Here it is at last: my long-awaited final post about the IHTSBIH tour. I’ve been jotting down notes over the past few weeks, as I collected my thoughts on what our shortcomings were.
Obviously, I thought this movie was going to do really well. My prediction was “[it] will be big and the mainstream press will not see it coming.” Ironically, it was not big and the mainstream press did, in fact, see the movie coming (the latter can be attributed to the PR firms who were promoting the film, along with some of the controversy surrounding the tour). So given my hyperbolic and incorrect predictions, it’s understandable if you take any other future predictions from me (or even this very post!) with a grain of salt.
At any rate, I’d still like to do some (very late) Monday-morning quarterbacking and offer up my hindsight thoughts and theories as to why the movie didn’t do well. The following post is a list of factors that, I think, collectively contributed to the movie’s underwhelming box office. I’ve talked extensively with everyone who was on tour about this stuff, Tucker included – most things we agree on, some we don’t.
But before I get into all that, it’s worth reflecting on what made the book a success, as it will illustrate how difficult it was to try and translate that level of success into a completely different industry.
Tucker was one of several people to tap into the fratire genre (a.k.a. “dick lit”). But he was the first person to really pile on tons of funny material, build a huge following, and dominate that niche in the mainstream. In other words, he got there the first-est with the most-est. And while the book is hilarious, it wouldn’t be the success that it is if it had been the second paperback containing tons of drunken tales. A funny book is a funny book, but a runaway best-seller is something unique. It also helped that his stories were so ridiculous that readers either cracked up or flat-out didn’t believe any of them. In either case, the book gets talked about, passed on, and word-of-mouth spreads.
He didn’t hit it out of the park on his first try, though. Tucker self-published two books before IHTSBIH, and he’ll be the first to admit that those didn’t sell very well. But he kept improving upon what he’d created. His site and forums provided him with a testing lab and sounding board, where he could rapidly improve upon previous iterations of his work, get rapid feedback, and encourage people to easily share his stories with their friends.
Now compare that path to breaking into the movie industry. Was it possible to invent the fratire genre of comedy? No, it’s already been done a thousand times over. Not a problem, though – formulaic films are the bread and butter of Hollywood. But unlike a book, where the final product is determined by one person, a movie is determined by hundreds of people, with an unlimited amount of variables altering “what you want” into “what you got.” Financiers, directors, editors, actors, cameramen, writers, etc… the list goes on for quite awhile. On top of all that, every single decision is determined by the budget. And that budget is never ample with an indie film, even with millions of dollars at your disposal. Unless you’re creating something like “Paranormal Activity,” it is typically very difficult to fail cheap while making a movie.
My point, of course, is that Tucker’s book was made in a relatively nurturing environment outside of an industry that was ripe for disruption. The movie industry, however, is a much harder nut to crack — there are too many points of failure and no room for making rapid iterations once shooting begins (granted, if it’s your first attempt at anything in an unfamiliar industry, the cards are stacked against you). It’s still impressive to me that this movie was made at all, considering some of the horror stories I was told on tour.
Without further ado, here are my thoughts on why the film came up short at the box office, along with some of the lessons I learned from the whole experience:
Not all press is good press
When you are a self-proclaimed asshole who has made some very controversial movie ads, it makes it hard to effectively combat a loud group of people who have falsely labeled you as a rapist. A lot of protesters (many of whom had artificial knowledge of his material) made these claims about Tucker while we were on tour, and they got quite a bit of attention from it.
It’s a common refrain that “any press is good press,” but the truth is that this kind of publicity is not going to motivate a whole lot of people to see a movie. If anything, I think it was a deterrent. Sure, it got the movie some attention, but it was the wrong kind of attention. Tucker wrote a solid post where he defended himself against the slander that was rampant at a few of the stops, but the damage had been done.
Now, I can’t really say whether all this bad publicity had a substantially negative impact on the bottom line or not, but it probably didn’t help us much.
