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 Times in 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.
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Resolved: “viral” (I know, I hate the word too) movie marketing peaked with Cloverfield; we are now watching its record-fast decline towards rock bottom as regular marketing guys shove regular campaigns into unimaginative, unconvincingly “alternative” wrappings.
Exhibit A: At Movie Marketing Madness a couple of days ago, Chris Thilk detailed the many ways that Forgetting Sarah Marshall’s campaign rubs him the wrong way. From the no-comments-allowed fake character blog to the billboards and bus ads that wreck any chance of playing as organic interventions by incorporating URLS and MPAA ratings, Chris says, “If this is the best a studio can do in terms of social media then…marketers have no place in this space.”
Exhibit B: Defamer points to this “ad” (maybe a generous assessment for a piece of paper taped to a tree) which takes the Sarah Marshall campaign’s familiar, Sharpie-scripted petulant, turns it away from the title character and towards said tree. I missed the film when it premiered at SXSW, but I have to wonder if this is an effort to fix another problem cited by Thilk, in that the fake blog posts “seem to exist after the events of the movie”––is there a bit in Sarah Marshall about a tree that this could be slyly referring to? Either the studio is responding to such criticism by steering the campaign towards attention-grabbing non-sequitors, or they’ve been detourned by actual, semi-inventive spontaneity on the part of their annoyed audience.
I’ll leave the discussion up to you, but I will say that it does strike me that worrying about Marshall’s marketing is just a manifestation of total indifference to the movie itself (as Defamer commenter ricker puts it, “I think I’m going to forget to see Sarah Marshall.”) With the Judd Apatow backlash gaining steam with each successive disappointing release, maybe Sarah never had the chance to dodge the increasing taint of lameness bestowed by its brand-name producer. After all, aren’t we about at the point where a new Apatow-associated product is, like, the Destiny Turns on the Radio to Knocked Up’s Pulp Fiction?
Unless you’ve been living under a rock (and/or have better things to do than spend your days on trashy filth-peddling websites like, um, FOX News and MSNBC), you’ll have already heard that two stars of the upcoming Sex and the City movie have been in the tabloid news this week. First, news broke that Kristin “The Cute, Demure One” Davis had starred in a sex tape; by late Tuesday, the scandal had been downgraded from “sex tape” to “just sex photos” (see them in their very not-safe-for-work glory here). Then, blogs started passing around an excerpt from a British magazine interview with Sarah Jessica Parker, in which the SATC star/executive producer reacted defensively towards a MAXIM article designating her “the unsexiest woman alive.”
Imagine, two actresses from the same heavily-anticipated film with “Sex” in the title, making headlines for their sexiness of lack therof in the same week! What an incredible coincidence, right? No matter how furiously both actresses camps try to paint their clients as women wronged totally independently of each other or the multi-million dollar project both are promoting, there’s evidence that the SJP story, at least, was fully manufactured.
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There’s an LA Times story this morning about how Paramount has promoted Apatow-com Drillbit Taylor around the fact that star Owen Wilson has done no interviews, in fear of having to answer questions about last summer’s suicide attempt. Instead of talking to reporters, Wilson taped “Drillbit-themed introductions to Fox’s Sunday-night prime-time lineup.” If there are three steps to managing a celebrity scandal––denial, confirmation, confession––the Wilson camp has chosen to remain mired in Step 1 for going on seven months, a stunning and curious feat in the era of confession as commodity.
After enumerating a number of projects fatally wounded by the unsavory off-hours activity of their stars, LAT writers John Horn and Gina Piccalo note in the last paragraph that Nine Months, the Hugh Grant film that was released just two weeks after the star was caught with a prostitute, grossed $70 million––according to this chart, more than Dumb and Dumber, Bad Boys or Babe, all of which spawned sequels. The Hugh Grant scandal seems to represent a turning point in spin: by appearing on any show that would have him the day before his movie’s premiere and talking about the hooker incident directly and self-mockingly, Grant was able to completely deflate the issue, successfully turning confession into commercial.
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Stuart Elliot at the New York Times reports on some of the many branding deals New Line has arranged to cross-promote the upcoming Sex and the City movie. There are basically two types of deals being made. On the high end, the producers of the film have inserted luxury brands into the narrative, based on what the actual characters might consume; Mercedes-Benz, for instance, has created a special limo for Mr. Big and a giant SUV for Samantha (insert penis substitute joke here). But then there’s a passel of more plebian-oriented brands looking to siphon some SATC cred to sell their products to the film’s target audience. Which is, apparently, suburban moms who tend to have a little too much too drink at faux-upscale family restaurants. Behold:
When it comes to products helping to promote the coming film based on the popular TV series Sex and the City, it seems the sky is the limit. Better make that the Skyy is the limit, as in Skyy vodka, which is being named the “official spirits sponsor” for the movie. Among the tie-ins are drinks made with Skyy to be served at Houlihan’s restaurants and named after characters like Carrie, Samantha and Mr. Big.
Well, at least New Line (or whatever corporate faction is handling these deals at this point) seems to understand a good half of their audience. Let’s just assume The Mr. Big cocktail recipe will make it to the gay bar circuit on its own and sweep up the other half.
Anne Thompson points to the above picture documenting a “viral” Dark Knight marketing stunt described by a tipster thusly:
I saw these guys pull up on a corner, in a van right in the middle of downtown with big signs and bullhorns shouting to people to vote for Harvey Dent as D.A. The van was covered with Harvey Dent posters with Aaron Eckhart’s picture. Of course people had NO idea what they were talking about. They probably thought it was a real campaign.
How far in advance of the movie’s release do you think Warner Brothers will pull the correct strings in order to allow the Dark Knight campaign and the presidential campaign to merge? When can we expect Harvey Dent to endorse McCain? Or vice versa? Now that Warner Brothers is taking advantage of election season to sell their Batman sequel, at what point will real politicians start taking advantage of a new Batman sequel to sell themselves?
Portfolio points to this short film starring Robert Evans, designed to promote a line of luxury sunglasses inspired by the legendary producer. Mind Games, styled as a trailer for a film noir, briefly summarizes the Evans character’s infatuation with a cool blonde described by Fred Schreurs as “a raging, memoir-typing harridan on the order, one guesses, of some of Evans’ seven ex-wives.” I read it as a straight Ali MacGraw thing––”Whatever was in her eyes, it sure wasn’t love,” Evans says, in the hindsight of a betrayal, and then, in his trademarked rhetorical-inquisitive manner, admits to having been cuckolded: “Was I smart? No, I was dumb, with a capital ‘d’.” But any read is probably more than this guilty, late afternoon pleasure deserves––it is, after all, an ad for sunglasses that you and I cannot afford.
Funny how 
Don’t criticize Chris Matthews when 
