Movie Hype--Is Anyone Listening? : Big Doses of Publicity Don’t Always Mean Box-Office Bucks

If you are sick of being clobbered with celebrity magazine covers, quasi-promotional “news” stories and other slobbering gobs of media hype every time a new movie opens, take heart.

Most of it doesn’t work.

At least, that seems the best explanation of some intriguing data regarding publicity--not to mention its sister science, movie journalism--and the films of 1988.

Several weeks ago, Time magazine movie correspondent Richard Corliss speculated that the movie industry was choking on its own good press. “By pushing its stars and its secrets across the breakfast table, Hollywood may be hyping itself right out of the wonder business,” Corliss wrote in Time’s Nov. 21 issue.

We wondered about that--and decided to conduct our own (slightly) more scientific review.

Using the Nexis computerized data base, The Times tabulated the number of stories written about selected 1988 movies through their opening dates--plus two days, for good measure. And the results were enough to send chills down a film writer’s spine.

The survey included The Times, the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Christian Science Monitor; about half a dozen international wire services; Time, Newsweek, U.S. News & World Report, Maclean’s and People magazines, and scores of special-interest and business publications. No electronic media were monitored; nor were many top-circulation newspapers or magazines such as USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, TV Guide, the National Enquirer, Cosmopolitan, Playboy or Esquire.

But among the media surveyed, there was a startling consistency: The pictures that got most attention before their release turned out to be under-performers at the box office.

On top of the hype heap was Tri-Star’s “Rambo III.” It nabbed 255 stories (including a Sunday Calendar cover) but took in a disappointing $54 million at the box office, far less than the $150 million racked up by its blockbuster predecessor “Rambo: First Blood Part 2.”

Next came Universal’s “The Last Temptation of Christ.” It logged 232 stories (including many news stories that covered the protests and controversy surrounding the film, and a Time cover with a sidebar by Corliss), and sold just over $8.2 million in tickets.

Among the high-profile losers, or less-than-winners, that followed were:

“Imagine: John Lennon” (Warner Bros.), with 186 stories and $3.5 million in ticket sales; “Bird” (also Warner) with 124 stories, $1.5 million sales; “Bright Lights, Big City” (United Artists), with 120 stories, $15.6 million sales; “Betrayed” (also UA), with 110 stories, $25 million sales; “The Milagro Beanfield War” (Universal), with 106 stories, $12.7 million sales, and “Tucker” (Paramount), with 94 stories, $19.2 million sales.

(Strangely, Universal’s “Gorillas in the Mist,” which grossed a modest $23 million, gets only 34 pre-release mentions in our computerized field. It did, however, get considerable press elsewhere--dozens of major interviews and articles, ranging from a Life magazine cover to frequent mentions in the New York Post and Travel & Leisure magazine.)

Clearly, heavy press didn’t sell tickets this year. But what about movies that did perform well? Did journalists see them coming?

Maybe. But nobody did much writing about most big winners prior to their release.

Disney’s “Who Framed Roger Rabbit,” with more than $150 million at the box office, got just 61 stories in our field, less than a third as many as “Bird,” whose audience will probably remain minuscule, unless it hits big on Oscar night.

Similarly, Paramount’s “Coming to America,” with $130 million in ticket sales, got 51 stories, and the same studio’s “ ‘Crocodile’ Dundee II,” with about $109 million sales, did only somewhat better, with 88 stories.

Granted, publicity may have helped MGM’s “Willow,” which nabbed 97 stories, many of them negative, and still did $56 million at the box office--strong performance for a nonsequel. Also, all those news stories about gang violence, hundreds of which at least mentioned Orion’s “Colors,” almost certainly boosted the film toward its healthy $46 million at the box office.

But relatively rare was the writer who looked into Fox’s “Big” ($111 million, 56 stories) or “Die Hard” ($78 million, 60 stories); Disney’s “Cocktail” ($75 million, 48 stories); MGM’s “A Fish Called Wanda” ($60 million, 29 stories), or Warner’s “Beetlejuice” ($73 million, nine stories).

