John Carter and the Gods of Hollywood
Page 21
In this way, without spending an inordinate amount of time, I was able to post a daily digest of John Carter news and commentary. Then, time permitting, I would write a post or two of my own, then go off about my business.
I was surprised, and pleased, to see traffic to the site grow significantly. From a standing start on December 4, it was pulling in more than 1,000 visitors a day by mid-December. A good number of them were themselves bloggers and journalists who found the daily newsfeed a useful tool for keeping up with the campaign.
Meanwhile I monitored the campaign.
Gradually, it became increasingly apparent that the campaign simply was not catching fire. The creative materials -- trailers, TV spots, posters -- seemed strangely tone deaf. There was negativity in the articles and comments that I was reading online -- complaints ranged from the confusing nature of the trailer and TV spots, to the fact that it looked like a clone of Prince of Persia or, worse, was this years’ Cowboys and Aliens. The comparisons--unfavorable for the most part--to Avatar and Star Wars were frequent as well.
If Burroughs summoned up my “dream-self”, Disney’s problems with the campaign summoned up my “work-self”, and I found myself beginning to contemplate the troubled campaign not just from the perspective of an anxious fan, but, increasingly, from the perspective of my “day job” which, for more than 20 years, had involved creating and producing films, and being responsible for theatrical marketing campaigns. My initial experience had been overseas, releasing major studio films in the 1990s in the Philippines -- an English speaking archipelago with a population of 100 million substantially “Americanized” potential viewers spread through 7,200 islands. Later I released a dozen indie films in the US. Nothing in my experience compared to a project on the scope of John Carter, but I knew the process and started to view it from a professional perspective.
As the “air war” began, with television spots appearing regularly on multiple networks from December 16 on, I began to monitor social media in hopes of seeing a surge, and in the process became aware of the fact that there was no measurable uptick in chatter about John Carter. Moreover, the campaign’s official accounts on key social media outlets Twitter and Facebook were oddly inactive.
On December 27th I found myself in a movie theater where the John Carter trailer played, and at the end there were snickers of derisive laughter, and a catcall or two.
On December 29th I found myself examining the output by Disney on Twitter and Facebook for what was then the first 30 days of the 100 day final push. There had been a total of 10 Tweets by @JohnCarter since the trailer debut a month earlier. On Facebook, there had been a mere eleven posts.
On the official John Carter website there had been no changes. There were a few games to draw viewers back, and a “Martian translator” device -- but other than this, nothing. No blog, no news updates, no wiki, no message board, no forum. It was bare bones and flat.
Meanwhile, the relentless negativity -- most of it relating to John Carter’s budget level and dim prospects for profitability -- was dominating the media narrative that was now reaching into the mainstream media. This was a narrative that desperately needed to be changed, but I could discern no indication that Disney was doing anything to change it.
Apart from the lack of effort to counter the negativity, I also simply couldn’t shake the feeling that opportunities were being missed. The same TV spots were playing over and over -- and neither the TV spots, nor the trailers, nor the posters did anything to create context or fire the imagination. There was no impactful mention of Edgar Rice Burroughs or the heritage of the film, no mention of Andrew Stanton or the fact that the genius behind Wall-E and Finding Nemo was involved.
It was as if the pedigree of the film was being ignored or worse, denied.
An idea began to form. Was it possible that I might be able to in some fashion have a voice at Disney? Was it crazy to think that might even be a possibility? Was this just the Mittyesque daydream that Gore Vidal had written about:225
Until recently I assumed that most people were like myself: day-dreaming ceases when the world becomes interesting and reasonably manageable. Now I am not so certain. Pondering the life and success of Burroughs leads one to believe that a good many people find their lives so unsatisfactory that they go right on year after year telling themselves stories in which they are able to dominate their environment in a way that is not possible in this over organized society.
Was I telling myself a daydream in thinking I might be able to gain a voice in the campaign?
