Naturally, each distributing company tries to get the best salesmen it can, even if it has to pay salaries of hundreds of dollars a week for them. Because a good salesman, selling even a poor picture, may get a lot more money for it for his distributing company than a poor salesman would be able to get for a better picture. Now let us see how these things work out. A dozen or more big distributing companies, blanketing the whole country, each trying to sell the pictures it is handling to the greatest possible number of the fifteen thousand exhibitors for the best possible price. Not to the _audiences_, mind you; that is the exhibitors’ look-out; the distributors are not trying to sell pictures to the people who sit in rows and look at them—at least, not directly. They are selling them to _exhibitors_. Along comes a picture producer who has made, perhaps, an excellent picture of ordinary, everyday people just like you and me. Along comes another producer who has made a picture that isn’t half so good or as true to life—but it cost more money to make, or it has some spectacular sets in it, or it is based on some novel that had a big sale, or it has a catchy title, or a well-known star, or is made from a popular play. The distributor takes it and _turns the better picture down_, because it will be easier to sell the picture with the “talking points” to the exhibitors! Audiences may not like it as well as they would the other, better picture—but it will be easier to make the exhibitor “bite” on it! See? [Illustration: _Courtesy Assoc. First Nat’l Exhibitors, Inc._ A TÊTE-À-TÊTE WITH A LION. Note that the lioness is looking not at the actress opposite her, but at the motion-picture camera that annoys her with its clicking.] [Illustration: _Courtesy Assoc. First Nat’l Exhibitors, Inc._ ACTING WITH A “TAME” LION. There is always enough danger in playing “opposite” a lion to make it easy for any actor to “register fear.” Note how the lion is baring his teeth.] There, in a nutshell, is one of the big difficulties that anybody who wants to help along the moving-picture industry, either by making better pictures or by encouraging better pictures, is up against. Between the public on the one side and the big distributors and producers on the other side stand the exhibitors, who must be “sold” on a money-making basis, before any great change can come about. In the long run, to be sure, audience value counts. In the long run you and Andrew McGinnis and George Lenox and Fuller Westcott have to be satisfied with the pictures you see, or you will quit going to see what your local exhibitor-man has to offer. But remember, that’s _in the long run_. Now, with this explanation of what a good picture has to overcome to find its way into the movie palaces, let us see how good it can be, and still “get by.”