Via Film.com, we learn that Open Road Films resorted to pulling a quote from some dude on Twitter — who is not any sort of film critic — to promote A Haunted House (see the dreadful trailer here):
One thing Steven Cuellar is not is a movie critic, either professionally or even at an amateur blogging level. You wouldn’t know that from a recent spree of TV commercials for the Wayans Brothers atrocity “A Haunted House,” because they use a quote from Cuellar’s Twitter account, which currently has 43 followers.
The quote? “Funniest Movie Ever!”
…
Open Road Films is the culprit behind this sleaze-a-rific promotional move. They apparently just grabbed the quote, presumably because Cuellar is the only person in the universe that would like it enough to make that statement (and want to see it again to boot).
Film.com’s Max Evry reminds us:
Of course this is not even close to the first time a studio has tried to scam the public through TV commercials, with Sony using a made-up guy named “David Manning” to promote pictures like “The Patriot,” “Hollow Man,” and Rob Schneider’s comedic excrement “The Animal.”
The studios must see some perceived value in pulling such stunts, and so we must wonder:
Who would be convinced to see a movie by a quote on an ad from a random guy on Twitter?
Of course many people are swayed by authority, so perhaps it makes sense to quote famous critics in ads. But someone who’s not a critic, whose name will mean nothing to anyone? What’s that about? Is there a perception of authority for anyone who’s quoted on a movie ad, merely because he or she is quoted there? Or is this just sheer desperation on the part of Open Road Films? What the hell is going on here?
Thanks to Stephanie for the heads-up.
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My suspicion is that studios search for quotes simply because it’s what people expect to see on a film poster. Very often the attribution is printed so small that if one’s glancing at the thing in passing one has no chance of reading it anyway. The job of the poster is not to be a complex work of art or to be considered in detail, but simply – like most advertising – to lodge a name in the minds of the viewers, so that when they’re standing in the multiplex wondering which film to see they’ll be reminded of it.
It’s a whole different world from even the amateur film fan, never mind the professional.
I don’t think I’d be convinced by a recommendation on a film poster even if it was by someone reputable and famous; I worry that comments are taken out of context, as in “this film was complete and unmitigated shite, except for that 1 minute and 30 seconds right at the beginning which was ‘absolutely charming'”.
Everyone has different tastes in movies. It’s entirely possible that the 43 followers of that guy’s twitter account would find that quote convincing. But I certainly wouldn’t. Then again, I don’t really trust professional movie reviewers either. Let’s be honest MaryAnn, I don’t even trust you as an unbiased arbiter of the quality of a movie, because there is no such thing as an unbiased arbiter of movie quality in this world. I trust you to be true to your preferences, and I know what your preferences are. So I know when I will like a movie that you like and I know when I will hate a movie that you hate. But most of the time I know that I will feel indifferent about movies that you either love or hate, or will love or hate a movie that you are indifferent about. The only way that I know that is to read your reviews in their entirety. An out of context quote on a movie poster, even from you would leave me unmoved.
Broadly I agree with you, I think. The way I make decisions about films is to find a few reviewers who cover a lot of films, and whose tastes I can learn – so when MaryAnn likes or dislikes a film and says why, I can generally get a fairly good idea of whether I’m going to enjoy it.
It would actually convince me otherwise even if I was (up to) mildly interested in a movie. I think to myself “Wow, they really couldn’t get anyone to say anything nice about this film, eh?” it would be better for them to not have any quotes at all. But I understand I am not the average viewer.
. . . Unless they’re quote whores like Peter Travers or the late Joel Siegel. I always knew a movie must not be very good if the only positive critic comment on the poster was from Mr. Siegel. He seemed to like everything.
But overall, yes, this has a very strong odor of desperation, though there is something to the air of authority presented by anything in quotes. It’s extraordinarily cynical (imagine that from an ad man), but whoever put this together is probably counting on the fact that members of this movie’s target audience will not be paying enough attention to notice the source of the quote, nor would they know if it’s a famous critic or not if they did.
If I saw that, I’d immediately assume the film must be a massive turkey. If the only decent quote they can find is from some random Twitter user (with apologies to Mr. Cuellar), then there obviously aren’t many people with good thing to say about it. It absolutely screams “avoid”.
I always look under the quotes to see who they’re attributed to, but I suppose a lot of people don’t bother. I’m already attuned to ignore any quotes from Marie-Clare or Grazia (who never seem to have seen a single rom-com they didn’t think was the best thing ever), and to actively avoid anything festooned with enthusiastic quotes from Nuts or The Star.
The quote itself is pretty sad: I bet that he’d have a hard tim justifying why he thought the film was funny, and the comment itself is one of those hyperbolic statements that are so common that they require close to zero thought. For some reason, I can’t help but imagine that he’d be like one of those people who would just freak out and litter the comments section with invective if and when Maryann gave the film a bad review. That being said, I don’t think that I could give credence to any sort of movie review emanating from twitter, simply because the character limit of the medium itself poses an impediment to any sort of serious analysis that is required for a review and pretty much steers the discussion in the direction of banal statements.
the funny thing is…while the original site I found the initial complaint about the random twitter quote usage was snarky, and made a nasty dig about his ‘dead boyfriend’, who died 4 months ago, it reads to me like the guy whose tweet was used just…needed a laugh; he’s had what looks like a horrible year, you know? And that’s ok. He tweeted it to one of the Wayans, and the publicity company came after his tweet pretty desperately.
I can’t believe anyone takes blurb-quotes on posters seriously in this day & age. At this point, having scattered quotes on a poster or in an advert is more of a pro-forma design element than anything else. And if I’d seen this particular quote, I’d have assumed it was meant ironically and that it was a parody of movie quotes found on posters. I mean, give me a break, they quoted a random guy on Twitter? Buh?
I really don’t pay any attention to the reviews in trailers, except for this: I once saw a trailer for a movie that was full of reviews. One said “Absolutely one of the films of the year!” I was like, “Why yes, yes it is. No arguments here.” I had to rewind it, because there was a gap after ‘the’ so I thought maybe they’d done some artsy thing like making the ‘best’ float in, or just appear or something, but no. The reviewer didn’t have anything better to say than it was one of that year’s films.
Ah. Found the trailer. What I’m talking about is at 1:22 See the big ol’ gap? Someone obviously forgot something. http://youtu.be/nvyqXFmV-LI
oddly, I cannot find that quote in their review.
http://www.lovefilm.com/reviews/Tyrannosaur
but it sounds to me like they meant it in a positive way, from that review; they really loved that movie at that site. That movie was nominated for and won a lot of indie film awards. I think frankly, you’re reading the emphasis wrong there, which was easily found out.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrannosaur_%28film%29#Awards_and_nominations