So, while _for a time_ there is more money in playing the public _down_ than there is in playing it _up_ (since more people come, at first at least, to see pictures that are too cheap for their taste, than come to see pictures that are a little too good for their taste), _in the long run_, playing the public _up_ pays best. In other words, if the leadership element is present at a motion picture, if it is a picture that is thoroughly worth while, and yet is not too good to “get across,” it will both make money and build business, while a cheap sensational picture, though it may make more money than a better film at the time it is released, will in the end lose business for the firm producing it, because _in the long run_ it drives away business instead of bringing it in. When you go to see pictures, look for something worth while. If you find it, particularly in a picture that you like very well, don’t be afraid to let the local exhibitor or theater manager in charge of the movie-palace where you saw the show know that you liked it and thought it was good. That will help him just that much in deciding what kind of pictures his audience likes. Remember; while a picture must be financially profitable for the producer, and so can’t be above popular appreciation, it still must be good enough to be right at the upper edge of that popular appreciation, and trying to push it always a little bit higher. [Illustration: _Courtesy United Artists Corporation._ ONE OF THE BIG SCENES IN “ROBIN HOOD.” While it usually costs an enormous amount to film the so-called big “mob” scenes in elaborate productions, they are often very effective. Notice how well trained the “extras” are here.] [Illustration: _Courtesy Assoc. First Nat’l Exhibitors, Inc._ SPENDING MONEY ON A “SPECTACLE.” It used to be thought that “great” pictures could be made by unlimited expenditure in “mob” scenes and “big sets.” This scene, however, is from one of the films that helped disprove it; costing nearly half a million, it proved to be a comparative failure.] CHAPTER IX AMERICAN MOVIES ABROAD Have you ever happened to think: the world has at last found a universal language! The men who created Esperanto, or any of the other so-called “universal” languages, little imagined that before their product even reached its twenty-fifth birthday the old world would have unconsciously accepted an entirely new method of interchanging ideas—and that the “new” method would be the oldest language of all. “Say it with pictures.” Long before the Romans began to roam—even before the Athenians settled down in Greece—men talked to each other in pictures. The Eskimos scratched their tales on bone, and the Egyptians carved pictures of eagles and lions into solid rock, and from such crude beginnings, little by little, the various languages evolved.