Time for another round-up.<\/span><\/p>\n 1.<\/a> The stories about Hollywood\u2019s efforts to appeal to the Christian niche market just keep on comin\u2019. GetReligion.org<\/a> links to a Wall Street Journal<\/a><\/i> story on The Exorcism of Emily Rose<\/a><\/i>:<\/p>\n The $19 million project is a hit in part because Screen Gems deliberately courted an audience that it might not have counted on for a typical horror flick: religious conservatives. . . .<\/p>\n Studio executives figured that horror movie-loving teens would flock to the picture, which stars Tom Wilkinson as the priest who is put on trial for allegedly causing the girl\u2019s death and Laura Linney as the spiritually conflicted lawyer who defends him. But Screen Gems worked hard to attract a spiritually-oriented audience as well. It conducted an online poll asking participants if they believed in demonic possession (66% did) and issued a promotional mini-newspaper that reprinted articles from recent years about the Vatican\u2019s views on Satanism and incidences of real-life exorcisms.<\/p>\n \u201cWe tried to get people thinking about the fact that this exists in the world,\u201d says Valerie Van Galder, who handled the marketing of the film. \u201cWe tried to make exorcisms newsworthy.\u201d . . .<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Meanwhile, the Associated Press<\/a> reports:<\/p>\n At some of the largest and most influential Christian churches in the country, the lights dim and congregants watch a sneak preview of a new movie about golf.<\/p>\n The Walt Disney Co. is marketing \u201cThe Greatest Game Ever Played\u201d to faith-based groups even though the film, about Francis Ouimet\u2019s improbable win in the 1913 U.S. Open, isn\u2019t overtly religious.<\/p>\n \u201cIts themes are about family, about not giving up on your dreams, courage,\u201d said Dennis Rice, head of publicity at the Walt Disney Studios. \u201cThey are very secular virtues, but they also could potentially be Christian virtues.\u201d<\/p>\n Other major studios have undertaken similar marketing for films that aren\u2019t about God, including the recent father-son story \u201cThe Thing About My Folks\u201d and even the dark drama \u201cThe Exorcism of Emily Rose.\u201d Twentieth Century Fox has launched a Web site<\/a> to market family-friendly videos directly to Christian groups. . . .<\/p>\n Studios said it\u2019s hard to quantify potential revenue from the family-values demographic, but one industry analyst gave a sense of what\u2019s at stake. Targeted marketing of this kind happens only if a studio expects to add $25 million to $50 million to the box office gross and sell perhaps an extra 5 million DVDs, according to Harold Vogel, who heads the New York investment firm Vogel Capital Management.<\/p>\n For their part, churches recognize that just denouncing violent or sexually explicit films doesn\u2019t influence their content so their members are using buying power to support films that reflect their values. . . .<\/p><\/blockquote>\n This last story is particularly interesting to me, as I recently caught flak from the higher-ups at one studio (which shall remain nameless) for actually mentioning the fact that their film was being niche-marketed to an interviewee whose only reason for talking to me was the fact that their film was being niche-marketed. I thought I was just stating a fact, but apparently it\u2019s supposed to be more of an open secret, or an elephant in the room.<\/p>\n 2.<\/a> GetReligion.org<\/a> also links to a very interesting A.V. Club<\/a> interview with my favorite documentarian Errol Morris<\/a>, which includes some fascinating anecdotes. For example, while discussing the editing of Gates of Heaven<\/a><\/i> (1978), he says:<\/p>\n There was an editor who worked downstairs, doing mostly pornography. His name was David Webb Peoples. He\u2019s subsequently become a famous scriptwriter. And Dave Peoples came up and looked at it. I had tremendous difficulty editing the movie, because there was no principle for editing that kind of thing. I don\u2019t think that it\u2019s even clear now how radically different that movie is from other movies. It involved these very strange dioramas, edited against each other. You can say it\u2019s talking heads, but it\u2019s not talking heads in a context where they\u2019ve been stitched together by voiceover and various kinds of visual detritus. There was something extreme and radical about this material, and it wasn\u2019t clear whether it was editable. And Dave Peoples said, \u201cYou know, I think it\u2019s really terrific, but I don\u2019t know how to edit it. I have no advice.\u201d And he loved the movie, understand. Dave Peoples is a really good guy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n David Webb Peoples, of course, went on to write Blade Runner<\/a><\/i> (1982) and Unforgiven<\/a><\/i> (1992), among other films.<\/p>\n Then there\u2019s this bit, where Morris discusses the ads he shot for MoveOn.org during last year\u2019s election campaign:<\/p>\n I mean, I\u2019m proud of having done those ads. I wish I could\u2019ve done more. I wish the ads could\u2019ve been used. I kept thinking that the only way ads like this could be effective was to just blanket the markets with them. You don\u2019t show one person, you show 50 people. Make it seem as though there\u2019s a bandwagon. And one thing that really interested me is, I shot evangelical Christians, and MoveOn didn\u2019t even put those in the mix! For reasons that, you know\u2026 I\u2019m speechless. It was assumed that you can\u2019t touch evangelical Christians. \u201cOh, they\u2019re the Republican Right. Stay away from those people. Don\u2019t even try to talk to them.\u201d Well, what\u2019s interesting is that there were evangelical Christians who were voting for Kerry. There were right-to-lifers who were voting for Kerry. And it\u2019s interesting to listen to the reasons why. To ignore that segment of the electorate is moronic. Particularly if you don\u2019t know who those people are, or what their concerns are.<\/p>\n We imagine what this country is, but quite clearly, this country is a mystery. I mean, one of the reasons I did the ads is, I thought I could learn something. Like, what the hell is going on? I think anybody\u2014particularly a person of leftist persuasion such as myself\u2014who stops and thinks even for a moment, realizes that something strange is going on and we don\u2019t quite get it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n 3.<\/a> FilmStew.com<\/a> reports that Walden Media, the outfit behind The Chronicles of Narnia<\/a><\/i> and the upcoming William Wilberforce biopic Amazing Grace<\/a><\/i>, are dipping into history yet again for Manhunt<\/i> \u2014 with Harrison Ford already signed to play Col. Everton Conger, the Civil War hero who tracked down Abraham Lincoln\u2019s assassins.<\/p>\n FWIW, it occurs to me that, while Ford has made a number of films set in the past, I can think of only one other film in which he played an actual historical figure, namely K-19: The Widowmaker<\/a><\/i> (2002; my review<\/a>). Not sure if that means anything, but hey.<\/p>\n 4.<\/a> Reuters<\/a> reports on the current state of the on-again, off-again Disney-Pixar relationship<\/a>, and notes in passing that The Chronicles of Narnia<\/i> will have its world premiere December 7 in London, with Prince Charles and Camilla in attendance.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Time for another round-up. 1. The stories about Hollywood\u2019s efforts to appeal to the Christian niche market just keep on comin\u2019. GetReligion.org links to a Wall Street Journal story on The Exorcism of Emily Rose: The $19 million project is a hit in part because Screen Gems deliberately courted an audience that it might not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1116,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n