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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Press Release – Just Daring You To Try To Escape 2012 Next Thursday Night

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10 Responses to “Press Release – Just Daring You To Try To Escape 2012 Next Thursday Night”

  1. Sam says:

    Sheesh. Few things are more off-putting than a hard sell, and I have to hand it to the marketing team. THAT is a hard sell.

  2. John Wildman says:

    This reminds me of the ads and ad campaign strategy for Bill Murray’s character’s network in SCROOGED.

  3. Nick Rogers says:

    John: Truer words, sir. Truer words.
    And I think it’s funny how Fox is somehow NOT a “major broadcast network” according to this press release. Is there some sort of bad-blood story between Roland Emmerich and Fox that I’m missing? Or is it just because Fox affiliates have no nationally similar programming at that hour?

  4. Dr Wally says:

    NO-ONE can shill like Roland Emmerich. Remember that ID4 invented the Super Bowl spot for big Summer event pictures (or at least it feels like it did). I remember going to the opening week of Starship Troopers in November ’97, and though the audience seemed to enjoy the flick, by far and away the biggest buzz in the room was for the Godzilla ‘fishing’ trailer. Okay, Godzilla turned out to suck, but put aside the wisdom after the fact, and look at that trailer in isolation. Judged as a piece of marketing, it’s a work of genius.
    If this stunt goes over well and 2012 has an opening weekend of $80 million, expect it to become the norm just as ID4 blazed the Super Bowl trail for the Summer.

  5. Sam says:

    Dr. Wally: Just by saying “ID4,” you remind me that Independence Day was the first time I ever noticed a marketing campaign pushing a particular shorthand notation for a movie title. “MiB” was soon to follow, but “ID4” was not even the proper acronym.
    Actually, now that I think about it, “D2: The Mighty Ducks” was earlier, but that was, to use a metaphor from a totally different sport, minor league in comparison.
    Anyway, I kind of thought the whole “ID4” thing was silly, but I can’t deny that it was so successful we’re still using it 13 years later. Maybe what we need is Roland Emmerich to give up the whole directing thing and take up marketing other people’s better movies.

  6. Foamy Squirrel says:

    They expect 110 million people to be watching ad-supported television at 11pm at night? Seriously? Over a third of the national population?
    I haven’t been paying attention, have they been promoting this ad to the general public? Do they really think they can more than double the usual number of television watchers in that time slot, especially as Nick pointed out they’re apparently skipping Fox?
    I think they’ve also glossed over the fact that people actually look forward to watching Superbowl ads…

  7. LYT says:

    Sam – D2 was of course a riff on T2: Terminator 2, which has ID4 beat.

  8. Ju-osh says:

    Dave: When are you going to start posting the full length TIFF interview videos? I’ve watched a few of the sample videos three times already, and am jonesing for more.

  9. Sam says:

    LYT: Ah! You’re right. Very good.

  10. Cadavra says:

    They’re not skipping Fox. Fox doesn’t program from 10:00-11:00.

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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