Recently, Mental Floss published

“You don’t have to be crazy to blow 30 million dollars in 30 days. But it helps.” That’s the value proposition on the movie’s poster, which positions Pryor as he’s bursting up through a sea of cash. Candy is positioned above him, lounging and holding a wad of bills. Pryor looks worried and a bit harried while Candy looks like he’s having the time of his life. Pryor’s name appears above the title treatment and below the title we’re told this is “An American excess story.”

All that combines to tell the audience what the basic outline of the movie is, that Pryor’s character has to spend a lot of money quickly. You’ve got the money shown and the copy is pretty good, though the “…excess..” bit makes it sound like he’s an eccentric millionaire on some sort of crazy binge. But what it does show clearly is just what a huge star Pryor was at the time. His name on the poster is as big as the title treatment, making it clear that he’s the star and the title character. I can’t help but think, quite frankly, that putting a black man as the sole above-the-title lead is something that wouldn’t happen today. At least not in anything that wasn’t a movie specifically aimed at an African-American audience. instead this is a mainstream release where the white guy on the poster and in the movie isn’t even mentioned in the credit block.

For the trailer, we’re introduced to Montgomery Brewster and his dying relative, who leaves him all kinds of money and we see the caveats and conditions that are put on that inheritance. Spike is super-excited and Brewster immediately starts throwing money around, hiring a personal photographer and driver, renting a penthouse and more. We see the people around him react like he’s going crazy with the way he’s spending his money. There’s a fun moment where Brewster curses and it’s bleeped out since apparently the line was good to leave out of the trailer and yeah, it works. Finally, we get the same “An American excess story” at the end that was on the poster.

It’s a fun trailer that sells the movie as a lighthearted romp around the city with someone who’s doing something crazy in an effort to get an even bigger prize. Again, Pryor is clearly the star here and he’s front-and-center in the trailer. Candy this time at least gets name-dropped, a step above his place on the poster, but that’s about it. It’s a short trailer but conveys the plot and the value proposition clearly and concisely without spoiling almost anything from the back half the movie, including how (as in Trading Places) there are self-interested bankers who manage the situation who are actively working against Brewster and his plan.

This is the kind of movie that doesn’t seem to be made very much anymore and when it is – the nearest example I can think of is Chris Rock’s recent Top Five – it’s not very successful. The campaign plays up Pryor’s personality and persona and presents the movie as being a light, fluffy piece of entertainment starring one of the biggest comedians at the time.

I don’t think I saw

The movie, as you all know, tells the story of Ferris Bueller (Matthew Broderick), a righteous dude. Ferris decides that the day is too valuable to waste in high school and so fakes a sickness to take the day off. He enlists best friend Cameron (Alan Ruck) and girlfriend Simone (Mia Sara) to join him in his adventures, which wind up including a trip to downtown Chicago where they visit Wrigley Field, the Sears Tower, the Art Institute and more. Along the way they have to duck not only Ferris’ father, who they keep almost running into, but also Principal Rooney, who is convinced Ferris is faking it and sets out to bust him and bring the truant to justice. This year marks the 30th anniversary of the movie’s release and is being celebrated by Ferris Fest this weekend in Chicago, an event organized by a few devoted fans who have arranged for some of the movie’s stars to show up as well as tours of the locations famously documented in the movie, making it a great time to revisit the movie’s marketing campaign.

The one-sheet for the movie is pretty simple but lays out the story’s value proposition pretty clearly. It simply shows a smug, smiling Broderick lounging and looking directly at the camera. In big bold type at the top we’re told “Leisure Rules,” which is true. That message is reinforced  below the title treatment with copy that explains the movie is about “One man’s struggle to take it easy.” So the movie is clearly setup as the adventures of a self-satisfied young man who’s out for nothing more than to buck the system and enjoy himself as much as possible.

The poster, as much as the eventual movie would, made Broderick a star and positions him as such. He’d only been in a handful of movies and TV shows up to this point – most notably WarGames, though we can’t discount LadyHawke and the underrated classic Max Dugan Returns – but his ability to open a movie was likely in doubt. WarGames was three years prior to this and he’d been mostly on TV in the intervening years. So putting him and his smile right there on the one-sheet was, it’s safe to assume, a dicey proposition.

Compare that to the trailer, which takes the opposite approach. While it opens with Ferris explaining how life moves pretty fast, most of the spot involves other people talking *about* Ferris, with just a half-dozen shots of Bueller himself. So this is more about selling the story than selling the star or the performance. Instead it wants to position the title character at the center of some myth that we then are told we need to check out the reality of in theaters.

