MoviePass: The Ongoing Saga (Part 5 of ?)

Amid the relentless torrent of MoviePass scandals and mania, one of the MOST disturbing things they've done yet has gone pretty much unreported.

Until now.

Short version: MoviePass is currently making it impossible to use their service at all.

Now you may be shrugging and saying, "Isn't that what they've been doing the past few months? And are they even still in business?"

Answers to your questions: No. And Yes.

Now, it's possible no one is reporting on this huge scam/scandal ("scamdal"?) because, well, in order to understand how what they're doing this week is worse than usual...you have to understand the truly insane way MoviePass operates.

Give me a minute and I'll give it a shot.

MoviePass limits the number of movies you can find at your local theater to maybe one or two a day, with approximately one daily showtime of each movie available. Usually an evening showtime, circa 7pm. To get your ticket for this 7pm movie, you will have to go to the theater before 5pm (earlier on the west coast) because that's when they usually shut down the app for the day. It's a pretty sweet Kafkaesque racket MoviePass has there, making it impossible to actually get your ticket and see your movie at the same time. The comments section on their Instagram is flooded daily with people flipping out over seeing an evening showtime available on the app and then arriving at the theater to find it gone.

Okay, none of that is good. But at least MoviePass was mixing it up and making a different movie available each day. One day it would be Venom, the next it would be Halloween, and so on. So if you were scrappy and took the initiative to go to the theater over your lunch break, you could check in to a movie and buy a ticket for a movie later in the evening.

Not anymore.

MoviePass has a weekly schedule informing you of the "many" "options" for movies you can "see." There's usually six on display. The first movie on the list would be the reliable one that changes each day and is actually playing at a theater near you. The other five are only playing in New York, L.A., and maybe D.C.

Well, this week, in addition to the usual five impossible-to-see films, they decided for the first time to keep the first movie on the list the same for the entire week.

It's Indivisible. 

And zero theaters within 30 miles of my medium-sized city of Charlottesville are playing this film.

The effect? No one in my city can use MoviePass this week.

They finally did it. MoviePass went from making their service "extremely difficult to use" to "impossible to use."

This backs up my previously stated theory: MoviePass wants you to quit.

(And I'm not the only one with this theory.)

They've done some awful things before. And usually been destroyed in the media for it. But the radio silence on this scandal confirms something else I've long suspected: none of the media reporting on MoviePass actually use the service. They just parrot rumors and press releases.

I don't know that MoviePass is going completely down the tubes.

But they're sure acting like it.

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Also: Since being orphaned by their parent investor, MoviePass created a new website. It is live. And it is a mess.

Bonus: It has been up for about week and this official corporate website STILL has both a spelling and a punctuation error in the main page text: "MoviePass...gives everyone the ability to watch film’s where the director intended; at the movie theater."

I think they meant that as a colon, not a semicolon. I will leave it to you to spot the spelling error.

But in addition to the spelling and punctuation errors, the statement isn't even true. MoviePass isn't letting you see any movie where any director intended.

Unless you're the director of Indivisible.


-B.P. Kasik/Phony McFakename

I wrote the book on MoviePass TWICE, once from a positive perspective, and once from a more realistic perspective. I also wrote a horror book about a sort-of evil MoviePass.

My other "legitimate" books are on Amazon here and my Phony books are on Amazon here. I exist on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram.

MoviePass: The Ongoing Saga (Part 4 of ?)

The most recent MoviePass Cinemadness is their parent company seeking to cut them off.

Helios and Matheson is sick of being tainted with the "suckers that financed the cash-burning MoviePass machine" brand.

Too bad! They can try to rebrand, but both Pepperidge Farm and the Internet remember.

These jokers decided making unlimited movies in the theater for $9.95/month was a sound business strategy.

Don't get me wrong, I appreciated it! Thanks for doing that!

But spinning off your little MoviePass company isn't gonna erase it.

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I've joked about MoviePass' "Whoopsie!" emails they periodically send to users, where they apologize for their latest blunder. There have been many, many blunders.

Well... check the title of the email they sent a few days ago...

"Whoops! Regarding your special screening invite."

Context: MoviePass sent me an invite to a movie premiere event in Los Angeles. I was bemused by this, but immediately disregarded the message and went on with my life. The "Whoops!" follow-up came a few hours later, telling me I'd accidentally been sent that invite and they didn't mean to send it to users who lived so far away and obviously couldn't make it there for the event.

But bottom line: They actually put "Whoops!" in the title of one of their emails.

