This morning brought a pleasant surprise as I went about my regular news hunting rounds for ScreenAnarchy. I began as I always do, sorting through email before heading off to check a list of forty or so bookmarked sites that host trailers from all around the world, the Apple trailer site among them. And what did I find at Apple? My own name staring back at me twice, with reviews I wrote quoted prominently in the PR materials for both Jim Mickle's Stake Land and Gustavo Hernandez's La Casa Muda.
I'm not going to lie to you. It felt good. It's nice to see your work recognized and it's nice to see that the industry considers you influential enough to build your opinions into their marketing campaigns. The problem is that only one of the opinions attributed to me is actually mine. Let me explain.
The quote used for Stake Land is one I embrace wholeheartedly. I absolutely believe that Jim Mickle and company have created the best American-produced horror film of the past year here and it deserves all the love that I can heap upon it. La Casa Muda, however ... well, that's a different matter.
To be clear, the quote used is factually accurate. The marketing people involved here broke no rules, and they did not put any words into my mouth. I did, in fact, use this phrase. But by stripping it out of context they are using it to mean something quite different than the clear and overriding point of the review I wrote for the film when it screened in Cannes. The words are quite different from the meaning.
Here's the quote that they used: "A strong, compelling piece of work."
It seems clear, yes? A clear cut endorsement, a statement that I believe the film is worth your time and money. And I totally understand why they would want to use a quote like this. From a marketing standpoint it's absolutely perfect. But now here it is again, as I originally wrote it, in context as part of the concluding paragraph of my review of the film:
The difference should be immediately clear. The words are there, yeah, but set in context the message is something entirely different than the message presented in the marketing materials.On certain levels La Casa Muda is a strong, compelling piece of work - one that showcases what can be done by talented people on a tiny budget. There is a lot of talent on display here. That is absolutely true. But there is also a very fundamental narrative failure that undercuts the characters and the audience's ability to engage with them to a serious degree. In the end it promises more for the future of the talents behind it than it delivers in the present.
This sort of thing is not a new game, by any stretch, and those in question here are actually playing far more ethically than many in that I did actually say what they said I did. I've had far more 'creative' quotes attributed to me in the past. But this is still something that matters and something that we shouldn't let slide too easily.
It should matter to you because you're being manipulated with the goal being to take money out of your pocket and put it into the distributors. This is true of any advertising campaign in any medium but it's something that we tend to put out of our minds too easily and we could use a reminder from time to time.
And it matters to me because I'm the guy being used to manipulate you. And that bothers me. It bothers me as a matter of principal and it bothers me on a more practical level because - should the distributor succeed in separating your money from your pocket after you've seen these ads and you walk away disappointed - on some level I'm going to come away looking like an ass for supposedly giving a ringing endorsement to a film that I actually think is very near fatally flawed. I'm the guy who ends up getting slagged on message boards as being a shill or 'liking everything' based on pull quotes used on posters and DVD covers and advertisements that may or may not reflect what I actually think about the films in question. And that kind of sucks.
I guess what I'm saying here is Buyer Beware. You see a glowing quote on a poster? Google it before accepting it at face value. Do your research before buying your tickets. And remember that simply being written down doesn't make something true.