I
recently read in the Paper of Record that Twentieth Century Fox had
pulled the “teaser trailer” for their upcoming film, Neighborhood Watch. The trailer depicted the film’s stars
patrolling their neighborhood turf to the sound of hip-hop music, while they
mimicked gunplay with their hands. According to the Paper of Record’s
article, the public outcry that erupted after the actual neighborhood watch shooting
in Florida may have “spoiled the fun of a movie that cost over $50 million to
make and will cost tens of millions more to market.” In fact, the article said,
the trailer wasn’t the only problem. The film’s very name – Neighborhood
Watch – guaranteed that
it would have been tainted by “even a whiff of the vigilantism at issue.”
Personally, I found this surprising. I mean, Wow. Even a
whiff of the
vigilantism? It wouldn’t even take a bona fide smell to taint that
up? Or a putrid stench? Who goes to the movies these days -- gloomy
search-and-rescue dogs? Given the sensitivity of moviegoers' noses,
studio insiders say it was an “unfortunate decision” to release the trailer in
the first place. That does seem unfortunate. It’s always a stroke
of bad luck when people spend $50 million dollars of their own money to make
something fun, and then real events just come along and ruin it. That’s especially true
when the fun thing isn’t really even about the thing that’s spoiling the fun. The real movie isn’t about
black music, or gun violence. It’s about ALIENS. Oops - spoiler alert!
But c’mon, public outcriers. Lighten up. Aliens aren’t violent. They
might kill a few people once in a while, in their quest to take over the
planet. But they’re definitely not vigilantes. They’re totally made up. That’s what makes them so fun!
Moviegoers need to keep this marketing tragedy in perspective. Is it the
studio’s fault that their trailer played on unfortunate racial stereotypes to
make the actors look all scary and violent? That was just a joke! That's why they call it a "teaser" -- Get
it? And they only did that to keep the alien invasion angle a secret,
so the movie would be more fun. But now -- insert sad face emoticon here -- the fun might be
ruined. Maybe the real problem is that Americans are too quick to stereotype movies
based on their hilarious teaser trailers!
Frankly,
Americans would probably be happier if they just stopped taking whiffs of
vigilantism altogether. Whiffs of vigilantism are bad for people who want
to have fun. And also, people who like animals. Fox knows this
because the movie, We Bought a Zoo, didn’t do very well either. The fun of that movie was
spoiled when people got a whiff of dozens of dead animals, who were shot trying
to escape from a real private zoo in Ohio. As it turns out, whiffs of
dead animals don’t sell movies about handsome widowers who buy
private zoos. Even Matt Damon couldn’t blow fresh air back into that
zoological stench. SO not fun!
Of course, Fox doesn’t know for sure that carcasses tainted the film. It
might just have been a bad movie. With a stupid premise. But
market research was also kind of tricky. Because first of all, no one at the studio
knew what Ohio actually was. Some Hollywood insiders were quoted as
saying they thought it was a prison somewhere in California. Like upstate, near
Vacaville. Others said they heard it was a really big
zoo. Eventually, someone remembered it was actually a
state. Just a really boring one. Where people have ugly feet,
like Hobbits. And lame parties, that aren’t even on the beach. And
that didn’t seem fun to anyone. So they decided to cut their losses and just stop doing research. What -- go to Ohio? No way!
Now, it seems, the best hope for Neighborhood Watch might be to delay its
release. At least until real events stop stinking everything
up. But conventional Hollywood wisdom can’t get behind that
decision. The producer of Collateral Damage said he thinks that delaying his film’s
release for several months after the 9/11 attacks actually hurt its performance
at the box office. It only made $40 million dollars! Worse yet, it
was one of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s worst films.
The studio tried to
rebound from that financial disaster by putting Schwarzenegger into a new acting role. It was called Governor of California. Unfortunately, real events came along to
spoil that movie too. Like when the governor’s wife got a whiff of the fact
that he'd been supporting a mistress – and his out of wedlock
offspring – for decades. Right under her roof. Well, not always
right under her roof. Sometimes, he kept them in a hidden underground
bunker. I think it was somewhere in California. Like upstate, near Vacaville.
Well, truth CAN be stranger than fiction. And that’s so awesome, as
long as the studios can still figure out how to profit from it. Like they did with Erin
Brokovitch. For
that film, Julia Roberts won an Oscar. During her speech, she almost
remembered to thank what’s-her-name. Or like, The China Syndrome. That was so fun because a real
nuclear meltdown actually happened right after the film came out. I think
it was somewhere in Ohio. And don’t forget about Titanic! No public outcry to spoil that fun! The only good news in all this tragedy is that the studio will
probably survive. And that's good because you can never have enough parties
on the beach. Or nice pedicures. The studios also know that regular people -- like those poor Ohio prisoners -- need them to keep making movies. Because sometimes, the real world just isn’t that fun. And when it really starts to smell, that's the best time to bring on the aliens!
