Why Has ‘Opus’ Struck a Chord?

Producer Robert W. Cort still remembers a meeting a couple years back in which seven executives at Interscope Communications gathered to discuss a five-hanky script about a composer who takes a job as a music teacher only to find the temporary gig changes his life--and those of his students.

“I remember somebody saying at the meeting, ‘There’s not much concept here,’ ” Cort said. “And then somebody else said, ‘But you yourself said you cried. When was the last time you read a script and cried?’ ”

It was the hardened Hollywood executive’s emotional reaction that ultimately persuaded the production company to make the movie.

Thus was born “Mr. Holland’s Opus,” the Richard Dreyfuss movie that audiences everywhere are talking about. The word of mouth has paid off: In its second week of release, “Mr. Holland’s” topped the box-office charts, grossing $23.1 million to date, which is about what the movie cost to make.

The runaway success of a film with no special effects, no huge bankable stars and a plot line that even its producers call “old-fashioned” has left much of Hollywood--and even some associated with the movie--baffled.

“Though it was a movie we felt there was a considerable audience for, I don’t think any of us thought the movie would open really big,” said Cort, who also produced “Three Men and a Baby” and “Cocktail.” “Up until we showed the film in sneak previews, everybody was scared to death.”

“It wasn’t expected to do this kind of business,” said Dan Marks, senior vice president of product management at Entertainment Data Inc., which researches and analyzes box-office performance. “It doesn’t come at you as one of those big-budget, superstar-driven, hot topic screenplays. But they knew they had a feel-good picture and I think the public can’t get enough feel-good pictures.”

Indeed, the film’s unabashed emotionalism--a case of cinematic “counter-programming”--has struck a chord with audiences.

“They went for the heart at a time when nobody was going for the heart,” said Jack Trout, president of Trout and Partners Marketing Strategy Firm in Greenwhich, Conn. “We’re living in a hard-bitten age and I think people are yearning for that.”

Aiming directly for the heart when most movies “go for the head or the groin,” according to producer Cort, was a calculated move on the filmmakers’ part.

“What have movies been really, but these big, fat, high-tech adventure kinds of things,” Trout said. “How much of Stallone and all that stuff can you stand? How many more things can we blow up? It’s the old story of ‘going against’ in the marketing world. If everybody is doing escapism and explosions and mega-stars, go the opposite way and get a hit. It takes some courage to ‘go against.’ ”

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That was just the beginning of a marketing plan that cost $10 million--relatively low by industry standards. Also pivotal were two large-scale sneak previews in 2,000 theaters at the end of December and then again a week before the film’s opening. That move went against conventional wisdom. Sneak previews are not widely used; out of some 400 movies opening yearly, only about 5% use sneak previews, said EDI’s Marks.

“The strategy of exposing it to as many people as we could through the sneak previews as well as early [media] screenings really led the movie to where it is today,” said Dick Cook, president of Buena Vista Pictures Marketing and Distribution. “Because it wasn’t a particular genre--it wasn’t an action movie or a pure comedy--it had no one element that was going to propel it. . . . We knew that word of mouth was going to be our best salesman.”

“Mr. Holland’s Opus” was “sneaked” at showings of Disney’s “Father of the Bride Part II” on the assumption that the same audience would be drawn to the heartwarming story.

“The people who attended those clearly did like the movie and did get a buzz going,” Marks said. “It’s that wonderful word of mouth in this business. You can’t buy it, but when you get it, it really shows up in box-office grosses.”

The slightly longer-than-usual trailer was also a key to the success. The trailer opens with shots of Dreyfuss as Holland playing the piano and continues with a montage highlighting his frustrations as he tries to whip the high school orchestra into shape. Then it foreshadows every plot point in the movie.

“I had a number of people tell me they were choked up by the trailer,” Cort said.

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The distributor, Disney’s Buena Vista Pictures, strategically timed the movie’s release--on Jan. 19--so that it would be the only feel-good, tear-jerker movie competing against a slate of rather lackluster fare. Studio and production executives had looked into releasing the film, which was completed in fall 1994, in October or November 1995, but they determined that opening it at those times could result in its getting lost amid the surfeit of holiday movies.

But they did decide to open the film in Los Angeles in December to qualify for Oscar consideration. It was a risky move because it opened the film up to possible early negative reviews, which could have obscured the positive word-of-mouth endorsements.

“There were some people at Disney who were concerned that the movie was not necessarily going to get to the ‘smart critics,’ ” Cort said. “And that where it would be appreciated, in the hinterlands, it wouldn’t make it to them in time.”

Indeed, critics in big cities have called the movie emotionally manipulative. In a review for the Los Angeles Times, Jack Mathews called it “a film of epically hollow proportions . . . a movie that tells you how to feel every step of the way and ends on a symphony of false notes.”

Still, marketing experts say that moviegoers are not as resistant to efforts to tug their heartstrings as critics may be. Some speculate that moviegoers may be looking for just such an emotional experience.

“Sure, they’re manipulating people. You better believe it,” said marketing strategist Trout. “But the fact that it makes people cry is why it’s a winner.”