‘Piranha 3D’ is too hot for ... something
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You have to hand it to the Weinsteins. Most studios would get turned down by a convention or network, make a note of it, and move on. The brothers hear the no and then run out and tell everyone about it.
For spring-break splatterfest “Piranha 3-D,” Dimension Films is running with the “too hot for the mainstream” campaign as far and as fast as they can. First the film was too hot for Comic-Con, as the publicity pitch went, when the convention decided not to let a presentation for the R-rated monster comedy play in the coveted Hall H. (Dimension held a separate event off-site, but not before turning the Comic-con rejection into a rallying cry.)
Now it’s the quiet promotion to reporters of the above TV commercial, via RyanSeacrest.com, implying that company’s spot has been turned down by MTV and Fox for being too bawdy. Under what circumstances it was actually rejected -- and the fact that plenty of commercials for R-rated movies are turned down by networks all the time -- is secondary to the too-hot message. Come see the movie Fox -- Fox! -- didn’t want you to see.
Finally, there’s this Hollywood Reporter story, in which Girls Gone Wild founder Joe Francis objects that a character in the film who gleefully films body shots and toplessness is too closely based on him. But even here there’s a promotional vein to tap, since it gives the film’s talent a chance to say “the movie’s not about Joe Francis ... but kind of is” -- and, oh yes, paves the way for audiences to infer that this is the movie even the king of beach-time partying doesn’t want you to see.
The Weinsteins have tried the outsider approach before -- most famously and fruitfully with Michael Moore and “Fahrenheit 9/11.” The basic template is to take a corporate disagreement about standards, wring every last bit of press from it and then use the affair to position the movie as the-film-the-powers-that-be-want-to-keep-from-you.
You have to admire how any company can take a mild objection and seek to turn it into a promotional opportunity; that’s an old-school zeal you don’t see much anymore. The truth is that “Piranha 3D,” in which an alcohol-infused spring break is rudely interrupted by flesh-feasting fish, is actually not that shocking (one sapphic love scene and one gross-out 3-D male anatomical moment notwithstanding). The partying is nothing you wouldn’t see on, well, a spring-break video, and though director Alexandre Aja does fixate on a large number of severed limbs, most of the violence is of the ketchup-packet variety Which leads to a small wrinkle, since promoting a movie as sensationally controversial may get people piqued to see the film but disappoint them when they have.
Then again, Dimension may not have had much of a choice. “Piranha” is a tough sell, with a premise audiences may feel they’ve seen before and a party-down vibe that can be seen almost any time of day on MTV or, for that matter, the nearest college bar. So any promotional opportunity is one worth taking. If the marketing world gives you lemons, make lemonade. Or use them in a tequila body shot.
--Steven Zeitchik
http://twitter.com/ZeitchikLAT
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