The Dirty Secret of Spring Breakers
Thursday, March 28, 2013 at 7:00PM Hi everyone, Tim here; you may know me from my film review blog Antagony & Ecstasy, from my dogged commitment to the Film Experience’s own Hit Me with Your Best Shot or you may not have the damnedest idea who I am and don’t care. But I’m going to be with you on Thursdays for at least a little while now, with a weekly column, where we’ll talk about… well, that’s the trick, isn’t it? Movie stuff. Whatever seems to be interesting about the new movies poking their heads around that particular week: something particular about the way a movie was put together, or conceived, or, in this case, sold.
The dirty secret of the film industry is that it exists to be profitable. It actually does good to be reminded of that, because even in the case of the costliest, sprawlingest tentpole movies, we tend to act like that the filmmakers are our buddies, or some such; but it’s true of even the most independent-minded, anti-commercial cinema that it’s actually supposed to make some sort of money. Sad as it is to think, even microbudget indies that cost fractions of pennies by movie budget standards are still wildly expensive by actual human being standards, and if they constantly hemorrhage money, then it would be impossible to keep making them.
All of which is to say: I truly don’t begrudge Annapurna Pictures the right to turn a profit on Spring Breakers, more...
...nor Harmony Korine the right to become a bankable film director, even though I would park myself firmly in the “not a fan” camp regarding this particular picture. What I do begrudge is the way they got there by selling the film as something it isn’t to an audience who would never in a hundred years see the thing it actually is. This thought first occurred to me a few days before the film made its bold jump from 3 to 1104 theaters (a jump of 36,700%), when I happened to be by a television that happened to be playing Entertainment Tonight, and the perky lady anchor breathlessly hyped the naughty, sexy movie starring former Disney stars Selena Gomez and Vanessa Hudgens that they’d be talking about after the break, selling the movie on the basis of its salacious, Lives of the Movie Stars elements to, well, to the sort of people who watch Entertainment Tonight.
This is really quite dazzling. To go from the rabidly anti-populist Trash Humpers to a sexy exploitation picture shilled by the same team eager to bring us scoops about the new season of "Dancing with the Stars" in one step would be a legendary act of selling out, if only that’s what Korine had actually done. In fact, as I expect we all know by now, Spring Breakers is more of an all-out satiric assault on the kind of mentality that drives the entertainment media, in all its obsession with nipple slips and mostly-naked teenybopper icons and a quintessentially middlebrow American prudish fascination with watching sex. The kind of person that would go see the movie because a syndicated TV show suggest that you can see Hudgens being kinky is exactly the person that the film is most eager to condemn.
In short, Spring Breakers is the current reigning champion of the trend of advertising a movie as something completely different, one of the most magical facets of being a regular filmgoer in the 21st Century (and earlier: one of my all-time favorite movie trailers, for the holiday classic Miracle on 34th Street, is functionally an original short film that manages to avoid mentioning that the film in any way involves Christmas). It’s not, maybe, the most epidemic problem facing the world, but it’s desperately annoying, and has always struck me as counterproductive: it seems like it would stand to reason that the best way to get people to pay for your product is to attract the people who’d be most likely to enjoy it. And maybe that’s why we have the other trend in movie advertising, to share every salient plot point that happens prior to the last five minutes. But that’s a different rant.
It seems like it should be obvious box-office suicide; except it’s not. There have been films that have proved this before, but none so spectacularly as Spring Breakers. It might insult its audience to their face, and there might be walk-outs (four of the dozen-odd people in the theater where I saw it when it started were not there when it ended); but it made $4.9 million the weekend of its wide expansion – in three days at the U.S. box office, Spring Breakers made more than eight times the international lifetime grosses of every previous Harmony Korine film combined. It does not matter in the least if the people who got it there knew what they were getting into or not, if they were delighted by the surprise, or felt ill-used and lied to.
