Kristin here–

This past summer I had my first experience of being quoted as a pundit in a major newspaper. The Los Angeles Times was planning a story on the internet buzz around Snakes on a Plane and more specifically around the fact that some of that buzz had actually influenced New Line to change the film.

In late July I had completed the final revision and updating on The Frodo Franchise. Two chapters cover the official and unofficial internet publicity for The Lord of the Rings. The last thing I had added to those chapters was a reference to the Snakes internet phenomenon—which was still ongoing, of course, since the film was not released until August 18. The connection is closer than it may appear, since New Line distributed both films.

Dawn Chmielewski, of the LA Times, got wind of my work on fans and the internet. She called me, and we had a pleasant 40-minute conversation. The result was one pretty uncontroversial statement from me near the end of the story, describing how studios have a mixed attitude toward fan sites on the internet: “It is a phenomenon where the studios are having to keep a delicate balance between, on the one hand, wanting to use this enormous potential for publicity, and on the other hand have to control over copyrighted materials and over spoilers.”

This story was part of the huge amount of attention paid to the Snakes phenomenon, with Brian Finkelstein, webmaster of the main fan site, Snakes on a Blog, widely quoted about how New Line had cooperated with him and even invited him to LA for the premiere. One of the main points of interest to the media was that New Line had added a line of dialogue that had originated on a fan site for Samuel L. Jackson’s character. The studio also added some sex and gore, moving the film’s rating from PG-13 to R.

Fans’ influencing films was not entirely new by this point. After The Fellowship of the Ring came out in 2001, two fans elevated a non-speaking elf extra from the Council of Elrond to fame by dubbing him “Figwit” and starting a website devoted to him. As a salute to the fans, the filmmakers brought the extra back and gave him one line to say in The Return of the King, where he is credited as an “Elf escort.” That phenomenon, however, didn’t get much notice beyond fan circles. The Snakes revisions got far more attention.

Much was made of the fact that industry officials were eager to see whether wide internet buzz—especially when covered by mainstream news media—would translate into boffo box-office figures. As we all know by now, Snakes was a deemed a failure. New Line said that its opening gross was typical for a low-budget genre film. Snakes cost a reported $33 million. Ultimately it took $34 million in the domestic market and a total of just under $60 million internationally. I suspect that New Line spent a great deal more on advertising that it ordinarily would have, hoping in vain to expand the enthusiasm. The film’s box office takings would certainly not bring in a profit, but doubtless New Line hopes for better things on DVD. That DVD was released on January 2, so no sales figures are available yet, but the widescreen edition is doing reasonably well at #19 on Amazon.

The film’s disappointing ticket sales led to questions. Why would fans spend so much time on the internet and generate such hype and then not go to the film? After all, fans created parody posters, music videos, comic strips, and photos on their sites, as well as designing T-shirts and other mock-licensed products. (The DVD supplement “Snakes on a Blog” presents a generous sampling of such homages; see also Snakes on Stuff.com.) And if that much free hype—even aided and abetted by the studio—didn’t translate into ticket sales, was the internet all that useful for publicizing films?

Of course fan sites had already proven their worth for New Line’s own Austin Powers: Man of Mystery and Lord of the Rings. Other films had benefited from free fan labor and enthusiasm. Famously The Blair Witch Project became a massive hit primarily because of the internet. But anytime a hitherto dependable formula results in even a single failure, the studio publicity departments go into a tizzy of doubt. It’s true of genres, stars, and just about any other factor you can name. Snakes fails, so maybe the internet isn’t that powerful a publicity force.

Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan came along to confuse things even further. It, too, had a huge fan presence on the internet. In this case, the main activity was the posting of clips on YouTube. Well before the film was released on November 3, deleted footage and some scenes from the film were showing up. There were about 2000 by then, and as of yesterday a search for “Borat” on YouTube yielded 6,293 items.

It came to be a joke on the internet: “What is the difference between Google and Borat? The latter knows how to make money from YouTube.” (“Borat” was recently reported to be one of the top search terms on Google in 2006.) Webmasters and chat-room denizens who were already fans of Sacha Baron Cohen from Da Ali G Show, where the Borat character originated, promoted the film. The internet buzz probably led to more coverage of the film in mainstream infotainment outlets than would have otherwise occurred.