Movie = Experience = Movie
The people who showed up at the tour stops did not simply come to see the movie: they came for an experience. They wanted to see and interact with Tucker – nearly all of them had read his book, many had devoured the content on his site, and a good number of them had been following the progress of the tour. Before they’d even seen IHTSBIH, they had emotionally invested in Tucker’s life and the 18-month drama that was the production of the film.
Then the big day finally came: the tour bus had arrived in their city. And for many of them, this was their experience:
Round up friends who are also Tucker Max fans. Drive over to the venue, and see a long line had already formed. Walk up to Corman, who gave them their tickets and pointed to the merchandise table. Look at the t-shirts, books, and beer pong kits available for sale. Get in line. Watch Bill Dawes interact with people standing in-line, and laugh as he makes fun of them / smashes the cookies they brought for Tucker / cusses out mall cops / gets girls to make out with each other / gets a fan to drool his dip into a girl’s mouth / mocks protestors, etc. Enter the theater. Find a seat with a bag of free swag (bottle opener, poster, pen, wristband, t-shirt, pint glass). Pre-show where members of the crowd share funny/inappropriate stories while Tucker, Nils, and Bill make jokes.
And all of this happens before the movie even starts! At each stop, the crew was spending 1.0 – 1.5 hours elevating the crowd’s mood, priming our audience to laugh.
Not exactly your typical trip to the theater.
After the film ended, there was a 20-minute Q&A with Tucker and Nils. People were then encouraged to line up to get their poster signed and take a picture with Tucker, where he often made fun of them, then wished them well and thanked them for coming. Finally, they came out of the theater, with swag, t-shirt, and autographed poster in hand. Bill and I would swoop over to them and ask, “So… what’d you think of the movie?”
Watch any of the videos we did. We got rave reviews in each city. Why? Because they weren’t just talking about the movie — they were subconsciously reviewing the entire experience. And all the members of the crew put in 110%, night after night, to ensure that everyone’s experience was great. There were even a few people who came to multiple stops to see the movie again (i.e. relive the experience). We were effectively manipulating their feelings by giving them an amazing experience, one that they’d never had at any movie before.
This is the one area where we succeeded, I think, and it’s something all marketers should take note of: the experience IS the product, and the product IS the experience. If you’re going to do a big product launch, make it into a remarkable event that will excite your market and get them talking.
But had we been catering to the RIGHT audiences? Was it worth giving a great experience to the people who were already expecting it?
This brings us to the next issue…
Insularity: “The Handpicked Focus Group” bias
It’s difficult to get a passionate loyalist to rant and rave about something they’ve loved for years; their days of spreading the word are largely over. The people who truly go nuts and spread word-of-mouth are the ones who have just discovered something new and fresh, and feel an overwhelming urge to get others to experience it, as well.
What if you don’t have the money to reach out to the latter group, but you have a big built-in fan base? Which group do you target? The choice is obvious… right?
The true problem with self-selecting fans is not so much that they won’t spread the word, but rather that they are so biased that you can’t see straight. I talked about this a bit in a post I wrote while on tour. What I said was that we’d surrounded ourselves with an extremely biased sample of viewers, and that it was easy to deceive ourselves into thinking the movie would be a success based on their reviews. And I think that’s what happened to me when I first saw the movie back in March. I distinctly remember looking around and thinking, “This is the hardest I’ve ever seen a group of people laugh at a movie.” But what type of person was that theater filled with? Fans. Their laughs were augmented because of the familiarity they had with the punch lines, character nuances, and poop-splatters in the hotel lobby… They laughed uncontrollably as the stories they’d visualized in their heads years ago were projected onto the big screen. That audience at the distributor screening provided me with an abundance of social proof, and I was convinced that the movie would take off.
