One message that this trilogy of reviews on the recent TCM Classic Film Festival hopefully has communicated is that these posts come neither to praise nor to bury the event but to have the organizers lend me their ears. The plethora of screenings and celebrity presentations are awesome; the rub is that an unfair caste system and related sloppy planning precludes folks who pay $799 or $649 a head merely for four nights and three days of those events from attending nearly as many of them as should be feasible.
The first entry in this series focused on how better planning would have alleviated disappointment related to not having a prayer of attending an arguably reasonable number of events; the second post addressed the practice of benefiting "one-percenters" and friends of the organizers to the extremely unfair detriment of the third-class citizens who paid as much as $799 to attend the event.
This third and final article discusses how the overall experience of the hoi polloi could have been enhanced without any additional expense.
This post also continues the practice of the prior entries in this series by centering it around a metaphor. Your not-so-humble reviewer was sitting in a grad-school seminar when a fellow economically challenged classmate opened his cable bill and declared that "I didn't watch $35 worth of TV last month." Somewhat akin to that statement, I feel that I should have received a better value for the $1,300 total that I and my highly significant other paid for Classic festival passes. I DEFINITELY was denied a fighting chance to attend $649 worth of movies during that weekend.
LINE ITEM
The prior posts in this series regularly address the NUMEROUS AVOIDABLE flaws regarding administering the "steerage" line consisting of holders of the Classic pass and the $799 essentials pass (which only provided the benefit of the chance to attend the featured opening-night film for the additional $150). The underlying issue was that the "one-percenters" who shelled out $2,149 for Spotlight passes and the friends of the organizers who received equally Hollywood royalty treatment unfairly disadvantaged the rest of us.
The missed opportunities regarding this were to at least entertain the masses and provide small tokens during their 90-minute wait for an event regarding which they faced the risk of not being admitted. Each event had a team of "salmon-shirts," who arrived 90-minutes before a screening but largely aimlessly milled around until handing out deli-counter style numbers for 10 minutes roughly one hour before the event started.
Personal experience with someone whose number should have been well above 100 but cut to the 7th position for one screening showed that the salmon-shirts did not even closely monitor that behavior. A reasonable use of their time would have been to entertain the crowd and distribute SWAG that could have consisted of surplus give-aways from prior TCM events.
These staffer also could have asked trivia questions, randomly distributed loot, or even played "Let's Make A Deal" in a manner that included giving the first person to produce items such as a package of breath mints or a flashlight key chain a prize. These literally small no-cost gestures would have helped pass the long waits for events and communicated that TCM valued the folks who spent significant money and traveled up to 1,000s of miles to attend the event. They conversely brought many of us to the period between love and goodbye.
Similarly, the ONLY flaw at the spectacular (reviewed) Hollywood Roosevelt that was the headquarters hotel for the festival was the limited elevator capacity that was fine except for when festival events ended. Long lines and proportionately surly festival goers resulted.
The common sense solution would have been to either have largely otherwise invisible organizers or two salmon-shirts at the elevators during this busy period. Either group of wage slaves minimally could have helped direct the flow of passengers and engaged those in line in conversation regarding the event; they could have gone one step further by using this as an opportunity to distribute SWAG.
CLUB TCM
Additional disappointment related to the advertised Classic pass perk of access to Club TCM; the primary appeal of this benefit was a chance to enjoy a respite in that space; one hint is that the adjacent spacious hotel lobby with the plethora of comfy chairs and couches meets that need without additional expense.
Although not promised, consistent experience with similar V.I.P. areas created a reasonable expectation that the Club would provide free snacks and soft drinks and would have inexpensive SWAG that included TCM pens and note pads. This was limited to bottled water that was available to every festival goer.
The added insult to this injury was that the description of Classic pass benefits explicitly included Club TCM events. We learned on arriving that the elite Spotlight passholders got a free breakfast buffet in the Club each morning but that the organizers did not consider that a Club event. The lesson this time is that it is nice to make someone breakfast the next morning after you got what you wanted from them the prior night. The walk of shame past the buffet each morning was not fun.
On a related note, TCM likely could have solicited fellow Atlanta corporation Coca-Cola or another large beverage company and a snack company to provide a large promotional supply of items for an event attended by folks whose interest in spending countless hours watching old movies on television was adequately strong to pay 100s of dollars to attend the festival.
LOOKING A GIFT BAG IN THE MOUTH
This extensive analysis of the unavoidably poor planning of the festival wraps up with one of the most blatant examples of the elitism that pervaded the event. Both consistent prior experience and pre-festival communication created an expectation of a gift bag. Full disclosure requires sharing that TCM was responsive regarding this matter.
I learned a few weeks before the festival that only Spotlight passholders would receive gift bags. The basic analogy this time is that Holland America (and presumably other large cruise lines) gives every passenger an inexpensive tote bag so that they promote the line by carrying it around the ports.
The response to the argument that festival goers wearing their passes around their necks would achieve the same objective is that your not-so-humble reviewer only wore his pass while standing in line for and attending events. The oft-repeated rationale was to avoid looking like a doofus.
A look at the fantabulous SWAG that Spotlighters got showed that it could have been minimally downgraded in a manner that would have allowed spending the saved money on the aforementioned less expensive variety. As an initial matter, replacing the weather-proof bottom with a canvas one likely would have funded bags for all.
Further, either eliminating the zipper rubber (second) banana purse that contained banana-flavored taffy would not gone un-noticed and either could have gone in bags to Classic and Essentials passholders or used to fund buying refrigerator magnets for those unwashed masses.
Minimally, the lower-level bags could have contained the confections and the festival programs that the organizers handed out like candy.
One would hope that the lined canvas toiletry bag, the argyle socks, the flashlight keychain, etc would have satisfied the Spotlight passholders.
A related smart move would have been to give at least the Classic and the Essentials passholders certificates for t-shirts at the nearby TCM boutique that was completely devoid of customers and bursting with unsold merchandise the day after the festival. The shirt would have been a nice low-cost gesture and helped drive traffic to the store.
Epilogue
This final word regarding this epic coverage of a festival that might have been is the simple suggestion that a prominent television network that one of the largest media companies in the world owns know its audience and accordingly use its extensive resources.
Anyone with questions or comments regarding this TCM coverage is encouraged to email me. You also can connect on Twitter via @tvdvdguy.
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