Borat’s reported budget was $18 million. To date, it has grossed $126 million domestically and a total of $241 million worldwide.

The timing of the two events triggered much press coverage and show-business hand-wringing. What did it all mean? Is the fan-based sector of the internet good for films or not?

This isn’t some idle question as far as the industry is concerned. Twentieth Century Fox wisely encouraged all the Borat uploaders at YouTube. Far from threatening to sue over copyright, they leaked footage. Then, however, shortly before the film’s release, audience research (that highly dubious tool in which studios put such faith) revealed that many members of the public had never heard of Borat. What to do? At the last minute Fox cut back the number of theaters in which the film would be shown. Did anyone else in the world think that was a good idea?

Back on November 11, with Borat freshly successful and speculation about internet coverage rife, I promised to explore how the two films differed when it came to internet hype and success. That would be possible to do without seeing either film. I saw both, though. Like many others, I watched Borat in a theater and Snakes on DVD.

Others have offered reasons for the difference. On NPR, Kim Masters made some plausible observations. Snakes, she points out, “was a film with a very broad concept—Samuel L. Jackson battles snakes on a plane. The buzz took off on thousands of Web sites as the film became the butt of many jokes. The problem is that the movie wasn’t really meant to be that funny. Borat, on the other hand, is meant to be funny.” True enough. In fact, Snakes has a weird mixture of tones, starting off with a highly non-humorous scene of a gangster killing a man with a baseball bat. It goes on to interject funny moments in the midst of grim ones in a seemingly random way.

Moreover, Masters claims, the buzz for Snakes “took off too fast” and in the wrong places. The sites making all the jokes and parodies weren’t the same ones that horror fans frequent, and the humor may in fact have created a negative reaction among what would ordinarily have been the film’s target audience. Borat had no such problem. Fans of comedy and especially of Cohen spread the word to likeminded fans through what is termed viral marketing in the publicity business.

All true, and yet, having studied Lord of the Rings fan sites for a long time, I think there was another crucial factor that never occurred to the anxious studios. That factor was what the fans were doing with the films on their websites, in chat rooms, and on YouTube.

Many popular films, especially in genres like fantasy, science fiction, action, and horror, generate fanfiction, fanart, spoofs, and other creative responses. Snakes on a Plane offered the inspiration for all sorts of clever writing and drawing and videomaking through its title alone. As was pointed out over and over, from that title and the casting of Jackson, everyone knew what the film would be like. It could be parodied without even being seen. Indeed, I suspect that after months of posting and mutually enjoying hundreds of amusing riffs on “Snakes on a Plane,” many fans realized that they could never have as much fun watching the film as they had playing around with its title and concept. It had never been the movie itself they were really interested in.

Borat’s full, unwieldy title was also an attention-getter, but no one could possibly predict much about the film from it, let alone parody it. Here the focus was primarily on how funny Cohen was as Borat and how funny the film was going to be. What circulated were samples that seemed to prove exactly that. People would go to this film and have more fun than they could possibly make for themselves by messing around on the internet with its title. The words “snakes on a plane” could inspire just about anybody with a creative bone in their body, but only Cohen could do Borat.

Print and broadcast media spread the same message. For Snakes, they had zeroed in on the internet coverage and stuck with that. End message: there is a lot of fan attention being paid to a rather silly-sounding film. For Borat, they had Cohen appear as an interviewee.

Cohen brilliantly manipulated the infotainment outlets, especially the chat shows, by appearing in character as Borat. As the film’s release approached, Cohen was a hot property, a ratings booster. Talk-show hosts and soft-news reporters presumably couldn’t alienate him by insisting that he speak as himself. Maybe they didn’t want to. As a result, three things happened. First, the endlessly talkative Borat dominated each interview. On The Daily Show, the ordinarily in-charge Jon Stewart was totally unable to control the situation and frequently cracked up, once badly enough that he had to turn his back on the audience momentarily.