(Follow-up thought: they didn't actually rescind the invite, just said "Whoops!" in regards to sending it. If I were to RSVP to it, they couldn't stop me. I think it's time to hop on a plane and go cross-country and demand entrance to this MoviePass screening they "Whoops!"-ily invited me to!)

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Oh, and speaking of "Whoops!" emails, I got this recently...

This is a trainwreck worthy of deep, sustained contemplation.

I mean, the jokes write themselves, so we can skip right past the obvious snark. (Is MoviePass even gonna exist in two months? Does this mean T-Mobile service won't work, either? etc.)

Let's just stand in awe of the fact that T-Mobile thought doing a tie-in promotion with MoviePass was a good idea.

Also, switching cell carriers is a HUGE decision. Cell plans are a massive confusopoly, precision-engineered to make it impossible to compare plans and figure out whether switching makes financial sense.

And the incentive they're offering to switch? Two months of a completely frazzled, brokedown, tainted, user-infuriating service valued at $19.90.

That's right, a $19.90 incentive to switch cell carriers.

I suppose it's possible there are people out there who might have been contemplating switching carriers and might go, "Okay, that's a nice little bonus for something I wanted to do, anyway."

But for the rest of us?

This might be MoviePass' greatest "Whoops!" of all.

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And in other news, MoviePass produced a movie called Border.

It looks great!

And a nice perk: MoviePass sent out a non-"Whoops!" email saying that Border would be a "bonus movie" and would not count against our three-per-month movie limit.

Terrific!

I noticed on the app yesterday morning that there was a screening of it in my town last night.

Huzzah!

I got ready to go get my ticket over my lunch break, and...

It was gone.

MoviePass blocked it.

I repeat: MoviePass blocked access to their own movie on their own app.

Any questions?

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Rumors abound of MoviePass cutting off access to their previously stress-free eticketing theaters.

Anywhere from 1/3 to 1/2 of eticketing theaters are gone from the app. By "gone," I mean now these theaters are just offering the ridiculous limited daily options MoviePass randomly provides.

This is seriously bad because previously, eticketing theaters were the only ones that actually reliably worked. You could pick any movie and any showtime there.

During the great "Mission Impossible 6 Blackout of July 2018," I drove to an eticketing theater 40 minutes away and saw it, no problemo.

Speculation runs rampant about why. Some say it's because MoviePass didn't want to let users enjoy the convenience of these theaters anymore. Some say it's because MoviePass wasn't paying their bills at these places so the theaters cut them off.

This story is still very much in the shadows, and only power-users are even aware of it at the moment. And for what it's worth, the eticketing theater 40 minutes from my town is still on the app.

More as it develops...

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Oh yeah, and MoviePass is being investigated by the New York Attorney General.

No biggie.


-B.P. Kasik/Phony McFakename

I wrote the book on MoviePass TWICE, once from a positive perspective, and once from a more realistic perspective. I also wrote a horror book about a sort-of evil MoviePass.

My other "legitimate" books are on Amazon here and my Phony books are on Amazon here. I exist on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram.

MoviePass: The Ongoing Saga (Part 3 of ?)

Well, MoviePass is still standing. They survived the chaotic weekend of the Venom/Star is Born one-two punch.

They didn't even sabotage their app any more than usual to do so!

However, am hearing more reports than ever of people arriving at the theater only to find showtimes suddenly gone, even if these showtimes were there mere minutes before. People suspect MoviePass is shutting them out in a bait-and-switch scam where they trick you into coming to the theater in order to block you once you're there.

Double-however, correlation is not causation. Many of these reports are from folks who arrive at the theater expecting to purchase a ticket after 5 pm. MoviePass shuts the app down for the day as early as 5pm (earlier on weekends) almost every day. It's not that you get close to the theater and MoviePass magically shuts down. It's that you happen to get there at the time of day (high-demand time) where MoviePass happens to shut down.

Why do they shut down early every day?

Speculation varies. But the most plausible explanation is that they have a certain amount of money to spend each day and when they run out of their allotted funds for the day, party's over and they shut down the app. "THERE ARE NO MORE SCREENINGS AT THIS THEATER" across the board.

Lesson to be learned: stop going to the theater late in the day and expecting to be able to buy a ticket. It won't happen and you'll just get sad. If you don't have a functional eticketing theater nearby or you can't get to the theater early in the day - over lunch or something - to get your ticket for later, MoviePass isn't for you. In its current incarnation, at least.

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And remember that weird thing they did, where they tried to trick-re-enroll people who didn't actively cancel their accounts?

Those accounts were supposed to reactivate on October 5.

No one has yet to report this actually happened. Everyone has reported it has not. Latest news: they might get these accounts up and running by November 1. Maybe.

