The Holocaust--A Tough Sell for the Holidays? : Movies: Films with a similar theme pose a marketing challenge. Distributors devise new campaigns and count on good reviews.

Jack Brodsky has been marketing Hollywood movies long enough to know one of the immutable rules of the game--rules are made to be broken.

“All the rules in our business change every week,” says Brodsky, president of distribution and marketing for Morgan Creek Productions, which produced Paul Mazursky’s new $12-million film, “Enemies, A Love Story.”

“If you saw ‘sex, lies and videotape’ before it went to Cannes and said it would make $30 million, someone would’ve taken you in for a brain scan.”

Right now, Brodsky is in the midst of a high-stakes marketing challenge. Along with Tom Sherak, Fox Film’s domestic marketing and distribution chief, he’s trying to carve out a comfortable niche in the crowded holiday film season for “Enemies,” an unsettling, emotional tale about the romantic entanglements of Holocaust survivors in late-40s New York. With “Music Box” and “Triumph of the Spirit” also due out this month, and the documentary “Lodz Ghetto” already in theaters, “Enemies” is one of several adult-oriented films being released during the holidays with a Holocaust-related theme.

It is tough enough for serious dramas to get attention amid the comedies and adventures that dominate the Christmas release schedule. Having four films simultaneously in the market with Holocaust themes may be an unprecedent challenge to the distributors’ marketing departments.

All three of the features will be heavily dependent on good reviews, word-of-mouth and Academy Award nominations that will be announced in February. But the film makers are also banking on changes in Americans’ moviegoing habits. Serious films aren’t the commercial liabilities they were just a few years ago.

“There was a time when ‘Enemies’ would have been viewed as an uncommercial movie,” said Sherak. “But after the success of challenging films like ‘Dangerous Liaisons,’ ‘The Accidental Tourist’ and ‘The Last Emperor,’ we think a picture like this can have a very strong appeal. It needs a lot of tender loving care. But there’s an enormous adult audience that we think will want to see the film.”

The ‘Enemies’ team has concocted a daring strategy with its advertising. The campaign is designed to do more than simply tempt moviegoers with a trailer full of intriguing scenes and tantalizing dialogue.

“We’re quite literally telling them the story of the film,” explained Sherak, who said the trailer for “Enemies” is currently running with such adult pictures as “Steel Magnolias.” “In any good movie advertising, you want to give them a good reason to see the movie. And we want audiences to know the story because we think that will just involve them all the more.”

With a respected director like Mazursky and a cast that includes Anjelica Huston, Ron Silver and Lena Olin, ‘Enemies’ has an impressive array of acting talent--but no major box-office attraction. So Fox is reminding moviegoers of its casts’ award-winning laurels.

“There’s a word we use a lot around here called pedigree,” said Brodsky. “We think the film’s pedigree gives us a lot to work with, starting with Paul Mazursky’s reputation as a talented film maker. We’ve discovered through our research that Mazursky is a real draw for an adult audience. People know his name, and he has a real following.

“We’re also playing up the fact that we have an Oscar winner with Anjelica, a Tony winner with Ron and an actress who was in ‘The Unbearable Lightness of Being,’ which we think has a strong association with the audience we’re aiming for.”

Fox’s advertising only alludes to the film’s Holocaust theme, preferring to stress its actors’ credentials. In fact, Mazursky scoffs at the notion that “Enemies” can only reach a narrow, art-house audience.

“I guess I’m an optimist, but I don’t think it’s just about the Holocaust or Jewish suffering. It’s also about great passion--and it’s a great story, full of surprises and ironic comedy. It goes from laughter to despair, because it’s also about the existence of God. And the question that if He exists, how could he allow the Holocaust to happen.”

Brodsky said future “Enemies” ads will emphasize critics’ endorsements. In fact, television commercials will begin appearing in New York and Los Angeles on Sunday featuring quotes from early positive reviews.

Good reviews are also being counted on by the distributor of “Triumph of the Spirit.” Elliot Slutzky, president of marketing and distribution for independent Transworld Entertainment, said ads promoting Friday’s opening of “Triumph” in New York and Los Angeles will be laden with blurbs from early rave reviews.

“Triumph” is based on a true story about a Greek Jew who survived Auschwitz by winning more than 200 boxing matches held to entertain Nazi officers. The ad for the movie shows actor Willem Defoe leaning over an opponent in a ring while a referee, wearing a Nazi swastika, looks on.

