Three videos of note on the Facebook page (you may have to sign in and become a fan to see it) for Andrew Bujalski’s Beeswax: two intros for Bujalski’s work made for Canadian TV, one starring Shawn Sides as Elvira and the other featuring Alex Karpovsky as Dracula. In both, bats flutter by on strings, as Bujalski himself looks on, silent but bemused. “Tonight I have a thirst,” Elvira drawls. “A thirst for a spine-tinglingly cold taste of American independent cinema!”
This is doing it right.
And then there’s this, also embedded above. I saw this on YouTube and thought it was a joke, like that thing with Kent Osborne in the garage, but apparently it’s an actual ad for a film series on Channel 4 in the UK. The ad features young attractive people standing in front of graffitied walls (very first season Real World), earnestly informing us that there’s a type of movie in which “there are no buldings blown to hell in slow motion, and you know what? That’s okay, because these films are about people!” The kicker: “There’s something going on here.” Cut to slow-talking redhead girl: “And that something, is a little something called mumblecore.” She then looks at the camera with one of those “this is just between you and me” smiles that are most often seen on television in the promotion of feminine hygeine products.
This is doing it wrong.
Beeswax opens at Film Forum on August 7 and expands to several other cities shortly after that. I like it.
Movie posters have become increasingly more controversial in the past decade, or else people have become a lot more sensitive. Either way, it seems like there’s a new and controversial movie poster or billboard being banned somewhere. Usually it’s for one of two reasons: sex or violence, with violence being far more popular. One of the first sexually banned posters I could find was 1981’s For Your Eyes Only, which featured an A-frame design that was banned. It wasn’t so much the vaginal roof as it was the exposed buttocks, so they had to release a retouched version that covered more derriere.
It’s been more than 25 years since that poster was sent back to the drawing board, so why do posters keep getting banned? Marketing people know that controversy can turn into a marketing campaign of its own, so maybe they’re pushing the boundaries in the vein of “there’s no such thing as bad publicity.” With that in mind, here’s a look at controversial movie posters from the past several years. Prepare your innocent eyes and take a look after the break.
On Monday night, The Hollywood Reporter published a story questioning Focus Features’ marketing plan for Milk, Gus Van Sant’s biopic on the country’s first openly gay elected official who was famously assassinated by a colleague in the late 70s. The story suggested that by “keeping its awards contender out of fall fests and heavily restricting media screenings,” the studio is deliberately trying to avoid any kind of partisan publicity (positive or negative) that could damage the film from reaching a mainstream audience.
Focus chief James Schamus was, apparently, pretty upset by the story, particularly considering that it was timed to hit the web just under 24 hours before Milk’s premiere, a benefit screening at the Castro Theater in San Francisco. He’s written a letter to the editor of THR, which Eugene Hernandez posted on his blog last night before the Milk screening. The gist: Milk wasn’t ready in time for fall festivals, they don’t have enough prints yet to do widespread screening but they will, the entire internet has been going batshit crazy for the trailer (”probably the most inspiring piece of movie marketing about genuine (as well as out) politics ever created”) for over a month, and not only has Focus not avoided political attention but they’ve bought tons of ad space on The Huffington Post and NPR.
If the issue was whether or not Focus is actively trying to create “noise” around Milk, then Schamus’ defense seems solid enough to lead to the conclusion that THR got that part of the story wrong. But the issue might not be the quantity of noise, but the brand of noise.
The Circuit points to the news that a Los Angeles art gallery has mounted a show of the paintings of Adele Lack, the estranged wife of Caden Cotard, whose portrait graces the catalog for the show. Which is interesting, because both Lack and Cotard are fictional characters, played by Catherine Keener and Philip Seymour Hoffman in Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, NY, which not coincidentally opens in New York and LA on Friday.
Even more interesting, a number of art and culture blogs have written up the opening of the show without noting even the connection to the film, never mind the fact that the paintings themselves are movie props and the artist to which they’re credited doesn’t actually exist. One site even includes an image of Keener from the film, without indicating that they’re aware that it’s a publicity still not of an artist, but of a sort-of famous actress playing an artist.
It certainly seems like clever surreptitious marketing for the film — especially for this film, which resists relegraphing its intent or meaning –– but maybe it’s *too* clever? If the show itself is as free of Synecdoche signage as many of the blog posts about it, at what point are patrons of the show (which ends on Sunday) going to make the connection?
