Last week, we talked about Martin Scorsese’s Robert Osborne Award acceptance speech at the TCM Film Festival. In his speech, the legendary filmmaker used his platform to rally against the likes of Rotten Tomatoes and CinemaScore, who Scorsese says are to blame for the “devaluation of cinema.”
The main point by Scorsese is simple – the two services treat films like judged content and not art. “The horrible idea they reinforce that every picture, every image is there to be instantly judged and dismissed without giving audiences time to see it. Time to see it, maybe ruminate and maybe make a decision for themselves. So the great 20th-century art form, the American art form, is reduced to content,” explained Scorsese.
Recently, we received a statement from Harold Mintz of CinemaScore. Needless to say, he was not pleased with the filmmaker’s assessment of his service.
“To begin, it’s important that it’s understood that CinemaScore should not be looped with Rotten Tomatoes. CinemaScore’s inception was to poll opening night moviegoers to let others who don’t attend opening night know if the film is worth their hard earned money,” says the email. “To loop CinemaScore with a critic based service (Rotten Tomatoes) shows that Mr. Scorsese has no understanding of what CinemaScore represents.”
Mintz goes on to explain that CinemaScore is a completely different service than Rotten Tomatoes. For those that don’t know, CinemaScore polls opening night audiences about their reactions to films they paid money to see. Unlike critics, these are regular people who go out of their way to spend their own money to see a film opening night. As Mintz says, these people are “the most enthusiastic group for a movie.” At the end of the day, CinemaScore gives each film a grade from ‘A+’ to ‘F’ based solely on audience surveys.
“If they don’t like the movie, that opinion gets filtered down to those who are willing to wait a week or two to see it,” continues Mintz. “CinemaScore polls the audience that MOST want to see it… The data is deadly accurate. It correlates to box-office as well. To bury those results as Mr. Scorsese wishes to suggest only says that he doesn’t want his fans to let others know whether or not his latest film meets expectations.”
And that is exactly the point that Mintz (and CinemaScore) try to make with their grades – this is what the “fans” think of a film. This isn’t a critic releasing an unbiased opinion on a film. The CinemaScore grade comes from those who are probably more biased in favor of the film they just saw.
“It confuses me as to why Martin Scorsese wants to censor his fans from voicing their opinions. I can understand his concerns with Rotten Tomatoes because their opinions get released BEFORE the movie gets released which could cause the problem he’s most concerned about,” explains Mintz.
He concludes by saying that Scorsese’s “attack against CinemaScore is simply unjustified.”