BOB GARFIELD: Foreign language films like Talk to Her and Y Tu Mama Tambien showed up on several Best Movies of 2002 lists, but critical acclaim does not mean that foreign imports are pulling in the big American bucks. There was a time when it did. Back in the mid-70s one study found that foreign films took in more than 10 percent of U.S. movie receipts. By the late 1990s the foreign share of the American box office had fallen to a pitiful .5 percent. Film industry folks blame the decline on a number of factors, but there are hints that Americans may be taking notice of imports once again. OTM's Paul Ingles reports.

MAN IN THEATER LINE: Cine Mexicano, one adult, one senior.

TICKET MAN: Fourteen dollars.

PAUL INGLES: It's a drizzly early afternoon at the Madstone Theaters in San Diego, and filmgoers are lining up for screenings that include American independent fare like My Big, Fat Greek Wedding, Japanese animation, and a Spanish language film called De La Calle -- that's the one Alex Vega's here to see.

ALEX VEGA: I like, I like foreign films. Well, it's something different, you know, as opposed to the same Hollywood stuff. Same old thing. [AUDIO FROM AGUIRRE, WRATH OF GOD UNDER HERE] I like, you know, different stories from different parts of the world. [SOUND CLIP FROM AGUIRRE, WRATH OF GOD]

CAROL SKINNER: Stuff like the-- Werner Herzog -- Aguirre, The Wrath of God. [SCARY "WRATH OF GOD" SPEECH IN GERMAN LANGUAGE FROM AGUIRRE, WRATH OF GOD UP BRIEFLY] I mean I still remember feeling like I had been, you know, tied to my chair and had to remind myself to breathe, watching that movie -- it was -- had so much impact.

PAUL INGLES: That's Carol Skinner who remembers the hip foreign film scene of the late '60s and early '70s -- her first exposure to masters like Herzog, Fellini, Truffaut and Bergman. Back then you'd see a challenging foreign film in a college class or at the local art house theater, then head off to a favorite watering hole to rap about it -- for hours. In the early '80s, Skinner packed her passion for foreign films and moved from Seattle to Idaho.

CAROL SKINNER: When I first moved to, moved to Boise, the only thing you could see at the movie theater was The Raiders of the Lost Ark. I used to tease people and say, you know the reason that people in Boise don't like foreign films is cause their lips get tired. And [LAUGHS] --so I didn't have a very high opinion of people that weren't willing to go to foreign films and read subtitles, cause it really isn't hard.

PAUL INGLES: On a blind date, Carol met a movie-loving architect who just happened to have blueprints for an art house theater in the trunk of his car. The two married and opened up Flicks Theatre and are still in business after 18 sometimes tough years. According to film industry others of their generation are driving a new surge of interest in foreign films.

TOM GRUENBERG: The Baby Boomers are now at a point where they've become empt--empty nesters.

PAUL INGLES: Tom Gruenberg is co-CEO of Madstone Films, the owners of the San Diego cineplex and more screens in six other states.

TOM GRUENBERG: Their children are now 16 or 17 and they're on their own and for the first time in 12 years or 15 years-- the parents have an opportunity to go out to the movies, and they don't want to see the Batmans and they don't want to see the Spider Mans, so they want to see films that kind of draw their interest, and those are either independent films or foreign films.

PAUL INGLES: Gruenberg says this Boomer return to theaters is beginning to reverse the slide in interest and availability of foreign films on U.S. screens that started in the mid to late 1970s. That's when the American blockbuster film arrived in full force. Jaws, Star Wars, Close Encounters. And in place of foreign directors, young American filmmakers like Scorsese, Cassavetes and Coppola started making the kinds of edgy, thought-provoking films that used to only come from overseas. [SOUND CLIP FROM FILM SEX, LIES & VIDEOTAPE]

JAMES SPADER: Well, I promised each of the subjects that no one would see the videotapes except for me.

ANDIE McDOWELL: What are the interviews about?

JAMES SPADER: The interviews are about sex.

PAUL INGLES: In 1989, Sex, Lies and Videotape was screened by then 26 year old American Steve Soderbergh at the Sundance Film Festival. Critical raves and backing from Miramax Films helped Sex, Lies and Videotape gross over 20 times the 1.2 million it cost to make. It was a landmark, as studios started promoting American independent features more aggressively. Theaters, then, given a choice between a small American film with an ad budget and a foreign title without, more often went American. Emily Russo co-president of distributor Zeitgeist Films says the foreign filmmakers couldn't adapt.

EMILY RUSSO: The foreign sales agents and producers of those films had certain kinds of expectations about what foreign films could do in the United States based on perhaps, you know, the history of what they had been doing in, in the '70s and, and early '80s, and-- the price tags on those films, so to speak, were, were rather high and not realistic for what the market could bear, so I think a lot of distributors sort of shied away from, from being able to acquire those films.

