Catégorie : Cinema

Stinky kid and drama queen

Being a screenwriter at a press junket or a movie premiere is like being the stinky kid in high school: nobody wants to sit with you at the cafeteria and nobody cares to talk to you (especially not journalists*).

I guess it’s very suited that my first movie junket experiences are for a film that takes place in high school… I should have listened to the much more experienced Chroniques Blondes who told me to simply skip these events. Live and learn. Oh well. Public torture and humiliation makes for great writing material anyway. ;-)

*Except for the Voir journalist. ;-)

Interactive movie poster

The publicity campaign for the movie I co-wrote is in full gear these days, as the movie opens on March 30th. If you live in Montreal, you’ve probably seen the posters in the various métro stations around town. If you pass by the McGill métro, check out this one-of-a-kind interactive poster. It’s a touch screen that shows video excerpts from the movie. I’m hoping to check it out tomorrow (Ed took the photo for me). If you’ve seen it and played with it, let me know what you thought of the concept. I don’t know of any other movie that has done anything like this in the métro, but then again, I don’t take the subway every day.

The soundtrack is being launched tonight (Tuesday), at 5pm on a tv show called Plus sur commande, with a live broadcast on Musique Plus.

Refreshing the internal cache

But I’d say the main reason to think about publicity is to help the movies and TV shows you’re involved with. The screenwriter tends to know more about the story than anyone else on the project, so you can be a crucial resource as journalists figure out how to write about the plot. […]

The other reason to think about publicity is in terms of your overall career. I have no doubt that I’ve gotten meetings with certain directors and actors because of repeated exposure to my name. It’s nice if someone likes Big Fish. It’s even better if they remember I wrote it. Every time a news story includes the phrase, “…August, whose credits include Big Fish, Corpse Bride and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory…” that’s like refreshing the cache on someone’s internal IMDb.

Screenwriter John August talks about publicity for writers on his blog.