Saw An American Carol today. Good flick. What I find interesting is that I even heard about it, and that it hasn’t been burried yet by the mainstream media. What’s cool about the movie is that it is un-apologetically conservative, and relentless in it’s desire to shoot every sacred cow in sight.

For way too long, Hollywood has been interested only in pushing their liberal agenda. As a result, you get a sort of self-congratulatory closed-loop, where directors and studios try to out-liberal each other, and come awards time, congratulate each other for make each film more extreme – and more liberal – than the last. 

David Zucker – the man behind An American Carol - was once a liberal. He created classic comedies like the Airplane series. Then 9/11 happened. He realized that liberals were saying things that just didn’t make sense – all the crap about “America’s evil” and “we deserved 9/11 due to our foreign policy” and “It’s all the evil conservatives’ fault.” Zucker realized that America IS the greatest nation on the Earth, and that there are times that war IS the answer.  

What interests me, from a marketing perspective, is how Zucker & Co. have been able to get the word out about this film, and how they’ve been able to attract an audience, no thanks to the media. 

Obviously, Zucker had a budget for an advertising campaign. Wisely, he took steps to build a viral campaign, encouraging conservatives to spread the word. We caught the viral wave early, and helped, by forwarding his online trailer to a bunch of friends. Spreading the word is essential, as you’re not going to see a lot of support from fawning media outlets, the way you did with films that do their best to destroy American archetypes (Brokeback Mountain) or trash the Bush administration (name virtually any film released in the last eight years). But Hollywood does respect one thing over any ideology – money. If you get great box office, they may not love you or your flick, but they’ll try their best to emulate your success with a thousand and one “me-too” movies. We saw the flick on the opening weekend, specifically so we could help add to the bottom line for the opening weekend grosses – usually a big indicator of a film’s success or failure. The opening weekend grosses determine how long a film will be booked, as well as if it’s labeled as a winner or as box office poison. 

Even if I hadn’t liked the film, I’d like to see it succeed, if only because it’s so refreshing to see a conservative-themed film make it. All things being equal, this film should enjoy a good deal of success. However, if you look at how the mainstream news media and the entertainment media outlets are treating it for the most part, it is going to be an uphill battle. Everybody at CBS, NBC, ABC, PBS, and MSNBC are just thrilled to talk about an assault on organized religion, Religulous, by everybody’s least-favorite atheist, Bil Mahr. And they are positively giddy over the prospect of promoting Oliver Stone’s upcoming fantasy hatchet job – W., purported to be the story of how George W. Bush went from drunken frat boy to become President of the United States. Stone, of course, is not known for his love of the truth, accuracy, or a desire to tell a fair and balanced story. If you believe the reviews, An American Carol doesn’t even exist. The reviewers are all talking about how “amazingly well” Religulous is doing. So, let’s take a look at Friday’s numbers:

1. Beverly Hills Chihauhau (Disney) – $8.5 million
2. Eagle Eye (Dreamworks/Paramount) – $5.5 million
3. Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist (Sony) – $4 million
4. Nights in Rodanthe (Warner Bros) – $2.45 million
5. Appaloosa (Warner Bros) – $1.7 million
6. An American Carol (Vivendi) – $1.4 million
7. Fireproof (IDP Films/Samuel Goldwyn) – $1.3 million
8. Lakeview Terrace (Sony) – $1.2 million
9. Burn After Reading (Focus) – $1.15 million
10. Religulous (Lionsgate) – $1.1 million

If you’re interested, do your own informal survey of how much ‘ink’ you see these three movies get. I would bet you the price of a movie ticket, popcorn and a Coke, that you’ll see a great deal more positive press over Religulous and W. than you’ll ever hear about An American Carol. That’s a shame. It’s wrong when the media allows their own biases to promote one flick over another, just to push an agenda. If An American Carol succeeds, it will be not because of the media and the marketing channels, but in spite of them.

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