It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?
So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.
And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.
There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.
I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.
So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.
But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”
My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher
“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.
~ David Simon
marketing is about awareness. twitter/myspace/web ads will not build an audience but it will help sustain awareness. It’s like the billboards you see in major markets. Does that drive people to the theater or does it remind people a movie they want to see is opening on a specific date.
Is there a movie out there that has GREATLY benifitted from the internet? Other than Blair Witch?
To talk about the ‘impact’ of Twitter you have to talk about the ‘impact’ of the internet. Ten years later there are still no metrics. Just assumed metrics. The marketing strategies of the 21st century are based on broad spending. Everyone is afraid to change the way it’s done becaise to deviate is to take a risk. To take a risk is to assume blame.
Does anyone believe GI Joe benifitted from early reviews from online critics? For all the sound and fury, is the final box office of GI Joe going to be about the same had they screened it for everyone at the same time or leaked out favorable reviews from easily influenced net nerds.
On a funny ‘net side note. I saw an ad for “The Goods” which touts a 2 star review from Roger Ebert before cutting to a snipped “Insanely hilarious” from C-Younkin at imdb.com.
Here’s the link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1092633/usercomments
So someone is using a random poster at IMDB for a review snippet. Thye’ve officially started mining from the bottom of the barrel.
Blair Witch as internet phenom is a complete scam.
30 minutes TV spots on USA Network, lots of hype, and the major news mags buying into the scam of web significance is what opened that movie.
Funny thing is, the rest of the media doesn’t have that much power any more because they abused it, amongst other things… like web spread.
Comic-Con did help get Kick-Ass sold, at least according to everyone quoted on the subject.
I think, though I would hesitate to say for sure, that it helped G.I. Joe to have SOME reviews out there as opposed to none. There is a bit of a stigma if it’s clear that a movie has been hidden from all reviews, though it’s not clear how much of a stigma (I suspect teens and kids don’t care, and adults care a little bit).
I was the first one to say that Kick-Ass would be “the first Comic-Con sale.”
That said… please.
If a studio invested $45 million – most of it towards P&A – on a movie because of Comic-Con, they would be out of business quickly.
Credit is due. The movie showed footage there first. Then they sold the movie. But Matthew Vaughn showing the entire movie to the studios is what sold the movie, not a good reception at Comic-Con, especially at that price.
ok, so if we take Blair Witch out of the equation, is there any movie that has benefitted greatly from a high presence online?
I keep hearing people saying that the internet hurts movies because word of mouth travels faster. I think that’s bullshit too.
i think people NEED to believe the internet is a vital part of the B.O. equation. But it’s probably the facet that gets the most attention and requires the most management yet yields provides the smallest contribution to the bottom line.
“Blair Witch as internet phenom is a complete scam.”
Nope. That’s how I heard about it and I passed that trailer and link onto everybody. It was certainly part of the marketing campaign and it worked. And it’s still one of the best horror films of the 20th century.
What about all the people who weren’t even online back in 1999? There were quite a few, like my Boomer-aged parents, who I dragged along with me when the movie first came out.
If I were a studio exec watching the clips of Kick-Ass that showed at Comic-Con, I might be a little nervous, even if I liked it, due to the very twisted humor.
But I see a massive crowded hall laughing and cheering at all the right moments, I think that’d give me a lot more confidence to pony up for it.
That said, I’m sort of amazed that Nic Cage being in an action movie, even a weird one, isn’t an immediate guaranteed sale prior to that.
Amusing to me that a good 1/3 of the Tweets scrolling on DP’s newly installed “Inglorious Basterds” Twitter feed are spam-bots whose creators have already figured out the trick of gaming the Twittersphere by including a popular search term (in this case, today at least, IB) as a non-sequitur in their pitch to get you to click a link. Wonder if Ad Age includes the bots in their tally….
Speaking of Twitter…if you want people who find you on Twitter to find The Hot Blog, shouldn’t you put a link to the site on your Twitter profile?
Doesn’t the proof in the twitter-as-a-movie-marketing-tool-pudding lie in the fact Ashton Kutcher’s “Spread” isn’t even tracking in theaters and he has more individual twitter followers than anyone?