That’s a slightly surprising approach but it also makes some sense in light of the movie itself. The whole story is about that: The myth of Bueller. That’s what drives the movie forward as much as anything else. The kids of school believe in it, his sister resents it, the principal wants to squash it and his parents are blissfully unaware of it. That persona is what drives him to believe he can get away with what he tries. The movie isn’t about Ferris Bueller as much as it is about Ferris Bueller’s id, the part of him that does what he wants when he wants it and refuses to be shoehorned into society’s norms, at least not before he’s railed against them as much as possible.

What’s surprising in looking back at this from the perspective of 2016 is that Bueller is still kind of shown as a scofflaw. These days the kind of behavior he engages in would make him a Vine star, not someone who is still kind of shown as an outlaw. The Bueller attitude has gone mainstream and parents would now sue a school district that tried to rein in their creative sweetheart.

Happy 30th – or actually like 48th – birthday to Ferris Bueller and the movie that inspired countless groups of idiot teenagers to try and recreate that iconic pose of Ferris, Cameron and Simone in the Art Institute and yell “Hey batter batter batter…” while at Cubs games.

Last week

Martin stars in the Carl Reiner-directed comedy as Navin Johnson, a…simple-minded individual who one day leaves his adopted family to make it on his own. As he does so he gets involved in various schemes, eventually falling in love with Marie (Bernadette Peters) and inventing a device that makes him a millionaire. But of course things don’t go well for Navin, whose idiocy keeps getting in his own way. If the plot sounds simple it’s because it is. The story is basically a loose framework on which to hang Martin’s antics. This was his first starring role after establishing himself as an effective comedy writer and standup performer and this was an opportunity to translate that to the big screen.

The theatrical poster sells the movie’s main draw – Martin acting like an idiot – as its central focal point. There he stands looking disheveled and out of sorts in his bathrobe with his pants around his ankles as he clutches the few belongings he’s decided he really needs. So the shot comes from one of the movie’s penultimate moments where things are hitting rock bottom and would probably be decried today for being a spoiler. But it’s one of the more ridiculous and memorable looks of his from the movie so it makes sense that it would be selected for the one-sheet. What other options did they have? Navin as a gas station attendant? Him in his overalls from the beginning of the movie?

There’s no copy about the story on the poster. Instead, over the title treatment and Martin’s name are all the studios and producers involved in the movie’s making, a common practice at the time. So it’s overall a pretty sparse one-sheet that intends to sell you a Steve Martin experience, pure and simple.

The trailer starts out by establishing Martin as the next in a long line of movie stars who have become associated with an iconic comedy character, following in the footsteps of Charlie Chaplin and others. After that we get a general sense of the story, starting with Navin living with his adopted family and starting out for his adventure in the world. After that the story doesn’t matter as much since it’s just about showing the crazy scenes that Martin and the co-writers concocted for him.

Again, the point of the trailer is to make an audience that was already pretty familiar with Martin’s schtick aware that there was a movie coming out that featured more of the same. That’s why there’s not a whole lot of focus on the story outside of the beginning which gets the ball rolling and then asks the audience to assume that what follows is all in service to that. That’s the goal of the entire campaign and it accomplished that.

Of course the rest, as they say, is history. Reiner’s on-set direction helped channel Martin’s tendencies into a movie that wound up as a decent box office hit and sent the writer/actor off on the cinematic career he was pining for after years of standup work. His movie persona evolved over the years from this slapstick character to one that was much more erudite as he bounced between highbrow pictures and more middle-of-the-road family comedies. But this is the seed, where it all started for Martin on film. Without a campaign that sold him as the central reason to see it’s debatable as to whether that all would have happened.

It’s been a little over a week since the unexpected passing of the music icon Prince. Tributes have come in far and wide and everyone is sharing their favorite stories about how they saw him live, how his music impacted them at a young age and so on. His impact on movies was covered extensively, of course, from his own movies like

There wasn’t time for me to fit this in last week so I’m taking time today to revisit the marketing of Prince’s seminal feature film Purple Rain. Somewhat autobiographical, the movie tells the story of The Kid (Prince), a struggling artist who comes from an abusive and difficult household. With his band, The Revolution, chafing under his leadership, The Kid is on the cusp of hitting it big but is sabotaged by Morris Day, the leader of The Time and his rival at a local club in a way that threatens not only his burgeoning career but also his romance with Apollonia, who wants to be in a group of her own.

Released in 1984, this was at the height of Prince’s popularity and powers. His album 1999, released two years prior, had cemented the promise of records like Controversy and Dirty Mind and turned him into a full-fledged musical icon. And considering much of that popularity came from his innovative and notable music videos, it made sense that long-form movies would be his next step.

The theatrical poster looks exactly like it was pulled from one of those music videos. There’s no attempt to sell the story here since that’s lower than even being secondary on the list of priorities to convey to the audience. Instead it’s just Prince, decked out in a purple suit and shown straddling a matching purple motorcycle. He’s sitting outside…some sort of building but it’s not clear what it is, a club, a private home or something else. It doesn’t matter. What matters is the woman – Apollonia we know but which isn’t explained here at all – who’s standing in the open doorway.

