Tricky Pics: A New Kind Of ’70s Disaster Film
Tricky Pics: A New Kind Of ’70s Disaster Film
3.52 p.m. ET (1952
GMT) August 17, 1999
By Tracey Middlekauff
NEW YORK — People who didn’t grow up in the 70s escaped
a lot of humiliation. Their mothers didn’t force them to wear Hang Ten terrycloth
short ensembles, they probably never had feathered hair, and they certainly
didn’t buy Shaun Cassidy’s Born Late before it became fashionably
kitsch.
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On the other hand, those who were born well enough into the decade to
escape some of its excesses didn’t get to be KISS fans the first time
around (you just had to be there). And they probably don’t know too much
about Watergate, other than what they’ve memorized — and subsequently
forgotten — for a history test.
So why would they want to see movies about events and moments in time
they can’t even remember, much less relate to?
Perhaps they don’t.
Last Friday, Detroit Rock City opened with a whimper. The film,
a 1970s-era nostalgia pic about a group of high school boys and their
quest to see KISS in concert, barely managed to scrape together $2 million
by the end of the weekend.
One week before, Dick, a satirical, revisionist history of Watergate
that traces Nixon’s downfall to a pair of silly teenage girls, made its
debut. It didn’t even make that weekend’s top 10.
The reviews for Detroit Rock City have been, to put it mildly,
bad. Very bad. Entertainment Weekly’s Owen Gleiberman predicted
the film would do poorly, because, in his words, “it sucks.” Dick,
on the other hand, has garnered very enthusiastic reviews; hailed as an
“uproariously dizzy satire” by the New York Times, critics have
called it smart, funny — even brilliant.
But who were the intended audiences for these films? The trailers for
Detroit Rock City made the movie seem like American Pie
for KISS fans. But just how old is the average KISS fan these days?
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And Dick’s ad campaign was perplexing — posters for the
film prominently feature Kirsten Dunst, who first appeared as the child-vampire
in 1994’s Interview with the Vampire, and Michelle Williams, the
teeny-bopper star of Dawson’s Creek. Do Dawson’s Creek fans
really want to see a comedy about Watergate?
Older viewers with an interest in Watergate may not be enthused about
a film that appears to be a teen comedy. In a recent — admittedly
unscientific — poll by Fox News Online of Dick viewers at
a Manhattan theater, David, 35, acknowledged his initial trepidation about
going to see the film.
“I had to get past the teen movie aspect,” David said. “The poster is
terrible. Those cutesy 13-year-old-looking girls, with all-knowing looks.
Yuk.” Another movie-goer, Leslie, 44, told Fox she was “able to look past”
the marketing.
Yet how many potential viewers were not able to look past the ad campaign?
Both Dick and Detroit Rock City seem to be casualties
of misguided marketing. But good luck getting their respective movie studios
to admit that.
Columbia Pictures, the studio behind Dick, wouldn’t comment on
the box office figures. And publicist Matt Heien insisted the movie was
targeted at a wide range of viewers. When asked why the ad campaign focused
on the films’ teen stars, he said, “This wasn’t considered a teen movie,
per se. Every time we screened the movie, the feedback was great.”
But Paul Dergarabedian, president of Exhibitor Relations, described
Dick as “a film which got good reviews but presents a real marketing
challenge. It’s a hard sell. The target audience has no idea about Watergate.”
As for older audiences, he said, “it doesn’t seem like their kind of picture
at all.”
While Dergarabedian admitted it’s “hard to quarterback” the marketing
for Dick, he does feel it would have been a good idea to gear it
to an older audience. “Maybe something like ‘The Watergate You Don’t Remember,’”
he suggested.
As for the New Line Cinema-backed Detroit Rock City, Dergarabedian
said, “That’s a tough call. How would you market that? If you’re a KISS
fan — maybe. But it’s tough when you have a movie when it’s not real
clear who the appeal is for. Period material is tough, especially when
you’re trying to sell a concept your target audience can’t relate to.”
Steven Elzer, senior vice president of corporate publicity for New Line
Cinema, said everyone over 17 was the target audience for Detroit
Rock City. When asked who the film was marketed toward, Elzer would
only comment, “It’s an R-rated film.” He declined to elaborate further,
except to explain that an R-rated film “means 17 or older.”
He had no comment on the film’s opening weekend box office.
Perhaps the studio heads should have thought a little bit more
about their target audience. Remember Leslie, the 44-year-old who managed
to ignore Dick’s marketing? She loved the film. But then, she remembers
Watergate and understands the film’s references.
But Daniel, a 26-year-old who admitted he was “not a Watergate expert”
and thought Woodward and Bernstein “may have had something to do with
the (Watergate) break-in” said the film was “stupid. Very few parts made
me laugh.”
Who can say how these two films would have done at the box office with
different marketing campaigns? Good reviews certainly don’t guarantee
a film’s success, and movies with reviews as bad as Detroit Rock City’s
have occasionally gone on to become huge hits.
But what’s done is done. And besides, KISS front man and Detroit Rock
City producer Gene Simmons apparently isn’t letting the bad box office
get him down, or diminish his ego.
“I’m sitting on Mt. Olympus, and these silly humans don’t behave the
way I want them to,” Simmons was recently quoted as saying. “Now the heavens
will open, and I will zap them with lightning bolts.”
| Tags: movies