Learning Project Management through the Movie Industry

Dear Professor and Club mates:

I saw my parents last weekend. They have been running a movie related business, Mom 2 Pop for a decade now... they shut it down. They had 7000 titles in tapes, and a thousand DVD. The business was a rental setup that loaned 50-100 movies to apartment projects each month, paid for by the management company as fringe benefit for its tenants. In the monthly shipment were the "new releases."

I helped inventory many times, and 8000 movies is only a drop in the bucket, of total number worldwide. Also, some new releases in the old days cost $100 just to get them on release date. Each month after release the tape goes down in value. They kept the entire collection old and new movies in storage shelves at one of the apartment sites, and thereby avoided the storefront debacle. Good business idea, eh? But they are retired now.

So they were looking for a suitable place to market, giveaway, or trade all those tapes. Flea markets were okay but sales were just barely enough to cover expenses. Other avenues also proved too negative.

It turns out "Habitat for Humanity" was a very willing organization. Mom donated the tapes all to the charity group "who build those houses," she said. "They have the hardest working people you ever saw."

Is that the saddest or happiest story you have heard this year? What is more lonesome than an old video sitting in storage? Is happiness then in going to a new life donated to earnest people? Movies are not living things; they are dumb, and expendable. You tell me. PD