Probably.
But the daydream persisted.
Was it such a stretch?
I considered the output of the official John Carter Twitter, Facebook, and official website since November 30; 10 tweets, 11 Facebook posts, and almost no updates.
Then I considered the output of my “hobby blog” since December 4: 26 “John Carter News” aggregation posts, and 45 other articles. Daily visitors to the site numbered in the thousands, and since many of them were journalists and bloggers who were replaying articles they found there, perhaps what I was doing could be considered significant.
Or not.
Trying to convince myself, I printed out a list of my output -- not including the daily aggregated newsfeed -- since December 4:
4 Dec John Carter inspired Avatar, not vice versa
4 Dec Interview with Michael Giacchino,
4 Dec The language of John Carter’s Barsoom
4 Dec How to count in Barsoomian
4 Dec Military ranks on John Carter’s Barsoom
4 Dec Barsoomian Proverbs
4 DecThe White Ape of Barsoom
4 DecMap of Barsoom
4 DecProject Gutenberg text of “A Princess of
4 DecAndrew Stanton on Edgar Rice Burroughs
4 DecTars Tarkas, John Carter’s fierce Ally
4 DecIncomparable Dejah Thoris of Helium
5 DecWho is John Carter?
6 DecAndrew Stanton on reshoots
6 DecVideo: 100 Years of John Carter
8 DecTwo great studio stills of Lynn Collins
9 DecWho is John Carter - Part 2
9 Dec“Is John Carter Just an Avatar Clone?”
10 DecJohn Carter is #6 on list of Top 25
10 Dec14 Facts about the Movie John Carter
11 DecAndrew Stanton on the John Carter books
11 DecBarsoomian, Dolthraki invented languages
12 DecDominic West trained with swords...
13 Dec$700M Global Gross for a Sequel? Really?
15 DecThe John Carter Imax Poster .....
16 DecJohn Carter / Star Wars comparisons?
16 DecERBophiles are excited for March 9!
17 DecDear John Carter Trailer Team....
17 DecLynn Collins on the Pixar Process
18 DecHear Michael Giacchino’s John Carter
18 DecCarl Sagan on Edgar Rice Burroughs
19 DecWoola Wallpaper -- free download
20 DecMy advent on Mars
21 DecAndrew Stanton’s dream for John Carter
23 DecSalt Lake City Weekly on John Carter
23 DecJohn Carter Japanese Trailer offers clues.....
27 DecKate Erbland: New Trailer ...
28 DecCheeta dies at 80?
28 DecThe plot thickens - was Cheeta a cheater?
29 DecTaylor Kitsch: Reluctant Hero
In all there were 40 posts in 26 days, and these did not include the 26 aggregated newsfeed posts--one each day with 10-20 articles in it. As I looked at the output and compared it to Disney’s entire social media and digital marketing output, the idea of a “seat at the table” didn’t seem completely far-fetched. I wasn’t just a random person off the street, I told myself -- I was a fellow industry professional with some credentials in theatrical releasing, admittedly modest (so modest, in fact, I could imagine someone at Disney complaining “what kind of a bottomfeeder indie lowlife producer is this guy
?”) but enough that, when coupled with my status as a specialty blogger and knowledge of Burroughs and Burroughs fans.......well, I could daydream about getting in the door at Disney.
After all, Burroughs taught me how to daydream.
The next day I called Jack Scanlan, a senior publicist who had worked on studio pictures for 40 years and knew a lot more of “establishment Hollywood” than I did. A bit shy about confessing to my daydream, I told him about The John Carter Files, then gradually warmed to the task of explaining to him my concerns about the campaign. Finally I shared my fantasy of a “seat a the table” with Disney. Did he know anyone there? What did he think? He agreed to take a look at The John Carter Files, then said he would get back to me.