Again, this looks like a shot that could be taken from any Prince music video. It shows the star giving the camera a seductive look and a woman who’s waiting to be paid attention to. The one-sheet makes a big deal at the top of explaining this is “Prince in his first motion picture”, even using the same font the artist applied to his albums when mentioning him. The image is heavily-stylized and slick and is very much in keeping with the image Prince was conveying at the time.

The official trailer starts off by hitting the same note, with the narrator immediately intoning that we’re going to see Prince in his first motion picture out. That narration will go on to explain that before he wrote the music he lived every minute of it, clearly explaining that this is an autobiographical story in many ways. That’s as close as we’ll get to a plot or story description, though, outside of vague comments about how he’s going to “risk everything for the only thing that mattered.”

The whole trailer is set to “Let’s Go Crazy” and shows a montage of random clips from throughout the movie. So we see plenty of Prince either performing on stage or in his dressing room, shots of him with Apollonia, sometimes out cavorting along a river or in the throes of passion in some manner. Along with that there are a few shots of Morris Day looking like a crazy person and a bit more.

Aside from that little bit of narration there’s almost nothing about the story here. Nothing is offered about who these characters are, what the setting of the movie is or anything else. I mean nothing. So, as with much of the rest of the campaign, it’s presented as more of a Prince music video than anything else. The trailer sells an experience more than a movie. Or more accurately, it presents a loose collection of moments featuring Prince and those around him than an actual movie. It’s selling Prince’s image, well-cultivated at this point, to an audience that was presumed to be receptive to just that because he was a huge part of MTV’s programming.

This would represent the pinnacle of Prince’s cinematic career, which never hit the highs of his musical offerings. No, he’s not a great actor, but a lot of people aren’t. But as with most things it seems as if success wasn’t the point. It was a creative itch that Prince was eager and able to scratch, with the goal simply being to put it out there, not for it to achieve huge mass success or critical acclaim. It’s yet another area where the artist would carve out his own path and if you didn’t get it then you weren’t meant to get it.

Looking briefly at the trailers for his two follow-ups, Under the Cherry Moon and Graffiti Bridge, you see plenty of similarities to this first effort. The UtCM trailer follows Purple Rain’s format to a T, showing lots of scenes of things happening but offering no hints as to the story, all set to “Kiss.” The trailer for Graffiti Bridge, a direct sequel to Purple Rain, varied slightly. So while again it uses “Thieves in the Temple” as its base track there is a bit of dialogue and at least the rough outline of a story on display.

Far from the undisputed genius that his musical catalog is seen as, in theaters Prince was much more hit and miss. While Purple Rain, in particular, has its defenders, it’s never going to be mistaken for a “great” movie. But it’s all part of Brand Prince, and that’s what matters. Judge it at your own peril.

This isn’t tied to an anniversary or extended cut being released on Blu-ray or anything else. Instead today’s column was prompted by a coworker telling me that the website for

Contact, just so you remember, tells the story of Ellie Arroway (Jodie Foster), a scientist who’s obsessed with finding proof of life elsewhere in the universe in part because her father died when she was a young girl and he had encouraged her to look to the stars. So she spend hours each day just listening, working with a team of others. One day…they hear something. Their discovery quickly becomes a political issue as they find it’s not a simple “hello” but instructions to build a transport of some kind. Ellie becomes obsessed with making it but has to work with Palmer Joss (Matthew McConaughey), a new-age spiritual advisor to the President who makes her question why it is she’s so obsessed. After roadblocks and setbacks, Ellie finally finishes the machine and finds out what’s on the other side of of the gateway the aliens have had her construct.

The theatrical poster for the movie is solid but also kind if interesting in a few ways. Foster and McConaughey are obviously the focal point, with her sitting and him standing behind her, both of them looking into the middle distance off-camera. A collection of satellites sits behind them, making it clear to the audience that we’re dealing with something about outer space, a message that’s reinforced by how the sky includes more and more stars the closer to the top you look. At the top, above the names of the stars, is a note that the movie comes “From the Academy Award-winning director of Forrest Gump and the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of ‘Contact’,” with the latter point being kind of self-evident. Toward the middle of the one-sheet we get some text saying “A message from deep space. Who will be the first to go? A journey to the heart of the universe.”

It’s not exactly the smoothest copy and reads like, though I don’t think it is, a haiku. The overall design and look and feel of the poster sells a clean, slick drama about space exploration in some form. But it doesn’t oversell the outer space aspect of the story. Since everyone and everything is grounded here it tells the audience it’s still a character drama, not a thriller about interstellar travel.

