Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly - AOP Goes to the Movies

Episode Date: September 3, 2022

This week, Age of Persuasion Goes To The Movies. Just in time for the Oscars, we look at great movie marketing, and talk about the landmark movies that completely altered the way Hollywood sells its films (Yes, one of them involves a shark, but the movie that made the shark possible has a little karate in it). We’ll also feature some of the most inventive movie ads ever done, and trace the history of movie trailers -  which were originally created to drive people OUT of theatres, not into them. It’s true. Hope you’ll join us. And pass the popcorn. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly. As you may know, we've been producing a lot of bonus episodes while under the influences on hiatus. They're called the Beatleology Interviews, where I talk to people who knew the Beatles, work with them, love them, and the authors who write about them. Well, the Beatleology Interviews have become a hit, so we are spinning it out to be a standalone podcast series. You've already heard conversations with people like actors Mark Hamill, Malcolm McDowell, and Beatles confidant Astrid Kershaw. But coming up, I talk to May Pang, who dated John Lennon in the mid-70s. I talk to double fantasy guitarist Earl Slick, Apple Records creative director John Kosh. I'll be talking to Jan Hayworth,

who designed the Sgt. Pepper album cover. Very cool. And I'll talk to singer Dion, who is one of only five people still alive who were on the Sgt. Pepper cover. And two of those people were Beatles. The stories they tell are amazing. So thank you for making this series such a success. And please, do me a favor, follow the Beatleology interviews on your podcast app. You don't even have to be a huge Beatles fan, you just have to love storytelling.

Subscribe now, and don't miss a single beat. Due to popular demand, we've dug very, very deep into our archives and are pleased to announce the re-release of episodes from the last season of The Age of Persuasion. And we've remastered them to fit our Under the Influence format. Here is an episode from 2011. This is an apostrophe podcast production. Your teeth look whiter than no nose. You're not you when you're hungry. You're a good hand with all teeth.

You're under the influence with Terry O'Reilly. How do you do? My name is Alfred Hitchcock, and I would like to tell you about my forthcoming lecture. It is about the birds and their age-long relationship with man. With that introduction, Alfred Hitchcock began one of the most creative movie trailers of all time. He's standing in a well-appointed study surrounded by bird paraphernalia.

We see a painting of a dead bird on the wall, we see a feather pen, and we see a hat decorated with big feathers. Take this plumed hat from the period of Charles I. How proud the birds must have been to have their feathers plucked out to brighten man's drab life. Next, Hitchcock notes that we love to steal chicken eggs and eat them.

Then he gives us a little history. Originally, there were many varieties of birds on Earth. Some have become extinct. The great orc, the passenger pigeon, and the famous dodo bird have all disappeared. Actually, they didn't exactly disappear. They were simply killed off. But of course, this is nature's way. Man merely hurries the process along whenever he can be of help.

It is classic Hitchcock tongue-in-cheek. Listen to the music. He's giving us a lecture on birds, and remarkably, he's using humor to sell what is essentially a horror film. Then he sits at a dining table to eat some roasted chicken. Changing his mind, he then moves over to a beautiful birdcage, looks at the canary inside. Surely the birds appreciate all we've done for them. cage, looks at the canary inside, sticks his finger in the cage, and is shocked when the bird bites him. Then we Now why would he do that?

Then we start to hear angry bird sounds. Hitchcock looks around the study, puzzled. Then star tippy Hendren bursts into the room and yells, They're coming! They're coming!

See, it wasn't a pleasant lecture on birds. It was a cleverly written argument explaining why birds would want to wreak revenge on mankind. As violent images of birds attack the screen, a title appears that says, Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds. It would go on to become the fourth highest grossing film of 1963. Alfred Hitchcock often said that in the suspense genre, it was increasingly difficult to shock audiences,

and he always wanted to steer clear of clichés. The Birds was a story like no one had ever seen. So was the movie's trailer. As a result of that innovative marketing, people didn't just run to see the film, they flocked to theaters. Hitchcock's inventive movie trailers prove that movie marketing can be as compelling as the films themselves.

Movie trailers have a long history, and it may surprise you to learn that the original trailers weren't created to attract crowds, but to repel them. So grab your popcorn and unwrap that noisy licorice now, please. Thank you. Settle in and let's look at the movie ads that sell us the movies.

