I’ve paid very close attention to this film since reading the pre-production script. This is a laudable example of perception vs. reality mapping gone massively wrong. The perception, came via word-of-mouth and marketing dollars; poured out as to what the filmmaker wanted viewers to think this film was about. Westerns are a very hard sell in the US and rarely extolled in Europe — since Westerns are a uniquely American experience. And, lets face it, if a film is couched as “new and mysterious”, sometimes decoding the mystery can be a worthwhile experience for an audience. But there really needs to be “a mystery’ to be decoded. If there isn’t — word-of-mouth will kill you in the digital age. I this case, the perception/marketing plan was that this was a VERY different film. It was NOT a western, but something that dealt with women’s struggles in the West. Interesting experiment to watch — marketing trying to shape perception. It was like telling the audience, in advance, their perceptions were ALL wrong. If you’re going to tell someone how they should approach personal thinking — you’re already on a VERY slippery slope. It didn’t work out ultimately. Not in the long or short run. Like putting lipstick on a pig… as they say. The film cost was around $12M (including tax/production credits), guessing. The film has made, to date, $2.4M. I suppose word of mouth and thinking for oneself, out muscled the hype that proceeded the film’s release. Like I said — if you tell someone this is the way to think about something — you sure as hell had better bring it. The filmmaker, in this case, was just not smarter than the THEM in teh equation. He took a calculated risk and was wrong. Maybe fur began to fly after they saw the first edit and started sweating profusely? If I were ‘them’, I’d be resentful as hell that someone, somewhere thought that they could shape my thoughts and make them line up with theirs. What’s the point of owning a brain if you’re not going to use it? You do have to hand it to Tommy Lee Jones though. To be in his late 70’s and still working in film is a pretty incredible thing on it’s own. Having a career that runs as long as his has is an incredible feat in a world where taste is more and more marginalized.