The theatrical trailer – there was a teaser that played similarly, just more condensed – is an exercise in slow building tension. It starts with 45 seconds of almost complete silence as we see Ellie sitting amidst the SETI satellite array with headphones and her laptop as she listens for a signal of some sort. Suddenly, she starts to hear something. We then cut to the frenzy of activity as the team tries to figure out where the signal is coming from at the same time she’s chastised by a government official (played by James Woods) for making her discovery public. Throughout the rest of the trailer it’s clear he’s a big problem for her to overcome as he wants to turn the project over to the military and asks why the aliens can’t just speak English. Ellie finds and explains that they’re speaking through mathematics and are sending instructions on some sort of transport, a transport she’s eager to test herself, a commitment Jasper questions. It ends with a shot of her walking the entryway to the ship and being strapped in, at which point we cut to black.

It really is a tense trailer, but not in the same way many current trailers use quick smash-cuts to build tension. Everything, after that 45 seconds of silence, is timed out to the pulse of the sounds from the alien transmission. It’s constantly cutting back and forth from a scene from the movie to black, sometimes with text. It slow builds, dropping little bits of information here and there, just enough to give the audience a general idea of what the story is. We see who most of the main characters here are and it’s great that it doesn’t show anything about Ellie’s actual trip, not even a shot of her wide-eyed looking at something, but cuts just as she’s strapped in. There’s also nothing here about Ellie’s motivations, so we don’t see any shots from the opening of the movie showing her as a young girl with her father. Instead we’re just presented with a woman who is singularly focused and driven.

The opening of the trailer also leans heavily on the movie’s pedigree. It mentions the movie comes from the Academy Award-winning director of Forrest Gump (Robert Zemeckis) and the Pulitzer Prize-winning author (Carl Sagan) but oddly doesn’t actually name-drop either one. Sagan is of course well known and this was Zemeckis’ first film since Forrest Gump and I remember him being a fairly big part of the publicity campaign because of that. Also part of the publicity was the fact that Sagan had unfortunately passed away about six months before the movie came out, just as the marketing cycle was clicking into gear. Plus, this was a time when movies were still made for adults, so considering the name recognition both men likely had at the time their exclusion seems odd in retrospect.

It was an interesting time for the two above-the-title stars, too. For Foster, this was her first big-screen role since 1994’s Nell, which she also produced,, and it was just six years since her Academy Award-winning role in Silence of the Lambs. So she was still a big star but had taken some time off to direct and do other things, with this being kind of her return to the big screen. McConaughey was just starting to get hot again following a few smaller roles after 93’s Dazed and Confused, with this coming a year after a starring role in A Time To Kill and with another high-profile release, Amistad, coming later in 1997.

So what’s still on the website? It opens with the same pulsing signal we saw in the trailer, which you have to click on to see the text “A journey to the heart of the universe that was seen on the poster and in the trailer. Click that and you get the title treatment, which you then click to get to the main menu.

“About Contact” has sections containing Cast Bios, Filmmaker bios and Production Notes. The “Interviews” section has interviews with Zemeckis and others that are both text and available as downloadable Quicktime MOV files, in case you were wondering how web video worked pre-YouTube. “Visual Contact” has sections for the Trailer, B-Roll and Cast Interviews, all of which are also Quicktime videos as well as a collection of Movie Stills, each of which comes with a brief description offering the context of its appearance in the movie.

There’s also some material here that expands the world of the movie and offers more information. So “Sketches” has what look like production designs for The Machine, the Location and the Equipment that are being constructed in the story. Finally, the “Earth Reaches Out” section has various information on real space exploration, ranging from the esoteric “Drake Equation” to “TV and Radio,” which talks about the kinds of broadcasts that are being beamed from Earth out into the cosmos and which alien civilizations might be picking up. Points here for name-dropping “Seinfeld” and “Cheers” as examples of the current programming that are making their way out to the stars.

All in all the site is…yeah, this is what the internet looked like in 1997. That’s the same font everyone was using and that’s how we handled video, by downloading Quicktime files via our dial-up modems while hoping no one in the house picked up the phone while we were online. It’s a fascinating time capsule of the web and it’s interesting that it’s still active and hasn’t been replaced by something more modern that sells the movie on home video.

Picking up what I said about the poster, the whole campaign sells a slick, adult-focused thriller. It does everything but come out and say “You’re going to need to be patient” since the poster doesn’t hint at much other than the basic premise and the trailer, as I said, is mostly about the slow-burn. And it’s all very clean and crisp, with sharp visuals and understated performances. For audiences 19 years ago this was an intriguing drama, and it can’t be ignored that the movie was released in the middle of the summer, so it was a time where a movie like this could survive in a period that now is filled with super heroes and young adult novel adaptations.