The truth was, after 22 years and 20 films--and in spite of living literally in the shadow of the gates to Disney Studios in Burbank--I really didn’t have any contacts inside Disney. It would be easy to say that this is because of cloistered nature of Disney Studios. But I don’t really have any contacts inside Warner Brothers, Universal, or Fox either. My world is the indie world, and I had never really graduated beyond that -- nor had I regretted it. To me, “Hollywood” was not Sunset Boulevard, it was gritty North Hollywood, where I had lived for many years -- rows of small houses owned by film editors and grips and gaffers and VFX artists who worked from project to project and, when real estate was good and film was tough, had used their houses as ATMs to get through the tough times. There was very little glory in their Hollywood experience, and no personal financial security. They had kids and college and alimony just like other people did all over the country, but they dealt with these everyday challenges from a position of far less certainty than equivalent professionals in other industries did. They worked a movie and then chased after the next opportunity, then worked again and waited again. They did not go to premieres or walk the red carpet, and on the rare occasions when they did get invited to a premiere, there were no paparazzi interested in them.
The next day Scanlan called back, excited. He was impressed with The John Carter Files, and he was going to call Arlene Ludwig, head of west coast publicity for Disney Studios.
“Can you draft up a memo, something I can forward to Arlene and use for talking points when I talk to her? I need it right away -- this is the last chance to call her until after the New Year. How fast can you get it to me?”
“It shouldn’t take long.”
“An hour?”
“Sure.”
We hung up.
Well, I thought -- maybe there is something here.
An hour later I pushed send on an email that, for better or worse, was throwing my indie hat into the studio ring. In a very diplomatic way, it outlined what I thought were key messaging points that were being missed, and which if used properly could position the film in a positive way that was being missed. I sketched an idea for how to draw on the heritage in a way that would create an aura that the film story is “special”; that Burroughs and Stanton were both assets that could be used to change the narrative about the film, and I included quotes that were powerful endorsements of the material from Carl Sagan, Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, and others -- suggesting further avenues for differentiating the product and making it seem less generic, more weighty and unique. There was more -- specific proposals for articles, videos.
Anyway, I thought after sending it on to Scanlan.
Nothing will come of it.
But at least you gave it a shot.
On New Year’s Eve in the afternoon my phone rang and it was Jack Scanlan with good news to report. Arlene Ludwig, it turned out, had retired. But Scanlan had skillfully maneuvered his way into the office of her replacement Ryan Stankevich who, unlike Carney and the top players, was working through the holidays. After hearing Scanlan’s pitch for what I had done with The John Carter Files and what I could do going forward if given the opportunity (and Scanlan can pitch with the best of them) -- Stankevich agreed to a meeting on January 11th.
“How did you get her to agree?” I asked. I was impressed.
“It wasn’t difficult. We’re both guild members, and you represent the fans. That’s huge.”
I was taken aback.
“Well, I don’t officially represent the fans.”
“Sure you do. The John Carter Files has fans, lots of them.”
I was thinking of the longtime Edgar Rice Burroughs fans, who had been organized into fan groups for a half century or more, and to whom I was a johnny-come-lately (if at all).
“I’m talking about the ERB fans, the ones that have been out there forever. I don’t officially represent them.”
“You’re splitting hairs. Do you want the meeting or not?”
I did.
Scanlan wished me Happy New Year and signed off.
Happy New Year indeed . . .
MT Carney is Fired
As the New Year arrived at Disney, Rich Ross was already looking for MT Carney’s replacement. Her departure, while not unexpected, would be a rocky moment for Ross, who had selected her as an out-of-the-box choice a mere 18 months earlier. Her departure would not be seen as simply a routine replacement -- it was a rebuke of Ross’s leadership and judgment.