All these people who went to the screenings were inside our insular little world. Many of them had read the book and blog posts, seen the pictures, and watched the videos we’d been making. It took me a long time (almost two-thirds of the way through the tour) before I finally started to understand the prevalence and deceptiveness of this bias. But even then, my hopes weren’t swayed much.
The question is: should we have focused more on getting the movie in front of other people, who had no familiarity with Tucker, no expectations, and thus increase the likelihood of spreading more impassioned true word-of-mouth? In an ideal world: yes. But how do we reach those people and get them into theaters in the first place?
That brings us to…
Distribution, ad budgets, PR, and movie trailers
I’m not sure I ever gave enough credit to how important these factors were, especially distribution. For instance, in a lot of cities, the movie was playing in semi-obscure theaters that were pretty far off the beaten path. I know in Colorado, at least, that several of my friends expressed interest in seeing it, but the closest theater that was playing it was more than 30 minutes away. That kind of distance is an enormous barrier, and most people aren’t going to make that commitment. It’s hard enough to convert people to simply clicking a few buttons and buying a ticket online – it’s a lot harder to convince the rest of those people to drive a half hour to a theater they’ve never been to.
The strategy, of course, was that the movie would be forced into more and more theaters based on overwhelmingly positive word-of-mouth (which I’ll discuss in a minute). The problem, though, was that there was very little awareness of the movie even being in theaters at all. Even some of Tucker’s biggest fans were unaware, not to mention the general public. As easy as it is to put WOM on a pedestal and harp on the ineffectiveness of advertising, there’s one thing that’s very obvious: with a big enough ad budget and solid ads to back it up, you WILL create a lot of awareness and interest. Especially if you have a great trailer…
In spite of being seen nearly a million times, a lot of people really disliked that first trailer. A common observation from fans at each of the tour stops was: “The trailer doesn’t do it justice.” If that’s true, then there may have been a decent amount of prospective ticket buyers who lost interest from just the green band trailer alone.
The strategy for the making of the green band trailer was to not reveal too many of the jokes and to avoid spoiling the movie. In the grand scheme of things, this is the right mentality to have. But as Nils and I discussed at length one day, if the purpose of the trailer is simply to get as many people into theaters as possible, perhaps it’s best to err on the side of revealing too much. On the other hand, there isn’t a ton of clean material to work with to create an amazing green band…
Unfortunately, the red band trailer (which was a more accurate portrayal of the movie, giving away more jokes and spoilers) was put on Youtube almost two months after the green band. For every 1 person who saw the red band, 10 had seen the green band (the decidedly lesser of the two). I have no idea how big of an impact this could have ultimately had on ticket sales, but it’s something we’ve all thought about.
Managing expectations
To me, not managing the readers’ expectations along the way was our biggest sin (I’m referring primarily to myself and Tucker for this). A lot of the other faults with the movie’s marketing can be chalked up to “A for effort”-type mistakes, where lack of experience and naiveté were the causes of those missteps. But allowing fans’ expectations to reach enormously high levels could have been avoided.
The way we defended the film ended up translating into excessive hype. It’s one thing to be confident that the movie will do well while trying to “sell” it to readers, but we promised them something very big with a statistically low likelihood of it actually happening. And I think quite a few folks were disappointed because they naturally held the film to our standards. The movie didn’t blow up like we said it would, and it shook some of our readers’ trust. That’s what I regret.
As much fun as it is to try and prove yourself and call something before it happens, the fact remains that over-hyping a product that you’re personally involved with has more potential to hurt than help. Better to have fans enter a theater with low expectations, and leave pleasantly surprised.
Niche audience vs. Critics
It turns out I made the same mistake that I once chastised someone for: I thought everyone would like what I liked. I truly did enjoy IHTSBIH – actually seeing these funny stories and characters that I had first pictured in my 18-year old head was a trip, and a lot of fun. But it seems like something is lost in translation if you haven’t read the book beforehand. So many people on tour would say, “It was great… but be sure to read the book first” when we interviewed them. They may have been right.
