Tonight I watched Boys Don’t Cry which, while well made, I really didn’t want to see. After I finished it, I checked out the trailer so that I could see how they promoted the film: it seems very much like something that you can’t market, almost as if it should go directly onto the “university text” list and bypass the cinema entirely.
I was most surprised by what I heard:
A true story of hope, fear, and the courage it takes to be yourself.
In what way does this pertain to the movie that I saw about the fallout of a woman passing herself as a man in smalltown America? In an effort to get people to see their films, the studios will pass their movies off however they can.
Boys Don’t Cry can be compared, I suppose, to Brokeback Mountain: the trailers for Brokeback Mountain were honest. I went into that film expecting something and getting it. I knew what Boys Don’t Cry was offering me, and the trailer was vaguely honest in that it admitted that the film was about a hate crime (well, it was more about the lead in to a hate crime), but when that voiceover man comes on, you know it’s all over.
My terrible secret is that, with the number of movies I go to, I hate some trailers a heck of a lot. In July and August, just about every film I went to had a trailer for 48 Shades in it. It was a really poorly made trailer:
“How many shades of brown are there?”
“48.”
“Wow, that’s a lot of shades of brown!”
– ACTUAL DIALOGUE
No one in Australia has gone to see the movie.
Sadly, the voice over for 48 Shades is probably telling the truth, but it is the most trite, life affirming truth that it could possibly tell. It’s no small wonder that Australians hate local cinema. That and we’re an island of pirates.
The whole lying about your product débacle reminded me of the
As long as the studios recognise that this stuff is pure BS, I suppose they can get away with it. If they think that I gleaned a single ounce of hope from Boys Don’t Cry, though, they’ve got another thing coming.
(if you’re wondering what Boys Don’t Cry‘s “flaw” is, I’d suppose that I’d put it down to a mild case of Hilary Swankitis).
