Don’t ignore movies under publicity radar

Last modified: Thursday, March 6, 2008 9:57 AM CST

Don’t ignore movies under publicity radar

By MELISSA OLSON

For the Herald

In the long, tedious process from idea to theatrical release, there are countless chances to ruin a movie. In fact, with so many elements at play — writing, casting, editing, direction, music — and so many opportunities to make a crucial error, it’s a wonder any good movies get made at all, let alone great ones.

But one thing you can safely say is that most bad movies are bad for a pretty clear reason. The action was terrible, the writing was boring, the ending was ridiculous, and so on. Every once in awhile, though, there comes a movie that doesn’t really do anything wrong at all, and still manages to fail miserably. And that, friends, usually has a lot to do with distribution.

See, with any movie, when you finally get done with all the shooting and all the editing and all the extras, like music and special effects, there’s still a long way to go before the film hits theaters.

Marketing and PR teams have to invent contests, cut a trailer, put together TV spots, organize advance screenings, start a viral internet campaign, invite critics to a press junket to interview the movie’s stars, and so on.

Good filmmakers make good movies, but it takes a great marketing and publicity team to get anyone to watch them.

To make matters even more complicated, there really is no set formula to guarantee a movie’s success. Sure, there are analysts who spend their entire careers looking at what audiences like, from genre and actors to music and release dates, but at the end of the day, they still don’t really know for sure whether or not any given movie will really succeed.

Why was “Juno” a huge success, but “Michael Clayton” made very little money despite several Oscar nominations and George Clooney? Anyone can guess, but no one can say for certain.

So, if you’re a movie executive, and you know that despite billions of dollars’ worth of research there’s really no predicting audience reception, every once in awhile you just aren’t willing to take the risk.

So, you pull the plug on your own project. And that’s what happened two years ago to “Penelope” and “I Could Never Be Your Woman.”

“Woman” is a grownup romantic comedy by “Clueless” mastermind Amy Heckerling about an older woman (Michelle Pfeiffer) who falls for a younger man (Paul Rudd) just when she’s beginning to feel too old for love.

“Penelope,” produced by and costarring Reese Witherspoon, is a sweet fantasy about a girl (Christina Ricci) who is born with a pig’s nose, cursed until the day she can find true love.

They’re not exactly identical plots, but these two have a lot in common all the same: they both had talented women on both sides of the camera, they both have a certain element of fantasy and whimsy, and they’re both comedies that lightly examine the idea of a woman’s self-image.

And, of course, both movies were abandoned.

“Penelope” was purchased by the Weinstein Company, who promptly… put it on a shelf and forgot about it, before eventually dropping the rights. And “I Could Never Be Your Woman” never found a distributor at all, thanks to some crummy deals made by the lead production company on the project.

However, both movies are now finally available. “Penelope” has limped its way into theaters for what promises to be a very short run, judging by the lack of response at the box office this week. And “I Could Never Be Your Woman” was released a few weeks ago direct-to-DVD, that epitome of cinematic failure.

I’ve seen both movies, and both are pretty decent. “Woman” is a little dated now, being filled with Heckerling’s trademark topical slang and references that have aged two years past their prime, and “Penelope” is so short and breezy that it leaves one wishing for more.

But neither film has a big, obvious flaw: there’s no terrible writing, no awful effects, no ending that doesn’t make any sense. In fact, both movies are kind of funny and sweet. They simply became the victims of an industry where you don’t necessarily have to do anything wrong to fail.

The moral of the story, folks, is that sometimes nothing goes wrong with the movie, but everything goes wrong with its release. And that kind of makes me wonder what else might be out there.

After all, like so many people, I cringe away from anything labeled “straight to DVD” when I’m in the video store. But if a funny, charming Michelle Pfeiffer comedy and an equally charming, gorgeously costumed fairytale with Ricci and Witherspoon can slip under the radar, who knows what else might have been overlooked?

So the next time you’re renting a video, think about the movies you’ve never even heard of. You might just find a film that deserved much more.

A Chippewa Falls native, Melissa Olson graduated from the University of Southern California with a degree in film. She works in Madison for the television program Discover Wisconsin. E-mail comments and questions to Melissa at mfo.usc@gmail.com.