The low-budget thriller “Backrooms” has officially raked in nearly $400 million worldwide, making it the highest grossing film of all time from indie film production company A24.
The film was directed by 20-year-old Kane Parsons, who first went viral on Youtube for his short horror clips.
[CLIP FROM “THE BACKROOMS” PLAYS]
But that’s just the latest in A24’s indie hits. They’re behind the new Anthony Bourdain biopic “Tony”; as well as “Marty Supreme” starring Timothée Chalamet; Oscar winners “Everything Everywhere All at Once” and “Moonlight”; and the upcoming Robert Pattinson movie “Primetime.”
In short, A24 is a darling of indie film buffs. And now, Arizona’s own Harkins Theaters says they’ll no longer play their movies. Harkins says they couldn't secure "mutually agreeable terms with A24.” They pulled screenings of “Tony” and “Primetime” last week.
Phoenix Magazine film critic M.V. Moorhead joined The Show to gives us his take on the drama.
Full conversation
LAUREN GILGER: Good morning, Mark. Thanks for coming in.
M.V. MOORHEAD: It’s always good to see you, Lauren.
LAUREN GILGER: OK, so tell us first just about A24 and how they became such a big force in the film world.
M.V. MOORHEAD: Well, one of the things that’s extraordinary about A24 is that they became a big force of a certain kind of boutique film really quickly. They’ve been around just a little over maybe 10, 12 years, something like that.
And they’ve had — I mean, you just rattled off a bunch of them — but they made some movies early on that kind of flew under the radar that I wish more people knew about, like a movie called “Morris from America” and “Equals.” And one of my very favorites from just not quite 10 years ago, a movie called “The Lovers” with Debra Winger and Tracy Letts was number one on my top 10 list that year.
But eventually they started to become a really big deal. And like you said, “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” they had “The Whale,” they had “The Zone of Interest,” they had “Sing Sing,” “Minari.” So that’s kind of become their forte is real award-bait kind of movies.
LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. So they’re a big force, right, this independent, but very big now, film company?
M.V. MOORHEAD: Yes.
LAUREN GILGER: Kind of a darling — indie film lovers love them.
M.V. MOORHEAD: Very much so.
LAUREN GILGER: And indie film lovers kind of love Harkins, right? This kind of homegrown, almost century-old movie theater here founded in the Valley. Tell us about their history.
M.V. MOORHEAD: Well, they were started by a man named Dwight Harkins, who was really known as Red Harkins. Red founded them in the early ’30s, and he was just kind of a born showman, and he had a lot of innovative, creative ideas.
He experimented with drive-in movies at Tempe Beach Park back in the ’30s. He built — it wasn’t his first film or his first theater, rather — but he built the College, what was called the College in those days. It’s now known as the Valley Art Theatre in downtown Tempe. And he had a lot of kind of wacky ideas.
He did luminescent carpeting so you wouldn’t stub your toe in the dark, I guess, or whatever, but it wouldn’t mess with the lighting of the screen. He had a room for mothers to go in and take care of their babies, and they could plug in and listen to the movie while they were doing it, but it wouldn’t mess with everybody else’s experience. Stuff for the hard of hearing.
His son, Dan Harkins, who we know to this day, insists that it was Red who broke up segregated seating, racially segregated seating in the movies. So he has a very storied history.
But the one thing I mean, my disclaimer is this thing between him and A24, I have like zero inside baseball knowledge about what’s going on.
LAUREN GILGER: Well, neither side’s saying that much about what’s going on.
M.V. MOORHEAD: And nobody seems to be saying much.
LAUREN GILGER: But this is not the first time Harkins has done something like this.
M.V. MOORHEAD: Exactly. Harkins’ history, especially — Red seemed to mostly be into being a good, solid local chain. And but they were in financial trouble by the time that Red passed on in the ’70s. And it was the son, Dan, who really took them to another level.
And that was partly because of a little bit of feistiness. That company is known for just having a little willingness to fight and contention. And most notably in the ’70s, Dan took other distributors, big major distributors, the studios and all that, to court in an antitrust suit because of practices that he felt were anticompetitive.
LAUREN GILGER: Wow.
M.V. MOORHEAD: And really kind of to everybody’s surprise — for all I know maybe even to Dan’s own surprise — he won. And my old late friend, Bill Rocz, who used to be the film critic on Channel 5 here, told me that he always saw Dan as sort of a David who took on a Goliath and won.
And that was the beginning of Harkins becoming what we know it to be today, which is just a dominant local chain that people are very loyal to. But they’re also in a lot of other places — in Oklahoma and I think Colorado and California. That branching out, that’s what not only saved Harkins, but turned them into a pretty big player.
LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. Well, it is kind of what local film fans here love about Harkins, right? So you’re seeing a lot of people online right now saying like, “We hate this. This idea that we can’t see A24 films at Harkins, because we don’t want to go to AMC, we want to support this local chain.”
What do you think here? Do you think they’ll come to some kind of deal? You think they’ll figure it out?
M.V. MOORHEAD: If I had to guess — and it would be nothing but a guess — I would guess that they will. They had a problem with New Line Cinema. Harkins had a legal wrangle with them back in the ’90s, and so they weren’t playing things like “Austin Powers” and stuff, really lucrative pictures.
And so they eventually, I believe — now New Line has since long since been gobbled up by Warner — but I think they eventually settled their differences, too. But he — the business, Harkins — they don’t take any guff. They fight. And I’m certainly in no position to say who the rights and the wrongs are in this, but the point is that’s not a company that rolls over.
LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. All right, well, we’ll see what happens. M.V. Moorhead, film critic with Phoenix Magazine, joining us. Mark, thanks so much. Appreciate it very much.
M.V. MOORHEAD: Great to be here. Thanks.
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