In this New York Times story (cleverly topped with a 600px wide still featuring Greta Gerwig in a bikini), Michael Cieply reports on Sony Pictures Classics’ plan to premiere the Duplass Brothers’ Baghead first in Austin, and then spread the film out to strategically-selected cities throughout the country before opening the film in New York or Los Angeles. Why do it this way? The implication is that Sony is hoping to benefit from positive word of mouth and blog coverage in college towns, hipster meccas and smaller cities where a recommendation from a friend carries more weight than a film review. But in order to convey that message, Cieply has to implicitly diss the publication in which his story is published. An excerpt:

Professional reviews and expensive advertising in the national media centers matter less. Internet buzz and the folkways of a flourishing festival culture now count for more.

“It’s a cumulative effect,” [Sony's Tom] Bernard said. Critics in the big media centers, he argued, have generally gotten into the habit of writing for one another more than for movie viewers. Meanwhile, audiences in regional centers like the Texas cities he has in mind for Baghead have become well informed about films thanks to the widespread availability of information on the Web.

Later in the piece, Cieply notes that Baghead won’t even screen for critics in New York until after its June 13th Austin premiere.

If I read a story like this about a film with which I wasn’t familiar, I would assume that the movie was one or all of the following: a) completely awful; b) ridiculously low-brow; c) otherwise critic-proof. But Baghead is none of those things, and in fact, the idea that this is a film that critics “won’t get” is laughable––it so far carries a 100% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with an almost-rave from Variety’s Peter Debruge factored in. So I wonder if this isn’t something sort of akin to what’s going on with the marketing of War, Inc––is Sony really worried that the whiff of critical acclaim will ruin Baghead’s credibility with a young audience?