I realize that movies are just products to the companies selling them, but every once in a while I’m reminded what a joyless and cynical world these people live in. In a recent issue of the New Yorker, Tad Friend records an October weekend he spent shadowing Tim Palen, copresident of theatrical marketing for the elbow-throwing distributor Lionsgate (Saw, Sicko, Religulous, The U.S. vs. John Lennon, Deliver Us From Evil). Like every weekend in Hollwood, it’s an opening weekend, and Palen is sweating the box office returns for Oliver Stone’s W. even as he monitors a test screening of the Renee Zellweger comedy “Chilled in Miami” (which opens this Friday under the more marketable title New in Town). In both cases Palen’s job is to turn the movie into something it’s not. “Publicity is selling what you have: the film’s stars and sometimes its director,”writes Friend. “Marketing, very often, is selling what you don’t have; it’s the art of the tease.”
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
• “Posters are intended to tell you the film’s genre at a glance, then make you look more closely. Horror posters, for instance, have dark backgrounds; comedies have white backgrounds with the title and copy line in red. Because stars are supposed to open the film, and because they have contractual approval of how they appear on the poster, the final image is often a so-called ‘big head’ or ‘floating head’ of the star.”
