BEATRICERSS button
introducing readers to writers since 1995

July 08, 2005

More Trends in Blog Marketing

by Ron Hogan

Last week, my friend Anne, the ace publicist at Vertical, offered me a pass for a sneak preview of Dark Water, a film based on a story by Koji Suzuki, the creator of The Ring. Sure, I says, so Wednesday night Mrs. Beatrice and I get ourselves soaked running (separately) from Times Square to the AMC megaplex and push our way through the disorganized throng that passes for a line, only to discover--and I suppose this is an indication of how long it's been since I've been to an advance screening--that "security" is confiscating cell phones at the door. Apparently if I hit my camera phone 24 times a second for the length of the movie, then print out the resulting JPGs, I'd have a flipbook of Dark Water that would bring the film industry to its knees were I to post it online.

So fine: They don't trust me with their movie, and I sure as hell don't trust them with my phone. Mrs. B and I stepped out of line and decided as long as we were in the theater, we might as well go see Rize, an amazing documentary you should make a point of watching. Maybe I'll spend the $10 on Dark Water later on.

But here's where the trend kicks in: yesterday, two different publicists both decide to email me about upcoming movies with literary hooks: the Diane Lane-John Cusack romantic comedy Must Love Dogs, based on a novel by Claire Cook and directed by the creator of Family Ties, followed an hour or so later by A Good Woman, an adaptation of Oscar Wilde's Lady Windemere's Fan that answers the question "Whatever happened to Helen Hunt?" Before I get deluged with more notices, though, I should point out that I'm only mentioning this once to acknowledge the trend--as long as movie studios think they're entitled to tighter security than airports, I'm not especially interested in promoting their screenings. But I hear (and see for myself) very good things about Romancing the Tome, a blog all about books-into-film, so go ahead and bombard them.

If you enjoy this blog,
your PayPal donation
can contribute towards its ongoing publication.