Martin Grove’s Filmmaker Focus – 05/11/11 Morgan Spurlock – “POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold”

Watching a re-run of “Jaws” the other night I saw something I’d never noticed before.

Well, actually, what I noticed was something I didn’t see. It was product placement and the reason I didn’t see it was that it wasn’t there.

Now the only reason I realized it wasn’t there was that I’d just had a look at Morgan Spurlock’s provocative and Oscar worthy documentary “POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold.”

Having seen “Greatest,” I couldn’t help but notice there wasn’t any product placement in Steven Spielberg’s 1975 classic. There was, for instance, a scene where shark expert Richard Dreyfuss visits the home of police chief Roy Scheider and his wife (Lorraine Gary). Dreyfuss brings a bottle of white wine and a bottle of red, which they drink with dinner while talking about the girl swimmer who may — or at that point, may not — have just been killed by a shark.

What’s interesting is that Spielberg never shows us those wine bottle labels to tell us what they’re drinking. Either the bottles are turned sideways or the labels go by so quickly we can’t read them.

All we know is that they’re drinking red and white wine. Today, of course, this would be a major product placement opportunity for a prestigious Napa vineyard or an importer of expensive French Burgundy or maybe a big commercial winery.

It got me thinking that if “Jaws” were being filmed now Spielberg would, at least, be tempted to take big money from companies eager to put their brands in his movie. Those plain old beach umbrellas would be promoting CocaCola or somebody’s beer today. Those tight jeans passing by would boast designer logos. And Scheider’s police chief would be driving a sporty new SUV.

But in 1975 we weren’t living in the age of product placement. We were only just entering the age of blockbuster movies thanks to “Jaws.” Its $7.1 million opening June 22, 1975 was astonishing at the time and so was its wide release with 409 screens. Needless to say, its $470 million in worldwide ticket sales dwarfed what other pictures were grossing in 1975.

The contrast between then and now is fascinating. Spurlock understands how movies have become part of Madison Avenue’s tool kit for getting messages in front of people without us even realizing it. With “Greatest” his goal was to finance making a film about product placement by selling product placements to raise the production money. Hence, the film’s unwieldy but sponsored official title: “POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold.”

How Spurlock convinced POM Wonderful to promote its popular pomegranate-based drink in “Greatest” is one of many well documented events in the movie.

Among the film’s other high profile sponsors, all of whose brands are nicely plugged in “Greatest,” are Hyatt Hotels & Resorts, JetBlue Airways and MovieTickets.com, the worldwide leader in advance movie ticketing — where many people seeing “Greatest” are purchasing their tickets.

MovieTickets.com CEO Joel Cohen and executive vice president Walt Borchers (pictured here with Spurlock), who were on hand for the film’s L.A. premiere, were among the first companies to say yes to Spurlock.

Recalling his first meeting with Spurlock over drinks in New York, Borchers said, “The pitch lasted all of about 10 seconds. I knew right away that it was a perfect fit for the MovieTickets.com brand. We had a great time working with Morgan and his team on the entire project.”

“Greatest” was a 2011 Official Selection at the Sundance Film Festival, Miami International Film Festival and SXSW Film Festival. After opening via Sony Pictures Classics in platform release in New York and Los Angeles, it rolls out nationally Friday (May 13).

Directed by Morgan Spurlock, the film was written by Spurlock and Jeremy Chilnick, and produced by Spurlock, Chilnick and Abbie Hurewitz through Spurlock’s production company, Warrior Poets, along with Snoot Entertainment’s Keith Calder and Jessica Wu, who produced.

I was happy to catch up recently with Spurlock to talk about making the movie.

Q: How did the idea for this movie originate?

A: The original idea came from a couple conversations I had with my producing partner Jeremy Chilnick talking about the pervasiveness of advertising and marketing and how it just seems like you can’t go anywhere from the minute you wake up to when you go to bed without somebody trying to sell you something somewhere. And that even includes our entertainment — film and television.

Now you feel when you’re watching shows people are saying dialogue that sounds like I’m watching a commercial. So we said, “Why don’t we make a film where we need products to pay to be in the movie and kind of pull the curtain back on marketing and advertising — that we have to get financed by these corporations?” We felt that would be a great jumping off point.