You're under the influence. As arguably the most powerful art form of the last 100 years, movies also have a long history of movie marketing. The first movie poster ever designed to promote an individual film, many say, was for the movie La Rousseur à Rose. Historians say this 1895 film holds the distinction of being the first to depict a fictional story and the first known instance of a comedy. The poster shows an audience in the foreground watching the film projected against a screen in the background. They're laughing as they see a gardener being splashed in the face with water from a hose. Thus, it was also the first poster to depict an actual scene from a film.

As movies became incredibly popular at the turn of the century, exhibitors began building elaborate palace-like theaters to accommodate the enthusiastic crowds. Because films were so new and unique, it didn't matter which movie you were going to see, just that you were seeing the wonder of film in a theater. What movie are you going to see? I have no idea. Me too. The theaters were packed, And that was a problem. When patrons showed up for a screening, they would stay too long. Sometimes all day. They sat wide-eyed and enthralled by this new thing called motion pictures.

So while theaters stayed full, exhibitors were losing money, as no new paying customers could get in. They needed a way to clear the movie theater between screenings. That problem led to one of the most enduring movie marketing vehicles of all time. Enter the movie trailer. In the early days of film, the credits were at the beginning of the movies, not the end. So when a movie ended, there was nothing to do except replay it. Hence the problem. The public just settled in and watched the movie over and over again.

So exhibitors hit on the idea of showing slides listing upcoming movies. When the words The End appeared on the screen, projectionists would begin the slideshow, hence the term trailer, as the slides trailed the end of the films, and crowds would eventually get restless

and exit the theater. No one saw the marketing power of this idea at that time. As Jack Atlas, who once headed up the trailer department at Columbia Pictures, said, those early trailers were supposed to get people bored enough to leave the theater and make room for somebody else. But by the late teens, studios began to see the flickering light. The first documented movie trailer, as we know it, was shown in 1913 at an amusement park called Rye Beach in New York.

One of the concessions there hung up a white sheet and showed The Adventures of Kathleen. It was a 13-episode adventure serial filmed in Chicago, directed by Francis J. Grandin. While it wasn't the first serial to be made by an American film studio, it is historically important because it was the first to use cliffhangers at the end of the episodes. For example, at the end of one reel, Kathleen was thrown into a pit of lions. Then a piece of film would trail the episode and words on the screen would ask,

does she escape the lion's pit? See next week's thrilling chapter. By 1915, Paramount and other studios began buying up theater chains. As the novelty of movies began to wear off, the public was becoming more selective about what they wanted to see. While studios needed a way to market certain movie stars and storylines, they really didn't have the time nor the staff to manage trailer production. In 1919, three ad men saw the profit potential in the movie marketing business, so they started a company called the National Screen Service, known as NSS. Essentially, NSS offered to oversee the creation and distribution of movie marketing materials for all the major studios.

Hollywood leapt at the idea. From that point on, to well into the 1970s, NSS rented posters, stills, and trailers to movie theaters everywhere. Needless to say, all the early movie trailers sounded and looked alike. Most were bombastic and over-the-top. But when David O. Selznick wanted to create a trailer for his epic film Gone with the Wind in 1939, he chose to present an understated one.

Essentially, it was a picture-book-style trailer. It begins with a hand opening a beautifully illustrated book and turning to the first page, which says, The most eagerly awaited motion picture in the history of modern entertainment. The next page shows the film's title, followed by pages for each of the stars, then the most important page of all. It said the movie promised to be, quote, true to the spirit of the stars, then the most important page of all. It said the movie promised

to be, quote, true to the spirit of the book. Selznick wanted the movie going public to know that his film was faithful to the book. It had won the Pulitzer Prize and millions of people

had bought the book by 1939. So presenting the trailer as a book was very strategic thinking. If people could be assured the movie was the novel fully realized, Selznick had a hit

on his hands. He had golden instincts. Gone with the Wind won 10 Academy Awards, a record that stood for 20 years, and it is widely believed that the movie has sold more tickets in North America

than any other film in history. As time marched on, other film directors saw even more creative opportunities for movie trailers. In 1959, Otto Preminger directed Anatomy of a Murder, a taut courtroom drama starring Jimmy Stewart. But the trailer was anything but usual. It opens in the courtroom. A bailiff stands and says...

