Hope Springs eternal

A billboard has been abandoned on Victory Blvd. in Van Nuys, CA.

It's the billboard you see above, and it's for a movie that was released in theaters last August 8th, over five months ago. And that detail isn't going to be lost on anyone, since the billboard itself specifies the release month.

If anyone thought that maybe they left it up to advertise the DVD release of Hope Springs, well, we're nearly a month-and-a-half past that as well.

I've noticed advertisements come down too quickly (before the movie has even been released) and linger on way too long (maybe a month after the movie came out). But rarely have I seen the kind of pure neglect that I'm seeing in this case.

I drive east down Victory Blvd. most days on my way home from work, and each day I still see it there, nearing the intersection of Van Nuys Blvd. In fact, I resolved to write about this unusual scenario a couple months ago, but vowed to wait until it finally came down to see how long its stay would ultimately be.

Today I realized that you tend not to notice something not being there, so this might be a flawed strategy anyway. And I ended up having a free morning with nothing else to write about. I'll still hope to notice when it finally comes down and inform you of that fact.

Any number of factors could be at play here, but the most likely is that the ownership of this billboard has entered into some kind of limbo, meaning no new transactions can occur on it -- and leading to a lengthy period of (unnecessary in this case) free advertising for whomever happened to be the final occupant of the real estate. I have to wonder if it's also not considered to be an undesirable location for a billboard, as the approach to it is partly blocked by another billboard (or sign, or some other kind of obstruction).

In either case, it's starting to look like Hope Springs may still be around when spring springs ... and possibly even when the August release date on the billboard could logically be referencing August 2013.

A study in contrasts

Charlie St. Cloud had a pretty ho-hum opening weekend, especially for what the studio was hoping from a Zac Efron movie. It picked up $12.4 million, which projects to a likely final total in the vicinity of $30 to $40 million.

Whether that was a factor in the following decision or not, sure enough, as I was driving home from work on Monday, the ten-story Charlie St. Cloud poster I wrote about last week was being systematically removed, a mere 7 to 10 days after it was originally erected. As I passed by at 65 mph, the guys on their window washer's lift were down to just the final ribbons of the right side of Efron's face. And yesterday, the building was back to what it had always been, as seen above. (Note: After posting this, I just realized I took a picture of the wrong building. I was going to let it go, but I didn't want those of you who compared and contrasted to think I was crazy. Or lying.)

It's not so unusual, I guess. All movie advertising is geared toward the opening weekend, after which it is assumed that the film -- unless it's really special, which Charlie St. Cloud isn't -- will get eclipsed by the latest and greatest new release. It's an endless cycle with very predictable outcomes, as reflected in a steady box office decline that's so reliable, it could probably come with its own mathematical formula. They could have left the Charlie St. Cloud poster up for another week, but to what purpose? Just because it was such an effort to put it up in the first place? No, this is the real world -- it's time to move on.

The reason I'm really writing about it today is not because of Charlie St. Cloud, per se, but because of the contrast with another movie advertisement that's just three-tenths of a mile up the 405 freeway.

Specifically, this one:















That's right, your eyes are not deceiving you. That's a poster for Just Wright, which was released on May 14th, nearly three months ago. And though IMDB still lists box office updates for it, which means a scant couple thousand dollars here and there are still trickling in, the movie has not cleared more than a million dollars since the week ending June 6th.

If Charlie St. Cloud is emblematic of the pragmatic approach to advertising, I'm always interested in examples of the opposite approach, which involves essentially abandoning a billboard and continuing to pay rent on it long after the movie in question has come and gone. It's as if time is standing still at the top of this signpost for Hollywood Park Casino -- which I've always found somewhat of a curiosity itself, as the casino is actually located at least a mile or two to the east of the highway, rather than directly underneath, as this sign seems to indicate. (It's actually a racetrack, but I'll use the terminology they use for themselves.)

My best guess is that this is no ordinary advertising space open to the public, that Hollywood Park Casino advertises movies (or other services) in that space that they believe will somehow bring more people to Hollywood Park Casino. However, the only relationships I can see between Just Wright and a gambling facility are pretty flimsy, because you're gambling on horse racing here, not on basketball. If I were being really cynical, I'd say the folks at Hollywood Park are advertising a movie they think will bring more blacks to the casino, because they operate under the theory that blacks are more addicted to gambling than their white counterparts.

But I'd never be that cynical, would I?

Acceptable pandering

The closest mall to our house has undergone a massive overhaul in the past year. We thought the nation's economic woes might scrap some of those plans, but lo and behold, the grand re-opening came about a week ago, the same October 2009 date that had always been promised on signs outside, that always seemed so far in the future.