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This is terrifying: an unsubstantiated, hopefully fake-news online rumor that Live Nation wants to buy MoviePass.

Kiss the service COMPLETELY goodbye if that happens.

The problems the service currently faces? The headaches they provide its users?

Baby, you ain't seen NOTHIN' yet! Live Nation basically exists to make your life a living hell. Making money is just a nice bonus for them.

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This one's not a rumor: MoviePass is throwing their hat into the ring of my favorite genre: horror.

And to their credit, they have good taste. They're greenlighting a Neil Marshall film.

That article has a huge omission, though. Yeah, Marshall made The Descent and Dog Soldiers, both great. But he also made Doomsday! Doomsday! The most awesome, crazy post-apocalyptic pastiche mess of all time! It's up there with the wacky early 80's Italian Mad Max-ripoff genre hybrids. Strong female lead. Great soundtrack. Great visuals. Crazy, unpredictable plot. Was lucky enough to see it in the theater, lost count of how many times I've seen it since. I'd watch it again right now.

I forget what we were talking about. But, yeah: Doomsday!

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Oh, and Sinemia made a super-baller move, possibly a MoviePass-destroyer.

To clarify: Sinemia is offering their platform and tools to any theater. ANY THEATER can now set up their own customized version of a subscription model. It's a build-your-own-MoviePass.

I mean... that removes any incentive for smaller theaters to play ball with MoviePass. Most of the eticketing theaters out there (the ones where you can actually reliably use MoviePass) are smaller theaters that cut a revenue-sharing deal with MoviePass. I'd bet dollars to donuts the deal Sinemia is offering is better for these theaters.

This is huge.

And I've been reading about Sinemia a whole lot lately.

I'm gravitating more and more into their orbit. I hate their $30/month price for their unlimited plan. And I hate their stupid hidden fees on every ticket, both "processing" and "convenience." And I hate their extra attempts at bilking you for fees ($10 for "early activation," $20 if you want to go month-to-month rather than pay a year in advance).

But... apparently, their service actually works. Their MoviePass-comparably-priced $10/month three-movie-plan sounds super-appealing, even with potential $1-$3 fees attached to each ticket... because you can ACTUALLY USE IT. You can see what you want to see where you want to see it when you want to see it. You don't have to make an extra trip to the theater early in the day to get a ticket before they shut down their app for the day.

I'm still locked into the annual plan for MoviePass, but I'd seriously consider quitting and trying Sinemia if I were month-to-month.

If you decide to take the Sinemia plunge, here are some quick pro-tips I've gathered: sign up for a year in advance (waives the activation fee), wait two weeks for account to start (waives the early user fee), and then buy your tickets through Facebook Movies (waives the processing fee, for now at least). And bonus: if you use Atom Tickets (they're some kind of new Fandango) and connect it to Facebook Movies, you get a free ticket for every four tickets you buy with them. Go to the theater and get your ticket when it's time to see your movie to avoid paying advance convenience fees. And of all their plans, the $9.99/month plan for three movies makes the most sense. (Their other plans are more expensive because they offer one 3D/IMAX/upgraded per month but 3D/IMAX/upgraded movies are stupid and annoying on the eyes and ears, so don't pay extra for that nonsense.)

If MoviePass is losing a longtime lover and cheerleader like me, I can only imagine how casual users feel. But then again...

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Here's a bit of speculation: MoviePass wants you to quit.

Seriously.

They publicly brag that they've made it so hard for users to see movies with their app-blackouts and lame showtimes/screenings even on their best days, that they've got users down to seeing an average of one movie per month.

They want it that way.

They want you to pay for their service and not use it. Or preferably, to forget to use it.

Like a gym membership.

Back when they had an unlimited plan on offer, this wasn't feasible. But as it is now? Yup. They're pulling it off.

They had almost three million users at the height of their powers and that number has been spiralling down since they went in the toilet. No one knows their exact numbers, but I suspect MoviePass would be perfectly peachy-keen happy to get their membership rolls whittled down to one million people who never/almost-never use the service.

I didn't want to believe the worst about MoviePass. I kind of had faith that they'd pull it together and start behaving better once they had all customers down to the three-monthly plan on September 16, 2018.

But no. It's been over a month since then and they still suck. And they're showing no signs that they're interesting in not sucking.

Leaving any reasonable human with the inescapable conclusion:

MoviePass wants you to quit.


-B.P. Kasik/Phony McFakename

I wrote the book on MoviePass TWICE, once from a positive perspective, and once from a more realistic perspective. I also wrote a horror book about a sort-of evil MoviePass.

