COVER STORY : Marketing J.F.K.’s Murder

When Warner Bros. embarked on its $15-million promotional campaign for “JFK,” it was by no means certain that Oliver Stone, who finished shooting the movie on the last day of July, would be able to deliver it by the Dec. 20 release date.

Though Stone had considered a February opening as a fallback, it was in his interest--and the studio’s--that the picture come out during the holiday season. It is, after summer, the biggest moviegoing time of the year. A December opening would qualify director, cast and crew for Oscar consideration, all important in terms of prestige and box office. And, not so incidentally, Stone--superstitious by nature--had been successful releasing “Platoon,” which won best picture, and “Born on the Fourth of July” at that time.

Operating on the assumption he’d pull it off, the studio began its media blitz in the early fall. Posters featuring a close-up of the film’s star Kevin Costner were plastered on buses, in bus stalls and subway stations. A trailer was running in theaters across the country by mid-October. On Nov. 24, a two-page ad ran in the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times.

The next day, Warners blanketed the airwaves of the top 50 markets. A 30-second ad was placed on “Monday Night Football.” A 90-second version heralding “the movie event of the year” appeared as the first spot on the CBS “MASH” special, the late-night talk shows, as well as on MTV. During news broadcasts, the studio employed a technique known as “roadblocking”--only used, as a rule, the night before a major film is to open: It bought the same time slot on all the networks and their local affiliates, increasing the chances of reaching the largest possible audience.

Print coverage also kicked in. The current issue of Vanity Fair features Costner on the cover; Time and Newsweek cover stories are in the works (but may be dislodged by stories about the disintegration of the Soviet Union).

Still, some believe the film faces an uphill battle. “JFK” may not be the 3 1/2-hour-with-an-intermission marathon Stone had once contemplated. But the three hour-running time could still pose problems for theater owners and audiences. The subject--the assassination of John F. Kennedy--is downbeat, at a time when family films and lighter fare thrive.

Skeptics admit that Costner is an obvious plus in broadening “JFK’s” target audience of over-25 year-olds. But this time around, they point out, he’s playing a role that affords him less than his usual quota of charisma and sexuality.

The headline-grabbing Stone has a following, but observers question whether it will be enough to ensure that “JFK” holds its own in a field of “adult” films, such as “Bugsy,” “The Prince of Tides” and “Grand Canyon.”

The movie’s defenders believe it will. They point to last year’s Oscar-winning “Dances With Wolves,” another three-hour Costner vehicle (with subtitles, at that) that grossed $184 million in the United States and Canada alone. Other other dramas, such as “Rain Man” and “Platoon,” have done well during the Christmas season. They predict that if “JFK” is as good as its word-of-mouth, it could fill seats in the more than 1,150 theaters showing it.

“The market expands or contracts based on quality or, at least, on whether it contains films people want to see,” maintains Joe Peixoto, a vice president and film buyer for Metropolitan Theaters. “At Thanksgiving, ‘The Addams Family,’ ‘Beauty and the Beast’ and ‘My Girl’ all took off. A pack of good films doesn’t have to be a drawback. If people see ‘Prince of Tides’ and like it, they’re more likely to go to the movies again. If ‘JFK’ is as good as I’ve been led to believe by the exhibitors who saw it, the audience will be there.”

Variety box-office analyst Art Murphy says that, since the target audience is adults--a segment skeptical of and turned off by more traditional forms of advertising--reviews and a spot on year-end 10-best lists could help the film. He cautions that it would be a mistake to evaluate “JFK’s” box-office performance too fast.

“I wouldn’t be concerned if the numbers aren’t that large when the movie opens,” he says. “Because the movie is long, it will have one or two fewer showings a day so you’d have to multiply ‘JFK’s’ numbers by 1 1/2 in order to equalize things. For another, the subject matter may cause people to defer seeing it until after the holidays so no conclusions should be drawn until well into January. If the picture opens big, though, all these qualifications don’t apply. There’s nothing like a hit to take care of all advance speculation.”

For his part, director Stone bucks all this “marketing” talk.

“It’s something sick in American culture when every Christmas we have to talk about how many toys are sold and how much money is made off the Christmas movies when it should be a time of spiritual coming together,” he says. “I made the best film I can, and whoever comes, comes.”

Stone acknowledges, however, that if “JFK” performs well commercially, it may have a ripple-effect. “The success of a ‘Missing,’ a ‘Silkwood,’ a ‘Reds,’ a ‘Killing Fields’ helps the next one get made,” he points out. “Those that do well create more of a market for other historical interpretations and help to continue a tradition.”