Q: Now there was a time when if we saw somebody drinking soda in a movie, that bottle of soda was typically turned so you wouldn’t really see its label. Products were generic. They’d create some generic beer for a movie. Now it’s totally different.

A: Now it’s big money.

Q: Let me ask you about how you brought in some of the companies you showcase in the movie. For instance, how did you get MovieTickets.com on board?

A: I ended up being connected with Walt through a friend of mine, Matt Kovacs, who works for his media agency in L.A. Matt and I went to college together. One of the first people I called when I put the idea of the film together and we first started calling brands was Matt because I knew he represented a bunch of companies.

I said, “Here’s the idea of the movie we have” and he said, “You have to meet our client. You have to meet Walt Borchers at MovieTickets.com.” They were going to be in New York serendipitously enough like a week later. So I met them at a bar one night. We started talking about the idea for the film and Walt said, ‘I love it. I love everything about it. We would love to be a part of it.’ It was literally that easy. Like I told him the idea for the film and he said, “This is great. It’s smart.” I was blown away that they were that excited about it.

Q: I’ve seen the microsite they created for your movie on MovieTickets.com and it’s very impressive.

A: What they did with the microsite was great. We produced an original commercial for them that ran in movie theatres — in all the theatres that are MovieTickets supporters where you can buy tickets for those chains. It was thousands of screens that they ran on. They put posters that co-branded myself with them and (that were) a co-promotion for the film in those movie theatres.

We wanted to find companies that could really provide and give us that co-promotion that big blockbuster movies have and that could give us that support. MovieTickets was one of the first ones to jump at the chance of that. They were the first one to literally be out in the marketplace because their commercials started running about four weeks before our trailer started running in movie theatres. The posters went up. It was like a teaser trailer for the movie before the film came out.

Q: I was looking at the commercials that MovieTickets did with you and I’ve got to ask you about one, in particular, called “Morgan Gets the Boot” where they toss you out of the building. When I looked at it for the first time I asked Walt, “What sort of padding did they have on that sidewalk?” I couldn’t really tell how they managed to do that. And he said, “No. There was no padding. They actually threw him repeatedly — and he got hurt.”

A: I got thrown seven or eight times onto the sidewalk. What you see at the end of me being thrown out of the building is they threw me so high up in the air that when I hit the ground my neck snapped and my head cracked onto the sidewalk. I got a concussion. We ended up still shooting for the rest of the day. I got a brain scan, an MRI, two days later when I flew to Los Angeles because I was having really bad headaches. The doctor was like, “Your brain is really swollen. This is not a good thing.”

Q: I’ve heard of filmmakers giving their all to make a movie, but this is going beyond!

A: Yeah. I went above and beyond the call of duty for this with the MovieTickets spots. That’s for sure.

Q: But you’re okay?

A: In the end, I’m okay. Most of my friends and family may debate the actual brain damage that occurred, but I think the commercial came out great.

Q: How much money did you raise to make the movie?

A: The budget for the film was $1.5 million. We raised all of that money through brand partners — through sponsors. And we also had three commercials that aired within the film for our top three sponsors of the movie that also came from their marketing push for the film. So the full budget of the film, including the commercials, was $1.8 million.

Q: How long did you shoot?

A: We began in January 2009 and we literally shot right up until a week before Sundance in January 2011. We sold it at Sundance. It was really exciting.

Q: As you look back at production, what were the biggest challenges? It all looks so easy in the finished movie.

A: People think that getting the brands on board looked so easy just (by) calling those companies, not realizing that I called over 600 companies to sponsor the movie. The percentage of success rate that we had with this film was 2.5 percent. But 97.5 percent of the time, people wanted nothing to do with the movie.

Q: But in the end you got enough done to make the movie.

A: That’s exactly right. To make the movie and tell the story we wanted to tell, I had to retain final cut of the movie, which was a big deal. So it’s pretty great (we could get it done that way).

Q: In the movie you present a really interesting concept as to whether you’re selling out or buying in.

A: What the film does is (show that) I’m buying into the whole idea of Hollywood filmmaking. To have a big special film and get it out to the most amount of people, what you need to have are these types of co-promotional partners to help create your marketing campaign, to help spread the word — like we did with the theatres with MovieTickets. To get those promotions happening in places where normally you wouldn’t have promotions. To have a microsite set up like we had on their website.