Some find solace and vindication in such numbers.

“This doesn’t strike me as odd at all. People who write about movies are mostly intellectuals . . . They don’t think as Middle America thinks,” says Fox marketing and distribution president Thomas Sherak, who had three winners--”Die Hard,” “Big,” and “Young Guns”--that did poorly with the press.

Sherak argues that many writers go out of their way to flex their muscle in behalf of noncommercial films, thus losing touch with broad audiences. “ ‘I’m a big guy and I’m going to give a break to some little film, or offbeat film.’ That’s how (some writers) think,” says Sherak.

Gordon Weaver, an independent marketing consultant who is currently promoting “Rain Man” for United Artists, believes the hype gap is simply a product of skewed demographics. “Assume the moviegoing audience is 12 to 24 years old. Then look at the demographics of magazines and newspapers. They’re older ,” says Weaver.

According to Weaver, publicity, while nice, is almost always less effective than paid radio and television advertising--and most of those ads should be on programs that the average reading adult doesn’t even know exist. “As I told (Disney film chief) Jeffrey Katzenberg once, if you see the spots, they’re in the wrong place,” advises Weaver.

On the journalistic side, Newsweek movie critic David Ansen figures writers aren’t in business to sell tickets and shouldn’t worry too much about catching the hot trend--as he certainly did with a well-timed cover story on “Roger Rabbit” this year, and perhaps didn’t with another on Columbia’s “Punchline,” which grossed only $20 million but scored a respectable 71 stories on our scale.

“If we just wrote to sell, we’d probably all be doing stories on Jim and Tammy (Bakker),” notes Ansen.

For the record, both Ansen covers had approximately average newsstand sales for Newsweek, which depends largely on subscriber sales, and didn’t rival the magazine’s top-selling “Adam and Eve” cover, according to a spokeswoman for the magazine.

Still, Esquire editor Lee Eisenberg--whose 1988 cover subjects included Robert Redford in advance of “Milagro,” Clint Eastwood in advance of “Bird,” and Sam Shepard in advance of the little-watched “Far North”--finds The Times hype-report seriously depressing.

“Once again, we see evidence that the culture’s in big trouble,” says Eisenberg. “The moviegoing public, by and large, is not a reading public. They want tried-and-true formulas, and they’re not about to be intrigued by a wonderfully written story.”

(At least Eisenberg didn’t get stuck with “Old Gringo” on his cover--as did both Vanity Fair and GQ, just before Columbia pulled the still-unreleased film back for more work.)

Some Hollywood publicists clearly share Eisenberg’s chagrin over 1988, which seemed particularly heavy with overexposed losers, perhaps because a plethora of nonfiction films like “Tucker” and “Bird” proved easier to pitch than sell.

“A little bit of you dies every time you hear about a heavily promoted movie that bombs,” says John DeSimeo, vice president of publicity and advertising for Castle Rock Entertainment, which is producing “Lord of the Flies” and other films for distribution next year.

Others are brutally realistic, however.

“Sometimes we’re trying to sell tickets, and a hit is always nice,” explains independent publicist Richard Guttman, who worked on “Willow” for George Lucas, among other films this year.

But the box office isn’t everything, says Guttman:

“Sometimes we’re trying to impress the 300 people who will put our clients in their next project. In some ways, the Los Angeles Times, Time and Newsweek are just very prestigious ways to reach those 300 people.”

Ouch.

LOTS OF INK

Title No. of Stories Box Office (millions) 1. “Rambo III” 255 $54.0 2. “Last Temptation of Christ” 232 $8.2 3. “Imagine: John Lennon” 186 $3.5 4. “Bird” 124 $1.5 5. “Bright Lights, Big City” 120 $15.6

LOTS OF DOUGH

Title No. of Stories Box Office (millions) 1. “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” 61 $150.0 2. “Coming to America” 51 $130.0 3. “‘Crocodile’ Dundee II” 88 $109.0 4. “Big” 56 $111.0 5. “Die Hard” 60 $78.6