I don’t know how I first came across

In the movie, which he also wrote and directed, Brooks plays Daniel, a modestly successful Los Angeles advertising executive (Brooks had a thing for playing ad men) who is celebrating his birthday by buying a new sports car. Shortly after pulling it off the lot, though, he dies in an accident with a city bus and finds himself in Judgement City, a stopping point for the newly-departed. There he meets Bob Diamond (Rip Torn), a quasi-attorney who explains what Daniel is doing there: Defending his life. He needs to prove to the court he’s capable of overcoming fear in order to move to a higher plane of existence (Heaven?) but if he can’t do that he’ll be sent back to Earth. In Judgement City he also meets Julia (Meryl Streep), who also recently died but who seems to be on an upward path while Daniel is decidedly not. Julia, though, provides the spark that prompts Daniel to rise above his inherent fearful nature and take the next step.

The poster is a wonderful work of minimalism. We see Brooks and Streep in their robes and slippers in a romantic kind of pose, but get no other information about the characters. In the background is a billboard for Judgement City, showing it to be just a few minutes away down Past Lives Parkway. Copy at the top declares this is “The first true story of what happens after you die,” which establishes at least the basic premise of the story.

What I want to focus on though is the white space, the wonderfully uncluttered nature of the one-sheet. The images and text only take up about half the real estate here and the rest is just blank. That’s not only evocative of what the audience could expect in the movie, which is filled with white buildings, scenes and more but also of the sense of humor of the movie. The writing and performances are filled with surfaces on which are drawn the characters and story. Everything you need to know about the movie and its tone can be found in the white spaces of the poster.

Also, let’s just note that this was an era in movie history when Buck Henry’s name was big enough to put on the poster. I kind of miss that.

The trailer opens by showing us how Daniel died, which is “stupidly.” We quickly get the setting and the premise as we hear he’s in Judgement City and he’s here to defend his life. Rip Torn’s fantastic attorney explains this isn’t Heaven and it isn’t Hell and we meet Streep’s Julia as well as some of the supporting cast. Interestingly the trailer absolutely gives away the emotional climax of the movie, showing how Daniel chases after Julia as their shuttles are pulling away.

It’s a good trailer but it really undersells just how dryly funny the movie is. It takes a lot of the good jokes and positions them more broadly than they’re played in the full film. So the audience in 1991 could be forgiven if they thought they were going in for one thing and wound up getting something a bit different. I also find it odd that the trailer doesn’t reference any of Brooks’ previous movies. While this was only his fourth directorial feature, his previous movies were all stunners, including Real Life, Modern Romance and Lost in America. But maybe there just wasn’t the full appreciation for the Brooks brand at that time. Still, he had a core of devoted fans – I know because I quickly became one of them – and the lack of direct outreach to them seems odd here.

Overall between the two elements, though, you can get a good sense of the movie’s overall tone and direction. The story was sold well and while you can quibble with some of the choices, you can’t say they’re hiding the fact that this is a high-concept comedy, not one that’s going to play to the cheap seats. I like that about the movie because while the trailer may present a slightly different tone than the finished product it, and the poster, make it clear this will be a movie that makes you think, even if it’s presented from the angle of an easily-digestible romantic comedy.

I’ve talked about Karina Longworth’s fantastic

Surprisingly there haven’t been a ton of movies made about this particular chapter in Hollywood’s history. Maybe that’s out of some institutional guilt that doesn’t want to confront. Maybe because doing so would tear down the mythology that’s been built up around the stars of that era. As Karina points out in her series, for every actor or exec who was ready to tell HUAC to get stuffed there were five others who were more than happy to salvage their own reputations and businesses by naming names and clearing their own. I’ve covered the campaigns for some of those. Good Night, and Good Luck came at the story from a journalistic point of view. The recent Trumbo was more straightforward, telling the story of a writer on the Blacklist who skirted the system to keep working. And while there have been a few documentaries one of the only other feature is the 1976 Woody Allen-starring The Front.

The movie that most stands out in my memory for more directly taking on this particular story is 1991’s Guilty By Suspicion. Written and directed by Irwin Winkler, the movie stars Robert DeNiro as David Merrill, a fictionalized version of real-life director John Berry. Merrill is a director who has entered the crosshairs of the Communist hunters and suddenly finds not only his own studio heads are pressuring him to talk about his own affiliations as well as those of his friends but those friends are looking to save themselves as well. Torn between his desire to keep working and the fact that doing so would mean turning on those he knows and abandoning his own conscience, Merrill has to decide between the lesser of two evils and weigh how his choices will impact his family, his industry and ultimately his country.

