Rebranding a movie

It’s not unusual for a product to undergo rebranding. In fact, one of the most successful was covered on this very blog. 
 
But in this case, the product in need of a new image wasn’t found on a store shelf. It was projected on the silver screen.
 
In 1973, United Artists released its movie, The Long Goodbye to theatres in Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia and Miami. The movie re-teamed director Robert Altman and star Elliot Gould of the box-office hit M*A*S*H three years earlier, in an adaptation of the Raymond Chandler noir novel. 
 
“Nothing says goodbye like a bullet,” the movie poster announced, Elliot Gould brandishing a cigarette and pistol, looking as hard-boiled as Humphrey Bogart’s Marlowe in 1946’s The Big Sleep.

 

And the audience stayed away in droves. 

 

When the limited release ended, United Artists pulled the film from its next opening in New York and, baffled by the apathy of audiences (and the hostility of critics), over the next 6 months, tried to figure out what went wrong. 

 

Should it be re-edited? Does it need a new title? Were audiences just tired of Elliot Gould, who was coming off a string of poorly received movies? The first two could be done; the third would be impossible to remedy. 

 

But in the end, it was decided to spend $40,000 on a new ad campaign. And not just a new campaign – a different one. 

 

Altman had moved the story from 1953 to the 1970s, calling his approach “Rip Van Marlowe” – “We took the position that he’d been asleep for twenty years, woke up, and Elliot just wandered through that film … and was trying to invoke the morals of a previous time.” The New York Times called it a “blackly satiric version of the Raymond Chandler novel.” 

 

Yet the original poster reflected none of that, selling it instead as a typical Chandler hard-boiled detective story that was destined to please no one, neither older audiences who remembered the Bogart version, nor younger moviegoers with no connection to the genre. 

 

In spirit, the movie was probably closer to the black comedy of M*A*S*H. Quoted in the New York Times, Altman said, “Somehow we had to prepare audiences for a movie that satirizes Hollywood and the entire Chandler genre … So I went to Mad magazine and asked Jack Davis, the artist, to come up with a cartoon approach.”

For anyone who read Mad Magazine (or TV Guide) of the era, Jack Davis needs no introduction. Well known for his gangly, expressive caricatures actors and celebrities, Davis was, along with Mort Drucker and Angelo Torres, one of the “go-to” artists for Mad’s movie parodies during the 1960s and ‘70s (and later, the 80s and ‘90s).

Here’s one he did in 1971 for Mad’s spoof of the Clint Eastwood spaghetti western, A Fistful of Dollars – here called “A Fistful of Lasagna:” 

And in fact, by this time, Davis had already applied his comedic style to posters for 1963’s It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, 1969’s Viva Max!, and 1970’s Kelly’s Heroes. Those posters featured the caricatured stars in a mass of frenzied humanity or satirical posing. 

But for The Long Goodbye, Davis took his comedic approach a step further, refashioning the poster image into what looked like the opening panel of a Mad Magazine movie parody in which Altman introduces the stars and plot to the audience, with quips galore in the interlacing word balloons that filled the top the page. 

Altman says, “The film is full of fun – murder, maiming, drunkenness, infidelity, topless yoga freaks, four-letter words – everything! Like my first big success, M*A*S*H, it’s got the same key ingredient! … Good taste!”

He continues, “Here’s our star, Elliot Gould! Elliot plays Phillip Marlowe, a hard-bitten, cynical private eye trying to solve an incredible mystery.” Gould: “With so many other actors around, why did you pick me?” Altman: "THAT’S the mystery!"

And so on. (So perfectly does the repartee follow the distinctive Mad joke structure for their film spoofs, it seems likely that it came from one of Mad’s writers.)  

You could argue that the new poster went too far in re-positioning a movie that, while not traditional film noir, was still low-key, slow-paced, and despite the sun-drenched scenes, was actually dark in tone – not the rollicking satire the poster now suggests.

But it would certainly made the feature seem less of an anachronism and more in line with the anti-institutional, anti-authoritarian wave of post-VietNam/pre-Watergate America. Rebranding gone Mad, perhaps.

 

So how did it do in the theatres this time? Not much better, apparently. Though the film has grown in critical appraisal over the years – it’s now recognized by the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" – The Long Goodbye continued to underperform at the box office.

As Madison Avenue could tell you, not every rebranding is a success. For every Marlboro, there's a Tropicana.