How ‘Girlfight’ Fell Flat on Its Face

It came into the film world christened a critic’s darling, flush with descriptions like a “riveting revelation of fresh filmmaking talent.” It was the toast of Sundance and Cannes. Several specialized distributors were knocking down the door, desperately seeking to buy this newcomer that was creating such a buzz among the festival crowds. There was even talk of its star, Michelle Rodriguez, turning in an Oscar-worthy performance.

Such was the auspicious beginning for first-time director Karyn Kusama’s drama “Girlfight.” The film, which debuted at the Sundance Film Festival last year, tied for the Grand Jury Prize with Kenneth Lonergan’s “You Can Count on Me.” While “You Can Count on Me” went on to become an art-house hit and score critics’ prizes and major nominations, including two for the Oscars, “Girlfight” dropped off the radar.

How could a film burn so brightly, then flicker away without a trace?

The experience has wounded not only the director, but the producers and even the studio, Sony Screen Gems, which gambled that this small, gritty independent film could strike a nerve with American youngsters.

The problem was that “Girlfight,” an urban drama about an angry young Puerto Rican girl searching to find a better life through boxing, never found an audience. Neither the art-house crowd nor urban youngsters came to see it. The film’s failure underscores the difficulty for small movies to make it big at the box office in today’s hyper-competitive market. But it has also highlighted the challenges of finding that elusive urban-youth market.

“My friends were drooling over the [marketing and publicity] campaign for this movie,” said Maggie Renzi, one of the film’s producers, who is a partner in John Sayles’ company, Anarchists’ Convention. “I mean, here was all this ink--Michelle was everywhere. It was the kind of exposure that you beg for. . . . Listen, when you bake a cake and don’t put in the baking powder you cannot be surprised that it did not raise. A movie is not like that--sometimes you do everything right and sometimes people just don’t go to the movie.”

But Kusama and producer Martha Griffin maintain that the film, which cost $1 million and made $1.5 million, was not helped by the studio’s marketing campaign. They say the studio backed away from selling the movie for what it was--a coming-of-age story about a misunderstood and bitter young woman.

“They were afraid of using stronger images,” said Griffin. “They lost the art-house audience and they never got the mall audience because they didn’t keep the edge.”

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Part of the “edge” was Rodriguez’s electric performance. Despite the 22-year-old New York native’s lack of experience (this was her debut) top critics compared her stirring anger and sullen pride to Marlon Brando in “On the Waterfront,” and Robert De Niro in “Raging Bull.”

The marketing campaign, which cost Sony Screen Gems close to $5 million, never focused on Rodriguez’s fierceness, argued Kusama. The posters advertising the film, they said, never truly explained the theme of the film. Instead, they were watered-down versions of the film, and Rodriguez was never really used to sell the picture, said Kusama.

The posters used an outline of a woman in shorts wearing boxing gloves, but the viewer never got a glimpse of Rodriguez’s face. Instead, said Kusama, they attempted to make the film out to be a love story. In one marketing ploy, women in gym shorts and tight shirts handed out fliers about the film outside offices on Madison Avenue in New York, said Kusama.

“I think it’s a sort of everyman story in a spirit of filmmaking that perhaps now isn’t as popular,” said Kusama. “It is a story about real people and about owning and facing one’s aggression. It was unslick and meant to be unslick. It’s rough, it’s low budget, it’s angry. Everything that was special about the film was lost. I felt that the studio thought it was too risky to show that part of the film and then it neutralized it.”

In addition, the studio did not aggressively pursue the Spanish-language market--an obvious audience considering the film’s protagonists are Puerto Rican, according to Griffin.

“I think there are very few people who know how to tap into the Spanish market,” said Griffin. “It’s ironic, I mean, this is one of the largest populations and people don’t know how to tap into that? It’s amazing to me.”