This is not a particularly important event in our lives, because a) my wife and I aren't really mall people -- in fact, aren't at all; b) even if we were mall people, we might not choose this one as our regular mall.

Quite simply, this mall has made no bones about being geared toward African-Americans.

And because we are such racists, we would never want to go where such people reside.

Of course that's not true -- if you knew me better, you'd know I make jokes like this to make fun of a person who would actually say such things in earnest, even though I know that's a dangerous line to walk, appropriate for the right company only. Naturally, I consider a website open to the entire world to be "the right company." Then again, I haven't revealed my identity, plus, I'm taking great pains to explain the semantics of my own joke, so you don't misinterpret what I'm saying.

But really, I shouldn't say we don't ever go to this mall, because I've probably been about a dozen times in the three-and-a-half years I've lived within shouting distance. I usually make at least one stop there each Christmas shopping season, which is the one time of year malls become somewhat useful to me. I've also gone there to get my watch band fixed, and to get a quick bite to eat. I'm no stranger.

In fact, I've been just enough times to be really dispirited by the place. Not because it's not a generally dynamic space with generally useful stores, and definitely not because I'm in the minority among a sizeable number of blacks and a smaller number of Latinos.

No, the real reason it dispirits me is because many of the stores go to great lengths to pander to those black customers.

More jewelry stores per capita than most malls. More places to buy pro sports jerseys per capita than most malls. More stores selling the latest and greatest in basketball shoes. And only one small bookstore, not even a full-fledged Borders, but a Borders Express. This is why I might not want to make this my regular mall. By shopping there, I'm essentially saying this kind of "racial profiling," as it were, is not off-putting.

You might say this mall is just a reflection of what the market will bear. Maybe this isn't the best mall to have, say, a tanning salon. And maybe there was a more diverse representation of stores in the past, but some of those places went out of business because they weren't getting enough sales. Most of the people who go there aren't offended by it, so I probably shouldn't be either.

But you know me -- either white guilt or liberal guilt or whatever I have causes me to become offended in situations where I think racial minorities are being abused. There are probably worse afflictions I could have.

And so it is that I probably should feel a little strange that the area of new construction in this mall -- which includes a Target, a Best Buy, a Gold's Gym, and a BJ's Restaurant & Brewhouse -- also has a 100-foot-tall advertisement for Disney's The Princess and the Frog plastered on the prime outer wall facing the 405 freeway.

It seems to be saying, in no uncertain terms, "Even though we've made a lot of expensive changes (i.e. changes directed toward white customers) at this mall, we still want your business, black folks."

Well, after all this build-up, I'm going to surprise you:

I'm okay with it.

I noticed it -- that's why I'm writing about it, of course -- but I'm okay with it.

You see, as much as I tend to be disappointed by the way products are marketed to black people -- especially when malls in black areas stock only those products -- I'm even more disappointed by overt attempts at gentrification. Perhaps I am totally cynical, but I have to imagine that the only way such large sums of money would be budgeted to overhaul this mall were if its owners wanted to branch out to whites. After all, it's not like the neighborhood where the mall resides is all black. It's almost as close to Marina del Rey as it is to Inglewood, so it should be a nice, harmonious mix of all ethnicities. A mall where the United Colors of Benneton store actually spills out into the food court and onto the escalators.

But the reality of the situation is, it's a black mall. A black mall whose very viability appears to have been called into question, hence resulting in these massive changes. (Which my wife and I haven't even seen yet. We were going to go last Saturday, but then the day got away from us.)

So if the giant Princess and the Frog poster is really saying "Hey guys, this is still your mall," then hell yeah, I'm okay with it.

Even more optimistically: Maybe the changes to this mall were not white-driven. Maybe the Westfield Group, which owns this and a number of other malls in Los Angeles, is not making a particular play for a new kind of customer. Maybe, like Disney, which this fall is releasing its first film with an African-American main character, Westfield just recognizes the changing face of America, where whites will be a minority inside a couple decades, and purchasing power is (somewhat) equally in the hands of blacks and Latinos as it is in the hands of whites. Maybe Westfield sees a post-Obama America, where presumptions are not made about people's shopping habits based on the color of their skin. After all, they're an Australian company, so they've already got the benefit of the doubt in our household.

So instead of doing the Stephen Colbert finger wag at Westfield for what they may have done in the past, I'm going to give them the temporary thumbs up for what they may be doing in the future. Same to Disney.

Until I actually see the new mall myself, at which point I'm sure I'll find something to carp about.

A shout-out to screenwriters

I was driving down Venice Blvd. today when I saw an electronic billboard for Whip It!, Drew Barrymore's directorial debut, which was released last Friday.

What was unusual on this billboard were the names listed. Drew Barrymore? Check. Ellen Page? Check. Shauna Cross?

