How I never heard of Star Wars as a kid.

I was at a party last night talking movies and someone in the
circle hadn’t heard of Wall E.

My surprised response to her was ‘they don’t spend $50
million in advertising for you to not
know about it.’ In her defense she said I don’t really go to the movies
often.  And so I started thinking, about
the great big Hollywood advertising push…

This girl is who the studios are aiming to reach. She’s the
person who doesn’t follow film online, rarely goes to the movies, she’s the
kind of girl to whom movies don’t have that much appeal for. And if a studio
can get this kind of person to be interested in their film, that probably means
that they’ve gotten the attention of the other 99% of the population.

As for us, we know about movies from the moment they get
greenlit, sometimes even before that. Take The Dark Knight, a movie I’ve been
following for three years now. I’ve clocked up tens of hours of readings
articles, interviews, viewing posters, watching trailers and doing a bit of the
ARG.
All for a 150min viewing experience.

I think it’s pretty safe to say it has my attention. And
then there’s The Phantom Menace.

I was 12 at the time. I was a regular movie goer. The first
I ever heard of Star Wars Episode 1 was when it was on the shelf at my video
store; ‘What’s this?’ How did it miss me? As a 12 year old male interested in
movies I was THE TARGET for the publicity machine, so something went wrong for
me to just simply MISS the entire rumour period, buzz, ad blitz, release,
reviews, trailers and TV spots. It wasn’t even talked about at school either.

 

Then there’s Titanic. No idea it existed. Saw it probably a
month after its release after a friend begged me to come for his second
viewing. I didn’t like it.

The Matrix. Needed a movie to go to on a date. Opened the
paper and there was Keanu looking cool in a trench coat.

Three of the biggest movies of the last decade and I had no
little or no knowledge of them. How things have changed. I know that The Dark
Knight production had to scrap shooting in the harbor due to toxins in the
water. I know that there’s a missing scene from Superman Returns that cost $10
million. I know that Scarlett Johansson and Josh Harnett fooled around in
costume on the set of The Black Dahlia.

Of course it’s because now I’m always online and hunting
this stuff down. But seriously…how did I miss Phantom Menace?

Things I did this week to further my career: found a script
assessor willing to work for cheap. Wrote a couple of scenes for It’s A Trap!

Things I did that aren’t helping my career: Started
writing a novel.