But, at the same time, we avoided selling out, in my opinion, because we were able to retain final cut of the movie. Nobody got to come in and dictate how we edited the film. They weren’t able to come in and re-edit the film if they weren’t happy about how certain scenes came out. To me that was the most important thing.

Q: You have interviews with some very high profile people like Ralph Nader and top movie directors like JJ Abrams, Brett Ratner and Quentin Tarantino. How difficult was it to get people like that to participate?

A: It was a lot of phone calls. We called Ralph a couple of times before we were able to nail it down. The same thing with the directors. It was hard because there were directors I wanted to get that we couldn’t get. Like I wanted to talk to Michael Bay so badly and we couldn’t get Michael Bay. I really wanted to talk to (“Iron Man” franchise director) Jon Favreau. We couldn’t get Jon Favreau. “Iron Man 2” had more product placements in it than any other movie last year so we really wanted to speak to him. But we still got great people — a really diverse group of people who all come from different places within the business and have their own unique points of view.

Q: And you had an interview with Ben Silverman.

A: That’s right. Ben Silverman is the former chairman of NBC (NBC Entertainment) and now has launched a whole new company (Electus) that literally is all about branded entertainment.

Q: Now that you’re an expert on this, let me ask you, is product placement a good thing or a bad thing?

A: Yes. (LAUGHS) I think all of the above. I’m a realist. We live in a world where people drink Coke, people drive Toyotas, they wear Reeboks. So to think you’re never going to see those things in a show that’s supposedly taking place in the real world is crazy. You can’t suddenly come out with a whole new fake brand just for movies. I’m even more distracted when I see people drinking out of white cans that say “BEER.” Unless you’re creating an alternative universe like Kevin Smith does or Quentin Tarantino does, where it’s filled with fake products created for their films, it’s a very different thing.

But at the same time I hate when they overshadow the narrative — where it does feel like you’re watching a commercial in the middle of a show. I hate when things like that happen and I think that ultimately what needs to happen is you need to kick the brand (reps) out of the writers’ room. You need to let the creative people be creative. Let them do their jobs and let them figure out how to make it work.

Q: It’s interesting that so many independent filmmakers struggle to get financing to make their movies. Maybe if they went about trying to do some product placement deals they’d be able to make the films they want to make.

A: Yeah. I think this does a great job of kind of opening that door for independent filmmakers. The fact that we were able to make a movie about this industry— about the film business, about advertising and marketing — using their money and to pull the curtain back the way we did is a real testament to the companies who signed on and their creativity and marketing savvy. Hopefully, it will open up the door to other independent filmmakers trying to get the chance. Up till now, you’d never find a company that would want to get involved with an independent film simply because they would feel that the scope wasn’t large enough, the audience wasn’t going to be big enough, it wasn’t going to give them enough bang for their buck. I think now they see that it doesn’t have to be millions of dollars.

You can give an independent filmmaker 25 grand. I think back to when I was making “Supersize Me,” 25 grand would have gone a long way. So if you’re making an independent movie and somebody says, “Listen, why can’t that character drive this pick-up truck? You have him in the script driving a pick-up truck. Why not have it be this pick-up truck?” You’ll get $10,000, $15,000, $20,000 to have that guy just drive that truck. So long as you don’t show close-ups of the emblems on the car, I think it could be great for an independent filmmaker.

Q: You mentioned “Supersize Me,” which has me thinking that this time around you pretty near got killed being thrown out of a building to make a commercial look realistic and with “Supersize Me” all that fast food you ate did some real damage to you.

A: Yeah. I was not in the best of shape by the end of that. That’s for sure.

Q: I guess you have a history now of really putting yourself into the movies you make.

A: At some point, I’m going to make something where I’m really good to myself. I’ve got to make a movie where I become like the pool boy at the Playboy Mansion or something.

Q: That sounds good. Do you have another project in the works now?

A: I’m editing a movie right now that’s all about San Diego Comic-Con. I love comic books. I love that comic book convention. We’re editing a film where we followed seven different people into Comic-Con and we’re going to see this pop culture Mecca through their eyes.

Q: When is that going to come out?

A: As soon as it’s done. We’re in post-production on it now so the goal is to try and have something to show at Comic-Con (at the San Diego Convention Center from July 21-24), but we’re getting there one day at a time.

---