Repositioning Find Me Guilty
Jeff Wells and others had major problems with the way that the Sidney Lumet-directed Find Me Guilty, starring Vin Diesel, was marketed earlier this year. The poster, and now the DVD cover, had Diesel looking like a comedic schlub and not like the gangster that his character actually was. That made the movie seem more like a comedy than the drama it actually was. While I don’t think the movie would have found a large audience anyway (other marketing efforts were almost none existent) this sort of mis-marketing was at least partly to blame for the film’s poor box-office performance. This sort of bait-and-switch likely led to more than a little bad word-of-mouth for the movie, as people passed on to others how they were feeling they had been promised on product only to be sold another.
Now two of the movie’s producers have created a new poster that they feel more acurately represents what the movie is about. The effort is being mounted in the hopes of garnering some attention from Academy Award voters. This one shows Diesel in a dramatic courtroom setting, a picture that’s surrounded by some of the critical raves the movie got upon its initial release.
I think it’s great to see two of the stakeholders in a movie, in this case the producers, trying to make a case for their movie. It shows a real passion for the product they created as well as the frustration they felt about studio-produced marketing efforts. I’m a big believer in the people who created the movie having a say in the marketing efforts. Nice to see these guys trying to take a bit of control back themselves.
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