If you haven’t seen Richard Linklater’s latest film in theaters, don’t worry, “Boyhood” won’t grow old on you just yet. The Nickelodeon will be extending showings of the movie for at least another two weeks.
“We’ll have it showing definitely until September fourth,” Kristin Morris, marketing manager at Nickelodeon Theatre, said. With such a great turnout, the Nickelodeon is obliging the will of film fans everywhere.
“It’s been really well-received nationally with really great reviews,” Morris said. “We had high hopes that it would do well but for it to continue to do so well was a little bit of a surprise.”
What makes the film such a unique spectacle? The fact that it took over a decade to create makes it more of an awesome project rather than a planned feature film.
“There’s not been a film that’s been made like it yet,” Morris said. “Richard Linklater taking 12 years using the same actors over that time period is really amazing.”
“Boyhood” might also be doing so well because of it’s lure for young people who are just starting to see films in a more serious way. Linklater’s latest can serve as a time capsule, conjuring brief totems of the best in music, movies, books and television over the past 12 years. As a young boy, Mason, the protagonist, watches Dragon Ball Z, dresses up for Harry Potter midnight releases and covers his ears screaming when his sister mimics Britney Spears. The film not only breeds nostalgia for these commodities, but digs up the original feelings of them as well. Thus, the film is especially sympathetic to today’s crop of college students.
“I think a lot of young people identify with that life transition,” Morris said. “So much of the film is about the main character’s growing up into being an adult and having what is an accessible experience to a lot of people. I think it definitely resonates in a college town like ours.”
The timing of the Nickelodeon’s release of “Boyhood” has incidentally coincided with the return of students to campus, as well as the advent of the Hub on Main Street, giving the Nickelodeon a whole new market of potentially movie-going neighbors.
“I definitely think that at our later shows there have been a lot more students coming which is great,” Morris said. “We’re really excited to have a lot more people living on Main Street coming to see us and coming to other businesses.”
Make no mistake, the audiences for “Boyhood” have included much more than college students. T
The film deals profoundly with the older family members around the main character, perhaps even shedding more light on their experiences than on the child himself. “Boyhood” is the symbiosis between old and young generations, making it an important film at a time when both Columbia and the Nickelodeon are trying to foster relationships between the older world of Main Street and young, university students.
“Our audience here is very diverse in age, socioeconomic, race and cultural aspects and this film appeals to a broad range of people,” Morris said. “I think we’re hopefully getting some new young students who are seeing us for the first time but we still have a really broad audience of people who are different and who come and enjoy the films as well.”
The extension does reveal a sign of success, for both the film and the Nickelodeon although it does mean that the people of the Nickelodeon have to rework their calendar.
“This past year our attendance has grown so much and we’ve had to extend several films,” Morris said. “‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’ earlier this spring, which we’ve extended four or five times, was really great. We have a relationship with the distribution company that releases each film and we communicate with them and they sort of determine how long we keep the films just depending on how the attendance is. It probably wasn’t as frequent for the organization in years previous but we’ve been growing and growing.”
On the off chance you are immune to the charms of “Boyhood”, due to continued growth the Nickelodeon will soon be able to show multiple films at once.
“One of the reasons we extend the film too is we only have one theater and it’s a 99-seat theater,” Morris said. “Later on this fall we plan to start construction on our second theater which will be upstairs and will be bigger. We’ll be able to have more flexibility in the films that we show and show more films. A lot of our patrons want to come and see us once every couple of weeks but when we’re just showing the same film over and over they can only come once a month.”
While the folks at the Nickelodeon want to remain loyal to those regular visitors, the extended showings and full audiences have kept the staff fresh and adaptable.
“We’re kind of used to [extending shows] now so it’s not a problem, just something we learn to live with. It’s kind of exciting when things aren’t set in stone for us.”