{"id":2095,"date":"2009-07-13T10:54:02","date_gmt":"2009-07-13T18:54:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/?p=2095"},"modified":"2009-07-14T11:16:05","modified_gmt":"2009-07-14T19:16:05","slug":"bruno","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/2009\/07\/13\/bruno\/","title":{"rendered":"Bruno"},"content":{"rendered":"

Am I the only person sickened by the overhype on this movie?<\/p>\n

This is why we hate the mainstream press.\u00c2\u00a0 Isn’t there a single outlet that can say no to hype?\u00c2\u00a0 That’s what this was, pure and simple.\u00c2\u00a0 Endless stunts that would make Lee Solters smile in his grave.\u00c2\u00a0 But this isn’t the 1950’s anymore, when we’re victims of few news outlets and what we know is controlled by a small coterie of power-mongers.\u00c2\u00a0 Today, we have a more flattened society.\u00c2\u00a0 The stars have been pulled down to earth and the hoi polloi have risen from their buried positions to roam amongst the so-called he-men of the universe.\u00c2\u00a0 Imagine some nut appearing in front of your high school dressed in a bizarre outfit every day for months. Would you think he was cool?\u00c2\u00a0 You’d avoid him, and if the school newspaper covered the story at all, they’d report how creepy he was.\u00c2\u00a0 Instead, in the real world, we’ve got a zillion dollar media eating up all this bullshit with no discernment whatsoever.\u00c2\u00a0 Like seeing any film will truly change our lives, never mind some improvised comedy.<\/p>\n

Is it improvised?\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t know.\u00c2\u00a0 "Borat" was.\u00c2\u00a0 So this one probably is too.\u00c2\u00a0 I didn’t love this guy as Ali G, I thought there were a few moments of laughter in "Borat", I spend little time thinking of Sacha Baron Cohen and his "creativity".\u00c2\u00a0 But, then I’m bombarded with his bullshit, I just can’t steer clear!\u00c2\u00a0 Michael Jackson dies and mourners can’t reach his star on Hollywood Boulevard, there’s a "Bruno" promotion!<\/p>\n

But I thought maybe I was too old.\u00c2\u00a0 That the younger generation, which hasn’t been subjected to decades of market manipulation, could be convinced "Bruno" is the hot new thing and flock to the theaters.<\/p>\n

But they didn’t!<\/p>\n

Do not believe the press stories, that "Bruno" opened at number one!\u00c2\u00a0 Grossing $30.4 million!\u00c2\u00a0 They’re true, but they don’t prove the point.<\/p>\n

Point is, "Bruno" is an amazing failure.\u00c2\u00a0 How do we know?\u00c2\u00a0 By the steep decline in ticket sales over the weekend.<\/p>\n

The "Wall Street Journal" reports that on Friday, "Bruno" sold $14.4 million worth of tickets.\u00c2\u00a0 But, when word got out what a stinker it was, receipts fell 39% on Saturday to $8.8 million.\u00c2\u00a0 And if you expect sales to steady hereafter, with months worth of lucrative playdates across the nation, you haven’t been alive for the last decade.\u00c2\u00a0 Only the best films can play for weeks on end.\u00c2\u00a0 Like "The Hangover" and "Up".<\/p>\n

Now if you know you’ve got a stinker, best to refuse to show it to reviewers and make as much money as you can before word gets out.\u00c2\u00a0 But today, word gets out almost instantly!\u00c2\u00a0 Read this article about the Twitter effect: <\/p>\n

\n
Social Networking Making Friday The Only Day That Counts<\/a><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In the old days, you could text to one person saying the movie sucked.\u00c2\u00a0 Today you can tell thousands, instantly!<\/p>\n

So when you create that marketing campaign for your new record, carefully scripting all the hype, the underlying product better be fantastic, or you’re going to have a sales day of one.\u00c2\u00a0 When the hard core purchase it out of sheer pent-up demand.\u00c2\u00a0 Because everybody else is going to get the word and stay away.<\/p>\n

In other words, the nineties paradigm is dead.\u00c2\u00a0 Wherein Clive Davis or Tommy Mottola orchestrates TV appearances and print pieces trumpeting the new release by a star and a dumb public pays up to twenty dollars for a CD and finds out there’s only one good track.\u00c2\u00a0 Homey don’t play that no more.\u00c2\u00a0 If I’ve never heard of you, I want the track at best.\u00c2\u00a0 To buy more, I’m going to have to hear more.\u00c2\u00a0 To overpay to see you live I’m going to have to be convinced you’ve got a career, that you’re here to stay.\u00c2\u00a0 You can’t jam anything down people’s throats anymore.<\/p>\n

Unlike films, records only succeed if they’ve got a long shelf life.\u00c2\u00a0 You just can’t sell enough in a day or a week to recoup your costs. So better to create product that sells itself!\u00c2\u00a0 That is so good, people will embrace it and tell others about it!<\/p>\n

At least the movie studios are not ignorant enough to blame their customers when a film fails.\u00c2\u00a0 The record companies say it leaked before release date, that their marketing was undermined, that the game just isn’t fair.\u00c2\u00a0 It was never fair!\u00c2\u00a0 It was rigged in their favor! But now the customer has power, and is using it.<\/p>\n

I’m down on Sacha Baron Cohen.\u00c2\u00a0 I’d like to see him take his millions and retire.\u00c2\u00a0 The constant overhype, for over a year before release date, has made me hate him.\u00c2\u00a0 Yes, I’m on backlash.\u00c2\u00a0 He’d have to earn my trust before I’d give him another dollar.\u00c2\u00a0 Or create something great, that stands on its own merits, that I hear about from others.\u00c2\u00a0 Yes, there’s a cost to jamming.\u00c2\u00a0 We burn out on you by seeing your mug in front of us at all turns.\u00c2\u00a0 We want to see you fail.\u00c2\u00a0 The mantra of the Internet age is slow and steady.\u00c2\u00a0 Actually, you’ve got to be afraid of the reverse.\u00c2\u00a0 A sudden explosion that makes you famous overnight and creates unreal expectations.\u00c2\u00a0 The dreaded Pitchfork syndrome.\u00c2\u00a0 The site makes you, you sell product and tour to many, then the site says your next album is not as good and you’re OVER!<\/p>\n

Be careful what you wish for.\u00c2\u00a0 If you do happen to blow up on the Net, don’t go on your publicity cleanup tour.<\/p>\n

Nobody at the company will tell you any of this.\u00c2\u00a0 They don’t give a shit about you.\u00c2\u00a0 They just need someone to sell.\u00c2\u00a0 If your career burns out, they’ll find someone else.\u00c2\u00a0 Agents want their ten percent, labels want their billing…\u00c2\u00a0 Long term thinkers are few and far between in the business world.\u00c2\u00a0 Not only on Wall Street, but in music.\u00c2\u00a0 We hear about monetization, we hear all the business bullshit.\u00c2\u00a0 But the public has a fine-tuned bullshit detector that will kill your income overnight.\u00c2\u00a0 Never forget it.\u00c2\u00a0 An artists is in business with his fans, not his manager, not his agent, not his label and not his promoter.<\/p>\n

<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Am I the only person sickened by the overhype on this movie? This is why we hate the mainstream press.\u00c2\u00a0 Isn’t there a single outlet that can say no to hype?\u00c2\u00a0 That’s what this was, pure and simple.\u00c2\u00a0 Endless stunts that would make Lee Solters smile in his grave.\u00c2\u00a0 But this isn’t the 1950’s anymore, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2095","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-media"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s96vPs-bruno","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2095"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2095\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2097,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2095\/revisions\/2097"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}