Since his arrival in October 2010, Ross had been dutifully implementing Disney CEO Bob Iger’s vision for the studio. Under the previous regime -- Chairman Dick Cook, Production chief Jim Gallagher, and Marketing chief Oren Aviv -- the focus had been on creating new franchise worthy projects in-house. But first with Pixar, then with the acquisition of Dreamworks in February 2009, Iger had been working toward a redefinition of the studio as a distribution hub for preexisting strong brands that would eventually include Jerry Bruckheimer Films, Pixar, Dreamworks, and Marvel, with a diminished focus on in-house production, particularly in the live action space.
In the 18 months of Carney’s tenure, her operation had yet to produce success as the marketing machine for Disney/Dreamworks/Marvel/Pixar/Bruckheimer. Prince of Persia had been the first test and had fared weakly in the US, adequately overseas; then The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, which flopped. Step UP 3D then underperformed; Secretariat performed weakly; You Again flopped; then Tangled did well, Tron: Legacy did a solid $400M worldwide; and Gnomeo and Juliet did $100M domestic. From that point on, however, it went downhill.
Dreamworks, due to concerns about Carney and the ‘Disney marketing machine’ under her, had built its own marketing team by the time its first release through Disney was offered. The same was true of Bruckheimer, and to some degree with Lasseter and Pixar -- with the result that 8 of 14 releases were under the three self-managed operations. Carney was left in charge of African Cats, Prom, The Lion King 3D, The Muppets, and John Carter. Of these, only John Carter was a $250M “tentpole” release.
The net result of all this was that as of the end of 2011, the marketing ‘mojo’ at Disney was in the producers’ offices with individual brands, not the studio marketing team. Carney’s tenure was over; and John Carter, lumped in among the motley group of in-house projects, was not getting anywhere near the same kind of focus and quality creative attention that the films of Bruckheimer, Dreamworks, and Marvel were getting.
In sum -- Disney’s “distribution model” was foundering and Ross’s own tenure was in jeopardy--and this was even before the expected John Carter debacle unfolded.
It was against this backdrop that Ross would have to announce the departure of MT Carny, a departure that would constitute an admission of a failed experiment and would really represent the beginning of the end for Ross.
The timing of the announcement had not been finalized, but over the weekend of January 7-8 Nikki Finke at Deadline got wind of the shakeup and wrote: “After more than a year and a half in the job, and speculation since her arrival that she was going to be canned, I can confirm that MT Carney is officially out as President of Worldwide Marketing at Walt Disney Studios.” 226 Finke quoted an unnamed Disney source as saying that John Carter was a “perfect microcosm” of what went wr
ong under Carney’s brand management oriented regime. Speaking of the decision to remove “of Mars” from the title:
It’s based on a big geek book. You are taking a piece of very well known classic source material and taking the marketing hook out of it. It’s like putting it through the deflavorizer. It’s like a perfect microcosm of what went wrong.
The report in Deadline came on the same day that the New York Times ran an in-depth article entitled “In Hollywood’s Clubby Culture, a Disney Marketer’s Rapid Downfall” -- a portrayal of Carney as victim of insider Hollywood which included the following description of her mandate:227
Mr. Ross charged her with shaking up Disney’s marketing approach, and she quickly did just that, reallocating funds from traditional media to new media, conducting an extensive review of Disney’s overall ad-buying process, jettisoning dozens of staff members and overseeing a chic redesign of the marketing division’s office space.
One major contribution, according to her supporters, involved organization and planning; rather than making decisions on marketing at the last minute and having everyone work on every movie, Ms. Carney successfully lengthened the planning process and split her staff into various pods of focus.
“She arrived to a lot of status-quo, grossly inefficient executives surviving on legacy relationships, and she responded with guns blazing,” said the Disney executive who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
The next day, January 9, Disney confirmed Carney’s exit, publishing Carney’s memo to her staff which read in part: “
After much consideration, I have decided to leave the Disney family to return to my own. It is terribly hard to leave, but I have been constantly torn between my kids and my job, and like all good Hollywood movies, the kids have to win. This has been a remarkable journey and I look forward to seeing your continued brilliance everywhere,