Six years after Morgan Spurlock entertained and educational educated Sundance audiences with "Super Size Me," the filmmaker returns to the festival with "POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold," a thought-provoking documentary that examines the prevalence of product placement in entertainment.
Spurlock sat down with TheWrap at the Bing Bar on Main St. to discuss the reception of the film and its acquisition by Sony Pictures Classics, which will release "The Greatest Movie" in April.
How did the sponsors react after seeing the film? Were any of them upset? Were you asked to cut anything?
No. Surprisingly enough, they were amazing. 11 of them were at the premiere. Mini Cooper wasn't, but everybody else was, and they loved it. They were all really excited and they loved how they came off.
There were some tense moments in the film, like when Ban [deodorant] couldn't describe their brand, or when the "Made In China" bit with Merrell [shoes] comes onscreen. But at the same time, I said to all of these brands at the beginning that we're going to be very transparent. What happens, happens. What we see, we see. The conversations we have in terms of how we integrate products into the movie, the stuff we talk about -- we want this to feel really natural and organic. We want the audience to see that, and they were all on board. The fact that they were, post-screening, still incredibly excited [says a lot].
After the screening, they started talking about how they could do more promotion for the movie. Based on the positive response of the audience, I think what the brands saw was that this was an incredible opportunity for them to be in on the joke. What it really does for these brands is it makes them look really smart.
The thing that I found most fascinating was the neuromarketing stuff.
Amazing, right?
Yes, it was very interesting. Do you feel like that's the future of marketing, and if so, does that worry you?
You have to think that if you can get to the point where you know that a mass of people, if you do X, Y and Z in a trailer, will want to go see that movie, or in a commercial, will make them want to go buy that thing or make them crave it in some way ... it's a crazy thing to think about. It's a pretty insane, "Brave New World"-ish, futuristic way to look [at things]. I'm basically going to be able to know what you want. It's like pre-cog advertising.
What do you think will be the next evolution in product placement? Where is it going?
I think the evolution is going to be a de-evolution. I think what will happen is, you'll see things get flipped back to almost how it was in the glory days, the early days of radio and TV.
