Depending on where you go, a movie ticket in Montreal seems to range anywhere from $10 to a car payment. Throw in popcorn or a Diet Coke, and watching a 15-foot Mark Wahlberg grunt catchphrases will seem less like an evening’s entertainment than a significant financial investment in your own brain damage. These prices, say the major chains, are the only way theatres can stay afloat in the face of declining attendance.
So, it’s perfectly reasonable to wonder how, at $2.50 a ticket and $1.00 a drink, Montreal’s Dollar Cinema on Décarie Square makes any money.
The answer is that it doesn’t pull in much. But that doesn’t matter to owner Bernie Gurberg.
“We don’t make a lot of money, obviously,” says Gurberg. “But it’s not about the money. It’s about giving somebody something that they couldn’t otherwise have… We’re helping a lot of families who can’t afford to go to the movies.”
Gurberg opened the Dollar Cinema on 2004 after leaving the garment industry. Never much of a film buff, he describes his decision to open a theatre as something between divine intervention and a whim.
“It was a series of things, maybe driven by the guy upstairs,” says Gurberg. “The needle trade was continuously in decline… and a friend told me about this place,” he continues. “It was an Odeon cinema many years back. A few people tried unsuccessfully to revive it… It turns out it was the best thing that could ever happen (to me).”
Tickets were originally a dollar, but after replacing all the seats a few months after opening, Gurberg raised the prices slightly to $2.00. In the past year, single tickets have crept up to $2.50, but Gurberg now offers a packet of 20 tickets for $20, and concessions have always been $1.00. With three screening rooms—one holding about 500, another 400 and a third 25—Gurberg keeps costs low by maintaining a minimal staff, working at the theatre himself most days.
Of course, the venue isn’t an exercise in decadence. While some chains attempt to justify their high ticket price through a “VIP experience,” portrayed as the theatrical equivalent of watching a movie nestled in Marie-Antoinette’s busom, Gurberg’s theatre is comparatively utilitarian. But the seats are comfortable, the main screens are large, and the sound is good. And perhaps most surprisingly, the movies are new, often only a few weeks removed from opening day.
“Sometimes they’re still playing downtown when we show them,” says Gurberg, “We’re trying to get movies that are current, that are mainstream, that people want to see.”
Just like the chains, Gurberg divides his tickets sales with distributors and studios, who see the Dollar Cinema as a viable income stream between theatrical release and the home video market.
“In bigger cinemas… after a week or whatever, (ticket sales) can go down pretty low,” explains Gurberg, “We have lower amounts of dollars, but higher amounts of people, so it works out.”
The result is that Montrealers get the chance to enjoy a movie experience on a tight budget. And that, to Gurberg, is worth more than money.
“We fill an important need,” says Gurberg, whose son has followed in his footsteps and opened a chain of bargain theatres called CineStarz, with locations in Gatineau, St. Basile, Missassauga and Cote-des-Neiges. “There aren’t many things in life you can do that will give you this opportunity, where all these people can walk through the door, and you can do something for them.” Even something as small as giving a budget-conscious family a free drink, Gurberg says, can be immensely fulfilling. “You should see the look I get. Almost tears… that kind of thing is worth (more than) money.”
The Dollar Cinema is located at 6900 Décarie Square. Visit www.dollarcinema.ca for showtimes and details.