For the most part, Tucker Max fan reviews tell one story: movie was great, funniest comedy of the year, etc. The aggregate critical reviews, however, tell a very different story. Generally speaking, they are the exact opposite of what fans think. I knew this movie would polarize people, but the outside reviews were skewed – the majority of them were negative. It’s tempting to dismiss this because we’ve talked with so many people who loved it (and not just loved it, but raved about it). But if the majority of fans like the movie while the majority of critics dislike it, then there’s a very high chance that IHTSBIH is a niche film (a.k.a. cult classic). Not the worst of fates. It’s better to have people love or hate your work, because when you’re greeted with a universally tepid response, sales will usually reflect that. However, if this movie is indeed a cult classic, then that inherently means it won’t achieve the mainstream success we had predicted. Of course, only time will tell – DVD sales will be the final test to determine whether this is the case or not. We shall see.
Conclusion
As I wrote last month, I would relive this experience all over again if I could. The tour was a blast, albeit with a sour ending. Everyone involved with this movie worked very hard on it for a long time. We did all that we could to make it work. It didn’t.
And that’s all I had left to say about that.
Thanks for writing this. It seems like a good summary of what went wrong.
For me the green band trailer killed it. Although there wasn’t much chance of me seeing the movie (living in London) I didn’t get a good feeling and my girlfriend (who’s read some of the book and found it amusing) flatly disliked it.
From there on I took the hype from the tour with a pinch of salt, although it sounds like all of you had a blast. The theme that seems to be emerging is that Tucker’s character in the film just wasn’t that likeable, so whilst the fans could see the wider context, the ‘cold’ audience couldn’t.
Anyway – thanks again for this. And it sounds like your career is going great guns – RPG was great and got some amazing coverage. Good luck for the future!
By: Nick on November 29, 2009
at 11:08 am
The marketing strategy relied heavily on word of mouth, but there were numerous deterrents to people actually recommending the movie to friends.
– The negative press was certainly an issue. It’s tough to recommend a movie while knowing that a likely response to your efforts is, “Isn’t that the movie that promotes rape?”
– The theater locations were terrible. How do you convince people to travel thirty minutes to see a movie that they think encourages rape?
– I liked the green band trailer, but most people thought it sucked. They’re probably right. And if you’re someone who’s trying to convince people that the movie doesn’t promote rape, and that it’s actually a really funny honest film, the trailer doesn’t help your case.
– If the rape thing didn’t stop you, then you have the advertising in general as an obstacle. The advertising did nothing to set the movie apart from The Hangover. Most people who saw the film would tell you that it was quite different from The Hangover, but it’s tough to explain HOW it differentiates itself to someone who only has the trailer to go on. Perhaps the marketing could have emphasized some word, phrase, or idea in order to distinguish itself.
Those are some huge impediments to word of mouth. If you’re counting on people to promote your movie, you need to help them out. The premiere tour was great, but there were too many reasons for people to NOT promote the film.
By: Matt on November 29, 2009
at 3:52 pm
Your last point is a good one. The Hangover definitely took some wind out of IHTSBIH’s release, as everyone would naturally try to compare the two. Finding a memorable way to distinguish IHTSBIH would have helped a bit, I’m sure.
By: charhoehn@gmail.com on November 30, 2009
at 1:26 am
Nice wrapup. I’m sure you’ve become much more marketing savvy after observing the process.
Predictions are tough–especially with movies. I remember reading in “the Tipping Point” that films are becoming one of the most difficult areas to predict mainstream success. Seeding a movie with hollywood stars doesn’t have the same pull that it used to. The likelihood of success is more related to unanticipated, random events than the movie itself.
I’m not sure why the book was so successful. I’ve read tucker’s site since the date application post, so I’m definitely biased. But I’d be careful to conjure a narrative like “first-mover advantage” (your first-est remark). The book’s success likely also had an element of randomness, and pointing a certain fact (i.e., timing, the stories, his website) could be misleading. I suppose that packaging the book in a movie format, and marketing it similarly, could never had been a guaranteed formula for success.
