minute reel which is changed weekly. Usually, the contract entered into between a cinema and an agency will specify that a cinema may not show any commercials other than the ones supplied by that agency, apart from trailers (i.e. advertisements for feature films).

So in this instance, Pearl and Dean were probably suggesting that to screen a commercial which comes attached to the front of a feature brakes that condition. The question is, how do you define a 'commercial'? Greenpeace would argue that as they're a non-profit organisation and because their film isn't directly publicising a product or service, it doesn't qualify. On the other hand, Pearl and Dean are probably afraid of setting a precedent which might enable commercials to be shown, bypassing the agencies.

My recollection is that these notices cropped up really quite frequently. It was usually leftie political propaganda shorts that did it - I remember a piece on the front of Kundun with the Dalai Lama complaining about how nasty the Chinese are, and an Amnesty International anti-death penalty trailer attached to Dead Man Walking - so this example seems pretty much par for the course.

Quite apart from any objections by Pearl and Dean, I would always cut this crap out if given the choice because (i) it insults the intelligence of an average five year-old, and (ii) these things are likely to offend members of the groups they're targeting. To take the examples above, Chinese people and supporters of the death penalty may well be among your customers.

The Dead Man Walking example was especially stupid, I thought, as the director stressed that the film should be seen as a neutral, sitting-on-the-fence contribution to the debate which is intended to help viewers make up their mind. To have some propaganda, stongly supporting one side of the argument, screened immediately before it destroys the object of the exercise, IMHO.

However you can see their point - a one day flat fee booking doesn't exactly bring in the same £££'s as something like LOTR on its opening weekend - their argument being that a print sent out for 1 show effectively makes it unavailable for a week long booking. But when they're saying this 3 months after its release and assuming they had getting on for 1000 prints struck you have to wonder...

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