Eric Bogosian
Marketing the Film subUrbia
February 5, 1997.
For the past two weeks and for the next week or so I will get out there and try to drum up some attention for the film release of subUrbia. It's easy to have second thoughts about this process, because, as McLuhan said: "The medium is the message," and given the nature of the medium (TV, print, radio), it's very easy for a message to get lost.
Some people, authors in particular, stay away from promoting films because the process feels so moronic. Here am I, having spent two, three, five years cramming my feelings onto the page and in minutes I'm supposed to sum up and even demystify what I tried so hard to make subtle and special. In a sentence or two, edited by an editor (in print) or pre-screened by a "pre-interview", I will present my work in an amusing way.
Of course, the first thought is, "Don't do it!" But I do it. I do it because I want people to see my film and if a little curiosity is piqued by my appearance on Conan or Imus (where I'll be this week) - good. But aren't I demeaning the work?
The answer is simply that the whole exercise can't be taken so seriously. Note I said "the exercise" versus "the work." Some people will take the work seriously. Hopefully many. But experience tells me that in most cases my hard-won battle against all odds to write a play, write a screenplay have each produced, etc. will result in nothing more than my grand effort passing through most people's minds like a bowl of granola through their intestines.
If I think back of all the tap-dancing I did to launch "Talk Radio" - on Arsenio, on stupid drive-time and talk radio shows - it's all forgotten now. The play and the film remain. No one seems to remember these anxiety-ridden moments in my life.
So why do it at all if it doesn't make a difference? But it does. It does because somehow, imperceptibly I enter the forum of the mass-consciousness, and thus my alter-ego, my media-self becomes legitimate. Believe it on not, people want to be comfortable with this self. They need a "gestalt" with which to relate. It's not my words that need to be complex but my media-persona. This is the real means of promotion. In fact, I haven't been very successful with this in the past, but I'll go out there and give it the old college try.
I think of David Mamet, the coolest writer in the world, and how he never does this sort of thing and I think, well, Eric, you must be a light-weight to even bother going on talk shows and doing interviews. But then I think of Tennessee Williams being skewered by David Frost on TV in the Sixties. Silly Tennessee Williams, weird, drunk, swishy. He wrote the most gorgeous stuff in the world and no one can ever take that away. Hype can inflate, but water finds it's own level. I will try to push this wonderful film out there and no one can say I didn't try.
P.S. I wish the poster had just been a big picture of a greasy slice of pizza. Maybe next time I can get a clause stuck in my contract that says I don't have to have a demeaning and stupid poster.
Part of the process of supporting the film has been to visit "Sundance" for the first time. It's easy to be glib about such a weird event. Nonetheless it's important to understand that in fact, in the current climate, everyone is sort of their own producer and must think like a producer about their own work. What about the real "artistes" who don't think about self-promotion? I'm afraid they are like the trees that fall in the forest with no one around to hear them fall - they don't make a sound.
What about the artists you've read about? Existential people like me, Eric Bogosian, for instance, who fill some imaginary role of romantic loner and iconoclast, who are "above it all." Truth is, no one is. Almost everyone has to have an agent, a lawyer, etc.. All the really way-out people, even alternative rock bands toe the line sooner or later.
You must know this already, but the whole thing has a stranger twist yet. Even when you have all these people working for or with you, the full weight still rests on you to play the game. I just saw this film "Waiting for Guffman" and it distills perfectly the way artists expect others to somehow save their asses, deliver them. The whole notion of getting out there and auditioning your way into a great role or writing the perfect screenplay is completely out of touch with reality.
Yes, perhaps you'll get a supporting role or get offered a rewrite with your effort, but the honest truth is, most every agent, producer, director, everybody, simply looks at the success of your last thing. Money-wise. Phone-call-returning-wise Except in rare occasions. (I've been around some of those, so I can't say they don't exist.)
It's a commercial business, people are looking to make a buck and most of them are not gamblers. Maybe Saul Zantz is, but most of them look for the sure thing. One way or another they find it.
