D-Diary: Paul Feig #6

The Clam Before the Storm.

As part of our continuing effort to further illuminate the entire filmmaking process, we're launching a brand new feature – Our "Director's Diary" (aka "D-Diary"). On a recurring basis, various filmmakers will be providing periodic updates – not just about whatever might be their current project, but also the industry in general… and sometimes more. Think of it as being like a blog, only snazzier.




You can visit the official I Am David site here.


I guess that joke would make more sense if, in my nervousness about my movie opening in just a few short days, I had taken myself out to dinner at a seafood restaurant tonight and had a platter of clams. But, alas, I didn't, and so all you are left with is some meaningless pun that might make you start to second guess my comedic abilities.

Oh, just get over it!

Um … I was talking to myself there. Not you. I would never use such a disrespectful tone with you. You're all my friends, right? Right?

You know, if you were really my friends, you'd loan me a couple of bucks. You know, just until I get that 26 million I'm supposed to be getting from that financial arrangement I made with some guys in Nigeria.

Come to think of it, that check's a bit overdue.

Maybe you could loan me a twenty?

But enough begging for money. I'm here to beg you for help with my movie.

I know, yes, you don't have to say it again. I already asked you for your help a few weeks ago. Right before I started my serial about the origins of I Am David, which I am now loath to go back to. Not that I won't. Just not this week.

Here's the thing. My movie is opening on Friday, and I have a lot to prove.

What does that mean?

Well, it means I made a movie that the industry is fairly convinced is going to bomb.


My movie is being released across the country but only in select cities, so if it doesn't do well in its opening weekend, it's gonna get pulled and then it'll never show in Los Angeles and New York and so I'll have to spend the next year encountering friends who will ask me, "Whatever happened to your film? I thought it was coming out." Whereupon, I'll have to launch into the same old tired story that I've bored you all with over these past six weeks in this sorry little diary of mine.

And so I won't. Even though I just did.

But I'm mighty nervous.

Here's where a lot of my nerves come from:

The topic on most people's minds these days is "moral values." The election seemed to hinge on it, people's attitudes seem to hinge on it, and now the success or failure of my movie seems to hinge on it.

What am I talking about? This …

My movie, as I've told you before, is definitely a family film, even though I made it with adults in mind. It's an "uplifting film," it's a positive film, there's no sex or unnecessary violence in my film (uh oh .. there goes my IGN audience!), and it makes people feel good as they're leaving the theater. In short, my movie is perfect for anyone and everyone who is worried that Hollywood isn't making the kinds of movies that they can bring their families to and which will make them feel good about life.

And so now I have to wait and see if people actually want to see movies like this.

Oh, sure, everybody says they want to see movies like this. Advertisers and business people learned way back in the 1960s that what people say they want and what they actually want are two different things. You line up a bunch of people and ask them if they'd rather watch a wholesome, uplifting film or a movie with a lot of car chases and sex, and almost all of them are going to say they'd rather see the uplifting film. But when they get home and turn on the TV when no one's around or they sneak out for a night at the movies by themselves, suddenly it's, "Hello, Mr. Ticket Seller. One admission for Lap Dance Demolition Derby please." And so that's why market research had to find ways to rate what people were interested in without asking them directly what they thought of things. People don't like to admit out loud that they like things that other people might frown upon. (To read more, pick yourself up an old copy of a book called The Hidden Persuaders.)

blog comments powered by Disqus