Again, stop interpreting “Twitter effect” so literally…it’s the instant dissemination of word of mouth via Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and, most importantly, texting from trusted sources that MAY boost or depress opening weekend among YOUNGER audiences. My 13-year-old son would NEVER look anywhere for a formal review of anything pop cultural…he just waits for his friends to weigh in…they all texted each other saying District 9 was “sick” and he saw it two times opening weekend, in turn, texting all of his friends. How is there not some multiplier effect there? Conversely, several friends texted him–and posted to FB–that T4 “sucked.” He didn’t want to see it much anyway, but that was the nail in the coffin.
I must admit to a certain morbid curiosity: Each time I come to this site, I look over at the rolling “Twits” for Basterds to see if someone will post something like: “Want to come over and fuck before we see BASTERDS?”
Jennab, don’t take this the wrong way, but when I was a teen I would read “professional” reviews all the time before buying a book or seeing a movie. The last place I’d trust a review is from my friends… Nothing against other 13 year olds but I knew even at the time that we were a bunch of idiots and even the snarky low paid ledger reporter had a bit more of a clue than my middle school buddies. So take that for what it is, but overhearing some grade school douche on twitter liked T4 or TF2 hardly would get me rushing out to the theater. In fact I would start thinking, wow, if my dumb friends like it, it’s probably really bad.
Yeah, but Martin, you have to admit: Most of the folks who post here likely already were movie nerds when we were 13. I was reading Castle of Frankenstein, and anthologies of film criticism by Stanley Kauffmann and Pauline Kael, around that age.
Not really Joe. I didn’t get heavily into movie nerd dom until my 20s. As a young teen it was just another thing to do. I was much more interested in building radio control cars and doing sports at that time. But I did have self awareness that there was greater benefit to listening to my local Roger Ebert than my friend next door when it came to shelling out $7. Although the reality at that time of course is that I didn’t have a ton of say, since just as often as not I didn’t get the final say in what our group of friends went to see. I usually did have an idea ahead of time whether it was garbage or not though.
The problem with your personal example – something we all tend to get sucked into thinking of as general – is that it leaves the other forces involved out of the equation.
Did your son see a trailer for D9? Was he already leaning towards?
What were the circumstances of him going twice in a weekend, apparently on Saturday or Sunday, since he waited for word of mouth? His own knowledge of the film, obviously, discounted word of mouth in his second viewing. Did he not go with friends when they went because of scheduling or because he was waiting on word of mouth? Did he go twice because he so loved the film or because friends were going to the movies and they picked that one out of the list of options currently available?
The significance of word of mouth, however delivered (and The Text Effect and The Twitter Effect are about the same, to me), is not under question. The question is, how much of an effect, how quickly, on how much of the potential ticket buying audience.
Neither Inglourious Basterds or District 9 is likely to crack the Top 9 films of the summer. So does the Twitter Effect go away in weekend 3? Conversely, The Hangover will be Top 5 for the summer domestically… were those Twitter legs longer?
As I have written, I have no problem with the notion that all social media (including the phone) counts in some real way. It is another form of word of mouth and After Opening Weekend, it matters a lot (though not as much as we tend to think). But the literal effect that you decry in your first sentence and then seem to endorse a bit is what I object to as well. Emperor’s New Clothes: 2009 Edition
Dave, yes, he saw the trailers and he was on the fence…probably leaning towards “no.” As Peter Jackson said in an interview of his own teen son, they don’t eagerly anticipate movies (know the release date, etc.) as they do video games (Zombieland excepted). Martin, you are unlike any other teen boy I have known, past or present, in terms of completely disregarding the opinion of your buddies. 🙂
All I’m saying is that, if our generation had to wait till Monday a.m. to talk about the flix we saw over the weekend, most of this younger generation is communicating by Friday p.m./Saturday a.m., and that could have SOME impact on opening weekend b.o. Did not say that it would ever replace mass campaigns…
Speaking of which, I am the target for Spread, right…? I did not see ONE ad, trailer, ANYTHING about that movie except its initial Sundance coverage…oh, and the highlight reel from your DP/30 with Kutcher. Unlike J & J, which was inescapable. BTW, I called it a delightful souffle of a movie (I know, I know) in an FB post, and 6 friends said, “Oh, now I’ll go see it!”