That’s what’s so galling: the lack of any kind of respect for the audience. Sure, there are always those suburbanites happy to have the chance to see this kind of stuff, smuggled under the radar (in addition to walk-outs, there was post-film applause in my theater), but that doesn’t change the fact that the audience has been openly lied to. It’s a little crime, as they go, but surely none of us want to end up in a place where it’s a guessing game every time we go to the cinema.
Reader Comments (28)
When I saw it, there was a small group of mixed ages and when it was over...the young people there seemed shell-shocked--probably college-aged or younger. And then they started complaining loudly. For me, I couldn't get over how insulted they were that they got tricked into seeing an arthouse film...which made me wonder how violently they would react if they stumbled into something like Amour. Spring Breakers is pretty fast-paced for the genre, so the whole experience was bizarre to watch unfold.
All movie advertising is based on bait and switch- they promise you a great time and then you end up suffering through "The Call" ( they should take your Oscar away Miss Berry!)
Your argument would be stronger if you used a children's movie not appropriate for children as an example of misleading advertisement. Those kinds of pictures do a great harm to younger audience members, thinking they're watching something appropriate for their age group because it has a PG rating. Little Monsters from 1989 is a perfect example of this.
You instead are defending the people who hated Tree of Life because it wasn't the Brad Pitt movie they assumed it would be from the ad campaign. You cares. If you're the serious film fan you know what the deal is when you see something promoted one way and the parties involved (Malick, Korine) are something else altogether.
Your argument would be stronger if you used a children's movie not appropriate for children as an example of misleading advertisement. Those kinds of pictures do a great harm to younger audience members, thinking they're watching something appropriate for their age group because it has a PG rating. Little Monsters from 1989 is a perfect example of this.
You instead are defending the people who hated Tree of Life because it wasn't the Brad Pitt movie they assumed it would be from the ad campaign. Who cares. If you're the serious film fan you know what the deal is when you see something promoted one way and the parties involved (Malick, Korine) are something else altogether.
I saw the film in New York City and the show was sold out. One of the interesting things about this screening was that a number of people walked out, and a number of people applauded at the end. Granted, this is New York and not middle America, but it was an interesting sight. In fact, most people in my theater were drawn to the film for James Franco, and they laughed every time he opened his mouth. Very few were there for the Disney starlets, and the rest were obviously there for Korine.
I don't know if the film was marketed in a misleading way as you say--it was a lot of fun and very much in line with the trailer. It is essentially an extended music video, so if anybody would enjoy the film, it would be the teenage/young adult audience to whom it was marketed.
What would be more worthy of discussion, I think, is the fact that many Disney starlets have no idea how to navigate the terrain once they grow up, because their young fans can't follow their careers and older people are unwilling to take them seriously.
This film is too mature for their young fans, but I don't think it is mature enough for an older crowd. Such is the paradox of Disney stardom.
I boycott all Disney programming since the mouse-owned network ABC canceled both All My Children and One Life To Live the same day.
I liked it. I want to see it again to experience the colors and the fever dream quality of it. I also was with a mostly baffled group of college-age kids (confession: I am also very close to college-age) but they had no idea who Harmony Korine was or that this was on the festival circuit or that people were saying it was 'Terence Malick meets dubstep'.
Also this movie is co-distributed by Annapurna Pictures and A24 who are both arthouse independent distributors and producers that are new to the game. But their strategy was savvy with very little marketing, in fact, just letting the likes of Hudgens, Gomez, and Benson (Pretty Little Liars is VERY popular with the age-group of people who likely went to see Spring Breakers) do the talking and promoting for the movie. They all seemed self-aware that this movie could not be sold as simply art but for the fact this was a movie with very salacious scenes and them dropping their Disney Princess image. People were just not expecting the art.
As for the audience, to me the movie is about telling its audience to be like the girls: let down your guard, test your threshold as a viewer, and enjoy the journey- you can leave any time (as some of the girls actually did). To me this is not a nasty, cynical, or sarcastic movie but a move that where the aim is true toward its audience. I loved those scenes considered ridiculous. The Brittney Spears moment? I was giddy and laughing that it went there for pure audacity but it was not done with a sneer. What is wrong with being absurdly sincere and sincerely absurd simultaneously?