My other "legitimate" books are on Amazon here and my Phony books are on Amazon here. I exist on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram.

Favorite Quotes: October 2018

“It is a fact that it takes experience before one can realize what is a catastrophe and what is not. Children have little faculty of distinguishing between disaster and the ordinary course of their lives.”

-Richard Hughes, A High Wind in Jamaica

“Rockin' the boat's a drag. You gotta sink the boat!”

“Are you for SURREAL?”

-Putney Swope

“I should want to cook [Mr. Belvedere] a simple meal. I should not want to cut into him. To tear the flesh. To wear the flesh. Be born into new worlds where his flesh is my key.”

-Saturday Night Live, “Mr. Belvedere Fan Club” sketch

"For all that gets written about the therapeutic power of good humor and its imagined ability to cure pretty much every ill, I have been forced to confront a difficult truth: being funny is not making me a better person."

"If you have children, you already know this: watching them use habits and mannerisms they picked up from you is taking a long, unpleasant look at the man in the mirror."

"[my teenage son] was suddenly MOUTHY, as my mom used to say, with an unsolicited opinion or flippant comeback to everything.

'Ah, he's sarcastic, like you,' said my brother-in-law knowingly.

He didn't mean anything by it, but it stung me to the quick. Sarcastic, LIKE ME? Telling jokes has been a big part of my identity as far back as I can remember, but being reduced bluntly to the Sarcastic One was devastating. I don't like the Sarcastic One. I'm not sure if anyone does. It's hard to get to know people who constantly deflect conversation with quippy asides--which is probably why they started doing it, as a way to talk without revealing anything, risking anything. Even if it's just a tic, even if there's more to someone than the sarcasm, it's tiresome as a first response."

"Why does nothing ever come out sounding NICER than we mean it? Why only meaner? I am weary, deeply weary, of people who always have something quick and clever to say. I find great solace in the company of people who are quiet and filled with a great light and generosity of spirit, like tall trees in a sunny glade, though I know I am not one of them, and perhaps never will be."

-Ken Jennings, Planet Funny

“Here’s the thing about comedy: it doesn’t hold up when it’s scrutinized. It doesn’t hold up when people ask you questions about it. It just sort of evaporates. So you have to avoid being in situations where people ask a lot of questions and challenge you and go, is what you’re doing funny? Because if you’re in that situation, it’s over, and you can’t defend it.”

“Kids like the show and they don’t have a problem with references they don’t understand, because their life is like that. They’re constantly being confronted with things they don’t understand, but they start to find meaning in the words in the town in which they’re delivered. The way we move into the world is the same way. You kind of learn things by proxy.”

-Joel Hodgson, on MST3K

“He’s got a face like a full diaper.”

-Rifftrax on Final Justice

“I want a cool rider. A cool rider... I want a rider that’s cool.”

“I got this essay on the fall of Rome. I didn’t even know they were in trouble!”

“We're going to die and I'm wearing my mother's underwear!”

“I wanted to ask you if you're free after school today.”

“Yeah. I'm free every day. It's in the Constitution.”

“I’m independent! I can kiss the next guy who walks through that door, if I want!”

“KABLAM! NUCLEOID WAR!“

-Grease 2

“When I was a child in the seventies, I would run home from school to watch “Million Dollar Movie.” They had this tremendous music: “Tonight…da-da…on the Million Dollar Movie…Charles Bronson in ‘Once Upon a Time in the West!’ And it was thrilling, man. I would sit on my living room floor, tuned into my Zenith television, and I watched that Million Dollar Movie. For me, I feel like video-on-demand has enabled me to have that kind of relationship with my audience. They can go home and get together and check out any one of the movies that I have on Netflix, or on iTunes, or whatever, and they know that I’m going to give it my all and I’m not going to let them down. The movie may not entirely work, but they know that I’m going to throw down. I care. I care about my work and I care about my audience. I’ve come around full-circle and totally embraced video-on-demand.”

-Nicolas Cage

"Football: the systematic violation of the Geneva Convention made into a sport. I'm surprised the A.S.P.C.A. doesn't protest."

“Didn't he get busted for murder?”

“Assault.”

“See? He's not even a very good murderer.”

“I hope we're still friends after I taser you.”

“Underneath that angry young woman show, there's a slightly less angry woman who's just dying to bake me something.”

“It's all fun and games till one of you gets my foot up your ass.”

“My name is Cliff, and I'll be your, ‘If you cannot afford an attorney’ attorney.”

-Veronica Mars

-B.P. Kasik/Phony McFakename

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My "legitimate" books are on Amazon here and my Phony books are on Amazon here. I exist on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram.

