one time there were two magician movies

o snap i guess they already did:

An internal promotional video for the Cheetos brand from the first quarter of 1991 serves as further proof that Flamin’ Hots were already out in the world.

The nearly nine-minute video, which Lukaska shared with The Times, is a Day-Glo green-and-pink time capsule, with Frito-Lay execs in fashionably baggy suits touting the latest and greatest snack aimed at kids, Cheetos Paws. At one point, two DDB Needham advertising executives perform a “New Jack City”-era rap about the coolness of Chester himself. Flamin’ Hots appear in the video for less than a second, in a rapid-fire slideshow set to MC Hammer’s “U Can’t Touch This,” alongside two other minor brands of the day, Cheetos Curls and Cheetos Light.

Every once in a while, my career puts me in touch with people who do things like that (devise and market snack foods, novelty ice cream products, energy beverages, etc.).

I do kind of wonder what their inner lives are like, and whether they laugh or cry when they reflect on the sheer silliness of it.

A few examples:

I worked for the person who came up with the slogan "soup is good food." Research indicated that mothers had underlying anxiety about feeding children meals that had not been prepared from scratch; Campbell's play was to alleviate this using the simplest, most direct possible language. The underlying lesson, I think, was that sometimes a lack of cleverness is a type of cleverness.

Much later I worked with the people who came up with the Taki's box-with-one-chip-in-it campaign. Ordinarily, companies want to communicate value, bounty, abundance. This was an instance where a manufacturer decided to go the opposite direction and sell scarcity.

There is a nice poem by Stephen Dunn with a line about how helping National Biscuit sell biscuits is wildly comic. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=36748

this all just reminds me when they made a big-budget movie based on the battleship board game and everybody was like "a movie based on a BOARD GAME god movies really have sunk to a new low", and all i could think of was how people said the same thing when the movie based on the board game clue came out in 1985. plus it had three different endings depending on which print you saw. total gimmick film.

except of course that film is fucking AMAZING.

if you make a good film on a stupid premise it will probably take longer for it to get appreciated but it will probably eventually become a cult classic. see also for instance the wachowskis making a film on the pretty bad '60s anime "speed racer" or rian johnson inexplicably deciding to make a movie in the trashy "star wars" series of films

I worked for the person who came up with the slogan "soup is good food." Research indicated that mothers had underlying anxiety about feeding children meals that had not been prepared from scratch; Campbell's play was to alleviate this using the simplest, most direct possible language. The underlying lesson, I think, was that sometimes a lack of cleverness is a type of cleverness.

― sane clown posse (Ye Mad Puffin)

a classic counterexample, someone who came up with ideas too clever for their own good, is stan freberg. he came up with this extremely elaborate busby berkeley extravaganza to promote a line of soups called the "great american soup" intended to compete with campbell's... people saw the ad and thought it was for campbell's soup. also see his ad campaign for the airline company that had just had some high-profile crashes... sophistication and irony are maybe not the best qualities for an ad campaign... it was nice to see daniel clowes getting work mind you.

Good post Kate.

Now I feel like maybe we have enough material to make a musical about canned food, which will be called...

Wait for it...

SOUP OPERA.

that made me think Ouija Boards were originally a board "game" made by Parker Brothers and imdb lists

1. Ouija: Origin of Evil (2016)
2. Ouija (II) (2014)
3. Ouija House (2018)
4. Ouija Seance: The Final Game (2018 TV Movie)

so we are back on topic 8)

the second Ouija was actually really fucking good.

Elvis (2022) & Priscilla (2023)

Oh no, but he’s not a hero

Indies about three dopey dudes who thieves and pull off a big heist after some enept smaller robberies: Bottle Rocket and Palookaville, both 1996

"who become thieves and try to pull off a major heist" & "inept smaller robberies "

The two O.J. projects (F/X series + 8-hour ESPN documentary). O.J.: Made in America screened at Sundance on Jan. 22, 2016; The People v. O. J. Simpson: American Crime Story debuted on Feb. 2, 2016, 11 days later.

https://www.ilxor.com/ILX/NewAnswersControllerServlet?boardid=41

lol

Hah

I thought this was going to be about

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BODBhZTFiOGItNjk4ZS00Y2VkLWJkNGQtNTk5NzZlNThlM2I4XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMzQwMTY2Nzk@._V1_FMjpg_UX1000_.jpg

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMTM2NTU1ZTktNjc4YS00NjNhLWE4NmYtOTM2YjFjOGUzNmYzXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyODE5NzE3OTE@._V1_.jpg

From 2011:

“La Guerre des Boutons” (“The War of the Buttons”) is a comedic remake of a 1962 blockbuster about spirited boys fighting with catapults and wooden swords. It was released Wednesday in French theaters.

But in an unprecedented development here, a more melodramatic film of the same story, with the similar title “La Nouvelle Guerre des Boutons” (“The New War of the Buttons”), comes out just a week later.