At last year’s Toronto International FIlm Festival they had guys dressed up in the running outfit that Michael Cera wore in Juno jogging around town, handing out orange Tic Tacs. So, it’s only fitting that this year the only viral marketing we’ve spotted around town is from another Michael Cera film. Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist has a phantom band in it that is central to the plot, and we’ve spotted advertisements for this band stenciled onto sidewalks and plastered on streetlights.
The past two weekends have seen the release of two big, R-rated comedies, first Pineapple Express and then Tropic Thunder. Both featured stars who have, at least occasionally, dipped their toes into family friendly film waters and who have developed big followings across all age groups.
Both movies marketing campaigns also featured red-band trailers. Others and I have discussed the role of the red-band trailer in the campaigns for R-rated movies. They are great components for selling the movies to their adult audiences since, as I’ve said before, they are able to more accurately portray the movie as a whole. If a movie’s comedy or drama depends on the use of coarse language or violence then it’s better for the movie to be able to present those elements to the target audience in order to appear attractive.
Red-band trailers have come back into fashion in the last four or five years largely because of the rise of high-speed video online. On the Internet, studios can put into place safeguards, usually in the form of forms that require the inputting of name, birth-date and zip code, that are meant to keep those under 18 from seeing the trailer or other content. Invariably, though, these trailers wind up on YouTube or some other video sharing site – or directly on blogs – where there is no safeguard. This makes what’s supposed to be restricted content available to everywhere regardless of age. This is an obvious flaw in the process.
But the larger question about the advertising of R-rated films is: What advertising is appropriate?
For all the griping about how critics just don’t get the stuff that fanboys love, a show of the numbers suggests that reviews from Tomatometer and Metacritic ranked critics are more friendly to movies based on comic books than maybe any other single genre. Jim Emerson elaborates on his findings.
Rumsey Taylor on the “brand ambience” of Mad Men: “When Draper is describing each of these products, you’re held rapt by his words, and how they pronounce, with consummate precision, their transcendent significance. It’s all bullshit, of course, but what wonderful, wonderful bullshit.”
Last night at Largo in Los Angeles, “Maya Rudolph and Fred Armisen performed a series of light and effortless vignettes co-written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson.” According to Vulture’s Nick Confalone, the performance felt “like sneaking a peek at P.T. Anderson’s Punch-Drunk Love notepad, exploring that movie’s notion that there’s someone for everyone, even though everyone is a little bit weird and fucked up. Whatever the future for this show, last night it made us grin like an idiot and tell our friends, ‘Love is awesome, right?’” Wonderful bullshit indeed.
At Movie Marketing Madness, Chris Thilk points to a sample marketing presentation made by the ad agency Basement, based on this hypothesis: If all prints of Casablanca had been lost immediately after its initial premiere and had recently been found, how would you market the film today as a wide-release feature?
Chris says the pitch looks “very real,” and he would know better than me, but I have to admit: some of the slides made me laugh out loud. Like the one where Casablanca is pitched as the perfect gap bridger between Sex and the City and an “Iraq War film” (”Casablanca is a romantic option for women; while still having entertainment for men — a shared experience for Valentines day”). And also the “Valentine’s Day Romance Generator” feature on the hypothetical Casablanca website, which allegedly “takes a woman’s idea, and transforms it into a man’s idea.” And also the “contingency plan” of having a Warner Brothers-signed top R&B performer do a cover of “As Time Goes By.”
So…is this supposed to be funny, or practical? Both?
The Sex and the City tour now apparently includes a stop at the Manhattan sex shop The Pleasure Chest, where tourists are invited to check out a selection of Sex and the City sex toys, including The Miranda, which bears the tagline, “suitable for any power-loving woman.” Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York has pictures of “consumer orgy” (tee hee) and thoughts. This, for me, is the key takeaway:
I love hating SATC too much to stop hating it, but there might be one good thing to come from it if, in the tightly wrapped heart of the American heartland, more Christian women are having orgasms and more Christian men are discovering their own assholes.
Now that War, Inc has topped the specialty box officetwo weeks in a row, using the unfunny “incendiary political cartoon” (the poster’s words, not mine) as a stick with which to beat the “critics are irrelevant!” dead horse has become the new hotness.
