Bay Area Sarah Backlash?

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Slashfilm's Peter Sciretta has posted a piece about an alleged San Francisco backlash to the Forgetting Sarah Marshall slogan campaign. If any San Francisco HE readers notice any of these satirical knockoffs that Sciretta is referring to, please snap a photo and send it along.

Sciretta begins by explaining that he recently wrote "about Universal's genius viral marketing campaign for the upcoming Judd Apatow-produced comedy Forgetting Sarah Marshall, which had taken over San Francisco. Signs on buses, bus shelters and billboards with cryptic messages that read 'I hate You Sarah Marshall', "My Mom Always Hated You Sarah Marshall' and 'You Do Look Fat in Those Jeans, Sarah Marshall', lead those who notice to ihatesarahmarshall.com.

"It's actually a very cool campaign, maybe too good. There are so many of these advertisements around San Francisco that a backlash has begun. Last week flyers that look like the Sarah Marshall advertisements have started appearing on trees around the city reading 'I'm So Over You, Tree'. Another person snapped the photo below of a tree-attached flyer which reads 'You Do Look Fat in those jeans, tree".

Forgetting Sarah Marshall, which I found personally painful to sit through (in part because of the film having forced me to contemplate certain aspects of Jason Segel's anatomy), opens on 4.18.

comment #1

TJ Smoov says ...

Yeah, these are all over Chicago, too, but I haven't noticed any backlash. Or even chatter about them, really, and I'm in advertising.

comment #2

BurmaShave says ...

A girl friend of mine thinks they're fairly sexist, I wonder if this has to do with the backlash?

comment #3

actionman says ...

I hate these ads for some reason...they're all over LA and they are quite obnoxious...much like the film I am betting...

comment #4

slowburn says ...

Why do you care about Jason Segal's anatomy? What the hell is wrong with you? If you didn't like the movie bc it is bad, fine. You seem to hate Apatow movies bc the schlub gets the girl. You must just be bitter bc you were never able to pull it off you loser.

comment #5

oakling says ...

The "fat" one is fairly messed up. That's not a message that we need to keep putting out there. My understanding is that Apatow is known for not putting women in his movies, and people are concerned that in finally doing it he's going to just turn around and make women look villainous - like maybe we'd be better off with him only showing us his men's club universe.

comment #6

christian says ...

I'm ashamed to see YOU SUCK SARAH MARSHALL placards next to old women at bus stops here in LA. Glad SF always has a plan to stick it to the man.

comment #7

MilkMan says ...

Yeah, totally "genius" marketing campaign. I had no idea that those giant billboards or bus stop posters were for a movie or anything. I was under the impression that they were put up, guerilla-style, by some very pissed off and enterprising 17 year old boy.

And another thing: The whole movie is built on faulty logic. I'm supposed to believe that a guy who can score a girl as hot as Kristen Bell is going to be heartbroken when she leaves him? Right. The type of guy who scores a girl like Kristen Bell is out and getting laid the day after she moves out. Now that's a movie I would pay to see. At least it's intellectually honest.

comment #8

Jay T. says ...

I'm not sure if I agree with your logic, MilkMan... one could argue that losing a girl as hot as Kristen Bell would be pretty rough, but I see your point. I think maybe the logic is flawed because he's too much of a loser as opposed to the heartbreak issue.

comment #9

corey3rd says ...

is this a remake of Saving Silverman?

comment #10

MilkMan says ...

Oh, I see what you're saying Jay T. That a guy who is as big a loser as the guy is in the movie never would've been with her in the first place. I agree. I'm sure there are plenty of HE Studs who would tell you different. I'll bet you anything that someone is going to say how they are just like Jason Segal's character, maybe worse, yet they've been in relationships with girls far hotter than Kristen Bell.

