Perfecting the Art of the High Sell

Does snob appeal still work with a mainstream audience?

The popularity of less-than-highbrow fare like “The Waterboy” or “Varsity Blues” would seem to be the kiss of death for sophisticated movies. But time-honored prestige-selling campaigns have recently been used to launch the more upscale “Shakespeare in Love” and “The Thin Red Line.”

And in both cases the campaigns seem to be working, at least so far.

After debuting both films in big-city exclusive engagements to garner media attention, “Shakespeare” and “Thin Red Line” have made a smooth first transition to suburbia and beyond. On fewer than 650 screens, “Shakespeare” has taken in more than $21 million since early January. “Red Line’s” wider opening in 1,500 theaters was good for more than $11 million over the four-day Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, bringing its total close to $15 million. Both films did more than $7,000 per screen over the holiday.

Still, the question remains: “How high is up?” Can “Shakespeare” go beyond the $40-million or so ceiling most period pieces hit? Will “Red Line” be able to bring in other segments of the audience besides older (defined by the movie industry as 25 years and over) males?

Much depends on what happens with the Oscar race, say executives at Miramax, which released “Shakespeare,” and 20th Century Fox, which is distributing “Red Line.” Academy nominations (announced Feb. 9) in major categories, as seems increasingly likely for “Shakespeare” and possible for “Red Line” could help turn both films into breakout hits similar to last year’s “Good Will Hunting.”

When “Red Line” went wide over the four-day Martin Luther King Jr. weekend, the ads skewed toward action scenes. Research had unearthed a strong interest among male, blue-collar audiences, according to Medavoy. And except for Sunday when the film lost out to the NFL football games, the interest in “Red Line” strictly as a war movie worked.

But to stay in theaters for the long haul, the film will need more than that. Restricted to one evening show in most theaters--the film is about 2 hours and 45 minutes--a little Oscar magic could help fill matinee seats with both younger viewers and particularly females, says Laura Ziskin, president of Fox 2000, the studio division that produced “Red Line.” “Then we’ll be able to play right through Oscar season.”

For “Shakespeare,” Academy Award nominations will bring in the fence-sitters, mainly male, and allow Miramax to expand the film’s number of screens. That’s how the company was able to reap close to $80 million with “The English Patient.” If “Shakespeare” draws significant Oscar attention it will garner the film the kind of outside approbation no amount of self-serving advertising can buy.

That Old Fear of Shakespeare

Both films have had to overcome initial perception problems in order to gain mass acceptance. For “Shakespeare” it was a title that signaled to a mass audience “that terrifying moment when you think it’ll be more boring than your worst high school English class,” jokes Mark Gill, West Coast president of Miramax. “How do you tell audiences that you don’t need to know Shakespeare to enjoy this film?”

Complicating matters, the film also arrived on the heels of “Elizabeth,” a similar-sounding, though completely different, period piece that catered to an art-house urban audience interested in English costume dramas.

“Thin Red Line” had different, but no less daunting, hurdles to overcome. Long before it opened “Thin Red Line” was being compared to another World War II epic, “Saving Private Ryan.” “Ryan” had been seen as a risky venture despite the box-office insurance that came with its star Tom Hanks and director Steven Spielberg. “Ryan’s” overwhelming critical praise and unexpectedly wide popularity then seemed to put Terrence Malick’s thought-provoking ensemble piece at an even greater disadvantage.

Miramax and Fox mapped out plans to offset these comparisons so that their films could at least get into the game. The primary target was educated urban adults.

“But even when you’re focusing on an upscale core audience, you have to be thinking mainstream,” says Miramax’s marketing-publicity executive Marci Granata. “If you don’t, it’s going to take you that much longer to catch up.”

With the deluge of major movies coming out at the end of the year, Miramax was looking to set itself apart before the crush. Since a finished print of “Shakespeare” would not be available for screening until around Thanksgiving, Miramax screened 30 minutes for the press in mid-fall to combat the idea that this was somber “Masterpiece Theatre” material.

Once the film was ready, Miramax decided on a slow, platform strategy, starting in big cities where the film was likely to find its most sympathetic audience. “The main reason for us to go out slow was that the film sounded like work, not entertainment,” Gill says. “And we needed word of mouth to get ahead of that.”

How to Deal With Great Expectations

Riding the fine line between being taken seriously as a movie and appreciating its entertainment value was also a problem for “Thin Red Line.” But even more crucial was keeping a lid on unrealistic expectations for what was Malick’s first film in 20 years, according to Mike Medavoy, whose Phoenix Pictures produced the film.

While not wanting to downplay the war genre aspect of the film, Fox also wanted to “set it up as an important movie,” Fox senior executive Tom Sherak says. “That hasn’t been done in a while because of the high cost of advertising.”

Studios long ago went out of the business of working a film from the big cities out to the hinterlands. It’s a game plan that only specialized companies like Miramax subscribe to with lower-budget movies. It can’t be counted on to bring in the kind of grosses necessary to recover the costs of a movie that cost as much as “Red Line”--$53 million.

“Thin Red Line” divided critics as well as audiences. Reviews were generally strong enough to cite critical reactions in ads and draw strong mention with year-end critical awards. But as with “Shakespeare in Love,” a limited release helped fill theaters since there was enough curiosity for both films to fill big-city houses.

The sight of lines around the block further promulgated the “special” aspect of both movies. “Even if everybody didn’t love [“Thin Red Line”], people were talking about it, so you felt you had to see it,” Sherak says.

Now came the big test. What works in Los Angeles or New York doesn’t always work in Denver or Des Moines, not to mention suburbia, though audience reaction to “Shakespeare” in small-city test screenings was enthusiastic, according to Granata.

Miramax has resisted the urge to go too wide too fast. The film is still skewing largely older female, though younger women are slowly joining the cause thanks to youth appeal stars like Gwyneth Paltrow and Ben Affleck. The company plans to stay put in the same number of theaters for the time being, a strategy that worked with Miramax’s “The English Patient.”

The degree to which these careful strategies work doesn’t only depend on the Oscars and word of mouth, however. It hones close to the maxim about show business that’s featured in “Shakespeare,” according to Granata. To paraphrase the film’s oft-used sentiment, in the theater the ingredients are all brought together and--when things go right, anyway--it all somehow works out in the end. How that happens--despite the best intentions of studio marketing departments--still essentially remains a mystery.