“The sound of failure is silence,” DreamWorks marketing maven Terry Press tells L.A. Times columnist Patrick Goldstein in one of his best pieces in a long while — a study of what it’s like, psychologically and emotionally, when your movie flops. “When you have a hit, your phone starts ringing at 6:45 a.m. and never stops,” says Press. “In failure, there is a deafening silence. No calls from distribution, no calls from journalists, no calls from the filmmakers. It’s the Hollywood version of bird flu. You feel like everyone is saying, ‘Get my mask out. I don’t want to be near any failure germs.’ Even your own relatives don’t call.”