I like your analogies to customer development (at least I think that’s what you’re referring to–rapid feedback, iterative revisions). To your point, movies are different beast, and it’s really a blindfolded launch after you’ve filmed the movie.
And I think you’re looking over one important element: the movie. I’m a loyalist, and even I couldn’t recommend tucker’s movie to friends. Now crappy movies make money all the time, so I’m not going to causally attribute failure to an un-funny movie, but it could have helped. WOM recommendation, I’d imagine, was much lower for IHTSBH than I would have expected.
By: Matt Daniels on November 29, 2009
at 4:53 pm
I didn’t overlook that as much as I glossed over it, much like I did with a lot of the other points in this post. I remember you saying you didn’t like the movie, and a good friend of mine said the same: loved the book, hated the movie. WOM works both ways, of course, so the people who hated it may have counterbalanced the efforts of the people who loved it. Whatever the case, you are right: the WOM never reached the levels we thought it would.
By: charhoehn@gmail.com on November 30, 2009
at 1:33 am
Why didn’t Tucker go with a regular distributor? Seems like that’s what he wanted, I’m pretty sure he said it repeatedly.
By: 55 on November 29, 2009
at 9:14 pm
No distributor wanted it because it was not a viable commercial property. Self distribution was the only option.
By: Dude on December 3, 2009
at 6:30 pm
This is a solid post. I’ve read a lot about the business side of the movie and this is definitely one of the best reflections on it.
My friends and I were excited to see it, but we were 1100 kilometres from the nearest location (in Canada). So, I guess the DVD will have to suffice.
By: Trent on November 29, 2009
at 11:27 pm
It was a blast following you guys on the tour – the excitement definitely spilled over to the 10K or so of us who were daily watching the tour vids.
This is the most honest write-up I’ve seen from someone so closely involved to date, though I was hoping you might comment on the specific tactics you found genius in that early phone conversation referenced in your ‘IHTSBIH Predictions’ post. In particular what did or didn’t get executed from that initial strategy.
By: Bryan on November 30, 2009
at 1:38 am
Ah yes, great observation. Completely forgot to address that, so thanks for the reminder. Back when I wrote that post, these were the marketing ideas that stuck out to me as really smart:
1) Charging $50/seat on the IHTSBIH tour, which would do screenings in just 5 major cities. At the time, I loved this because it was especially ballsy, and it catered heavily to the hardcore fans. This obviously changed to a $10/seat in 31 cities tour. I still like the idea of charging more than we did. People are unable to psychologically hurdle the “most expensive = best” bias, and a high price for a great movie experience would HEAVILY color what they thought of the movie.
2) Having the world premiere of the film in Iraq. Run the movie 4 times/day in a huge hangar for the troops, then give away swag bags with long-distance phone cards. Troops call back home, tell their friends and families who are deeply invested in their well-being about this funny new movie they just saw… You get the idea.
3) Making ihopetheyservebeerinhell.com into a free, online indie film school. His production blog covered so many aspects of the film industry, and he was trying to teach all this stuff as he learned it. He would get crew members involved in the teaching process, as well. But the more ambitious plan was to get different people’s perspectives on each scene. So the cameraman would explain his element, then the lighting guy, then the sound mixer, director, actors, etc. They would basically cover how much detail goes into each frame of each scene, and why things are the way they are. This would still be really cool if the site ever reaches that point, but it’s obviously not there yet.
By: charhoehn@gmail.com on November 30, 2009
at 2:05 am
Charlie,
Your clarity and honesty will serve you well. This was just your first movie effort, and I’m sure you’ll build on all you learned. Please keep writing.
By: John Paul Turnage on November 30, 2009
at 9:08 am
Bill even admitted the movie wasn’t good:
“The most obvious reason was also the hardest to admit. And that is, the film, while good, wasn’t good enough to generate the requisite word of mouth to make it a hit.”
