Posted on 05/17/2002 2:30:42 PM PDT by cd jones
This Friday's "Give Me A Break" is about the tricks movie studios use to
fool us.
When Sony's "Vertical Limit" came out, Sony ran ads saying, "Critics
declare... movies don't get more exciting than this."
The "more exciting" quote came from Dave Manning of the Ridgefield Press.
Did you see "The Animal?" It was awful. "Rolling Stone" said the movie
"reeks." But David Manning called it "Another winner!"
Critics called "Hollow Man" garbage," and "rotten to the core." But Dave
Manning liked "Hollow Man," too.
How could he rave about all these lousy movies? Easy. Because Manning
doesn't exist. He was invented by Sony Pictures. "The Ridgefield Press"
exists. It's a little paper in Connecticut with so few employees that
somehow they never noticed it was being used in movie ads. When the press
called Sony on its fakery, Sony apologized, and said it would never do it
again.
If we cannot trust reviews, can we at least trust those "testimonials"
from people coming out of theaters? No. Turns out there's fakery there,
too. The commercials say things like: "Audiences all across America are
raving about the most romantic film of the year."
On the way out of the theater, moviegoers enthusiastically said, "It's
Powerful." "Fantastic." "Fabulous." "Great film for the holidays." "I
love it."
It's convincing when you watch the commercial, but last year Sony and
three other studios have admitted to "The Wall Street Journal" that in
those ads, they''ve mixed real moviegoers with paid actors. That meant
when "Blair Witch 2" came out, which "The Orlando Sentinel" called "A
movie virtually everyone can hate," the "moviegoers" in the commercial
raved about how good it was.
Give me a break.
Part of the marketing budget of any major release consists of using pliable "critics" from publications you never heard of for rave review quotes. They are flown to LA, put up in luxury and given at studio expense what amounts to an LA vacation and allowed to at least feel like they belong in the Hollywood world. They are shown the movie, maybe allowed to pitch some scripted questions to the stars and voila, they come back and write a glowing review which is of course in the paper ads. That is what made the Manning thing so ludicrous. There are plenty of quote whores out there to be corrupted for 'real' reviews.
It is the same way with the area studies pundits you see interviewed on news shows or read editorials by. Think about it. If you are an area scholar specializing in a closed society, to be persona grata in that country, to get access to VIP's in that society you have to be trusted by that government to say nice things about them. You think Iraqi Baath Party officials would just talk to any foreigner without permission ?
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