The second result was that each appearance by “Borat,” supposedly there to talk about the film, ended up being a hilarious performance by Cohen, ad-libbing on everything around him—the chairs, the coffee mugs, the cameras, the audience. Spectators ended up with one impression about the film: it was about this incredibly funny guy doing incredibly funny things.

Third, there could be no discussion of the less savory aspects of Borat, the ones that mostly surfaced after the film was already a hit. These included allegations that people had been manipulated by false claims into signing consent forms and “performing” in the film. One has to suspect that when Cohen was explaining his project to them, he may have appeared as his own rational self and not in the wild-and-crazy persona of Borat. The stylistics of the film itself betray many points at which encounters with real people could have been manipulated. Who knows what the crowds at the rodeo where Borat butchers the national anthem were actually reacting to? None of their responses is ever visible in the shots of Borat. How many non-bigoted interviews were thrown out for every bigoted one that could be used?

The point is, though, that the interviews were like the internet clips, furnishing more evidence of how entertaining the film would be. Borat could provide a sort of creativity that was all his own, and fans could never imagine it ahead of seeing the film or create a more fun version of it themselves. Many, many of the people who posted or read stuff about Borat on the internet went to the film.

Ultimately the studios have yet to emerge from their early love-hate relationship with fan-generated publicity on the internet. They dread the early posting of bad reviews and crave good ones, naturally. But they still seem to believe that most other online publicity means the same thing: eyeballs on monitors should equal bottoms in theater seats. Publicists have not yet grasped that fans don’t go to the web just to talk about films and learn about films. They do things with films, and different films inspire different sorts of activities. Those different activities may or may not mean that the fan ultimately wants to see the film itself.

In most cases they probably do end up seeing the film. Snakes on a Plane is most likely an aberration, as Blair Witch was. But Snakes does prove one other thing. Fawning attention paid to the webmasters and bloggers who launch these unofficial campaigns is no guarantee of success. The “Snakes on a Blog” supplement displays some interesting aspects of New Line’s wooing of the main fans involved in the online hype. The documentary seems to have been made at just about the time Snakes was released. It ends with the bloggers, by invitation, on the red carpet at the Chinese Theater for the film’s premiere and later at the bloggers’ party put on by New Line at a bar. The whole tone is very enthusiastic about the internet’s impact on the film’s success; there is no sense that the film will disappoint and raise doubts about the value of fan publicity. There is also the implicit suggestion that fans starting future film-related blogs might get similar encouragement and hospitality from studios.

Clearly no amount of studio cooperation and attention to fans’ interests will make a film succeed if the right blend of ingredients isn’t there. Nevertheless, fans’ enthusiasm and willingness to spend great amounts of time, effort, and even their own money to create what amounts to free online publicity for films is of incalculable value to the studios. Yet for the most part those studios are still making only grudging, limited use of this amazing resource. The resentment they garner from fans as a result may be squandering part of that resource’s potential.

Gradually, though, the studios are giving up their policy of stifling the fans by making vague threats about copyright and trademark violations. If they go further and actually learn how fans use all the amazing access the internet has given them, maybe movie executives can relax and recognize the obvious answer to the current debate: Yes, fans on the internet are good for the movie business.

Easy Skanking (aka Fidibus).

DB here:

I’d intended to post this at the end of the year, but I fell behind. So in place of the New Year’s entry Kristin and I had hoped to write, we’ll just say: Best wishes for 2007!

And now the blog….

I haven’t bothered to draw up a list of best films of 2006, for lots of reasons. Some acute objections to the very idea of best-films lists are aptly summarized by Andy Horbal, and I find them convincing. But there have been practical concerns too.

My December movie-watching was dominated by 2004-2006 Danish films, in preparation for an essay. I think I couldn’t have spent my time better. Instead of being disappointed with critics’ official hits from the US, I was repeatedly excited by ingenious, moving, and enjoyable films….most of which I wouldn’t have known about otherwise.

First, some background.

Historically, it seems, the three greatest national cinemas are those of the US, Japan, and France. Their pervasive influence and their accomplishments in film art, film industry, and film culture make them consistently important in every era, from 1895 to the present.

