Tribeca Film Festival 2009
Another year, another Tribeca Film Festival. As in years past, each year they make it slightly harder for people like me to get tickets and move more and more of the festival out of Tribeca. The one improvement is that eighty percent of the films are now showing in a single theater, making it much easier to get around (and making it possible to pack in more movies). The theater is in the East Village, not Tribeca, but such is life (though it does make the American Express commercial featuring people extolling how much business the festival brings to Tribeca ironically funny). However the festival eliminated the discount ticket packages they offered last year, which had replaced the daytimer passes they offered the year before, leaving no worthwhile packages for individuals who wanted to see lots of films. Thankfully, they did not raise their prices, which made the sting slightly less.
The festival also moved to siphon as much money as possible out of the pockets of ticket buyers. As in years past, there is a two dollar per-ticket surcharge for tickets purchased online and over the phone. Why there is an online surcharge in general is mind-boggling to me, since it has the least overhead of any of the three methods, but I digress. In years past, tickets went on sale Saturday morning at 11am in-person and online. So as long as you showed up early to stand in the line, you could get all the tickets you wanted without paying surcharges. This year, however, tickets went on sale at 11am on a Tuesday, but the box office didn’t open until 2pm. That meant if you wanted to guarantee getting tickets, you had to get them online or on the phone, which made Tribeca an extra 2 dollars a ticket.
Since I refuse to pay the surcharges, I went to stand in line, knowing I was probably going to miss out on a lot of movies I wanted to see. Now due to some interesting circumstances, I managed to get my tickets at noon, which meant I got tickets for 23 out of the 29 films I wanted. Still, compared to years past, that is a pretty horrible hit rate. There were 3 or 4 films I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to get, because they were the headliner movies that I figured pass-holders would snap up. But still, it was obvious that being forced to wait an hour after people could get them online had an effect. All in all, I’m pretty pissed. Obviously not pissed enough, yet, that I’m going to stop attending, but it will happen eventually. I’m sure the festival won’t care if I stop attending, but it will be sad. Anyway, I’m going to try rushing for tickets for 5 of the 6 I missed out on, so we’ll see what happens.