The poster for the movie certainly doesn’t oversell the action in the movie but it does hit the setting and the star. DeNiro is seen sitting in what most people would quickly identify as a classic Hollywood screening room, a movie being projected through the window in back of him, something we can see thanks to the helpful addition of obvious smoke that’s diffusing the light. His hair and tie also help to place us in or at least around the 1950s. I don’t quite understand what the look of torn paper is supposed to add to the effect here. We do need to talk about lengthy copy that’s next to DeNiro. Because while it’s great at helping to establish the story and setting, it’s really long and isn’t exactly what you could call catchy. It reads:

“In the 1950’s a war was being fought in the U.S. A committee of Congress sought to control the creative community through fear and censorship. Anyone who disagreed with them became…” and then we lead into the title. After that title there’s the additional “All it too was a whisper,” a reference to just how little basis was needed for claims that could completely derail careers and ruin lives. But that’s just a lot of copy. You don’t often see marketers decide to just put the full movie synopsis on the one-sheet but that’s what they’ve done here. That approach makes a bit of sense considering this is not a well known story and it’s incredibly details in terms of the story. But still…it’s basically a procedural drama of a sort and these are sold all the time without adding a half a page of text to the one-sheet.

In the trailer looks, we’re quickly thrown into Merrill testifying in front of a committee and are told that there’s a problem with his involvement in a movie that’s being made. There are back room meetings before we see Merrill asked whether he’s a member of the Communist Party, our first hint at what that trouble is. He’s asked to not only explain himself as well as others before the narrator comes in and explains everything about the setting and the time period with some help from more footage that shows people pushing for Merrill to just play ball or give them permission to do so to save themselves. He’s a less than cooperative witness, though, which continues to cause problems for himself and his family.

Looking back at it now it’s very much an early 90s dramatic thriller and it’s instructive to remember that these movies were mainstream big studio releases at the time whereas now this would be a $20m indie that maybe winds up on iTunes with a minimal theatrical release. It sells a solid drama that’s spearheaded by DeNiro and which promises lots of hushed conversations and tortured consciences being debated. It looks like, based on this, a Big Idea movie that tries to take an important concept and story and condense it as much as possible to make it more approachable and understandable for the audience.

Blink and you’ll miss the cameo by Martin Scorsese, who appears in the movie as the fictionalized version of director Joseph Losey. In an interesting coda to this, Scorsese and DeNiro were the ones who introduced and presented the honorary Oscar to writer/director Elia Kazan in 1999. Kazan, for all the amazing work he’d done in Hollywood, had been put on the Blacklist for his own alleged affiliations and that presentation was marred by a number of big name stars who refused to applaud or acknowledge him because he had, during the HUAC hearings, named names, the ultimate sin in a town with a very long view of history.

This is a movie I saw in theaters and enjoyed on cable in the years afterward. It’s a compelling story about an era that should not be forgotten for how it turned people against each other and ruined the careers and lives of countless people not because of their actions but because of their beliefs. The movie may not be something that’s well remembered today but it’s a story we shouldn’t forget.

This isn’t contextual to anything. There’s no anniversary or anything that has sparked my thoughts on this topic, no new Blu-ray edition that’s coming out. But the other day I started thinking about

What got my head churning was just a random thought about the marketing for Star Trek: Into Darkness a while ago and the nature of what does or doesn’t constitute “spoilers.” That campaign had, of course, taken pains to hide the identity of the character played by Benedict Cumberbatch, calling him “John Smith” or some such when in fact he was playing Khan in a minor new take on the character.

So how, I wondered, did the marketing for 1982’s Wrath of Khan handle what could be considered the spoiler of Khan being the movie’s villain? After all, the character had appeared in an episode of the original TV series and it would be a big word-of-mouth coup to spring that surprise on the audience and get them talking, encouraging their fellow Trekkies to go see it because they won’t believe the big card the filmmakers played.

The answer is…not at all. And yes, for the sake of making a point I’m going to drive right past the fact that “Khan” is in the movie’s title and imagine this were just called “Star Trek II.”

There were other posters but the main one, the one that everyone recalls when they think of the movie, is a bold, striking visual that puts Khan – and his motivations – front and center for the audience. Notably, it doesn’t use photos of the cast (it would be another decade or so before photos became the default on one-sheets) but is an artistic rendering of the characters and the ships.

Khan towers over the top of the design, his family of followers behind him on a rocky, barren landscape. Below him we see Kirk, Spack and Saavik (Kirstie Alley) looking ready for action. Between them is a shot of the Enterprise shooting at a space station, something that’s not actually in the movie. At the top along with Khan’s visage is the copy “At the end of the universe lies the beginning of vengeance.”

Now let’s be clear: In retrospect this lays out a lot of the movie’s story, putting aside that starship attack that doesn’t happen. We see Khan there and can see thanks to the copy that he’s on a mission to enact vengeance against Kirk and his crew. But at the time this was a one-sheet that spoke more clearly to fans of the Trek franchise than it did the general audience.

