JANUARY 15, 2009 Report E.C.McMullen Jr. Link Updates: July 21, 2015 Page 2

SEX WON'T SELL YOUR GENRE MOVIE
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The era of Sex Sells is over. It's been over for a long time. Its been commoditized. Gone are the days when a sexy and sexually available woman is worth your time and money and effort to pursue her. Now even common looking guys look down their nose at Paris Hilton and Lindsey Lohan types as being too messed up in the head to bother about.

In short: skanks.

Further, Gals & Guys seem to agree on this point.

There was a time when our fathers, like men dying of thirst in the desert, would spend whole paychecks to chase down any errant piece of tail (hopefully as single men). A very small handful of such guys still exist, chasing down the ugliest pigs on earth for the desperate chance of a lay. We see and mock them on daytime talk shows like Jerry Springer. Most guys I know wonder why their "brothers" would put themselves through so much shit for a lowbrow, hulking, unformed, expanding mass of foul-mouthed protoplasm, like the one sitting next to them, screaming her fool head off at the booing audience.

Even mediocre guys think they can do better than that and they are usually right.

An unfortunate side effect of this is that even the plainest guys are becoming ever more finicky about bed mates. So women are becoming ever more competitive and even teens and (gag!) pre-teens are no longer playing with make-up, but putting serious thought into being sexy and copying the latest music video dance moves of Beyonce and Brittany.

Of course, some people will read sex into anything.
AAAHH! PHALLIC SHARK!	AAAHH! PHALLIC DOG!	AAAHH!

We are now in an age where sex sells sex and little else

Most of all and more than anything else, sex does not sell movie tickets. And by movie tickets I mean movie videos as well.

The latest disaster in the long running joke of why Sex Doesn't Sell A Movie is the movie Miss March. This R rated nudie comedy about a Playboy centerfold has and used a huge advertising budget. It debuted on 1,742 screens with $2.3 million, putting it at #10. For all of you tired old out of touch farts in the movie industry, listen up: Sex Doesn't Sell Tickets!

After the initial big weekend opener, WATCHMEN is dropping like a stone. The R rating isn't helping. On message boards across the web, comic book geek fanboys are calling the sex scene silly.

"Silly"

They're not offended, they're just not impressed. The nudity and sex is ludicrous and it ends with Nite Owl II's Archimedes craft spewing a stream of orgasmic fire to the tune of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah. Criminy!

This mimics the 2008 release box office performance disasters of nudie movies* like The Baby-sitters, Boarding Gate ($49,333 total box office. Then again, maybe nobody will pay to see Asia Argento naked), CHEMICAL WEDDING, Choke, College, THE EYE (Maybe no one will pay to see Jessica Alba nearly naked?), Finding Amanda, FRONTIER(S), A Girl Cut In Two, A Good Day To Be Black & Sexy, Good Dick, The Guitar, Hamlet 2, The Last Mistress (Asia Argento - even with a boob job - curse again), Lie To Me, My Best Friend's Girl (big stars), Playing With Fire, The Reader (Big stars, publicized nudity and even freaking Golden Globe and Oscar wins! It still tanks!), REPO: The Genetic Opera (The Paris Hilton curse again?), Sex and Death 101, Sex Drive, Virgin Territory, Zack and Miri Make a Porno (big stars), and Zombie Strippers.

*I didn't mention The House Bunny, which brought in less than its mean budget (cost of movie before advertising and the millions to ship the thousands of reels out to theaters), I Can't Think Straight (sexy Lez Lurv in the land of Mo'), The Love Guru (just sad, even with Jessica Alba again), My Blueberry Nights (Big stars like Jude Law, Norah Jones, Rachel Weisz, Natalie Portman and it still couldn't get good distribution or make at least $1m in the U.S.), The Other Boleyn Girl (big stars), and The Hottie And The Nottie (less than $30 thousand domestic with Paris Hilton as the star. Ouch!). Even though they used sex to sell their movies, they were rated PG-13, so they were just begging for a box office beat down.

Most Horror Thriller fans love John Carpenter's THE THING, though not for the sex.

