Bad Buzz
"The humiliating box office returns for All the King's Men may have trickled in over the weekend (a pathetic $3.8 million), but the death knell sounded almost a year ago and unintentionally came out of its producers' mouths. When Sony Pictures announced, just two months before the film's planned Christmastime release, that its opening would be pushed into the next year, the official reason was that more time was needed to complete the editing and score.
"But the unmistakable message sent to savvy audiences (that means everyone now) was: This movie is in trouble," begins a 9.26 Caryn James piece in the New York Times.
"The studio ignored one of the harshest realities of movie marketing today: It's almost impossible to recover from bad buzz. Studios wield their marketing campaigns as they always have, priming audiences to expect the best. But with the media following every twist of a movie's progress, viewers head to theaters loaded with behind-the-scenes information. A current television spot for the Ashton Kutcher-Kevin Costner action film, The Guardian (opening Friday), actually flaunts its preview audience test scores, calling it 'one of the best-playing and highest-scoring movies in the history of Touchstone Pictures.'"
"Even insidery advertising campaigns, though, can't change the fact that blogs, television infotainment and mainstream entertainment reporting can amount to an anti-marketing campaign, priming audiences for the worst."
And I love this graph....
"Desperately trying to spin viewers with higher expectations, All the King's Men set itself up for failure because it is impossible to forget a year's worth of factoids. When Sean Penn first appears on screen in the film, as the self-described hick and soon-to-be-political-savant Willie Stark, his short-sided period haircut may jog your memory: that's the funny haircut he had at the Oscars two years ago."
Posted by Jeffrey Wells on September 25, 2006 at 5:08 PM
comment #1
jeffmcm
says ...
I think you mean 'paragraph'. A graph typically has a chart with some numbers on it.
Posted by jeffmcm
at September 25, 2006 5:38 PM
comment #2
p.Vice
says ...
Actually, I think 'Graph' is exactly what Jeffrey meant. A 'paragraph' typically has interesting facts, pungent observation, and witty prose, none of which afflict James, the Times's most desperately obvious and hopelessly clueless movie writer.
Posted by p.Vice
at September 25, 2006 5:58 PM
comment #3
tholl-yung
says ...
Saw Zaillian on Sunday Morning Shootout, and I wasn't buying how great it was for him -- to work free for a year in editing with just the editors on payroll -- cuz it's the cheap part of filmmaking.
Posted by tholl-yung
at September 25, 2006 6:29 PM
comment #4
Dixon Steele
says ...
Caryn James has become the NY Times' Hitwoman, with her mark being the movie world.
Every couple of weeks she comes out with another hatchet job, like clockwork.
I remember when she used to be a pretty good film critic, then they moved her over to TV (No Man's or Woman's, Land).
Now she's back with a vengeance, like Uma Thurman in KILL BILL.
Posted by Dixon Steele
at September 25, 2006 6:53 PM
comment #5
jeffmcm
says ...
I would rather have a year of editing hell than a year of production hell. The hours are better.
Posted by jeffmcm
at September 25, 2006 7:07 PM
comment #6
Nick J
says ...
Actually, journalists often say "graph" for "paragraph." You may notice that one has a single syllable but the other has *three* syllables and is thus slightly more cumbersome to say. I hope that was helpful. You fucking idiot.
Posted by Nick J
at September 25, 2006 7:18 PM
comment #7
jesse
says ...
Wow, you learn something new every day: It is in fact "almost impossible" to recover from bad buzz! And here I was thinking movies recover from the vague catch-all of "bad buzz" pretty much every year.
Posted by jesse
at September 25, 2006 7:24 PM
comment #8
jeffmcm
says ...
Since when is Wells a journalist?
Posted by jeffmcm
at September 25, 2006 7:25 PM
comment #9
le corbeau
says ...
It's not hard to recover from bad buzz. You just have to have something to recover from bad buzz with. A good preview could do it, but no preview audience was ever going to like this white elephant.
What James really means is, once the fact of being a stinker gets out, it's no longer possible to con people into thinking it's a must-see Oscar contender.
P.S. I usually see it spelled "graf." I think that's to help distinguish it from the other kind of graph.
Posted by le corbeau
at September 25, 2006 8:24 PM
comment #10
jeffmcm
says ...
'Graf' is even worse. It sounds much too Prussian.
A journalist's job is to communicate with the public and to do so, they should really refrain from using insider jargon.
Posted by jeffmcm
at September 25, 2006 8:40 PM
comment #11
Mr. Muckle
says ...
Anybody notice the bad buzz on "Titanic?" Some of the worst ever. How'd that work out for ya, then?
Posted by Mr. Muckle
at September 25, 2006 9:28 PM
comment #12
jeffreywells
says ...
Wells to Jeffmcm: And what is it that you claim to be? I've been hammering away at journalism for 25 years. You wanna fight?
Posted by jeffreywells
at September 25, 2006 11:54 PM
comment #13
Nate West
says ...
Last December, I heard that "graph" would show up here, and the buzz was terrible. Some people said "graph" was definitely no "graf," and "paragraph" was out of the question. But the experts were wrong.
Graph is a marvelous surprise.
Posted by Nate West
at September 26, 2006 1:15 AM
comment #14
Abhay
says ...
Sure, who doesn't remember October 2005 in precise detail? I do. The month after Hurricane Katrina, the attacks on Bali, the Kashmir earthquakes-- and most of all, that was the month Sony delayed All the King's Men. Of course! I know I for one remembered that 11 months later, and it was the deciding factor in why I refused to see the movie.
Otherwise, that movie had it all: seven or eleven British actors pretending to be from Louisiana, 11% positive reviews at Rotten Tomatoes, and Jude Law! Political themes PLUS Sean Penn! Best of all, it's a remake! But no: once the blogs got to me, it was all over for poor All the King's Men.
Posted by Abhay
at September 26, 2006 2:31 AM