Getting Cozy in an Institutionalized Manner

Six weeks ago, I broached the topic of Hollywood and the Church cozying up to one another in unseemly ways. In that article, I cited a real-life example of a publicist marketing a film directly to churchgoers, strategically targeting worship time as the platform for exposure.

Two weeks ago, I participated in an event of quite a different sort, and I’d like to use the incident as a means of dissecting the business of publicity—and the Church’s role in the whole thing.

As part of my editorial responsibilities with Past the Popcorn, I received a press pass for a promotional screening of a mainstream major-studio release. The screening time? 10:30 AM on a Sunday morning.

Did I go? Of course I did. My job requires me to work every third weekend anyway, so I’m not locked into a rigorous observance of the Sabbath on Sundays. (Perhaps I should be; but that’s an entirely different discussion.) And I wasn’t about to assign the film to any of our other writers, all of whom have regularly-scheduled Sunday morning responsibilities.

As it turned out, the reason for the odd screening time became evident: this family-oriented film was steeped in a worldview distinctly non-Christian. The studio was marketing the film directly to people who were the least likely to be church-goers.

So, how offensive is it that a publicist would think of screening a film for the press on a Sunday morning? How devious (or considerate) is it to screen a movie that Christians might find offensive in a context which prevents them from even seeing it? Are there precedents?

As rare as Sunday morning screenings are, I can think of one other similar occasion—a junket a couple of years ago. The talent for the film in question was only available on a Sunday, so members of the press corps were flown in on Saturday for the screening, and after a night at the hotel sat in on roundtable interviews during normal church hours. Needless to say, with such a schedule, the religious press contingent was a bit thin. Those in attendance of more orthodox persuasions managed to get in a local midnight mass and nothing was lost.

But the rarity of such events needn’t lead us to conspiratorial conclusions. Many factors influence marketing schedules: facility availability, talent schedules, print availability, access to the target demographic, budgets, and so on. The only ones whose schedules tend not to be considered are the critics; but hey—that’s our job, isn’t it? And nobody says we have to cover every movie.

I have to confess, though, to harboring a niggling suspicion that the screening I attended the other week was deliberately dodging attention from Christians. The content was offensively propagandistic, stopping just short of Da Vinci Code-style heresies. I found myself thinking, “Wow! They sure managed to sneak one by this time!” I had heard nothing from the usual suspects warning me about the content. Where were the AFA, the SBC, and A&F when I needed them?

On reflection, though, I realized that I was probably just being paranoid. Sure, the studio might have directed publicists to set up Sunday morning screenings. But my local publicist knows me very well, and knows that I write for a Christian publication. And the studios approve the invite lists. Nobody was trying to hide anything from anybody. I didn’t sneak into that screening.

So what was going on? This, plain and simple: product being delivered to the target market. It was transparent business practice served straight up, no more or less calculated than Mel Gibson courting evangelicals for The Passion of the Christ. Heck, Gibson doesn’t even care for the theology of most of his “fellow” Catholics; so why should we expect studio heads in Hollywood to behave any less commercially than Mel? They’re all businessmen.

And that gets to the crux of the matter. Publicists exist to connect products to markets. That bears repeating. Films cost extraordinary sums of money to produce, and studios can’t earn a return on their investment if ticket and DVD sales projections aren’t met.

To explain this factor a little more clearly, I’ll borrow an example from when I was president of a local community theatre. Year after year, the outfit had struggled to survive; still, I was shocked to learn when I assumed leadership that no kind of return-on-investment analysis had ever been done. And in community theatre the principle is pretty simple: butts in seats—not great works of art—pay the bills. If you conservatively estimate how many butts you can expect to have in the seats, that tells you how many dollars you’ll have in the till. The estimated number of dollars in the till then lets you know what kind of shows you can afford to produce.

So back to film: the studios have already worked all those details out before they ever talk to publicists. What the studios are after at that point is merely hiring experts who know how to get the desired number of butts in the seats. Publicists know demographics; they are experts in networking; they are savvy with communications and advertising. They know their role and they stick to it.

And publicists are in business, too. But they don’t worry about butts in seats, really; they worry about projects in the pipeline. A lack of projects means a lack of business—so the pipeline must be kept flowing. And as in any other business, publicists are all in competition with each other, vying for a share of the studios’ project-allocated advertising dollars.

The implication for the publicist is the same: just as no movie theater is likely to turn away a paying moviegoer, a publicist has to think very hard about which projects to turn down—particularly because turning down a project might mean turning away an entire studio’s business for good. That damages the pipeline in a big way; so sometimes the pipeline has to carry some sludge along with the sweet stuff.

From that perspective, film publicists are no more suspect or trustworthy than any other promoter. They need to keep movies in the pipeline to pay the bills; but to maintain their connections with the target markets, they can’t come off as complete whores, either.

And also from that perspective, publicists are merely a special case of businessmen in general. Yes, there are probably publicity firms that are the correlate of Enron; but assuredly, none are the equivalent of Mother Teresa.

So is it execrable for a “Christian” publicist to accept pay for promoting films like The Reaping or Norbit?

I suppose one can only answer that question properly if one has a sound theological answer for the dilemma of ministry-as-business; and be sure to ask yourself: what church have you ever attended that was not incorporated? In my experience, God was the true Chairman of no board on which I ever sat—no matter how prayerful the meetings may have been. Those darn sinful people (including me) always got in the way.

So if anyone out there has a pat answer for the larger question, by all means start lobbing some stones. Until then, a little humility is probably in order.

In a few weeks, I’ll address how we’ve all bought into the so-called “Attention Economy,” and how that plays out in the world of film.