So face it: there is no way in hell this movie will sell any DVD’s because the movie isn’t good.
I’m a long-time Tucker fan and I wouldn’t buy the movie on DVD. I would, however, keep going to any premier if there are sequels because I bet next time, if there is one, you will “hit it out of the park.” Look at the first season of the Simpsons… Its painful to watch at times now, but the potential was there, just like it is with Tucker and company’s movie-making ability. This whole project has been- and is- innovative and inspiring for so many reasons (particularly the tour and production narrative and those videos from the tour…), but it also needs to be said that this particular movie was so painful at times to watch that I had to apologize to my friends for encouraging them to spend money on it.
By: Josh on November 30, 2009
at 11:29 am
Yea, I’ve definitely noticed that a fair percentage of Tucker’s fans didn’t like the movie. I kind of avoided this point by making a few generalizations, and I should clarify that not all fans loved the movie and not all critics hated it. But you misinterpreted what Bill wrote. He explicitly said that he thought the movie was good, but not good enough for massive WOM.
I have a tough time thinking, “The movie must be bad because that’s what a lot of people are saying.” IHTSBIH is not universally liked, but it’s not universally disliked, either. Not many movies can evoke such extreme emotional reactions at opposite ends of the spectrum. People seem to love it or hate it, with very few folks taking the middle ground.
By: charhoehn@gmail.com on November 30, 2009
at 2:23 pm
Charlie, this is a really good and honest post about the experience. A few thoughts / questions:
1) It was mentioned in the comments, but I really feel that having The Hangover come out just a few months before IHTSBIH really hurt the movie. I checked the one sentence plot lines for both on IMDB and if I take out “Las Vegas” from one of the sentences, the plot summary is too similar:
“Three groomsmen lose their about-to-be-wed buddy during their drunken misadventures, then must retrace their steps in order to find him.”
“A guy tries to patch things up with his soon-to-be-married pal after botching things up at his bachelor party.”
After watching BIH, I still felt it was too similar to The Hangover. (I understand this might make me an idiot, so be it.) For the record I don’t put The Hangover as a classic movie. It’s funny but I would not want to watch it a second time.
Do you think delaying the release date until everyone forgot about the Hangover would’ve helped?
2) Forgetting about The Hangover, do you think when the movie was released (late September) affected the box office sales? I don’t know much about this stuff, but looking at the biggest opening weekends, they all seem to take place May – July or November – December. http://boxofficemojo.com/alltime/weekends/
3) I really like the Iraq premiere idea. What stopped that from happening (if you’re allowed to say)?
4) I did word of mouth promoting the movie premiere tour (I know of 3 people who saw it because I told them the tour was coming) but no WOM after I saw it. As I previously admitted, I think this was a large part of my expectations being too high from reading about it on the movie blog. My friend who wasn’t a fan of Tucker and came to see it with me, wound up liking the movie more than I did as his expectations were real low. I’m still a big fan of the book and will be reading AFF when it comes out.
5) Do you think other movies will follow the 15-30 movie premiere dates idea? I think this is a great idea for building movie momentum… then again, if a movie is terrible but they’re spending $40 million to market it for opening weekend, it might be best for as few people to see it in advance as possible to prevent negative WOM…
6) I found the value of the production blog phenomenal. Were there ever any efforts in marketing it to film schools / film students?
By: Ben Rosenfeld on November 30, 2009
at 1:42 pm
1) I honestly have no clue on what the effect would be of delaying the release, or if that was even a viable option. Would “Paranormal Activity” still be a hit if it came out three months after “Blair Witch Project”? A lot of success is timing / randomness / luck. So I really have no idea.
2) Again, no clue. I have zero knowledge in the seasonal timing aspect of a theatrical release. Although I have observed that the really big budget movies tend to come out mid-year, so the DVDs are available right before Christmas.
