Despite focusing on Michael Moore a mere three days ago, I can’t help but ignore the buzz going on about the filmmaker’s marketing stunt over the weekend. Soon after we got our first look at an image from Moore’s new, untitled documentary about the financial crisis, a teaser trailer hit theaters and the web (as soon as it was online, I updated Friday’s post to include it). But in some theaters there was more to the ad than just an onscreen Jimmy Fund/Will Rogers Institute parody. In select cities the teaser was actually followed by Jimmy Fund-style pandhandling, in which ushers (or interns? volunteers?) wearing “Save Our CEOs” t-shirts walked down the aisles with donation cans.

Yes, people gave money, but apparently Moore is passing that cash and coin on to local food banks — though nobody in the select audiences seem to have been clued into this fact. If there were indeed moviegoers who simply dropped change in out of habit (thinking this was an actual charity or they confusedly thought they were at church for a moment), that wasn’t the only aspect of the marketing of this film that is going a little wrong. If Twitter is a good gauge of this sort of thing, too many people are coming away from watching the trailer and reading about the stunt believing that Moore’s new film is actually titled “Save Our CEOs” (or “Save the CEOs,” depending on the Tweet). I’m not sure if that is an appropriate thing to call the film, but now that it’s garnering buzz under that moniker, Overture Films might want to insist it be the official title anyway.

Check out what the film blogs are saying about the stunt after the jump:

…Read more