>This is my big complaint about Hollywood, too: if they charged people after the movie, instead of before; and 100% of the base price went to the theatre itself, while people could "leave a tip" for the filmmakers; then "box office" would actually correlate to the quality of the movie itself, rather than to the amount of effort put into the marketing campaign.

I suspect that the "box office" would correlate with how wealthy the audience was (or at least felt like they were) just as much as the quality.