But the studio counters that Rodriguez was profiled in several Spanish-language newspapers and bilingual magazines such as Latina, to publicize the film that opened the Latino Film Festival in New York. They bought Spanish-language television ads and hired Maracas Entertainment to handle the Spanish-language campaign.

“We made enormous efforts to try to appeal to that audience and it didn’t ultimately pan out for us,” said Valerie Van Galder, executive vice president of marketing at Screen Gems. “In my opinion, the fact that you are of Hispanic heritage does not necessarily mean you are going to go see a movie where the lead actress is of Hispanic heritage as well.”

Screen Gem maintains that they tried everything possible to find an audience for the film. They opened the movie in 28 theaters during a good time slot--September--when competition is not as fierce. They increased the number of theaters to 278 two weeks later hoping that some word of mouth had built, but the film dropped off quickly in markets it had done well in, such as New York.

What proved to be the biggest challenge was finding that young urban crowd, particularly young women who could relate to the story. As more and more women, including Muhammad Ali’s daughter, Laila, and Joe Frazier’s daughter, Jacqui Frazier-Lyde, take up the sport, it seems a logical conclusion that films about female boxers should follow. Hoping to capitalize on the boxing craze, the studio formed marketing partnerships with Bally Total Fitness to appeal to young athletic women taking boxing lessons. They tried to promote the soundtrack, on MTV, VH1 and youth radio stations.

Nothing worked.

“Our difficulty was selling this movie on television, and you need television in conjunction with very, very powerful word of mouth from your audience to have it cross over,” said Van Galder. “I needed to make this movie look accessible to the same kids that are going to see ‘Bring It On.’ [‘Girlfight’] didn’t look like a commercial mainstream movie and that is what kids are used to seeing unless you can convince them otherwise.”

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Movies like “Bring It On,” and most recently “Save the Last Dance,” capitalized on their slick look and teen stars (Kirsten Dunst and Julia Stiles, respectively)--two things “Girlfight” lacked. But mostly, they exploited the movie’s themes--romance, dance and teenage fun. Teenage girls have made movies like “Grease,” “Flashdance,” and “Dirty Dancing” major hits. But boxing is not a theme that appeals to many young girls, said Robert Cort, producer of “Save the Last Dance,” which so far has made about $80 million at the box office and drew large numbers of both African American and white girls.

“In terms of prizefighting, I think it’s a very difficult thing for the under-21 female audiences to look at,” said Cort. “And there is a turnoff factor for the natural audience, which is male--young white men and young African American men are not going to go see a girl fight. So what you wind up doing is getting neither audience.”

The studio did not want to sell the movie as a story about a bad-tempered young woman who finds a way to channel her anger through her fists. American moviegoers, for the most part, like films with uplifting messages--not dour, antagonistic characters.

“The idea of [selling it with] a very angry-looking woman who you have never seen before is not a particularly appealing marketing tool,” said Van Galder. “It’s also a story about triumph and overcoming circumstances. So why do you want to sell her anger--it is also a story with a hopeful message.”

“Girlfight” needed to be driven by word of mouth to reach across the art-house threshold, said Van Galder.

“To take it to the next level--and there are very few [independent] movies that reach that level--you need word of mouth that is almost evangelical, which means that people feel a need to tell their friends that they must go see this film,” said Van Galder, who handled the 1997 hit “The Full Monty” when she worked at Fox Searchlight.

The studio had a hard time convincing many art-house theaters to even show the film, and within a few days of its opening, “Girlfight” was being pushed out. The film also had to compete with two huge studio hits, “Meet the Parents” and “Remember the Titans,” which appealed to families and teenagers alike, on the same weekend.

In the end, said Renzi, all you can hope for is that the film is well remembered. Renzi, who has produced 10 films and has lived through disappointing box-office returns with Sayles, says she has learned to let the bruises heal and move on.

“Everybody believed in this movie,” she said. “All you hope is ‘Did this movie leave a bright enough trail where I can get something out of this?’ All you want is another outing. And did ‘Girlfight’ accomplish that? You bet it did.”