3) Too much red tape for a premiere in Iraq. Tucker wanted to, but I recall him saying that it was logistically impossible (or damn near).
4) Yes, expectations got carried away for the fans. Sorry to hear you were one of the people who had this happen to them.
5) Maybe. We probably slipped the whole tour under Hollywood’s radar, since it didn’t result in a huge success.
6) Not that I’m aware of… However, I did create a fairly extensive list of various film blogs, and I’m pretty sure we reached out to nearly all of those people about the movie.
By: charhoehn@gmail.com on November 30, 2009
at 2:38 pm
One thing to be wary of: the people doing the reviewing on the websites.
It’s almost reached boogyman status, but there are definitely small groups of people who hate Max so much that they’re willing to go to extreme lengths to screw with him. An enormous chunk of the 0% ratings on Rotten Tomatoes are from people who have not seen the movie and chose to spam the hell out of the ratings based on Max hate alone. There’s a few suspicious 100% ratings too, but dwarfed almost by orders of magnitude by the the 0 and 10s.
I don’t know why RT tolerates that kind of behavior – as it devalues their ratings. What is worth noticing though is that despite this spamming, the consensus rating is still hovering in the 60s – 40 points higher than the average critic rating. I still think Ebert would have liked this movie if he’d seen it.
I think this suggests that there is indeed going to be a demand for the DVD and it will slowly build.
Better luck next time. And I’m pretty confident there will be a next time in some form for you, Hoehn.
By: B. Thapa on December 1, 2009
at 3:42 am
I can see 2 major reasons why the movie failed.
1. It looked like a cheap comedy that goes straight to dvd like “date Movie” or “Dance flick” It would have been much more successful if it was just videotape of Tucker living his normal crazy life or a scripted live movie like borat.
2. Tucker stopped posting really funny stories about 2-3 years ago. That’s a hell of a long time. people forget very fast in the internet culture if you are not pumping out new content. Just posting on his forum is not good enough.
By: David on December 1, 2009
at 11:09 pm
Don’t know if I understand your implication with #2, but if you’re saying that having a consistent stream of fresh content would have translated into lots of ticket sales…. well, that’s just wrong.
In spite of the fact that Tucker’s main site is essentially static, his traffic has remained relatively high over the last few years. Even now, having subtracted the daily traffic generated by the message board, it’s still in the top 18,000 sites in the world. That’s a lot of people coming to a site with no new stories.
My main argument, though, is that internet awareness does NOT equal a successful movie (nor does a poor online awareness make a failure). Just look at “Snakes on a Plane” – insane amounts of buzz marketing before it was released, high awareness with big online circles… Was it a success? No.
Word-of-mouth trumps all in the film industry. The movie must stand on its own legs. Having a solid online marketing campaign helps in the very early stages, but it will never make a movie into a success. Only people will.
Amazing PR, great distribution, and a healthy ad budget don’t hurt either!
By: charhoehn@gmail.com on December 2, 2009
at 1:22 am
Charlie,
Kudos to you for being forthright with everything. I’ve followed the website for years and have been a fan of Tucker’s stories and respected him for kind of blazing his own trail in life. I followed the movie blog and looked forward to the release. To me the #1 problem with the movie is that it just wasn’t good enough. I just thought it was average. I laughed at a couple parts, but overall I don’t think the lines were as funny as Tucker and Nil’s made them out to be or that the movie was any kind of revolution. I guess he is a narcissist so I shouldn’t expect anything different, but I think it’s weak how Tucker has basically put most of the blame on the marketing and chastised moviegoer’s for not “getting” the film, but can’t even conceive that part of the problem may be the movie just isn’t good enough.