Both scripts are based on the same book, “La Guerre des Boutons,” written in 1912 by Louis Pergaud. Both have the same co-producer, the privately owned television channel TF1, and the same budget, about 13 million euros, or nearly $18 million.

https://www.critique-film.fr/la-guerres-des-boutons-2-films-differents/

https://archive.is/IIjHG

I suppose this sort of thing is going to keep happening as books fall out of copyright

a 1912 book by someone who died in 1915 would've been public domain for a while though

for some reason it didn’t enter the public domain until 2010, not sure why

Once upon a time there were two Jean Harlow biopics released five weeks apart:

Harlow (1965)
Harlow (1965)

came on here to post this but emil.y beat me to it 8 years ago lol

emil.y at 3:42 26 Mar 16
The Double (2013, adapted from Dostoevsky's The Double)
Enemy (2013, adapted from Saramago's The Double)
Both deal with doppelgängers and identity.

RIP Christopher Priest, without whom there would have only been one magician movie.

RIP. He wrote a lot of great stuff.

I have yet to watch the movie or read the book, been saving it up.

Still need to finish Nina Allan’s The Rift as well, which starts out grebt.

Immaculate
The First Omen

Haha I just said the same thing to my friend.

Bizarre how similar they are

Not just in "nun" premise but the first half hour of movie too

Two films based on the story of Bernard Jordan, escaping from his care home to attend D-Day anniversary.

The Great Escaper with Michael Caine, 6th October 2023.
The Last Rifleman with Piers Brosnan, 5th November 2023.

I’d seen the cover for The Last Rifleman and with Brosnan in it assumed it was a thriller of some sort.

"Roller Boogie" and "Skatetown U.S.A.", both 1979

This is a pretty loose one, but in the early '70s there were several movies about or involving on on some important level radio personalities/DJs:

WUSA, 1970
Vanishing Point, 1971
Play Misty For Me, 1971
The King of Marvin Gardens, 1972
American Graffiti, 1973

in that vein, i did see Vanishing Point and The Warriors closely together recent and thought the dj aspect was similar (Warriors was a bit later - '79)

I worked for the person who came up with the slogan "soup is good food." Research indicated that mothers had underlying anxiety about feeding children meals that had not been prepared from scratch; Campbell's play was to alleviate this using the simplest, most direct possible language. The underlying lesson, I think, was that sometimes a lack of cleverness is a type of cleverness.

whoa i remember being told that i went to college with the offspring of the person who invented this slogan but i have no recollection who that person was. what a strange intersection!

I think that a lot of that work was done by Molly M. at Porter Novelli.

The Warriors maybe pairs up better with The Fog (1980).

Might be stating the obvious, but I think radio DJs were just a bigger part of life back then, with a stronger presence as individuals, and (correct me if I'm wrong) more actual time of their voice on the air saying stuff. They were surely more prominent as local figures, and the intimacy of them being in everybody's cars and ears can't be discounted. So it makes sense that there'd be a lot of them in movies, just like having a lot of newspaper reporters, or politicians, or local business owners.

This is a pretty loose one, but in the early '70s there were several movies about or involving on on some important level radio personalities/DJs:

WUSA, 1970
Vanishing Point, 1971
Play Misty For Me, 1971
The King of Marvin Gardens, 1972
American Graffiti, 1973

― an icon of a worried-looking, long-haired, bespectacled man (C. Grisso/McCain

There's also a low-budget Canadian entry in that same vein and timeframe: "Slipstream", starring Luke Askew as the DJ

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slipstream_(1973_film)

And the movie FM, now only remembered because Steely Dan wrote the theme song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=316mipUnA-M

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FM:_The_Original_Movie_Soundtrack

The Warriors and The Wanderers work together too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBrRbcQuNl8

Dana Gould on "Soup is good food"

FM lines up a little with WKRP on TV (both 1978).

There's certainly an analog in the characters:

Micheal Brandon/Gary Sandy
Martin Mull/Howard Hesseman
Cleavon Little/Tim Reid

I remember seeing some comments about how that was merely coincidental, that radio stations of the era were all like that, with a burnout DJ, a hip Black guy, the frustrated program director etc.

Another one that lines up with FM is American Hot Wax, Floyd Mutrux's 1978 biopic of Alan Freed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLAx5lIqfsg

Not commercially available.

Two junkie movies in 1971: Panic in Needle Park and Born to Win.

― clemenza, Saturday, March 26, 2016 5:07 PM (eight years ago)

Dusty and Sweets McGee as well.

American Hot Wax probably could lineup with The Buddy Holly Story (also 1978).

...and also Dead Man's Curve, a 1978 TV biopic with Richard Hatch & Bruce Davison as Jan & Dean.

Old army buddies plan & execute a major heist in 1960:

Ocean's 11
The League of Gentlemen

Europa Europa (1990, Agnieszka Holland)
Europa (1991, Lars von Trier)

This confused the hell out of me at the time