But a lot of other national cinemas are important too, and I confess a fondness for those less salient ones, what Mette Hjort calls, without disparagement, cinemas of small nations. It’s partly because my academic life has been bound up with not only the Big 3 but a littler 3: Belgium, Hong Kong, and Denmark.

Denmark was the first foreign country I ever visited; I went there in 1970, just before starting graduate school, to do research on Carl Dreyer. I was received so hospitably by Ib Monty, Karen Jones, Marguerite Engberg, and others at the Danish Film Archive, that I came to believe that I could continue to do academic work on cinema.

Over the last 36 years, I’ve felt a kinship with Danish film culture. It has admirable directors like Dreyer and Benjamin Christensen, of course, but also without a lot of fuss the Danes keenly support artistic cinema in a commercial context. I’ve come to respect their open, unpretentious approach to filmmaking and film viewing. I’ve also made many strong friendships with Danish archivists and professors.

The Danish Film Institute not only helps fund most of the 15-20 titles theatrically released every year. It also proselytizes very actively for those films, helping them get festival slots and theatrical releases overseas.(Several Danish items will be screened at Sundance this month.)

The DFI’s job has gotten easier since the arrival of Dogme 95, which galvanized filmmakers around the world and made Danish film the flagship of Scandinavian cinema. Here is Norwegian director Aksel Hennie: “The effect of Dogme on my generation has been immense. More than anything else, it is the Dogme attitude, the ‘anybody can make movies’ idea. As a first time director with no formal training from a small European country, that was very inspiring.”

In 2002, Vicki Synnott of the DFI asked me to write an essay about post-Dogme Danish films for their publication Film, which appears in English in spring, summer, and fall. I reviewed about thirty titles, only a few of which I’d already seen. The result, “A Strong Sense of Narrative Desire,” can be downloaded here.

In 2005, Vicki asked me for a more up-to-date piece, and she sent me another passel of films to watch. Hence my December movie marathon, and the essay, which I’ve just submitted. After polishing, it will be published in print and will be available online.

I thought that a good way to start the new year would be to talk about the most intriguing and enjoyable films I saw. Most are little-known outside the festival circuit, and very few are as yet available on DVD. But all are well worth your time. So call it my Best Danish Films I Saw at the End of 2006 list.

Thrillers

The King’s Game (2005) offers journalistic-political intrigue in the vein of All the President’s Men. Efficiently directed and plotted, with some earned surprises, it also features those doyens of Danish acting, Anders W. Berthelsen (Mifune) and Søren Pilmark.

Murk (2005) shows off again the estimable talents of screenwriter (sometime director) Anders Thomas Jensen. A little implausible in the third act, but excellent suspense and fine performances from the ubiquitous Nicolas Bro and Nicolaj Lie Kaas.

Flies on the Wall (2005): Another political thriller, this one for the digital age. A documentary filmmaker (Trine Dyrholm, another fixture of modern Danish film) is commissioned to make a film promoting a political party. She finds a scandal instead. Director Åke Sandgren creates a dizzying montage of footage from the hidden cameras she plants among the offices and in her motel. At a certain point, though, we realize that some of the footage comes from cameras spying on her.

I plan to write more about this rather dazzling movie in another essay.

Ambulance (2005): The idea is worthy of Larry Cohen. A botched bank robbery forces the thieves to hijack an ambulance to make their getaway…with an attendant and a critically ill patient still inside. Unfolding in more or less real duration, the film barrels along breathlessly but still pauses for moments of character revelation and disputes about moral choices.

Pusher III (2005): Even grimmer than the first two installments, but completely gripping in its portrayal of a man whom we should consider utterly degenerate. Nicolas Winding Refn makes the milieu of The Departed look like a ten-year-old’s birthday party. There’s also an intriguing documentary, Gambler (2006) about the financial pressures that forced Refn to make the two final Pusher films.

Comedies

Clash of Egos (2006): A high-concept satire of the film industry by, once more, Anders Thomas Jensen. Through a legal settlement, working-class Tonny gets a chance to oversee a pretentious movie director’s next project.