“Despite the negative reviews, I found War Inc. innovative and subversively ironic,” Vicky Ward writes at Vanity Fair.com. Noting that Cusack was able to cull poster quotes from like-minded famous friends such as Arianna Huffington and Diablo Cody (the latter’s a new development, as she apparently hadn’t delivered her blurb as of the taping of this clip), Ward positions the success of the film as an instance of “the audience” rising up against the bullies of the critical establishment:
The encouraging results may be proof of the power of viral marketing, an instance when the subculture becomes the culture…it won’t just be the anti-war message of the movie that is groundbreaking; War Inc. could become a model for a new, grass-roots type of marketing, in which a film’s potential audience (with a little help from the director) may be better able to advertise it than the so-called experts are…if the drum roll is loud enough, the views of critics [can] be overruled by people who will see what they want to see, no matter who tells them not to.
First of all, I don’t know what kind of girl out there thinks it’s a good idea to drag their boyfriend to see Sex and the City. If you have no female friends to accompany you on such a journey, chances are you’re not the type of broad who’s really going to get anything out of it anyway; if you STILL feel like you have to see it, are you really so insecure that you can’t go to a movie by yourself? Really, it doesn’t matter. Whatever you’re thinking, please take this advice: there are things you and your boyfriend just don’t need to share. Give him the night off.
Of course, there will be women out there who don’t heed such advice, and for the poor boyfriends caught up in their careless webs, at least there’s something of an outplan. We got a press release at Spout HQ this afternoon about a promotion spearhead by Geek Squad––yeah, as in the orange shirts from Best Buy––designed to “save” the young men of America from a weekend full of “torture” outside the jurisdiction of the Geneva Convention. Sounds noble, right? Or at least, as noble as any totally opportunistic marketing scheme could be. Details after the jump.
If “you’ve ever sat around and wondered why you can’t make your living writing sex columns, or looked in the mirror and sworn you were Samantha Jones’ long lost twin,” then chances are you scare me to death. But good news––you’re eligible for a contest!
The Angelika, once a bastion of New York indie filmgoing***, now a collection of poorly laid-out screening rooms (most of them contain not a single seat with a decent view of the screen if the house is full) perched on top of a subway station (yay, rumbling!) is inexplicably pushing a Sex and the Citypromotional contest. The details after the jump!!!
At the Risky Biz blog, Steven Zeitchik accuses the Wachowskis of “insidious” product placement in Speed Racer, altering the design of Speed’s helmet and the Mach 5 to subliminally invoke corporate partner McDonalds. “It may not be brand placement. It’s something much newer and trickier: brand suggestion.”
FILMMAKER Magazine’s website has published the essay by David Gordon Green from the liner notes of the recently-released Benten DVD of Todd Rohal’s The Guatemalan Handshake. His first impression of that film? “I had a queer anxiety in my stomach that in fact the movie was “too good,” or should I say “special,” like a retarded kid who is enchanting and liberating in his or her world view, destined for a conflict with the traditional culture.”
Movie viral marketing or fan fic? It’s too early to tell, but twoG.I. Joecharacters have started Twittering. GeneralHawk’s latest update: “Having a late lunch at Bennigan’s with Snake-Eyes & Alpine. Alpine says The Roots newalbum is, quote, ‘Dope.’” [Tipped by Kevin]
At the P.O.V. Blog, Tom Roston ponders an emerging trend of Hollywood distributors test screening documentaries, and subjecting non-fiction films to the same focus group motivated pre-release tweaks that used to be the province of big budget comedies and wannabe franchises. He notes that the version of Morgan Spurlock’s Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden? that opened on Friday is quite different from the version that premiered at Sundance:
Spurlock actually relied significantly on test audiences after the movie was shown at Sundance. I wrote a story for the Los Angeles Timesin which I reported this fact, including how Spurlock removed a jokey, in-your-face animated sequence (which must have cost a ton of money) and changed a pivotal closing song, from the goofy “Why Can’t We Be Friends?” to the more thoughtful, “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding.” Both elements from the earlier cut of the film rang so wrong to me — they made a film that was supposedly about bridging differences between the Muslim and western worlds feel like a farce. But, thankfully, they were removed, and the film’s integrity, I think, restored.
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
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