Ehh. Not totally buying this.
I dunno, in some ways i think the marketing is genius!
I agree with JL, I don't think the marketing was that misleading. As oppose to the marketing for Drive. I don't see anything wrong with being mislead into thinking it's something it's not, unless it's inappropriate for a younger audience. I mean people could hate it, but they could also be open to learning more about film etc.
As for another comment fröm JL
'What would be more worthy of discussion, I think, is the fact that many Disney starlets have no idea how to navigate the terrain once they grow up, because their young fans can't follow their careers and older people are unwilling to take them seriously"
I guess I never really understand this notion because wouldn't their fans grow up too? I watched the MMC club as a kid, so Ryan Gosling, Britney Spears, Xtina Aguilera, Justin etc are only a few years older than me.
"The dirty secret of the film industry is that it exists to be profitable." You just answered your own question right there. Movies want to make money and in order to make money, they have to draw in the largest possible audience. Sometimes a trailer is misleading because it's targetting the largest possible audience and sometimes that means you have to sell your product as something it's not (it's not like you're selling a vacuum cleaner that has a specific function, this is a movie, an experience, which every audience member will take as they want but you have to get them there first). I agree that I don't mind for a trailer to be misleading if it leads audience members into a worthwhile movie experience. Besides, these days with the Internet and all the information we have, people should not rely on only a trailer to see what the movie is about (not that everyone does that, I'm just saying, the option's there).
Also, by the way, PG means Parental Guidance Suggested, so the rating is telling parents to beware, because what may be on the screen could be tough for young children (most of these ratings tell you why they are rated that way).
I don't think the marketing was misleading - it was marketed as a movie where two ex-Disney channel stars go wild during spring break and James Franco shows up as a rapper thug guy.
The only way it was misleading is that all the people that went to see it thought it was going to be a fun piece of trash movie and it was an art house film. But if the general public actually had film knowledge and knew of the director, they wouldn't be surprised. That's their fault, not the marketing.
Either way, it definitely stays with you. I saw it a week ago and my friend and I just keep saying "sprang brayyke" in that whispery James Franco voice.
Don't agree at all. The marketing for this film was pure genius! Sure it was (a bit) misleading but that's the point! How else is an experimental art house film going to make any money? Nowadays people can look up every single thing about a film through the Internet. Plenty of ways to find out what a movie is like besides the misleading marketing. Genius movie that I loved, and brilliant marketing that got people to go see it.
I suppose I shown own up to the unspoken thesis behind this piece: that tricking people into seeing a Harmony Korine film is just about the worst thing you could possibly do to them. Personally, I pretty much hated Spring Breakers, as I have pretty much hated every other Korine film I've seen, and I can see where the whole argument falls down for anyone who actually thought it was worth sitting through.
Even so, I still think it's a rude practice (and I'd initially included several other case studies, among them Drive, but I was anxious to keep the piece south of 1000 words).
The marketing is way more subversive than the actual movie.
I get what you're saying, as I was thinking something similar when I walked past a "Spring Breakers" poster at the entrance of an Urban Outfitters in a huge mall in Houston, TX (where I am originally from). It struck me immediately that a lot of the shoppers there (e.g. high schoolers...like me ten years ago) probably shouldn't be marketed to with this movie and the poster is giving a completely different impression of what I might think the movie is were I a high schooler.
Needless to say, I very much thought sitting through it was worth it. I found it hilarious, mesmerizing and absurd. But, they are selling a movie that not everyone should (or is ready) to see.