Out of all of these, many had huge stars, various awards, and despite the nudity, they not only couldn't sell tickets, some are still trying to find a distributor. Even among decent paying distributors, sex will not sell your movie (and if you can't find one distributor among the nearly 100 who will pay an advance for distribution rights to your movie, that says something about the quality of your flick).

I'm not cherry picking here. I covered EVERY 2008 American nudie movie and even threw in a few foreign ones that got at least film festival attention in the U.S. And I can show you similar results from 2007 (Jessica Alba gets naked in Good Luck Chuck and in Awake - they both tank), 2006, 2005, and so on.

Sex sells, but not movie tickets or distribution. Sex will not ever sell your movie.

I left out the movies, Role Models and Forgetting Sarah Marshall, because both of these movies were strictly sold as Paul Rudd comedies with nothing in the ads to suggest a sex flick. Paul Rudd, with 64 movies and TV shows to his credit and years of being in huge comedy hits is going to bring in the bucks. The fact that his movies had nudity is ... nice.

I don't mind watching a movie that also has naked gals in it. Seeing nudity enhances my movie going experience! But that only works if it's nudity in a GOOD MOVIE.

Nudity in a mediocre or bad movie isn't worth my money or obviously anyone else's. Unless you're hoping for a KIA return on your Pantera investment. I also left out the hit, Sex and the City, which had lots of graphic nudity. But hey, if your movie is based on a wildly popular TV show, with a huge built in audience, then you can throw Pauly Shore, Tom Green and Carrot Top in there and it will still be a hit! Hell! You can even have Zsa Zsa in a wheelchair without major damage. This logic is what makes sequels profitable, and that's all Sex and the City was: a sequel to a very popular TV show that ended on a cliffhanger to garner their huge audience for a movie.

The Wrestler had steamy sex scenes, but it didn't sell itself on that. It didn't even need that to make $26 mil any more than Rocky needed sex (I appreciated the thought though.
Good movie = Winner!
Good movie with sex = winner!
Bad movie with sex = Loser!).

Nudity and sex will never keep me away from a good movie (I love THE TOXIC AVENGER and POULTRYGIEST!), but nudity and sex in a mediocre movie won't draw me in either. I'll pay for a good movie with no nudity or sex in it (John Carpenter's THE THING, TREMORS, RESERVOIR DOGS, MONSTERS, INC., THE INCREDIBLES, IRON MAN, THE DARK KNIGHT). But if your movie is bland or worse, then neither I or anyone else will pay jack shit to see your stupid flick. First and foremost, You Have To Make A Good Movie. And if it's good and you have no room for sex, then pasting it in there will only drop your good movie to mediocre at best and no one will watch it and nobody in the movie business will pay you to distribute it.

And anyone who tells you different is a liar, a loser, or both. And either way? For all of their talk? They won't pay you a dime to distribute your movie.

But why? People still say "Sex sells" so why?

Welcome to the cultural inertia of Slogans!

One reason is that they're staggering out of touch dinosaurs.

In an age of free Internet porn when even legitimate porn companies are folding up; when people are making their own amateur sex videos on cheap video cameras with superior High Definition picture quality over the cameras they used to make 28 DAYS LATER; when people can make a fast and furtive sex video using even their damn cell phones for crying out loud - and they are all willing to post them on the 'Net for free just for bragging rights; why in the hell would you base your expensive business model on a flash of tit or ass? Are you really, desperately, that shitty a film maker?

It's 2009! So wake the hell up!

All of you directors and writers out there making your indie Horror Thriller movie? The next time you have some big mouthed, living large, self-described "expert" tell you to inject gratuitous nudity into your movie so you can sell it?

Make them put it in writing.

Make them pay you for it.

See how "living large" they are then. If you're going to be a whore get paid to be a whore and make "Expert" pay for it up front. Otherwise, pay attention to the real world: If it didn't work for Paris Hilton, Asia Argento, Jude Law, Michael Madsen, and Jessica Alba, it sure as shit ain't gonna work for you! So get a freaking clue and write a GOOD story!

Then make a GOOD movie!

If it's a good script it doesn't matter if it has stars or nudity. Neither sells a Horror Thriller movie anymore - if it ever did.

Read the companion piece: Big Stars Won't Sell Your Genre Movie.