Hey, hey, hey. There is a new movie coming to this town. All those involved in this film will now be sworn in. Next, director Otto Preminger swears in star Jimmy Stewart and his supporting cast, including Duke Ellington, who wrote the music score. Raise your right hand. Do you solemnly swear that you have done your job in this picture to the best of your ability,

James Stewart? I do. Lee Remick? I do. Ben Gazzara? I do. Arthur O'Connell? I do.

Eve Arden? I do. Catherine Grant? I do. And you, Duke Ellington? I do. Preminger even talks to the anatomy of a murder novelist, John Volker, who points to the jury box and notes there are no jurors.

Yes, Otto, but you don't have a jury. Oh, there, you see, John, our jury is not just 12 men and women in the box. Our judge and jury sits out there, millions and millions of people in the theaters. Creative movie trailers were proving that movie marketing itself was becoming an art form. But most trailers

were only shown in movie theaters. And it would take the most unlikely movie to change all that and convince studios to advertise on television. In 1971, a movie called Billy Jack hit the screen.

It was about a Green Beret Vietnam vet who protects a hippie art school from a very intolerant town. It hasn't aged well, the dialogue is grade-A plywood, the plot anorexic, but when I was a kid, I saw it five times in a single week. It was Billy Jack's martial arts skills that rocked my 12-year-old world. In this classic scene, Billy Jack is surrounded by a large group of henchmen ready to attack him.

But Billy Jack has a message for the leader. You know what I think I'm going to do then? Just for the hell of it. Tell me. I'm going to take this right foot and I'm going to whop you on that side of your face. And you want to know something? There's not a damn thing you're going to be able to do about it.

Really? Really. Love that scene. It turned me into a lifelong martial artist. But the real story of Billy Jack is how it changed movie marketing for all time. After a disappointing initial release where it only grossed $2 million, director and star Tom Laughlin sued Warner Brothers for misdistribution of the movie. He won the lawsuit,

forcing the studio to make huge television ad buys. Laughlin also four-walled the movie all over the country. Four-walling is when you buy out

the entire movie house for a flat fee. The theater keeps the concession money, but the producer or studio keeps all the ticket sales. Laughlin did this to,

in fact, act as a distributor. While Warner Brothers spent huge TV advertising dollars in specific U.S. cities, Laughlin four-walled the theaters town by town, region by region, to guarantee the film

would stay in theaters long enough to attract the audience the TV ads would generate. His strategy paid off. The second time around, Billy Jack would go on to gross the equivalent of $630 million today. It was a roundhouse kick to Hollywood's conventional wisdom. And the whole industry took note. Therefore, it was Billy Jack's success that helped make another blockbuster possible.

But instead of an ornery karate guy, it featured an ornery fish. There is a creature alive today who has survived millions of years of evolution without change, without passion, and without logic. It lives to kill. A mindless eating machine. It will attack and devour anything. It is as if God created the devil and gave him Jaws. The movie was Steven Spielberg's Jaws.

Using the Billy Jack strategy, the studio spent millions on extensive television advertising. Reports stated that 25 30-second ads per night ran on primetime network TV between June 18th and 20th in 1975. It was unprecedented. The movie opened in 464 theaters, then expanded to 675, the largest distribution of a film in motion picture history. With extensive marketing and incredible word of mouth, it became the first film to reach $100 million in domestic box office receipts, ushering in the era of the blockbuster. From the best-selling novel, Jaws. That epic trailer voice in that epic trailer was Canadian actor Percy Rodriguez. Rated PG.

Maybe too intense for younger children. The poster is considered one of the best of all time. The movie was the highest-grossing box office film in history until two years later when a movie that nobody wanted The movie was the highest-grossing box office film in history, until two years later when a movie that nobody wanted eventually made its way to our galaxy. Star Wars. A billion years in the making. The Force will be with you. Always. Not even the studio could get excited about Star Wars.

Theaters had to be forced to take it. But George Lucas chose to market it in unusual ways. He ran, for example, a series of very unique radio commercials. In an idea I've never heard done before or since, Lucas ran a campaign of over 20 radio ads that felt like an old-time radio adventure serial. Each ad told a little more of the Star Wars story and ended on cliffhangers.