To the former audience they likely were super-excited to see Khan there. After all they were probably the only ones to actually recognize the character and connect the dots between this and the TV episode that featured his first appearance. So I’m sure this got them speculating and talking about how this character was back and he didn’t look happy. To the latter, the general audience that maybe wasn’t familiar with Trek lore but just like sci-fi movies this looks like a pretty standard space epic, which is still pretty appealing. But it doesn’t have the allure and, more to the point, wouldn’t be any better served by keeping Khan’s presence on the poster.

The theatrical trailer takes a similar “Nope, he’s right there in the spotlight” approach. During a trip through a star field we’re given the backstory on Khan and told how he’s a “genetically superior tyrant” who was banished by Kirk but who’s now back for vengeance. We get a quick shot of Khan talking about his quest for Kirk before we’re thrown, for just about the entire rest of the trailer, into a space battle that pits the two of them against each other. The trailer shows a lot of the Genesis sequence (though what that actually is is never hinted at in the trailer) but for the most part this is sold as a big, bold movie filled with starship battles.

I wonder how much of that “action first” approach in the trailer was driven by the criticism of the first Star Trek movie, which was dinged by critics and audiences for being so talkative, with little actually happening for long stretches at a time. And how much was informed by the success of The Empire Strikes Back a couple years earlier, which is filled with one dramatic action sequence after another?

But the trailer doesn’t spill much of the actual story beyond Khan’s search for the head of the man who marooned him. There’s nothing about Kirk’s son, Project Genesis or anything else. There’s nothing about the discovery of Khan and his group on Ceti Alpha V…there’s no setup at all. It plops the audience right into the action and asks them to hold on. The inclusion of the Genesis Effect was, I’m guessing, something not so much driven by the desire to tease an element of the story to the audience but by the desire to show off what in 1982 were pretty amazing computer-generated special effects.

Again, I acknowledge that I’m doing a bit of rhetorical cheating by ignoring the obvious, which is that the studio was so unconcerned about the antagonist’s identity being known that they put his name in the title. But I think that, combined with Khan’s huge and obvious presence in the campaign, shows an assumption of maturity in the audience that is no longer around the age of mystery boxes and spoiler warnings. While certainly a lot of story points aren’t shown here they’re not shown because there are other facets that are more important to convey, not because we’re trying to keep some big reveal a secret from the gossipy fans.

When I think of popular culture that has become kind of a “must experience” touchstone for young men – not boys, but young men – there are two that come to mind: Catcher In The Rye and The Graduate. The latter, written by Calder Willingham and Buck Henry and directed by Mike Nichols, the movie tells the story of young Ben Braddock. Braddock (Dustin Hoffman)  has just graduated from college and, feeling a bit aimless, begins an affair with the older and married Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft). Eventually the affair ends but Braddock soon finds himself in love with her daughter Elaine (Katherine Ross), creating one of cinema’s more memorable uncomfortable romantic situations.  Now the movie is getting

The movie’s one-sheet has become a classic of the form for how it conveyed so much of the story in such a seemingly simple image as well as just the overall design sense. The producing credits appear at the top and the title treatment at the bottom along with the acting and directing credits. In the middle is what amounts to a still from the movie, with Hoffman standing in the background looking at a woman’s leg that’s either pulling on or taking off a stocking. Either way, the look on Hoffman’s face conveys a sense of powerlessness and confusion, like he’s not quite sure what to make of the situation happening in front of him. That’s reinforced by the copy off the right that says “This is Benjamin. He’s a little worried about his future.

There are other versions of this key art but this is the main one and the one that’s become the most iconic. And it’s notable for just how simple and straightforward it is. It’s mostly white space and the only color is in the credits, which heightens the starkness of the emotions that are being conveyed. And Hoffman’s face tells you so much about the character, that he’s kind of clueless and certainly doesn’t have much “go get ’em” attitude that it instantly feels familiar.

Now I said the picture only “amounts to a still” from the movie. That’s because a couple years ago actress Linda Gray made waves for claiming – or revealing – it’s her leg on the poster and not Bancroft’s. That shattered much of the myth around the poster and the movie as a whole by basically saying the marketers pulled a double switch on the audience. Either way, there’s no getting around the fact that it’s a nice leg.

Moving on to the trailer, it starts out with the sounds of Simon & Garfunkel, which is quickly interrupted as we join Ben at his graduation party, where he’s being assaulted by one person after another who wants to know what he’s going to do with his life now that he’s done with college. Soon he’s being seduced by Mrs. Robinson and the two are shown in various stages of their romance, almost all of which involve Benjamin being very awkward and not quite knowing what to do with himself. It’s clear, though, that she has all the power. Later on we see he’s actually in love with Elaine, but that relationship isn’t without its troubles either, including the fact that she’s getting married to someone else. The trailer ends with Benjamin barging in on Elaine’s wedding, something no one is very happy with.

