Buyers shy about picking up Parnassus

While the title of this story about The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus is “Heath Ledger’s final film could prove to be tough sell,” it should have been “Terry Gilliam’s next movie likely to follow most previous films in being a tough sell.” The latter is actually more representative of the meat of the article, which is about how distributors are gun-shy about picking the movie up because of Gilliam’s penchant for making dense, impenetrable films that are tough for all but the passionate-core audience to embrace.

Well let’s look at this problem from the other perspective. You more or less know what you’re going to get with a Gilliam picture. Sure, every now and again he throws something a bit more entertaining like 12 Monkeys or The Brothers Grimm at us. But for the most part we’re talking fantasy worlds, odd (and not in the charming, clever way) characters and a surrealist script peppered with catchy visuals. If you say a new Gilliam movie is coming out there are expectations that go along with that, expectations that are going to excite a core group of people.

But the marketing campaign that follows the movie’s completion too often then presents the film as “wonderful thrillride” or something along those lines. Basically the distributor tries to sell it to the suburbs under the logic that if they cast a big net then maybe they’ll make their money back. That’s wrong, though. Cast many small nets around the audience to find those that are likely to be the right people who will not only embrace the film but tell their like-minded friends about it and the film can also turn out to be a success.

Successful marketing is the result of putting two brain cells together and coming up with a plan. Not throwing pasta against the wall.