The Lost Art of Film Advertising — and Film Making
Repulsed though not shocked by the latest incident of leftist violence literally aimed at President Trump, I thought I’d get away from current affairs. Maybe go to the movies like I did for most of my life, yet seldom in the past decade. But how, I wondered, would I select something to see in the unlikely chance of something worth seeing? This simple question led to my latest reflection on the fall of, if not quite Western Civilization, the entertainment business.
Occasionally, the poster words made the sale along with, or as much as, the art. Prime examples include “Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water …” Jaws 2 (1978).
When I was a kid, I used to closely scan the newspaper movie section to check out the many selections. These pages were loaded with incredible art — black-and-white versions of the full color posters — meant to entice you into the theater. Film advertising was once an artform, the first link in the audience-production chain, requiring a good balance of illustration and text.
Sometimes one or the other was enough to hook you, like the picture of a donut space station with a rocket flying out of its slot, a scene that never occurs in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Or the ubiquitous scantily clad beautiful women for any comedy and action picture, especially James Bond films, who somehow appear more conservatively dressed and behaved in the actual film. We weren’t fooled because we knew the dynamic. And the movie promoters knew we knew. It was the game we both played, and which every now and then we all won.
For instance, the poster art for Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982) featured the Sean Penn surfer character enjoying the sexual attention of two gorgeous girls in short shorts. My friends and I may have gone to see it expecting a raunchy T&A teen comedy like the recent huge hit Porky’s. What we got was a sensitive, intelligent memoir by writer Cameron Crowe, based on his nonfiction book about his undercover infiltration of a California high school. Which we thoroughly enjoyed and much preferred to Porky’s-level fare. Oh, and the Sean Penn character is more interested in pizza than girls.
Amy Heckerling charmingly directed the picture, and its huge success led her to helm smart bigger hits like Look Who’s Talking (1989) and Clueless (1995). Either or both should have made Amy a Hollywoke feminist dream: a female filmmaker with a knack for moneymaking product. Yet she’s been out of mainstream work for a dozen years, precisely because of her two classics. One features a romantic male-seeking young woman — Alicia Silverstone in Clueless, based on a book by retroactively anti-feminist Jane Austen (Emma) — the other a professional single mom who never considers aborting her baby — Kirstie Alley in Look Who’s Talking. Kathleen Kennedy and her ilk would never hire Amy today, which is why they’re on their way out (READ MORE: Hollywood’s Easter Meltdown).
Occasionally, the poster words made the sale along with, or as much as, the art. Prime examples include “Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water …” Jaws 2 (1978); “You’ll believe a man can fly,” Superman (1978); “In space, no one can hear you scream,” Alien (1978); “Who you gonna call?,” Ghostbusters (1984); “See it or be it!” The Last American Virgin (1982).
The marketers’ next chance to fill theater seats is the trailer. They have about a minute to hook you — an increasingly tough job given the increasingly bad films. But back when there were good ones, they often rose to the occasion.
The advertising team on Taken could have just shown the many well-done action scenes from the last great action movie. Instead, they focused on a 30-second speech by Liam Neeson on the phone with his daughter’s kidnappers, interspersed with quick cuts of violence:
I don’t know who you are. I don’t know what you want. If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don’t have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills. Skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my daughter go now, that’ll be the end of it. I will not look for you. I will not pursue you. But if you don’t, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you.
It ends with a kicker, the kidnapper’s response, “Good luck,” and the phone hangup.
Every man who watched that trailer wanted to see the film. And no father of girls didn’t imagine himself in the same situation. The picture earned $225 million worldwide, and made a late career action star out of previously dramatic actor Neeson.
The other unforgettable trailer made a big, if temporary, star out of a completely unknown actor in America. Its creators only had to show two scenes to turn a low-budget Australian picture, Crocodile Dundee, into a global box-office sensation. One was the title character saving a hot blonde in a skintight bathing suit from a crocodile. The other was the same couple in New York City being held up by a switchblade-wielding robber.
“He’s got a knife,” says the blonde.
“That’s not a knife,” Dundee smiles, pulling out his own large knife. “That’s a knife.”
Of course, both Taken and Crocodile Dundee delivered the goods once the audience paid for admission. I didn’t expect anything remotely as great in my current fewer choices. With no more newspaper movie page to consult, I asked Grok what recently opened. There was only one major title, Michael, a biopic of the talented but perverted Michael Jackson.
I turned on Turner Classic Movies and watched the witty 1963 romantic comedy Sunday in New York starring Rod Taylor and a sexy pre-commie traitor Jane Fonda for the tenth time.
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