Bacon Bits

In my line of work, it’s not uncommon to get confusing or downright contradictory direction from my clients. It’s really not surprising anymore and totally comes with the territory.

This is, after all, an industry where we sometimes resort to a “mis-direct,” which involves setting the audience up for one type of emotion/experience, only to do a fast switch. Surprise! It’s actually this kind of movie! This can actually work well for either horror movies or comedies, but it’s a trick that’s been done to death.

The other trick we sometimes pull is to tell our own version of the story, focusing on the most “sellable” aspect of a film and making it seem like that’s what the movie is all about. For example, I once worked on a depressing movie about drug abusers that became (in our trailer) a sexy movie about star-crossed lovers.

And sometimes you get direction that just makes you laugh out loud. The all-time best I ever heard was, “We want something like, ‘In space, no one can hear you scream.’ But funnier.”

Last week I was working on a movie about a girl with unbelievable luck. I was really happy with the job I did, with my one concern being that I might’ve been a little too edgy/racy, as the audience for this movie is strictly teenage girls.

Surprise! The client felt my stuff was “too old-fashioned,” that I needed to be more hip and current.

So what do they want instead? “Position her like Ann-Margaret, Mary Tyler Moore or ‘That Girl.’”

I’m fairly certain that most teenage girls have never even heard of any of those examples, and doubt that an average 15 year-old would relate to them. But that’s studio logic for you. It doesn’t get more Hollywood than that.