More Fun at MJR
“You can read about it in all the papers,” says Robin Hansen. Robin is the marketing director of MJR Theatres, a local chain here in Southeast Michigan. I’m speaking to her over the phone, and I’ve just asked her how the economy has impacted their business. “Movies have done very well in 2009,” she continues proudly. “They’re the most affordable form of entertainment.”
Robin concedes that people do still say popcorn and drink prices are too high, but then suggests comparing it to the cost of concessions at a ballgame. She goes on to mention some of MJR’s initiatives to help ease the load on the wallets of local moviegoers, like giving away free popcorn every Tuesday from May through September of last year, as well offering early weekend matinees for just four bucks a ticket.
But the reason I’m calling isn’t to talk about the economy. If you’re expecting an article about the struggles of working-class Detroiters looking for ways to stretch their budgets—trading in out-of-state vacations for more modest forms of entertainment—you won’t find it here. The real reason I’m calling is because of the song.
MJR is an independently-owned business and MJR are family initials. This year marks the company’s 30th year of operation and Robin’s been there for fourteen of them. MJR’s founder, Mike Mihalich, began his decades-long stint in the film industry doing an entry-level job for Warner Brothers in St. Louis. Mihalich worked his way up, and in the early 80s, bought the Main Art Theater in Royal Oak, MI. He modernized the three-screen theater, becoming the first in the area to offer stadium seating and made news by sending his ushers out during shows to feed parking meters near the theater. Mihalich sold the theater in 1997 and over the years made several other moves, converting the Adrian Drive-in to the Adrian Cinema and the Brighton Theater to the Brighton Town Square Digital Cinema, in addition to building five new complexes. Locally-owned theaters make up roughly half of the market in the Metro Detroit area, and MJR has become the biggest of the bunch with its seven locations and 116 screens.
The independence has enabled MJR to move swiftly. Robin said one thing that surprised her about working at the company was seeing how rapidly Mihalich was able to adopt new technologies like digital projection. They stopped using film entirely in 2007.
The MJR closest to me is the Marketplace Digital Cinema 20, which opened in Sterling Heights in 2005. From the outside, the theater is a behemoth, separated from the main highway by a massive, off-center parking lot whose main entrance forces you to drive directly at the building’s art-deco facade. The approach alone makes the theater seem that much more monumental compared to other local theaters I’ve been to, which are tucked away on backlots behind malls. The inside of the theater is clean without feeling sterile, and the stadium seats are big, comfortable and upholstered with purple cloth to contrast the pale-golden curtain walls. This MJR wasn’t around when I was growing up in the area, and you probably wouldn’t be reading these words had it not been the only theater nearby that was showing advanced screenings of 500 Days of Summer. I went there with my brother Charlie, and though it was the first movie either of us had seen at MJR, it wouldn’t be the last.
Movie theaters have something called a policy trailer—industry-talk for the clip that comes on immediately before the film starts to tell you the show is about to begin and remind you to switch off your phone. In the early 2000s, MJR needed a soundtrack for their policy trailer, so they commissioned a production company in Lansing to create the music. Here’s the song, which is prominently featured as the first tab on MJR’s website:
Okay. I think you need to listen to that bad-boy again. But this time, pay attention to what happens 18 seconds in:
When that 18-second mark came around, everybody in the theater clapped. Clapped to the beats in the music. Dun-dun-dun. Clap-clap-clap. The song played twice during the policy trailer and everybody clapped the second time too. Charlie and I looked each other with raised eyebrows and half-dropped jaws, which quickly turned into smiles. We were both thinking the same thing: what just happened?
“It’s catchy, isn’t it?” Robin said, excitedly. “It gets stuck in my head. But I probably hear it more than most people. It seems like I always have some window open in the background that has the song on it.” I asked her when they first realized that people were clapping to it.
“It caught on very quickly,” she replied. “It’s kind of grown a cult following.” And sure enough, on YouTube there are videos of local schoolkids singing it. Someone else even put up a cellphone-quality bootleg of the policy trailer. Of the policy trailer!
My friend Joey Roth has a really fantastic perspective on design:
If an interaction is fun, design it with more friction. If it’s boring, design it with less. Don’t blindly make everything faster and easier. — @joeyroth
The MJR theme song is a participation hook. It draws you in—makes you aware that you’re not just watching a movie, but that you’re going to the movies. The song recreates, on a smaller yet more consistent scale, the same reasons you go to a highly-anticipated film on opening night.
Granted, not every person claps every time, but as long as the theater isn’t empty, somebody usually will. This adds another element to the hook: whenever I go to the MJR and the lights start to dim, I anticipate the clapping. Is it going to happen? Are there enough people in the theater for it to happen? Should I do it even if nobody else does? And when it does happen, I’m delighted. From watching the reactions of those around me, the song never fails to bring a smile to people’s faces. Listen to it again; you know you want to:
The MJR song is an accident. It’s one of those quirky idiosyncrasies that a growing local theater adopted a decade ago and has held onto since then. Yet, this tiny piece of experiential velcro was enough to create the awareness of being at the movies; of participating in the act of moviegoing with a room full of strangers connected by a shared interest in the thing they were about to see. It creates friction in a good way, and in the process, the song becomes a self-fulfillng prophecy—because of it, things really are more fun at MJR.