Replies: 8 Comments
on Monday, April 18th, AP Short said
Argh! Balance? In the blogosphere? VE, you should be ashamed of yourself. It almost makes me want to admit that maybe I overreacted to the York article.
What I really meant was, and let me see if I can put this in a balanced way....
Byron York is a Wanker!
Wanker!!!!
WAAAAAAAAANKEEEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
on Saturday, April 16th, Vampire Elf said
Look at that - I go away for a couple of days and things explode. Very nice.
First off, I want to point out that those numbers York refers to not only make sense, but make a hell of a lot more sense then using per-screen numbers. Those numbers represent how the various markets respond to ALL movies, period. And when ANY film (narrative, documentary, snuff, whatever) is off by an entire percentage point in a major market from those numbers (in either direction), that's really saying something about how that movie is doing in that area.
Specific instance per screen numbers (but not the oft-quoted industry standard "per screen average", which would mean precisely dick in this conversation) would only be helpful in determining where and when during the film's run a slide or increase occurred. They don't give us the overall picture - that would be those numbers that York quoted.
Having said that, the paragraph Adam refers is one of those things designed to speak to people who want to believe a certain thing. Everything stated in that paragraph is almost undoubtedly true. It did sell out in those places. There probably were standing ovations. And what's disappointing, but not unexpected (note: I did claim the source was biased), is that that one paragraph taints the perfectly valid argument that the rest of the article was trying to make. Thus is the nature of opinion journalism.
I think Adam's right, though, in regards to the fact that the film pissed off conversatives more than it got liberals fired up. Which is always a risk with the Moore/Limbaugh/Hannity/Franken folks.
In related news, I just bought this movie today. I got it for $5 at Ingles as a Previously Viewed flick, so as not to actually give Moore any of my money (much like Rove, only legal). And I swear I will watch it all the way through, unlike Bowling for Columbine, where I saw 20 minutes and had to turn it off out of fear of breaking of my television.
on Friday, April 15th, The Greatness said
Well, I certainly wouldn't have said it that way. It certainly has a dark musing that is the hallmark of tendentious writing. And I'd agree with you completely on his dishonesty if this were all he said on the subject. But that paragraph was preceded by three just as long, quoting major news sources that did, in fact, find large crowds in red states. Taken in full, I don't think he is pretending that there was no interest. In fact it would be incoherent for him to say so, for the only reason to go to the trouble he went with the Nielsen numbers is if there were at least some evidence that the movie was popular.
That one paragraph is the only even slightly misleading item in the whole article, in my opinion. To restate my point: That there were sellout crowds in the early days of release did not, in the aftermath, result in a significant appeal in Texas the way it did in New York. He went to the trouble of at least substantiating the claims, which is more than I can say for anyone else.
on Friday, April 15th, AP Short said
Let's go to the text, shall we?
"As publicity for Fahrenheit 9/11, Moore himself could not have written better stories. And he did seem to write some of them. “It sold out in Fayetteville, North Carolina, home of Fort Bragg,” he told the group at the MoveOn town meeting. “It sold out in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It got a standing ovation in Greensboro, North Carolina.” In a matter of hours, those quotes found their way into news reports, feeding the impression that Fahrenheit 9/11 was exciting audiences everywhere, made up of all kinds of viewers. And that impression was amplified by a separate campaign, coordinated by MoveOn, encouraging the group’s members to pack early screenings and write pro-Moore letters to newspapers, all of which was designed to create the sense that the movie was a phenomenon sweeping the country."
York is here CLEARLY, and you are welcome to disagree, but he is CLEARLY implying that mainstream news sites ran these stories Moore was feeding them without checking to see if they were true.
In fact, they were true. But we don't find that out from York. His intention is to mislead us into thinking they were false, or at best that no one knows.
on Friday, April 15th, The Greatness said
And you're reading your own politics into the text. As I see it, York suggested that MoveOn.org members packed the theaters and embarked on a letter-writing campaign. (Is that false?) Since such a thing not the sort of thing that happens for Shrek 2, the anecdotal evidence for sellouts was simply not that meaningful as evidence for broad-based support -- "wishful thinking", as he put it. And even by the per-screen totals that is born out. They were superlative the first weekend, but when twice as many theaters took the film the second weekend, the per-screen totals dropped proportionally.
And there's a perfectly good reason not to consider those numbers relevant when put in the context of Moore's quotes. Moore was not lying when he said "It was the number-one movie in every single red state in America," but his intention was to give the impression that the movie had broad-base appeal in the red states. The Nielsen numbers show that that didn't happen.
F911, and the Passion, show that agenda films play well to targeted audiences. The only thing I meant to point out was that Hollywood seemed unaware of Gibson's audience.
on Thursday, April 14th, AP Short said
You're being evasive. The point is, the York article is deliberately misleading - he implies that Moore made up stories about sellouts in red state towns when he either knows this is not the case or he didn't bother to find out.
The point about movie execs is a little disingenuous, since Fahrenheit 9/11 actually did a booming business, shattering box office records as expected. The massive success of the Passion was a surprise to Hollywood execs, for reasons which are probably not all that difficult to discern.
on Thursday, April 14th, The Greatness said
Well, the Leclerq article does provide evidence of sellouts -- on opening weekend, at the only theater showing the film in a town of 120,000. So there were people interested in seeing the film. But would the numbers have seemed as impressive if it was showing in every theater that was showing Spider-Man 2? I'm reminded of the stories of how Tool created buzz for their band by deliberately playing smaller venues than their fan base could fit in.
I can provide anecdotal support for York's statements on Canadian interest in F911. From a popularity standpoint, Michael Moore movies are as much a guide to American life for Canadians as Strange Brew was vice versa.
Of course, the election was so close that I doubt F911 could be held up as a decisive factor. The only really interesting issue here is on the movie-industry side of things. F911 was expected to do well, in contrast to "The Passion" which was supposed to crater. Both movies are a cautionary tale for execs who think they know how their market works.
on Wednesday, April 13th, AP Short said
Well, it's hard to make informed judgments about the election, unfortunately, because no one ever came up with a plausible weighting strategy after the exits were shown to be way off. Thus all the yakking about the exit poll numbers after the election turned out to be just that - yakking. We really don't know why Bush won.
So I guess in theory it could have been because of Moore. But given what we do know - that Democratic turnout met or exceeded expectations in key states - it's unlikely that feelings of complacency were to blame. You could make a better case that the film stoked the conservative base, though of course if Byron York is right (did I just type that?) then no one in the key states really saw the movie.
Of course, York makes his usual slew of logical errors in analyzing the data. It's possible his conclusions are valid, but you certainly can't tell from the piece whether they are or not.
Comparing raw numbers for F911 in different markets based on trends set by films like Barbershop and Shrek 2 doesn't make a lot of sense, because we don't know whether the films have similar release patterns.
Better would be "per screen" numbers - it's likely (in my mind) that F911 played on proportionally more screens in New York City than in Fayetteville. We don't know if that's the case or not - York doesn't say.
It also tells us a lot about what sort of "journalist" York is that he leaves us with the impression that the reports of sellouts in unexpected red state towns were fabricated, but he makes no attempt to confirm the stories with people who actually live in the localities.
In fact, he didn't even bother with a LexisNexis search, because the Fayetteville Observer ran an article on June 29, 2004 called "F911 Breaks Records in Military Town" written by local reporter Matt Leclerq.
Of course, that's probably just a pseudonym for "Michael Moore," right?