Who?

I thought it might be one of the stars, but if so, how come I've never heard of her? I'm obsessive about knowing the names of actors -- a post for another time -- so I don't come across many movie advertisements where a star is big enough to have his/her name on the poster, but small enough for me to not know.

Then as I got a little closer, I saw it said "screenplay by" in smaller letters above Ms. Cross' name.

It struck me as funny, but only because it was so unusual, not because she shouldn't get the credit. As I've discussed on this blog previously, our common practice is to assign "authorship" of a film to its director, even though most times the director is not literally a person who does any "authoring." But the screenwriter is the person who, in most cases, originated or at least adapted the story, without whom the director wouldn't have anything to do.

But screenwriters usually only get hyped if they are someone noteworthy -- Charlie Kaufman, William Goldman, Robert Towne, Diablo Cody, Dave Eggers, etc. Someone whose previous screenwriting efforts have been so heralded, they've been given more credit for their films than the person who directed.

So I looked up Shauna Cross when I got home, and found out that she had had only one previous assignment to her credit: a 2007 comedy called Taking Five, which does not star anyone I've ever heard of. On wikipedia, I saw that she is also the author of the book Derby Girl, on which Whip It! is based. It must be semi-autobiographical, because Cross is also a member of the Los Angeles Derby Dolls, who have become an only semi-ironic pastime that has become semi-popular with Angelenos.

Still, it's safe to say that most people have never heard of Shauna Cross. So it's hard to imagine, purely from an advertising perspective, what advantage there is to having her name on the billboard. It's true that this is where Cross lives -- not unusual for screenwriters -- and that she has probably gained some limited fame as a member of the local roller derby team. But it would truly be limited -- my guess is that of the people who do go to see the Dolls, few become involved to the point of getting acquainted with them.

Then there's another, sort of far-fetched theory: that Diablo Cody herself set some kind of precedent. Cody wrote the Ellen Page hit Juno, and became an overnight celebrity as a result. So maybe, just maybe, the studio thought that people would be drawn to another screenwriting-heavy film featuring Ellen Page. In fact, Cody has another thing in common with Cross -- they are both unlikely screenwriters. Cody's celebrity was perhaps not due primarily to her clever (sometimes too clever) dialogue in Juno, but the fact that she was, famously, once an exotic dancer. Exotic dancer? Roller derby girl? Close enough.

But I'd like to pin the credit on Drew Barrymore. She's produced numerous films, so she knows who's who and what's what on a set. If my theory is correct, she wanted to be magnanimous and share her "authorship" with a truly deserving partner. Barrymore seems to me like the kind of person who values a good script, and wants to spread the love if the movie is a hit. After all, there would be no Whip It! without Shauna Cross.

Sadly for Whip It!, it failed to clear $5 million this past weekend, but at least some critics seemed to like it.

Me? I can't promise to see it in the theater -- I didn't make it to Zombieland or any of the other films I intended to see this last weekend -- but it looks cute, and I'll definitely give it a watch eventually.

As for getting to a Los Angeles Derby Dolls game? match? roll?, well, one thing at a time.

Matrix-minded

I've seen the large advertisement for Sleep Dealer enough times on my way home from work that I thought it was time I finally wrote something about it.

The little indie first caught my attention because of the rather arresting image you see to the right, which not so subliminally calls to mind a little 1999 film by Larry and Andy Wachowski. There's a sizeable billboard for Sleep Dealer perched about a quarter-of-a-mile from my house, and it's not the only one I've seen around town.

It's one of those movies you look at and can't quite comprehend, because you haven't heard of it, but it also sort of looks like it has a budget. Every time I'd sit at the traffic light contemplating it, I'd tell myself I had to look it up on IMDB when I got home. On about the sixth time I actually remembered to do it.

It turns out Sleep Dealer was at Sundance in 2008, and true to its appearance from the poster, features some kind of future-world big-brother network of computers as one of its main plot elements. I'm always curious about science fiction, since it's such a hard genre to do well. But I was even more curious about this particular movie, because I'd squinted to see the names listed in the billboard credits, and hadn't recognized any of them. In fact, most of them seemed to end in the letter A.

Yep, here was a large billboard in the middle of the city for a movie made in Mexico, by a Mexican, and starring Mexicans. LA's definitely the right city if you're trying to get Mexican viewers, but that's simply not something anyone tries to do here, at least not with movies. TV and radio shows, yes, but not movies. Mexicans aren't seen as a viable market. Maybe the studios just don't think they like movies.

But more generally ... when I thought about it, I couldn't remember the last time I'd seen a billboard for any movie that wasn't one of the two or three studio offerings that come out each week. I have plenty of other ways to be aware of those other movies, to be sure, but it's not because they're advertised. Especially not advertised on billboards.

