Doomed to Fail
Chapter 14, In the Swing of Things (Cont’d)
Excerpt from Where Did I Go Right? (or: You’re No One in Hollywood Unless Someone Wants You Dead), by Bernie Brillstein (with Cheryl Henson)
So, by the time principal photography was complete on The Road to Ruin, a title that seemed more appropriate every day, Coppola’s perfectionist tendencies and utter disregard for budgets had driven costs north of $82 million. The dailies looked great and test audiences were overwhelmingly positive, laughing manically the whole time, but the trade mags were universally predicting a disaster of One From the Heart level proportions and Disney stocks were trading lower in anticipation of a massive loss.
Letterman, apparently still annoyed with the merger, was calling it “Henson’s Folly Two: One More From the Heart” and comparisons to Toys, a film which by this point was being reappraised, I might add, were ubiquitous. It was just like what those bastards did to Toys, and already the well seemed poisoned.
We warned the board, pushed it to August, and prepared to write off the whole $82 mill. Other studios moved their expected middle-performers up against us, figuring there’d be no competition from MGM that weekend. But we weren’t going down without a fight and we assigned a serious marketing budget hoping that if we could yell louder than the nay-sayers that we could get a good opening and let word of mouth do the rest.
And then Mel [Brooks] had a revelation: lean in to the negativity. “Reverse Psychology Marketing,” he dubbed it. “Be a Part of the Disaster!!”
“Mel, I’m not sure what side of the genius/madness divide that you’re on at the moment,” I told him, “But at this point, what do we have to lose?”
“Eighty-two mil and our careers and reputation?”
“Yea, hardly anything worth a shit. Let’s do it.”
And do it we did.
“From the studio that brought you Toys.”
“They said it could never work…were they right?”
“Over budget, undervalued, and lovin’ every minute!”
“Watch the Catastrophe happen in real time!”
We had a trailer that showed the Hindenburg exploding and openly quoted the nay-sayers in the trade press. We added the phrase “Doomed to Fail” in bloody red font to the posters. We hit every morning and late show with Robin and Wayne and let them crack up the hosts and audience. They openly played with the sense of impending doom with as much comedic irony as they could, even as we wowed them with the hilarious scenes and fantastic spectacle in clips.
“My career may never recover, so you’d better come see me while you still can!” became Robin’s go-to tongue-firmly-in-cheek phrase for interviews.
It was brilliant and that target demographic of 16-40 was salivating for the chance to say they were there when Ruin crashed and burned…or didn’t.
We went from the laughing stock of Hollywood to the talk of the town.
They lined up around the block. Some people wore costumes! We opened at Number One. And we stayed there.
People went in to see a disaster and instead they saw what we always knew: that Robin Williams and Wayne Brady were the comedy duo for the New Millennium. Alan and Savion’s choreography when combined with Coppola’s direction and Deakins’ cinematography were breathtaking. Some loved it with sincerity, some loved it with irony, but they laughed when they were supposed to, sang along with the songs, and applauded when it was done.
Anticipation of disaster put butts in seats, and good old-fashioned word of mouth kept them there.
Critics heaped praise. Ebert said, “Icarus touches the sun and soars on to the stars in this magnificent, hilarious, and borderline self-aware visual and audio feast. Not since the golden days of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers has a musical proven so joyous, so immersive, and so much fun.”
“Our Bad,” ran the headline in Variety when we broke $150 mil domestically. We’d end up making over $550 mil globally. People the world over saw it again and again.
Wayne was blasted into stardom, suddenly the A-list talent that I knew that he could be. We immediately started looking into his next big feature, either with Robin or on his own. Savion Glover, who’d been in the film for all of 3 minutes as the dancer who schools Tariq in a dance-off, was suddenly being asked to cameo in every music video and making appearances on every variety show. His career, already well established, was sent into overdrive. We immediately put his Bring in 'Da Noise, Bring in 'Da Funk into production in partnership with 40 Acres and a Mule.
And the Disney board, who’d been hyper critical of the film, and of Jim for pursuing it, suddenly were singing his praises. But Jim gave the credit, as always, to Mel, Tom, Frank, Robin, Wayne, me, and the rest of the crew who made it. “I just had the basic idea,” he told them. “They made it happen.”
But Jim’s modesty aside, the truth was that he was right: the world was ready for a Big Musical again.
It just needed a little tweak to make it fit the zeitgeist.
And yes, I went with the Smash Success option, as many of you predicted (yes, you're all so amazingly clever, understanding ironic foreshadowing and all; please don't SPAM the thread with "Called it" posts
). The Big Bomb option after the buildup was already done with Toys and yea, having it be a mediocre underperformance would have been a great compromise option in that it would have pissed everyone off equally, but that wasn't really considered.
But the success/fail result wasn't really the point. It was the journey, not the destination. How the company was reacting to the "impending doom" and how it was affecting things behind the scenes that was important. The fact that Jim is taking big risks still rather than "play it safe". Leading the zeitgeist, not reacting to it. That's the big takeaway here, not Robin Williams + Wayne Brady = Win, because duh there.
So sorry for "stringing it out", but as I said, it was never really about whether a Big Musical could work in the 1990s, but about the fact that Jim thought that it could against all common wisdom, that the board, despite its reservations, let him do it, and the creative ways in which Bernie and Mel made it actually work.
