The Oscar Files Part 4

In today's installment of The Oscar Files, we'll be taking a look at the campaign for Paul Thomas Anderson's (Punch Drunk Love, Boogie Nights) new film, There Will Be Blood. To date, the film has grossed over $21 Million domestically.

Right off the bat, before going into any sort of detailed analysis, my initial ideas are that this film's marketing has been less about There Will Be Blood, and more about its star, Daniel Day-Lewis (Gangs of New York, The Last of The Mohicans). For those who don't know anything about Daniel Day-Lewis, he is arguably one of the best actors of our generation. (For more info on Lewis, read his extensive interview with the New York Times.) Lewis is also known as one of the most selective actors in the modern era, often only choosing one film to star in every 4 or 5 years. As such, the films he stars in are typically very, very good. So I can see why Paramount would feel the need to market the film as a Daniel Day-Lewis vehicle. The problem with that is most people have no idea what the film is actually about. Check out this TV spot:



We see Lewis a lot. From this trailer, I know the film stars Lewis, is about oil, it's a period piece, and there's family and some money involved. Thats it. In order to get more of an idea about the film's plot, you'd have to turn to the official trailer. Check it out:



Much better, right? It's too bad that to catch the trailer, you either have to be lucky to see it before another film, or make the effort to seek it out online. Most passive movie goers (who probably spend the most money) won't bother to do this. So automatically you're loosing a majority of the domestic film audience.

What also doesn't do There Will Be Blood justice is the fact that Paramount didn't even begin to market this film until what seemed like a few weeks before its official Oscar nomination. I get the feeling that other nominees like Juno and No Country For Old Men had much more buzz behind them, as they were both released much earlier.

At this point, the best things going for Blood is the plethora of awards it's nominated for, the sheer number of times it finds itself onto a critics top 10 list, and buzz within the blogosphere. (Apparently one fan has tried to use the line, "I drink your milkshake!" as some quick and dirty viral marketing - via nerve)

If anything, the theme that really comes to light from all of these marketing campaigns for Oscar nominees is a true sense of neglect. I think that if the movie studios were to put half as much money and time into marketing a quality film as they do into some of the trash that finds its way to theaters in the summer, we'd be finding ourselves in a situation where quality films would be the true money makers. Isn't that a neat concept?