General Kenobi. You remember last time R2-D2 was sent by the lovely Princess Leia with an urgent message for Ben Kenobi. Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. With a tiny rebel starship under heavy attack, R2 and C-3PO flee to the planet below.

Will they make it? Will they find Ben Kenobi before Darth Vader finds them? Find out in the next thrill-packed commercial for Star Wars. Rated PG. Parental guidance suggested.

That first ad sounded like you might have even missed an episode or two. A very interesting strategy. Within three weeks, 20th Century Fox's stock price had doubled. Before 1977, its greatest annual profit had been $37 million. After Star Wars alone, the company earned $79 million. After Star Wars alone, the company earned $79 million. The movie would go on to earn nearly $1 billion. Movie marketing has become even more innovative in the last few years. Legend said there's been a curse on these ones.

Do you believe in the stories about the Blair Witch? Oh, my God. The Blair Witch Project is a movie marketing legend. Advertised mostly online, a website was created a full year before the movie was released. It listed a timeline for the supposed disappearance of three student filmmakers who were shooting a documentary on a local urban legend called The Blair Witch.

It then detailed how their film footage was found a year later and made into a movie. Missing person posters were stuck on poles at the Cannes Film Festival where distributors were shopping for the next big hit It leveraged fan sites, message boards and news groups The buzz it created was astounding And remember, the Blair Witch Project predated YouTube, Facebook and Twitter Rumored to have been shot for just over $60,000,

it grossed $29 million in its first wide-release weekend and over $248 million worldwide. To promote the Simpsons movie, 12 7-Eleven stores were transformed into Quickie Marts and sold Simpsons products like Buzz Cola and Krusty O's cereal. Then, there was paranormal activity. Jesus, this looks like something big here. It's not the house, it's me.

You cannot run from this, it will follow you. Paramount decided to try a social media marketing experiment with this film. They wanted to know if buzz could be generated for a little-known, low-budget movie with no stars. So the studio partnered with a high-profile film gossip blogger, and free midnight screenings of paranormal activityormal Activity were staged in eight cities. That was a crucial decision. Once the film was over, viewers were encouraged to talk up the movie on Facebook and Twitter. Paramount set up computers in the theater lobbies to give viewers instant online access.

Because the showings ended in the early morning hours when Twitter was at its slowest, paranormal activity garnered enough tweets to push the movie title and its links to the top trending topics on Twitter's homepage. Paramount then created an online campaign to dare people to submit one million demands for Paranormal to open nationwide,

which they did. And the movie eventually crossed the $100 million box office mark. Shot for $15,000, it is considered one of the most profitable movies in history, mostly thanks to a marketing plan. It's remarkable to think that movie trailers were originally invented to drive us out of theaters. Today, movie trailers are the third most watched videos online.

In many ways, movie marketing is like political advertising. Both are like big one-day sales. The ads have to drive people to the theaters on a certain day where they vote with their money. The results of that opening day dictate the life or death of a movie. Studios spend 90% of a movie's marketing budget before the film ever reaches theaters, because it's the only time the studios have control. Once the film has opened, word of mouth takes over.

It's a fact Hollywood doesn't take lightly, and it's why marketing budgets can be over 50% of the film's production cost. But maybe the biggest movie ad of them all is the Academy Awards, where a Best Picture Oscar can add anywhere in the neighborhood of $20 to $40 million at the box office. And that is a very respectable neighborhood when you're under the influence. I'm Terry O'Reilly. This episode was recorded

in the Terrastream Mobile Recording Studio. Producer, Debbie O'Reilly. Sound Engineer, Jeff Devine. Under the influence theme by Ari Posner and Ian Lefevre Music in this podcast provided by APM Music If you enjoyed this episode, you might also like Escape or Die Frying The Art of the Movie Poster

Season 10, Episode 4 You'll find it in our podcast archive Follow Under the Influence on Facebook See you next time Season 10, Episode 4. You'll find it in our podcast archive. Follow Under the Influence on Facebook. See you next time. Fun fact. Tom Laughlin, who played Billy Jack, sought the Democratic Party nomination for President of the United States

in three separate elections. He lost. But he put up a good fight.