It’s not hard to see, in retrospect, why this is such an iconic role for Hoffman and such an iconic movie. The trailer lays out 75% of the movie’s major story beats, from Braddock’s first interaction with Mrs. Robinson through his arrival at Elaine’s wedding. It’s clearly his movie here and he forms the emotional center of the story. Also notable is just how prevalent the various tunes from Simon & Garfunkel are here. They really were a key selling point for the marketing here as their songs are used to underscore the emotions that are on display and provide some grounding for them.

It’s also a long trailer, running about three and a half minutes, a full minute longer than most modern trailers.That allows for a bit more footage to be shared, but the final 45 seconds or so are just the credits, including another prominent placement of Simon & Garfunkel.

What this campaign is selling is mostly uncomfortableness, an uncertainty about life and your place in it. Benjamin isn’t comfortable discussing his future, he’s not comfortable in his relationship with Mrs. Robinson. The only thing we see him actually be assertive about is his love for Elaine. Hoffman plays that perfectly, which is part of why this movie has gone on to become the classic it is.

Earlier this week Silence of the Lambs celebrated its 25th anniversary and so it seemed like the perfect excuse to revisit the campaign for what has gone on to become a classic thriller that has not only launched a number of sequels and other adaptations but also been cemented as one of the best movies of the late 20th Century.

Is there a point to recapping the story? As has been noted in countless other places the movie was not the big-screen introduction to Hannibal Lecktor, that happened five years earlier in Michael Mann’s adaptation of Manhunter, another Thomas Harris novel featuring Lecktor, who in that movie was played by Brian Cox. But it was the introduction of Anthony Hopkins to U.S. audiences. Hopkins played Lecktor as a sophisticated psychopath, chewing into each line of dialogue with a relish that made the character, his performance and the film in general immediately memorable. While that’s all great, it would be nothing without an equally elevated performance by Jodie Foster as F.B.I. rookie profiler Clarice Starling, who goes toe-to-toe with Lecktor in order to gain his insights into a current case being investigated. And neither of those performances, or the look and feel of the movie in general, would be possible without the tight, atmospheric direction of Jonathan Demme. All of that came together into something that resonated in a big way with 1991 audiences and continues to make an impact today.

The film’s theatrical poster is now seen as modern classic of the key art format. We see a grainy black-and-white photo of Foster’s face, her eyes a pop of red against the monochromatic setting. But her mouth is covered by a death’s head moth, the skull on its back slightly exaggerated from what you’d actually find in nature. The cast list appears above the title treatment, which is followed by the copy “From the terrifying best seller.”

A few things occur to me looking at the poster: First, the connection to the source novel isn’t made at all in the trailer, so it’s appearance here makes me wonder what that decision-making process was. Why was it so important to hit that point here but to ignore it in other elements of the campaign? Second, the moth is a plot element that similarly isn’t included in the trailer. Indeed it’s completely out of context, through it’s a plot point that will of course come up in the movie itself. What it does, though, is make the poster that much creepier because it makes the audience (at least those not familiar with the story already) wonder what the heck that disgusting insect is doing on her mouth? What is going on here? You’re immediately intrigued by this.

Also notable is the absence of Hopkins’ Lecktor from the one-sheet. Aside from his name he’s nowhere, which is surprising considering considering what a big part of the trailer he is. That may have been partly because it’s actually Starling’s story we’re following and so she was in the spotlight. It may also have been that Foster was a star at the time whereas Hopkins wasn’t known to U.S. audiences in 1990/91 and so would not have been that much of a draw. It’s also a marked contrast to today’s posters which will sacrifice tone and design considerations in favor of cramming the faces of actors together as artlessly as possible. Whatever the case, this is an enormously effective poster that, as I mentioned, has gone on to become an immediately-recognizable classic.

The trailer starts out by introducing us to Agent Starling, who’s tasked with finding someone who’s been killing and skinning women. In short order we meet Lecktor, who is being used for insights into the killer. The trailer tells us repeatedly how dangerous Lecktor is, that he’s a raging psychopath and how Starling is in danger by letting him into her head. The trailer teases that at some point Lecktor escapes but that’s about it, actually.

There’s very little about the Buffalo Bill case that Starling is actually investigating, just a few mentions and a couple shots. So audiences would have been completely taken aback by how much of the movie is actually focused on that in addition to the graphic nature of that part of the story. Instead it understandably focuses on the psychological cat-and-mouse game between Starling and Lecktor. The studio obviously knew this would be the draw and that they needed to highlight the performances by Hopkins and Foster.

What’s also remarkable to me is just how well the trailer holds up. Usually as you watch these older trailers they come off as stilted, with a style that might have worked at the time but which now seems stiff and with a tempo that seems odd and unfamiliar. But this one might still work in 2016. It’s easy to see where today’s tendency to explain every single plot line would change things a bit, especially in how it would absolutely share more of the Buffalo Bill story, but otherwise this holds up pretty well, which may be a testament to the movie as a whole.