I see what you're saying but to say that audiences have been lied to is a bit extreme, no? Anyone who has seen the trailer filled with clips of threesomes and gunplay, or even THAT poster of four girls wearing barely-there bikinis while posing like video vixens around
Riff RaffScumbag James Franco, absolutely knows what they're getting into by buying a ticket. The walkouts are happening for the very same reason they happened in The Master and Tree of Life and Greenberg: it's an alienating experience. That being said, I hate to group those three films with the puerile shit show that is Spring Breakers.Tim, if Harmony Korine, being an art house hack, is what you really want to write about, just do it instead. That can lead to a conversation about hacks who earn auteur status by virtue of making low-budget "art house" shock/schlock titles.
Drive is guilty of false marketing too? Artfully done violence and the whole iconography of the scorpion jacket and the pink font in the posters to me felt like this will be a throwback movie than a Fast & Furious knock-off. Zero Dark Thirty was marketed as Top Gun for the 21st century with just Seal Team 6 marketed that had a real jingoist bent with the 'greatest manhunt in history' tagline. The final product was different with the opposite of the rah-rah happy ending the commercials were pointing to, and many people still saw it and still liked it a lot. The trailers for The Master had A LOT of scenes that never even made the final cut- you will have to buy a DVD where their is a short of all of the cut scenes and images found in the marketing (namely the moment Freddie yells at Lancaster in jail of whether or not 'The Cause' is telling the truth) in a cobbled together vignette. To me that seems a little more dishonest.
Your thesis to the Drive example and Spring Breakers seems to think that anybody who went in with the wrong impression of how it was marketed (again, they were not sold on the art, they were sold on the sleaze that was there a-plenty) was universally turned off by the movie because some tweens bashed it on twitter and also that you personally hated it. What about people who liked it despite going in with a different idea of what the movie was going to be? Surely those people exist. My dad was pretty much expecting Drive to be something completely different and he still ended up really liking the movie along with the Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy movie that was not marketed the way it turned out either. Also I do not really like all of Korine's movies or scripts adapted by Larry Clark but I really liked Spring Breakers.
Tim, "tricking people into seeing a Harmony Korine film is just about the worst thing you could possibly do to them." I could not possibly agree more. The man is the WORST kind of art house hack: one who pretends to not care about and/or actively despise his audience, but in reality is using that as a cover for the fact that his films aren't anywhere near as provocative (or, frankly, even as proficient) as he thinks they are/wants them to be.
Sorry, I'm still pissed off about having to sit through Gummo twice.
All that said, I can't help but be REALLY intrigued by Spring Breakers. Not to the point that I will spend money to see it, but it'll probably be on the top of my Netflix queue when it comes out there. I actually do find the marketing kind of genius in a really sick way. Sure it's backfired a bit with all the "worstmovieever" hashtags on Twitter, but as the saying goes: ALL publicity is good publicity. Annapurna is laughing all the way to the bank.
Frankly, I don't feel sorry for people who don't do at least a LITTLE research before going to see a movie. It's so easy nowadays to find out info on the director, screenwriter, and stars - let alone critics' reviews - to at least get some idea of what a movie's going to be like.
Don't think Annapurna Pictures is afraid to take some financial losses, so feel that this is unfair criticism leveled at them -- Spring Breakers is probably the least deceiving marketing for a film in the past few years...
Any trailer that made The Master appear to be worth seeing...that is a true crime. Sigh.
Korine's film MR. LONELY is kind of an overlooked gem. SPRING BREAKERS is just a smirking F.U to every conceivable audience that might go to see it. Wasn't a fan at all.
"It seems like it would stand to reason that the best way to get people to pay for your product is to attract the people who’d be most likely to enjoy it."
Just reading the comments to this piece, it's clear that few people enjoy Korine's work (or the post-Disney work of Disney princesses). So, who exactly is going to enjoy it? So, why not do a little false advertising?
Haven't seen this yet but i am a fan of his work and if anything i am glad this looks like a film that actually might make harmony korine some money so he can continue
I Liked the movie except the end that was so unbelievably without sense and absurdly stupid however i think that it miss something .....
Tim brayton. This movie was not made for you.
Neither was spring break
Hang urself
It's real love it look. at my shit l ol