6 YEARS AND 53 STUDIES LATER PROVES I'M RIGHT July 21, 2015 Sex and violence may not really sell products Review of 53 studies suggests advertisers may be wasting money If there's one thing advertisers think they know, it is that sex and violence sell. A new analysis, however, provides some of the best evidence to date that this widely accepted adage just isn't true. Article at Science Daily. March 29, 2013 The End of the Hollywood Sex Scene It seems America's #1 favorite topic ever, sex, will be taking a backseat to violence and talking animals in Hollywood movies. According to Vincent Bruzzese, film research expert of Ipsos, a firm which analyzes scripts for major studios, Hollywood isn't looking for sex scenes anymore when pitching future blockbusters. He claims, "Sex scenes used to be written, no matter the plot, to spice up a trailer. But all that does today is get a film an adult-only rating and lose a younger audience." He admits that sex scenes have sold so poorly in the last two years that, "Today such scenes are written out by producers even before they are shot." When I first heard this, I didn't quite believe it. Of course sex in cinema is still as ubiquitous as ever. Then I thought about it, and realized it isn't that common in movies that actually do well. Continued at Nerve. February 7, 2012 5 Ridiculous Sex Myths Everyone Believes Once again, science is here to shrivel our erection of lies with the cold swimming pool of truth. Sex is a great way to get the audience to watch. But "watching" isn't the same as "buying." Continued at Cracked. On March 30, 2010, Hollywood began to wake up. March 30, 2010 New Motto for the B.O.: Sex Doesn't Sell "Chloe's" paltry take is another nail in the coffin of the erotic thriller When "Chloe," a drama of sexual obsession and jealousy, was released in theaters last weekend, it landed with a whisper, not a bang. Given what's on the internet these days, moviegoers just aren't in the market for that anymore. Continued at The Wrap December 1, 2010 When It Comes to R-Rated Movies, Does Sex Still Sell? It's no surprise that people in the movies are so dour and anxious these days: They aren't getting any. A little over a decade ago, sex was still commonplace in cinema, and movies like Basic Instinct were sold primarily on carnal thrill. In the years since, however, movie characters have kept buttoned-up, and the rare film that makes sex a focal point of its promotional campaign usually tanks... Continued at NYMag December 20, 2010 Been there, seen that: Does sex still sell movies? Once, the sight of a Hollywood star's bottom or breasts was rare and exciting. Now they're all at it – and the results bore us. It's time for the marketing men to think more cleverly, says Tim Walker Continued at Independent December 21, 2010 How To Sell Sex In The Movies The spectacular flop of Love And Other Drugs has led several commentators to wonder whether sex still sells. But maybe it's just bad marketing that doesn't sell. Just look at Black Swan. Continued at Jezebel May 6, 2009 The naked truth: sex doesn't sell games Far from the porn-crazed sex ghouls they're frequently portrayed as, male videogame players appear to be developing quite a potent resistance to exploitative, sex-based marketing practices. Indeed, even Lara Croft has given into this progressive zeitgeist: her breasts and lips have shrunk in recent years, and the rest of her body has been reduced to more anatomically feasible proportions. On cue, her critical stock has risen, and while the first two games in the post-2006 Tomb Raider revamp (Legend and Anniversary) sold unfavourably compared with past instalments, the latest, Underworld, is selling healthily after a lacklustre launch. Continued at Guardian. December 29, 2009 Does sex sell movies? Uh, not really When it comes to movies, it may be that sex doesn't sell. A recent study concluded that nudity and explicit sex scenes don't translate to success for major motion pictures. Continued at CNN. But what about the mostly all male market? Sex doesn't sell there either. Not even to (and this is especially important) the stereotypical sexually frustrated male geek & nerd market. Then again, Star Trek and Star Wars aren't known for their predominant sexuality. Kirk was a horndog, but if that's all he was nobody would have cared. Spock was anything but a horndog, and he is more revered among the fans than Kirk. The most successful of all the Star Trek TV shows was ST: TNG. Captain Picard had about as much sex during that run as Spock waiting for Pon Farr.

P.S.: Not all sharks are phallic... BASKING SHARK WHALE SHARK LINK BACK Sex in Horror Movies, Matthew Warner SEX WON'T SELL YOUR GENRE MOVIE, Digg END