Slutzky said the ad was designed to highlight the strong cast (Dafoe’s co-stars are Edward James Olmos and Robert Loggia) and to take its Holocaust setting head-on. Previous ads have also attempted to pair “Triumph” with “Platoon,” which had the same producer--Arnold Kopelson.

“We feel the picture is powerful enough to garner word of mouth and build like ‘Platoon’ did,” Slutzky said.

Transworld is also counting on “Triumph” publicity to move off of the entertainment pages and into the news and editorial page columns, which was the pattern that helped fuel interest in “Platoon.”

“The film raises issues that generate the kind of publicity you cannot create,” Slutzky said. “It has a documentary feel; it’s real.”

The key element of Transworld’s own publicity campaign is Salamo Arouch, the man portrayed in the movie. Arouch, who served as technical consultant on the film, has been brought over to the United States from his home in Israel to talk about his death-camp experiences.

Columbia Pictures executives refused to discuss their marketing strategy for Costa-Gavras’ “Music Box,” a contemporary courtroom drama about a lawyer (Jessica Lange) who defends her father against charges of committing Holocaust atrocities. A spokeswoman for the film said the studio rejects the notion that “Music Box” belongs in a story about Holocaust movies.

“Music Box” producer Irwin Winkler says that marketing decisions are up the studio but that as far he is concerned, the Holocaust theme shouldn’t be avoided.

“I have no compunction about using references to the Holocaust if it tied into the quotes from critics that we wanted for our ads,” said Winkler. “I’m certainly not going to go around and say this film isn’t about the Holocaust. It’s obviously an important part of the background of the picture.”

Winkler, who’s produced such films as the “Rocky” series and “Raging Bull,” says that like “Enemies,” “Music Box” will rely on critical plaudits and that he is already collecting excerpts from early rave reviews.

The veteran producer admits that studio marketing executives prefer to downplay material that might make a film appear controversial or lacking in commercial appeal. “I figure the studio will be a little nervous,” Winkler says. “When we made ‘Rocky’ and ‘Raging Bull,’ the studio people didn’t want us to mention anything about boxing. They thought it would hurt the pictures. Of course, when the movies did well, then everyone wanted to make a boxing picture.”

Still, it could be an uphill struggle for these films to compete with more commercial holiday-season films. Eyeing Fox’s “pedigree” campaign for “Enemies,” some industry experts question whether Anjelica Huston’s Oscar credentials or a tie-in with an obscure art-house delight like ‘Unbearable Lightness’ will really grab moviegoers’ attention.

“My feeling is that their trailer is an act of desperation,” said one veteran producer. “They try so hard to puff up everything prestigious about the movie, then tell you the whole plot, that it really seems like they didn’t know what else to do. The trailer even plugs Ron Silver’s Tony Award--that’s got to be a first.”

However, Gordon Weaver, a former studio marketing exec who now runs a respected marketing consultant firm, isn’t as pessimistic. “The art of opening a difficult film is being totally honest about your movie,” he said. “It’s not so much whether a film is difficult or not, but finding the audience that wants to go see it.

“With ‘Enemies,’ I think it’s a real smart plan to go after people who are already predisposed to like your movie. If you can attract educated adults, then they’ll not only go see it, but spread the news with good word-of-mouth.”

With that in mind, both “Enemies” and “Music Box” initially open for exclusive runs in only three cities--Los Angeles, New York and Toronto--only going into wider release in mid-January. “We’re not deluding ourselves that we’re going to be like ‘Harlem Nights,’ which could be savaged by critics and still survive,” said Sherak of “Enemies.” “This movie has to open itself. Obviously, we’re hoping for a lot of good reviews. And if we can get some nominations for Academy Awards or Golden Globes, then we’ll expand the picture’s run a little more.”

Transworld’s Slutzky says the roll-out plan for “Triumph of the Spirit” is tied directly to the Academy Award nominations. On Feb. 2, two weeks before the nominations are announced, the movie will be opened in 12 additional major markets. Two weeks after the nominations, 25 more markets will be added.

Slutzky said the regional marketing plan calls for heavy promotional tie-ins with the Jewish community--premieres and benefits with groups like B’nai B’rith, and advertising in Jewish newspapers.

“We are definitely slanting (the promotion toward the Jewish community), although we feel the film will have broad appeal.”

Slutzky says the fact that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has a large Jewish membership is not something they can count on for a large turn-out at Oscar screenings. On the other hand, he adds that “it can’t hurt, can it?”