Tough call on the trailer. I like the idea of not ruining all the funny parts of the movie by keeping them out of the trailer, but I guess that would be better than putting out a weak trailer that no one is interested in. Personally, my expectations of the movie were lowered when I saw the trailer. I was still excited about the movie then, but it made it harder to try to get other people excited. It’s like I’d show someone the trailer (what’s a better way to quickly introduce someone to a movie than through a 90 sec trailer?), but felt like I had to defend it “Yeah don’t worry, it’ll be funny … they said they didn’t want to spoil the movie by including all the funny parts…”. Whereas I saw the trailer for District 9 and was instantly hooked and showed it to a bunch of people “See how awesome this movie looks!” … no disclaimers required.
Despite everything, I can only imagine the monumental task it was to even get this movie created so I give big props for that. And I found the movie blog extremely interesting with all the inside info about what goes into making a movie.
By: Chris on December 2, 2009
at 1:24 pm
What was the reasoning behind having the tour 6 weeks before the release. This strategy never really made sense to me. Where there expectations that WOM would carry over weeks of time till the movie premiered? How could they possible expect for the general public to give a crap over such an extended period of time? Were you expecting the hardcore fans to be pimping the film, in some cases 6 weeks straight? I would think it unlikely that the most ardent fan would be WOMing the movie to his/her circle of friends with any frequency over the weeks that one had to wait for the premier.
andy
By: andy on December 3, 2009
at 2:30 pm
Thanks for the writeup Charlie. Here are a couple additional thoughts as to why the movie fell short, that I haven’t seen discussed much elsewhere:
1) Trailer and advertising campaign was way too narrow. The Hangover campaign basically said, “Come along on a crazy ride with a few crazy guys.” Very broad. The ISTSBIH campaign basically said, “Come watch this unlikable asshole be an asshole. In a strip club.” Very narrow.
2) Tucker trashing, repeatedly, everyone who could help him – Hollywood, film critics, journalists, etc. Tucker’s attitude for years was “all those institutions suck”, and they will soon be irrelevant/extinct. You think they were rooting for him or against him?
3) The shit scene as a major draw. If you polled 100 people off the street, age 17+ and you told them that there is this movie coming out with the most epic shit scene in movie history, how many would say, “I want to SEE THAT!” Maybe 10. How many would say, “Gross. I will be sure not to go.” Maybe 50. I didn’t take my wife because of this.
This is of course in addition to (relatively) low budget, lack of big name stars, lack of marketing budget, lack of a distributor, bad trailer(s), bad reviews, and a “not-good-enough” movie.
By: Sweet on December 4, 2009
at 4:07 pm
[...] Watch any of the videos we did. We got rave reviews in each city. Why? Because they weren’t just talking about the movie — they were subconsciously reviewing the entire experience. And all the members of the crew put in 110%, night after night, to ensure that everyone’s experience was great. There were even a few people who came to multiple stops to see the movie again (i.e. relive the experience). We were effectively manipulating their feelings by giving them an amazing experience, one that they’d never had at any movie before. (Charlie Hoehn) [...]
By: | Mementum on December 6, 2009
at 4:30 pm
Appreciate your reflections on the tour and movie as an insider.
As a reader of the IHTSBIH book I also was disappointed when I saw the trailer and lowered my expectations for the movie. But I shelled out money for the tour in Lawrence and attended with a friend. My rating was 3/5 for the movie and 5/5 for the premier experience.
Even experienced Hollywood writers, producers, etc. struggle to make brilliant cinema.
Also read this article in Esquire about applying statistical analysis to movie making and thought you might enjoy it: http://www.esquire.com/features/best-and-brightest-2009/ryan-kavanaugh-1209?click=main_sr
By: Bruce on December 7, 2009
at 3:03 pm
I wonder what would have happened to us if the movie blew up to commercial success?
By: Jace Cohen on December 9, 2009
at 11:58 am
I would have hired you to take my dinner order every night.
By: charhoehn@gmail.com on December 9, 2009
at 1:53 pm
I think this is an awesome set of learnings–talk about things that only experience can internalize!!
By: Jeff Widman on December 18, 2009
at 3:00 am