MoviePass: The Ongoing Saga (Part 2 of ?)

I didn't mean to write about MoviePass again this week. But darned if they aren't constantly doing write-about-able stuff.

The big scandal this week was their deranged scheme to forcibly re-enlist ex-customers.

That's right. People who thought their accounts were canceled are being emailed and told their accounts will be re-activated (with the original movie-a-day plan!) on October 5 unless they click a link to opt-out.

This is legally tricky stuff. I don't know the law, but I understand that when you cancel a service, it isn't legal for the company to un-cancel your cancellation.

HOWEVER...

MoviePass' terms of service are mega-Draconian. (So much so that I wrote a horror book that took satirical aim at their terms of service!) And one of those terms is that your account isn't canceled unless you explicitly contact them to cancel your account.

The people MoviePass is contacting with the offer they can't refuse? These are people who didn't EXPLICITLY cancel their accounts. They were just told MoviePass was changing the terms and then declined to opt-in to the new three-movie-monthly program. So according to MoviePass, these passive account lapses put their accounts in "suspended" status instead of "canceled."

I'd be surprised if the courts don't eventually decide whether this is sketch, as the implications are disturbing. How would you like it if every online service you canceled trickily tried to re-enroll you without your consent if you didn't read the fine print in every email from them?

But heck, if you look at it from another perspective, it's just a generosity misfire. I mean, being offered the unlimited plan again? That's AWESOME! If I knew all it took to get my unlimited plan back was to quit, I totally would have quit!

So paradoxically, MoviePass is punishing good folks like me who hung on with the three-monthly plan and rewarding the disloyal serfs who punked out when the going got tough.

This isn't a new thing, though. If you want to negotiate for a raise or promotion at work, you have to threaten to quit or get a job offer from a competitor. Loyalty is rarely rewarded in this, our late-stage capitalist economy.

If MoviePass wanted to re-enroll those folks, all they had to do was send an email saying, "Click here if you want to re-join with our original unlimited plan." Everyone would happily click that. Maybe make it a trial offer for two or three months so they don't bankrupt themselves again?

C'mon, MoviePass. Hire me as your consultant here. I can stop you from your continued attempts to machine-gun yourself in the crotch! I got two books about your service to my name, so you need my wisdom!

As a side note, a very wise friend whose predictions often come to pass predicts MoviePass' doom this weekend.

He pointed out that October 5 is the date in the scandalous re-enlisting email where they will start re-enlisting and charging people monthly fees. I didn't blink at that date in particular. But he pointed out what October 5 is.

Opening day for Venom.

Another Marvel movie.

MoviePass has a rich tradition of screwing their service when new Marvel movies are released. Avengers: Infinity War opened and they introduced "Peak Pricing." Ant-Man and the Wasp opened and they started blocking screenings and theaters from the app on a nationwide scale.

The Venom trailer looks great, it has the great Tom Hardy, and the buzz is solid. Everyone wants to see it.

And ticket verification is no longer in place, so whatever limited film options MoviePass makes available over the weekend? A suspiciously high number of people are going to check in on whatever random movies those might be and then buy themselves some Venom tickets. (Or heck, A Star is Born tickets! This is the perfect MoviePass storm, as everyone in the country wants to see one or both of those two movies.)

Let's do some quick math: MoviePass has maybe three million customers, minus all the ones they lost over the last couple months of corporate horseplay. Average ticket price nationwide is about $10. So if all customers use it on Venom this weekend, they're out $30 million. (If everyone uses it twice to also see A Star is Born, they're out $60 million.)

There is no way MoviePass can afford this.

My wise friend thus prophesies that this weekend will bury MoviePass.

I, however, predict the app will just have some awfully suspicious "glitches" where people can't check in to any movies on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday. I call this the "MI6 Special," since MoviePass debuted this money-saving trick the weekend Mission Impossible 6 opened this past summer. Don't want people to use your app? Just shut it down and claim "technical difficulties"!

And PLOT TWIST!

Just yesterday they announced they will NOT, in fact, be going bankrupt.

See? The CEO says there's no chance of bankruptcy. No need to discuss that any further. Move along.

Seriously, though. $65 million in additional funding is a game-changer. That means they actually will have the funds in reserve to handle a worst-case $60 million movie-going scenario this weekend.

Time will tell, though.

We shall see if this legendary company still stands next week.

Until then...

We wait...

In suspense...


-B.P. Kasik/Phony McFakename

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My "legitimate" books are on Amazon here and my Phony books are on Amazon here. I exist on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram.