Live from Sundance: Some Weird Product Placement
Filed under: Drama, Independent, Sundance, Festival Reports
Last night I watched Downloading Nancy, though perhaps a more accurate verb would be "endured." Erik Davis' very positive review is here; let me just say that I respectfully disagree with my boss, and that if he weren't my boss my disagreement would be a lot less respectful. (J/K, Erik! I'm totally J/K.) I hated this movie. It's ugly and loathsome and crass, and for no good reason. But what I found funny was that it had, of all things, product placement. One character is seen with a can of Diet Pepsi in four different scenes. In another one, someone asks if he wants a drink, and specifically suggests Pepsi.
And you have to think: Did Pepsi pay for this? Did the filmmakers approach Pepsi and say, "Hey, listen, we're making a really vile and unpleasant movie about a messed-up woman who wants to be sexually and physically abused, and who meets a stranger on the Internet specifically for that reason. And we think it would be awesome if her uncaring, unemotional husband -- the one who has partially driven her to this -- were an avid Diet Pepsi drinker. What do you say?"
Actually, now that I think about it, I wonder if the product placement was actually paid for by Coke. That would make more sense, wouldn't it? "Diet Pepsi: The choice of a sexually dead and emotionally unfeeling generation!"
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
1-23-2008 @ 8:15PM
FHL said...
It could just be that's how they refer to cola drinks there. Where I grew up, you called it Coke, regardless of whether it was Coke or Pepsi. It's sort of like the soda vs. pop debate. =)
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1-25-2008 @ 4:31PM
frosty said...
Nothing against your opinion of the movie (the main focus of this article), but do you even know how "product placement" works at this indie budget level? You're dreaming if you think money changes hands. You generally beg the target company to let you use their product onscreen, just so your characters don't have to drink "generi-cola", the phoniness of which, you know, would take your audience visually out of the story. If you're LUCKY, the company in questions will actually send you some of their product to use onscreen and possibly feed your cast and crew with offscreen too. But for them to PAY MONEY to you to use their product onscreen for a movie that has no connection to a viable studio, has no distribution deal in place - just doesn't happen. Even with bigger-budgeted shows with mini-major backing, it can be hard to get free placement for a dark story line. For example, "Wonderland" had some troubles in this vein. Even though it was an $8 mill Lions Gate epic, not many companies were too stoked about having their product featured being used by HIV+ porn junkie John Holmes. Ask me about the weeks I spent trying to get permission for a character to smoke Misty Ultralights in an indie I produced a couple years back. Forget about free samples, the closest I got to permission was a verbal telephone statement that the company, already burdened with defending itself in various liability class actions, "probably wouldn't be inclined to spend the time or money to sue" me if I did use them.
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