Understanding studios

Understanding studios

Posted on January 30th, 2010 by Sean Cunningham

I haven’t seen When in Rome, but I am disgusted by the flack it’s taking for its promotional campaign. Rome has been critiqued for ads that read, “From the studio that brought you The Proposal.” This is unusual because the plug doesn’t involve any people specifically working on the film, and as a result is the equivalent of saying, “There’s no one of particular note involved with our movie…but we know people who did something you might have enjoyed.” This attack strikes me as hopelessly ignorant, for every film studio has a very distinct style, once a filmgoer learns to recognize it.

When I discovered When in Rome was made by Touchstone, I thought, “The Proposal,” but that’s not all. I also thought Surrogates, Dan in Real Life, and Step Up 2: The Streets, all Touchstone triumphs. Consequently, I know exactly what to expect from When in Rome: it is a sci-fi thriller set in the near-future featuring sassy multi-racial dance crews and an unexpectedly affecting performance by Dane Cook. This doesn’t appeal to me, because I’m a Fox Searchlight Pictures guy. They’re responsible for The Wrestler, Notorious, and Miss March, so when I see one of their movies, I know what I’m getting: an incredibly depressing comedy about a doomed rapper who needs to get to Playboy Mansion so he can have a final match with the Ayatollah.

The problem is that some studios don’t understand the importance of branding. Take Miramax. Just this week they were shut down by Disney. Miramax distributed films including The Crying Game, Clerks, Reservoir Dogs, The Grifters, and The Piano…so you knew when you went to one of their movies, you’d get a foul-mouthed slacker caught in a treacherous New Zealand backwater where the conned may be the con artist and there’s an ear hacked off by a mute woman, who turns out to have a penis, as does Harvey Keitel.

Who’d want to watch that?