Movies can’t change the world, but one upcoming documentary might make people plenty angry about the commercials they didn’t pay to see on screen.
Documentary filmmaker Morgan Spurlock, he of the endless appetite for Big Macs, is taking aim at product placement with “POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold.”
The film, out in select theaters April 22, examines how sneaky ads slip into mainstream movies in Spurlock’s inimitable style.
Said style didn’t serve him well in “Where in the World is Osama bin Laden,” a shallow look at the nexus between terrorism and the Western world.
He should be on much more solid ground with “Sold,” but just how cozy did he get with the sponsors?
Spurlock did one promotional appearance with some of the executives featured in the film, and he covered the film’s costs completely with, yup, product placements. It sounds perfectly meta, but let’s hope he also skewers a film industry which slams big business on screen while simultaneously squeezing every last nickel out of consumers.
Spurlock may be making a point by using sponsors to bring “Sold” to theaters. It’s hard to begrudge an independent filmmaker for throwing a Home Depot ad into his or her film if it means the difference between shutting down the production and making it to the final credits. When I watched “Two Tickets to Paradise” last year I spotted several glaring product placement moments. But the film, a labor of love made on the proverbial shoestring by actor turned auteur D.B. Sweeney, likely needed those product placements to keep the shoot alive.
But seeing Spider-Man swing over a billboard for Pepsi feels insulting when one considers all of the money being made by Spidey, Inc.
(Photo: Morgan Spurlock’s new documentary: POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold” promises to expose the product placement movement in film for all to see. Sony Pictures Classics)
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{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
A muckraking film maker who underwrites his anti-product placement advertising movie with product placement ads? Talk about undermining your premise. He may be making snarky on screen comments about in-movie advertising, but his real message is you wouldn’t be seeing some movies without the money from product placement.
Why, it’s almost as if his real purpose is to just make money off of lefties – rather like a certain portly film maker.
Seems like an interesting idea. In TV, 30 Rock has repeatedly done their product placement while simultaneously calling it out and mocking it. And Chuck makes their Subway product placement so intentionally obvious that you have to laugh at it.
K – If he makes valid points and delivers a stinging indictment of the system I’ll let his meta move of funding the film that way slide!
Yeah, 30 Rock does mock it effectively. And, I bet, it’s the first time some casual viewers get what’s going on
It occurs to me that product placement—aside from allowing bigger movie budgets—also, like TV commercials, could allow the populace to strike back against movies they don’t approve of, by boycotting sponsors. But then, I’m sure Spurlock objects to “artists” being spanked with the rolled up newspaper of commerce.
I actually don’t mind product placement, since it’s usually relatively unobtrusive, and helps to ground a movie in time and place. Maybe our lives shouldn’t be so brand conscious, but since they are, it always feels artificial when our movies aren’t.
I remember when Arrested Development was still on the air, they did a very funny product placement bit with Burger King. How I miss that show!
I don’t mind it so long as I don’t notice it. I used to hate how when you watch a film and you saw a character drink out of a can of cola but the logo looked like the Pepsi logo, except it said cola. I used to think it was insulting the audience.
Again, if it’s not too obvious I don’t care too much.
Sorry Morgan, but Mike Myers beat you to the punch in “Wayne’s World 2″ circa 1993 and Adam Sandler made mocking product placement an art form in “Happy Gilmore” shortly thereafter.