PAUL INGLES: Meanwhile, on the theater end, the '80s and '90s were tough on the art houses and smaller cineplexes, and some shut down -- particularly after the mainstream theater chains started a building boom. The new megaplexes were bigger and shinier. Their stadium seats, picture and sound all superior to the funky old movie houses where foreign films played. Jeff Anderson, film critic of the San Francisco Examiner.

JEFF ANDERSON: I think the i--the original idea behind multiplexes -- if you have a thing -- a, a big giant movie theater with 16, 25 screens on it, they could play, you know, 5 or 6 or 7 or 8 foreign films and a then a bunch of other Hollywood films. But what they did instead was they have Harry Potter playing on, you know, 9, 10 screens and then, you know, other Hollywood films filling up the rest of the thing. So-- that failed. [LAUGHS]

PAUL INGLES: Despite being ignored by most big theater chains and drowned out by American media buzz over its own independent filmmakers, foreign film retained a pulse in the U.S. A few foreign releases even managed to break through to larger audiences -- Like Water for Chocolate in 1992; Roberto Benigni's Life Is Beautiful in 1997, and in 2000, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. [SOUND CLIP FROM CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON]

PAUL INGLES: In the case of Crouching Tiger, many were drawn into the theater by word of the stunning martial arts sequences, but once in, those who were new to foreign films learned that reading subtitles wasn't so bad.

CAROL SKINNER: I mean subtitles have actually gotten better and better over the years.

PAUL INGLES: Carol Skinner of Boise's Flicks Theaters.

CAROL SKINNER: You know, when I first started watching foreign films, people would talk for 5 minutes and, and you know the subtitle would say something like "Yes, I think so too," and you, you'd know that you missed something. [SOUND CLIP FROM MOSTLY MARTHA]

PAUL INGLES: Although subtitles load the bottom third of the screen in this scene from 2002's Mostly Martha, you don't need them to know the lead character, a high-strung German restaurant chef is, well, upset with her customers. [CLATTER FROM DISHES BREAKING] The film reached a broader audience thanks to creative promotion by its distributor, Paramount Classics. Its co-president David Dinerstein says a key factor was getting the food press to write about Mostly Martha.

DAVID DINERSTEIN: We were able to, to start to screen the film for people that didn't necessarily like foreign films but loved food. [LAUGHS] And once we got the film in front of them, they became huge, huge fans and the word of mouth started to, to set in.

PAUL INGLES: Paramount's Classics Division is just over 4 years old, and in recent years every Hollywood studio that didn't already have an in-house specialty division created one to promote independents and a few foreign titles each year. With the major studios more involved, specialty theater chains like Landmark and Madstone or local entrepreneurs are buying up some of those smaller movieplexes that had closed down in the '90s.

ALBUQUERQUE MOVIE PATRON #1: Two for-- Two for Frida and whatever your largest, biggest diet coke is--

ALBUQUERQUE MOVIE PATRON #2: Could I just get a small cappuccino?

PAUL INGLES: This 8-screen theater in Albuquerque was shut for years before Madstone bought it and re-opened it.

MOVIE CLERK: If you'll just wait over there by the coffee bar, your drink'll be right out.

PAUL INGLES: Now it has a coffee bar, a lounge where patrons can talk about their movies. And on this day it's showing two foreign language films. Albuquerque is like lots of other communities across the country that have also started holding annual film festivals which include foreign movies. And the real fans know to hunt for other less-obvious screens that carry the foreign titles that still can't get into the theaters. Emily Russo's Zeitgeist Films distributes some of those.

EMILY RUSSO: Because even when there are art theaters in those smaller communities, they're playing what they'll call "art product" which is to us, you know, maybe the most commercial art films that are, are, are available -- you know films that are being distributed by the major companies, and, and therefore for the type of product that we're handling, we have to really be very creative and innovative about trying to sneak into getting-- media centers or, or museums or even to in a sense public libraries.

PAUL INGLES: Other distributors and exhibitors we spoke with all say it's their intense love for good foreign cinema that keeps them motivated to get their titles seen, since as Emily Russo says, these films are rarely big moneymakers. Still, there's always hope for a breakthrough title such as Amelie. [SOUND CLIP W/ACCORDION FROM FRENCH FILM AMELIE] The 2001 French romance proved irresistible even to foreign film skeptics, and it grossed over 30 million dollars in the U.S.; another 100 million worldwide. The possibility of returns like this and that passion for the genre among marketers and fans means that other subtitled gems are much likely to be coming to a theater near you. For On the Media, I'm Paul Ingles.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Coming up, mowing down astroturf in America's newspapers. And does the sports media protest too much?

BOB GARFIELD: This is On the Media from NPR.