Lotto (2006): Danish comedies often have a moral issue at their center, one that’s usually more subtly developed than the morality of Hollywood films. Here the situation is: If you and your workmates pooled to buy a lottery ticket and it won….should you tell them? Another fine Pilmark performance, this time in mild-mannered mode.

Easy Skanking (2006; illustration up top). Originally titled Fidibus, which refers to somebody serving as a gofer for a drug dealer. This is a lively venture into Pulp Fiction and Trainspotting territory, but with a sweeter tone and a happy ending. Rudy Køhnke, Denmark’s answer to the young George Clooney, works for the fearsome pusher Paten, but falls in love with Paten’s mistress. You can check out trailers here and here.

Adam’s Apples (2004): A little older, but I had to include it just because it’s one of my favorite films of recent years. Written and directed by Jensen, it tells of a daffily upbeat priest’s efforts to reform convicts, including the skinhead Adam of the title. Tough and warm-hearted at the same time. Mads Mikkelsen, now famous thanks to Casino Royale, plays the priest, with Ulrich Thomsen of Flickering Lights as the edgy miscreant.

Dramas/ Melodramas

Susanne Bier’s After the Wedding (script by Jensen) has already received plenty of praise. It’s another poised, sensitive study of love and family in the vein of Open Hearts (2002), but with a more socially engaged dimension. The protagonist, played by Mikkelsen, has transformed himself from a dissolute vagabond into a worker in an orphanage in India, but his past returns to threaten his redemption. If American critics had seen this film, or if it had been distributed in the US, it would have appeared on many ten-best lists.

1:1: Annette K. Olesen’s tale of the racial tensions surrounding an attack on a teenager. As often in Danish films, psychological drama is balanced by a consideration of social context. The opening credits play out against blueprints and documentary footage detailing the construction of the housing development that forms the center of the action.

Prague (2006): Christoffer, a hard-working businessman, comes to Prague to claim the body of his father, whom he never really knew. His stay leads to a crisis in his past, as he learns his father’s secrets, and one in his present, as he and his wife face the breakdown of their marriage. A severe, engaging film with some of the tang of mid-period Antonioni, starring Mikkelson and Stine Stengade.

A Soap (2006): Pernille Fischer Christensen’s debut has already racked up festival prizes. The action unfolds wholly in an apartment building, where Charlotte (Trine Dyrholm, another fixture of modern Danish film) and the transvestite Veronica (David Dencik) strike up a relationship. Almodovarish, but more subdued (Danes aren’t Spaniards, after all).

How We Get Rid of the Others (2007): In the near future, Copenhagen creates laws that eliminate all citizens who take more from society than they give. A dark, 1984ish vision that satirizes how communitarian social policies can turn tyrannical.

Unclassifiable

The Boss of It All (2006): I’ve already discussed this here, and have recently added a couple of updates. Surely one of the most artistically daring films of the year. Funny too.

Day and Night

Bang Bang Orangutang (2005): Simon Staho is virtually unknown in the US, but his previous feature Day and Night (2004) takes minimalist cinema in a new direction. Perhaps inspired by Kiarostami’s Ten (2002), Staho pushes the camera/car conceit toward more classical staging and shooting. His followup, Bang Bang, opens up a bit more–now the camera occasionally leaves the car–but Staho goes on to create new formal constraints. The story? A heartless businessman sinks to the bottom of society and out of touch with reality.

Offscreen (2006): After the Neoromanticism of Reconstruction (2003) and Allegro (2005), Boe, in collaboration with Nicolas Bro, creates a more-or-less fictitious diary film. Bro becomes obsessed with recording his life on video, and that leads him to horrific violence. An absorbing exercise in first-person cinema, with viewpoints multiplied (as in Flies on the Wall) thanks to mini-cams.

I hope to write more on these formally adventurous films. (I did: here and here, both for the DFI.)

Watching these films over several weeks, I was even more convinced that today’s cinema encompasses far more than even the most pluralistic ten-best lists can allow. Lists are helpful for some purposes, but our time is better spent seeking out unusual movies, listed or unlisted.