So, glad folks liked the "reverse psychology marketing". It was fun to create.
Excerpt from Where Did I Go Right? (or: You’re No One in Hollywood Unless Someone Wants You Dead), by Bernie Brillstein (with Cheryl Henson)
So, by the time principal photography was complete on The Road to Ruin, a title that seemed more appropriate every day, Coppola’s perfectionist tendencies and utter disregard for budgets had driven costs north of $82 million. The dailies looked great and test audiences were overwhelmingly positive, laughing manically the whole time, but the trade mags were universally predicting a disaster of One From the Heart level proportions and Disney stocks were trading lower in anticipation of a massive loss.
Letterman, apparently still annoyed with the merger, was calling it “Henson’s Folly Two: One More From the Heart” and comparisons to Toys, a film which by this point was being reappraised, I might add, were ubiquitous. It was just like what those bastards did to Toys, and already the well seemed poisoned.
We warned the board, pushed it to August, and prepared to write off the whole $82 mill. Other studios moved their expected middle-performers up against us, figuring there’d be no competition from MGM that weekend. But we weren’t going down without a fight and we assigned a serious marketing budget hoping that if we could yell louder than the nay-sayers that we could get a good opening and let word of mouth do the rest.
And then Mel [Brooks] had a revelation: lean in to the negativity. “Reverse Psychology Marketing,” he dubbed it. “Be a Part of the Disaster!!”
“Mel, I’m not sure what side of the genius/madness divide that you’re on at the moment,” I told him, “But at this point, what do we have to lose?”
“Eighty-two mil and our careers and reputation?”
“Yea, hardly anything worth a shit. Let’s do it.”
And do it we did.
“From the studio that brought you Toys.”
“They said it could never work…were they right?”
“Over budget, undervalued, and lovin’ every minute!”
“Watch the Catastrophe happen in real time!”
We had a trailer that showed the Hindenburg exploding and openly quoted the nay-sayers in the trade press. We added the phrase “Doomed to Fail” in bloody red font to the posters. We hit every morning and late show with Robin and Wayne and let them crack up the hosts and audience. They openly played with the sense of impending doom with as much comedic irony as they could, even as we wowed them with the hilarious scenes and fantastic spectacle in clips.
“My career may never recover, so you’d better come see me while you still can!” became Robin’s go-to tongue-firmly-in-cheek phrase for interviews.
It was brilliant and that target demographic of 16-40 was salivating for the chance to say they were there when Ruin crashed and burned…or didn’t.
We went from the laughing stock of Hollywood to the talk of the town.
They lined up around the block. Some people wore costumes! We opened at Number One. And we stayed there.
People went in to see a disaster and instead they saw what we always knew: that Robin Williams and Wayne Brady were the comedy duo for the New Millennium. Alan and Savion’s choreography when combined with Coppola’s direction and Deakins’ cinematography were breathtaking. Some loved it with sincerity, some loved it with irony, but they laughed when they were supposed to, sang along with the songs, and applauded when it was done.
Anticipation of disaster put butts in seats, and good old-fashioned word of mouth kept them there.
Critics heaped praise. Ebert said, “Icarus touches the sun and soars on to the stars in this magnificent, hilarious, and borderline self-aware visual and audio feast. Not since the golden days of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers has a musical proven so joyous, so immersive, and so much fun.”
“Our Bad,” ran the headline in Variety when we broke $150 mil domestically. We’d end up making over $550 mil globally. People the world over saw it again and again.
Wayne was blasted into stardom, suddenly the A-list talent that I knew that he could be. We immediately started looking into his next big feature, either with Robin or on his own. Savion Glover, who’d been in the film for all of 3 minutes as the dancer who schools Tariq in a dance-off, was suddenly being asked to cameo in every music video and making appearances on every variety show. His career, already well established, was sent into overdrive. We immediately put his Bring in 'Da Noise, Bring in 'Da Funk into production in partnership with 40 Acres and a Mule.
And the Disney board, who’d been hyper critical of the film, and of Jim for pursuing it, suddenly were singing his praises. But Jim gave the credit, as always, to Mel, Tom, Frank, Robin, Wayne, me, and the rest of the crew who made it. “I just had the basic idea,” he told them. “They made it happen.”
But Jim’s modesty aside, the truth was that he was right: the world was ready for a Big Musical again.
It just needed a little tweak to make it fit the zeitgeist.
And yes, I went with the Smash Success option, as many of you predicted (yes, you're all so amazingly clever, understanding ironic foreshadowing and all; please don't SPAM the thread with "Called it" posts
). The Big Bomb option after the buildup was already done with Toys and yea, having it be a mediocre underperformance would have been a great compromise option in that it would have pissed everyone off equally, but that wasn't really considered. But the success/fail result wasn't really the point. It was the journey, not the destination. How the company was reacting to the "impending doom" and how it was affecting things behind the scenes that was important. The fact that Jim is taking big risks still rather than "play it safe". Leading the zeitgeist, not reacting to it. That's the big takeaway here, not Robin Williams + Wayne Brady = Win, because duh there.
So sorry for "stringing it out", but as I said, it was never really about whether a Big Musical could work in the 1990s, but about the fact that Jim thought that it could against all common wisdom, that the board, despite its reservations, let him do it, and the creative ways in which Bernie and Mel made it actually work.
So, glad folks liked the "reverse psychology marketing". It was fun to create.
