School Not Expecting Profits in Captioned ‘Wolves’ Showing

SANTA ANA —  The three “Back to the Future” movies were enormously successful, grossing about $400 million.

But when the Taft Hearing Impaired School screened a captioned version of “Back to the Future, Part III” last year--the first time a captioned movie has been shown in Orange County--the school’s take was somewhat smaller.

After paying off a Los Angeles-area group that produced the open-caption film and making a donation to a statewide organization for the deaf, “we wound up keeping about $100,” said Steve Longacre, principal of the Santa Ana school.

So on Saturday, when the school presents its next captioned film, “Dances With Wolves,” at the Edwards Cinema Hutton Centre in Santa Ana, the expectations will be scaled back.

“We’re not out to make a whole lot of money anymore,” said Longacre, who is hearing-impaired. “We are just out to provide a service to the deaf community.”

And it is a service that means a lot to the estimated 150,000 hearing-impaired residents of Orange County, Longacre said.

Frustrated in their attempts to understand film dialogue and sound effects, many in the deaf community do not go to the movies, he said. They often wait for the movie’s release on home video.

“The key word is equal access,” Longacre said. “Why should we have to wait and watch a movie on a small screen?”

The situation is particularly hard on people like Longacre, whose wife and children have normal hearing.

“It’s tough not to be able to go share a movie with the wife and kids,” he said. “It’s fairly common to have mixed families. I know a number of friends in this situation and it kind of tears them apart at times.”

Captioning of big screen releases is a slow, expensive process, and the movies are generally in great demand.

Longacre said the school would attempt to show the movies as soon as they are available. Besides “Dances With Wolves,” the recently released “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II” has also been captioned and will be screened in Orange County soon, he said.

Saturday’s screening will begin at 10:15 a.m.; admission is $7. For information, call the school at (714) 241-6545.