I don't know the actual costs of these things, but to me, an outdoor campaign usually seems a more expensive advertising endeavor than TV. It seems to be the greater indication that you're fully committed to the movie. So I expected to see a TV campaign for Sleep Dealer accompany its arresting billboard. But the movie comes out on Friday, and I still haven't seen it.

Then I finally got it.

On that billboard, they can make people think they'll be seeing the next Matrix. But if they played moving images ... well, then the jig would be up, wouldn't it?

So Sleep Dealer appears to be the rare movie that benefits more from a single image than a number of them in sequence -- as movies are actually made. Then again, maybe it's not so rare. Every straight-to-video movie in the video store tries to grab you with a false promise of seeming coolness. Why should Sleep Dealer be any different?

Well, because it's actually going to theaters, that's why. That one picture of Matrix-like plugs going into Matrix-like outlets on the Matrix-like back of a Matrix-like guy with a Matrix-like shaved head seems quite a gamble for a movie getting released in theaters, especially one that may not be able to back it up.

To confirm my theory, I just went online to check out the trailer. Yep. I can hardly believe it's getting a theatrical release, and these C-grade images would shut down the core Matrix audience in no time flat.

Hey, I'm not saying it will be bad. I'm just saying that movies like this don't get theatrical releases anymore. They don't even get the chance to be good.

For their sake, let's just hope appropriating the image of Keanu Reeves for their advertising campaign gives them that opportunity.

Larger than larger-than-life

Note: Here's a little throwaway I've been meaning to post since last week, but never quite generated the necessary enthusiasm. Well, I'm babysitting a meeting of all my company's general managers to make sure there are no technical problems, and it's hard to get any work done, and the actual content of the meeting has no relevance to me, so it seems like a good time to bang this out before it loses its timeliness.

For about two months, up until last Friday, I drove past this monolithic visage of Will Smith every day on my way home from work. It's an advertisement for his widely panned prestige picture Seven Pounds, which was released just before Christmas -- though I swear that photo is at least ten years old, looking more like Smith looked in Six Degrees of Separation than now. Re-teaming with Gabriele Muccino, his director on the well-received The Pursuit of Happyness, was not a happy pursuit this time around.

However, I did get a certain enjoyment looking up at this massive incarnation of Mr. Smith. Covering two sides of the office building in question -- one directly facing the freeway, one facing the traffic that rides south to north on the 405 -- I felt like the former Fresh Prince was serving as the patron saint of highways, ensuring us all a safe and incident-free commute.

Sure, I consider Smith generally pleasant to look at. And it was really trippy seeing him during one of our winter windstorms, when the yards upon yards of fabric billowed like ocean waves. But more than that, something about the sheer massiveness itself was impressive, if only as an indicator of the ballsiness of modern advertisers. Especially since it remained up for a good month after it was clear people were not really interested in this film, which grossed only $70 million, Smith's lowest take since Ali in 2001. In fact, on the day it was taken down, the movie had slipped out of all but one theater within a 25-mile radius of my house.

This "hang it and forget it" mentality is not surprising considering the massive scope of the ad. Just eyeballing it, it appears to consume nearly ten floors of the building, and its entire width. And on two sides, at that. When you're dealing with something like that, you can't afford to switch it up every week, in accordance with the vicissitudes of the North American box office.

When first contemplating this ad -- not the only one of its kind in Los Angeles, but probably the largest -- I considered it the meeting point between the rising ambition of the advertising industry and the plummeting fortunes of the economy. The mission of dreaming up every more inescapable advertising seemed to align perfectly with the vacating of office buildings, necessitated by the economic collapse.

At least, I assumed the building that was home to the Seven Pounds ad was vacant. Had to be, right? I noticed that another building along the 405 began hosting such advertisements immediately after its prior tenant -- which employs one of my friends -- picked up and left. Besides, how can you hang an ad like this over occupied offices? Covering the windows as the Seven Pounds ad does, it necessarily blocks out some percentage of the light -- how much depends on what color the poster is where you're located.

Well, just recently I learned that's too much to assume. In fact, the increasing prevalence of these so-called "super-graphics" has inspired the city of Los Angeles to pass a three-month moratorium on all new outdoor advertising. I guess the city needs to revisit its own rules on outdoor advertising, having not legally anticipated the repercussions of ads like the Seven Pounds ad. In fact, I read a different article in which building tenants complained about the way the change in the sunlight affects their ability to function as a business. I should think so.

How much does this have to do with movies? Not much, I guess, now that I look back on it. But it does mean that come this spring, I probably shouldn't expect Zachary Quinto's Captain Spock to replace Will Smith as the next patron saint of highways.