And based on all of the Judd Apatow joints that have come out in the last few years, I would say it's safe to assume that Judd and his Posse have been having a pretty good time over the last 10 years or so. To which all I can muster is a big SFW, Stephen Dorff style. Pot, chicks, and good times with good friends. I'd say that boils it down to its essence. Yet these movies are continually hawked as representing some majority class of men in this country, as if every guy sits around doing what these guys do, when in fact, the only people who get to sit around all day and smoke dope and crack wise are little boys and people who work in the entertainment industry. Apatow World is as big a fantasy land as anything cooked up by Bruckheimer and Bay, yet because their taste in Pop Cult references are somehow more edgy, they are let out of the shallow end of the pool. Mystifies me.

comment #11

Rothchild says ...

I'm sorry, but if Linda Cardellini dumped me I'd be super depressed as well.

comment #12

DarthCorleone says ...

Just to bring the prediction to fruition, I'm a nerdy loser. I have been involved with a woman as hot as Kristen Bell. She did dump me years and years ago. I'm still bitter about it.

comment #13

Mgmax says ...

If my name was Sarah Marshall Universal would now be learning the names of my attorneys.

comment #14

robbiefantastic says ...

amen darth, amen......

comment #15

abuseintake says ...

Trust me; San Francisco is a shit-smeared hell-hole. I have never lived in a place with so many earnest, self-satisfied assholes in my life. I think the campaign for the movie is no more obnoxious than any other that’s out there, but leave to some trust-fund hipster to show us the socioeconomic dangers of a marketing campaign for a film they won’t even see. I am so over you, San Francisco!

comment #16

rocco says ...

Fuckin' California...

comment #17

Jay T. says ...

Abuseintake... as someone who grew up in the bay area, let me just say: yeah, you're pretty much right about San Francisco. The worst trend is going to cool bars and restaurants in the shit-hole that is the mission district because it's cool -- unlike those "stuffy marina bars", which are really filled with basically the EXACT same people except you can actually stand outside the bar without tripping over a crack whore. Pre-ten-tious...

Everyone always rips on LA and calls it phony (especially people in SF), but I think the city's in-your-face superficiality is actually quite genuine -- it's shallow but honest about it. Personally, I'd much rather be stabbed in the front than the back.

comment #18

christian says ...

San Francisco is still one of the most beautiful cities in America. Yes, there are phonies. But I know quite a few people who've been living there forever, in the Mission and elsewhere, who are hardly trust-fund babies. And there's a truly alternative filmmaking scene with the likes of Craig Baldwin and even Coppola. Pixar roots in the Bay Area for a good reason and it's that reason that makes their films unique and heartfelt.

And when I'm feeling blue, I can walk through busy streets where people are not ashamed to walk and interact with their neighbors. I can breathe in some of the cleanest air in California, stare out at the Pacific cloaked in fog to the tunes of Vince Guaraldi. Where little cable cars, ride up to the stars...

comment #19

Jay T. says ...

The thing that's frustrating about SF is it could and really should be so much better. If they just cleaned it up the way New York City did...

comment #20

abuseintake says ...

I moved to S.F. 3 years ago from Seattle, and if you want a beautiful city that is 30-45 minuets away from some of the best skiing, fishing and hiking on the planet than Seattle is the place. I just got back from a business lunch at the hotel Nikko, and my client and I marveled at the shocking, seemingly endless precession of partially clothed drug-zombies. I guess am biased because I was born and raised in Seattle but also the hard fact remains that the crime and filth of SFO are unrivaled on the west-coast. I live on Potrero hill and it is a place where from the back yard of a 1.2 million dollar home you can hear not only the local chapter of the Dog-patch Hells Angels setting off car alarms for sport with their Harleys, but I can also hear Glock 9's popping-off from the projects just a half-mile away. I just have to get through 9 more years of this inhospitable confluence of gunfire, feces and entitled gentrification and then I move back to a clean city that had only 26 homicides last year. BTW Los Angeles is much more of a “real” place than SFO, I find that the people in LAX are much less standoffish whereas most of the people I see in the Bay area look like someone is holding a Cat-turd under their nose.

comment #21

Jay T. says ...

One thing about your last comment: separate the bay area from san francisco -- you're referring to a pretty big region and the people/lifestyle, etc. are completely different in parts of Marin and Sonoma County, for example, than SF.

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